Friday, July 30, 2004
First Day in a Suit
It's like getting naked, only in cuffs, collars, and creases--only worse. I feel debased, defaced, denied, rewritten, mistaken. I feel like the black man being trailed in a dept. store only I am the white man being eyed on the subway platform. I am not who you see. This is not how I was born into the world, naked, held on a hand up to the sun, in the fire and rain, fed lightning and icicles by faieries and shadows. These sleeves conceal hands etched rough by walls that foolishly stood in their way. These shining shoes shelter feet that have embraced the earth in love and pain. This pale and slender frame was never grown indoors or hid from the sun's cold, naked rays. I am not who you see. I am a wild, fornicating, mad, hallucinating stranger unfit for normal society--too democratic, too personal and personable, too brave to be unafraid, too joyful to stop crying, too rich to count money, too injured to mistake ignorance for healing, too real to cast judgements on those i know and especially those i don't, too spiritual to believe my eyes and too cynical to believe in gods....
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Op. posth. no. 12
In a blue series towards his sleepy eyes
they slid like wonder, women tall & small,
of every shape & size,
in many languages to lisp 'We do'
to Henry almost waking. What is the night at all,
his closed eyes beckon you.
In the Marriage of the Dead, a new routine,
he gasped his crowded vows past lids shut tight
and a-many rings fumbled on.
His coffin like Grand Central to the brim
filled up & emptied with the lapse of light.
Which one will waken him?
O she must startle like a fallen gown,
content with speech like an old sacrament
in deaf ears lying down,
blazing through darkness till he feels the cold
& blindness of his hopeless tenement
while his black arms unfold.
~John Berryman
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they slid like wonder, women tall & small,
of every shape & size,
in many languages to lisp 'We do'
to Henry almost waking. What is the night at all,
his closed eyes beckon you.
In the Marriage of the Dead, a new routine,
he gasped his crowded vows past lids shut tight
and a-many rings fumbled on.
His coffin like Grand Central to the brim
filled up & emptied with the lapse of light.
Which one will waken him?
O she must startle like a fallen gown,
content with speech like an old sacrament
in deaf ears lying down,
blazing through darkness till he feels the cold
& blindness of his hopeless tenement
while his black arms unfold.
~John Berryman
Some Kind of Monster
I saw the Metallica documentary last night of the above title. In addition to laughing my ass off, discovering why (in a genetic sense) Lars is as creative and demented as he is, and feeling invigorated and inspired about the creative process, I was amazed by just how self-reflective and sensitive the three band members were as people. Don't get me wrong: in 7th grade I passionately believed that Hetfield's lyrics and Ulrich/Hetfield's music was top shelf material that could only be produced by top shelf human beings. It's just, every debacle since Black (uh, I meant album)-- Load, Reload, Cock and Hot Load, S(uck) & M(asturbate)--I was pretty sure the band had lost the capacity not just for musical creation but abstract thought overall. But the licks of the new album, St. Anger, that I heard in the movie sounded like a reinvention of the very elements that made me an avid headbanger in their heyday: hard-grooving riffs that won't allow your skull to sit nicely on your spine, tight, fast and adrenaline-drenched beats dancing to heavy melodies, and perfectly-timed bridges and transitions from verses to choruses to solos to breakdowns. (If you couldn't tell already, I have positively no musical training and am completely tone-deaf, thus my critical opinion of music is based entirely on my own set of rules and definitions!) One thing I found sociologically interesting about the reception of the movie last night--at the Landmark Sunshine Cinema on Houston between 1st and 2nd-- was the contrast between the message inherent in the film of clarity and sobriety and redemption and the incredible enjoyment by the audience of their every tragic/pathetic/addicted stumble. Oh yeah, and for the record, I definitely think it Sucked Huge Hairy Chunks of Shrapnel-Filled Bull Scrotum the way Metallica flipped out over free-share music back in the day. C'mon boys, share the wealth a little. For christ's sake. The majority of your fans out here make a fraction annually of what you spend on Phil [their celebrity therapist] in a month. You wanna talk problems?
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AliVe!
It is impossible to see in the incredible activity of the ant-hill the complexity of intentions at work in Grand Central. We are not mere slowed-down versions of worker ants (sorry d.matthews). We are a group of friends reuniting lovers after years of forced separation; we are a pair of sisters sparring in the fashion of flying kung-fu movies; we are families from a myriad quiet places taking photos in the transportation hub of Gotham; we are luggage and gift-bags, fed-ex envelopes and cell-phones, back-packs, brief-cases, flip-flops and neckties. We come in oh so many colors, oh so many sizes. Ants, despite their fierce kinetic oscillations, operate in essentially linear modes. Venture out, collect food and material, return home, resume search. Humans, despite our languid ambulations, operate in unpredictably scribble-like manners. Bite a pretzel, snap a photo, stare at that passerby, cross arms and wait tiredly for mother or husband, buy a ticket, cross arms and converse casually waiting for a destination to occur, hustle for change, make up our minds and then change them in a moment. We are carpenters and delivery-boys, stock-brokers and engineers awaiting our next departure, security guards, police officers, and green berets trying to distinguish citizien from terror, little league coaches and retail managers. We come in oh so many shapes and sizes. Ants are black or red, segmented but incredibly monotonous; tireless but not very creative; gifted with an incredibly accurate internal navigation system yet totally uninterested in the larger world. Humans are sap, walnut, peach, alabaster, ebony, leather; we are endoskeletal yet softer on the inside than the out; we are incredible architects of the practical and yet often we are the mere apprentices to our own inexplicable dreams; we are able to depart from here and arrive virtually anywhere we want but does a single one of us know where we are going?
I love this Gargantua of city. Soooo much.
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I love this Gargantua of city. Soooo much.
Try selling something
I don't know why it should be so difficult to sell my Jeep in the city, but it seems to be taking far longer than I had imagined. Posting on Craigslist gets responses, but no one's been able to come over to look at it yet. Maybe I'm just being impatient; I just got the pics online last night, and I haven't been readily available to show it. I'm being impatient. But I need to sell it! Anyone need a Jeep in good condition??
The place is focking outrageous. I absolutely love the apartment. Beautiful, new appliances, great floors, spatious. We now have our utilities hooked up, so I'm online in the morning, sheet yeah, and posting again. The neighborhood could have been better, say Park Slope, but we'd never have gotten this apartment over there. As it is, I took a stroll in the park last evening and made some friends, played hacky sack, chatted with the landlady, had a beer; entirely enjoyed it. And, when I want to get to Park Slope, or the Heights, they're just a few stops on the Q away. Focking beautiful.
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The place is focking outrageous. I absolutely love the apartment. Beautiful, new appliances, great floors, spatious. We now have our utilities hooked up, so I'm online in the morning, sheet yeah, and posting again. The neighborhood could have been better, say Park Slope, but we'd never have gotten this apartment over there. As it is, I took a stroll in the park last evening and made some friends, played hacky sack, chatted with the landlady, had a beer; entirely enjoyed it. And, when I want to get to Park Slope, or the Heights, they're just a few stops on the Q away. Focking beautiful.
Saturday, July 24, 2004
Really a New Life
In the Breukelyn apartment, down the road from a few bridges, crossing rivers each day.
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Saturday, July 03, 2004
a new life begun
Tis been a little too long since I've had the opportunity to sit down and write something for the online community, though it be just the folk I get to see regularly.
Two weeks ago I moved down from Massachusetts to Jersey, Johnny's place. Two weeks from today John and I move into Brooklyn. I'm always surprised when my body starts to feel stress. Usually, I'll be able to stay up and party, work my ass off for school, work, ceremony, and be able to get up the next day (or the day after) and kick some butt. There's something about New Things in life that gives the mind and body an additional weight that is deceivingly heavy. I've got a three day weekend here, however, that I will be sure to rejuvenate the juices; I'll need every ounce for the next two weeks of 2 hours commutes, 13 hour days, and a move into Prospect Gardens.
Teaching begins too. Tuesday starts summer school, for the kids who are in danger of being left back a grade. I'll be working with another teacher, learning how to structure a classroom so that the kids know the rules and that there is some routine to the day. Sooo much to learn. I had no idea how complex formal education really is, from the inside out. I'm really looking forward to building units, working towards raising the literacy and math skills of my students. My students! Crazy thought.
Two weeks ago I moved down from Massachusetts to Jersey, Johnny's place. Two weeks from today John and I move into Brooklyn. I'm always surprised when my body starts to feel stress. Usually, I'll be able to stay up and party, work my ass off for school, work, ceremony, and be able to get up the next day (or the day after) and kick some butt. There's something about New Things in life that gives the mind and body an additional weight that is deceivingly heavy. I've got a three day weekend here, however, that I will be sure to rejuvenate the juices; I'll need every ounce for the next two weeks of 2 hours commutes, 13 hour days, and a move into Prospect Gardens.
Teaching begins too. Tuesday starts summer school, for the kids who are in danger of being left back a grade. I'll be working with another teacher, learning how to structure a classroom so that the kids know the rules and that there is some routine to the day. Sooo much to learn. I had no idea how complex formal education really is, from the inside out. I'm really looking forward to building units, working towards raising the literacy and math skills of my students. My students! Crazy thought.
