In the name of a very wise Aussie friend "today sucks, it just absolutely sucks"... today is the kind of day that you want an addiction to sidetrack your brain from thinking how bad the day actually is. Could you believe that I awoke with full knowledge that today would be one disaster after another?? [think minor firework eruptions with each passing minute] First i fell out of bed when turning off my militant alarm clock [killed both my knees on the bed frame], took a geogology test before i opened my eyes [horrific subject, vile teacher] and kept going [should have listened to my inner chakra] and proceeded to have the most spectacularly worst day ever. Survey results were messed up, homework could not be concentrated on, writing has withered and abandoned me, coffee was crap-o-la, and it took my train 45 minutes to show up... It still amazes me how awful a day could actually turn out. Clearly with representation of self so profoundly out of wack it is not the day to meet the President, future employer, extraterrestrial life, the mailpersonnel or even acknowledge my pet turtle. The only think of to escape my one-woman disaster zone was to run away to this tiny craft shoppe called 'sew therapy' [the only therapy besides dry martini humour i can currently afford] and bought the most beautiful yarn [not to strangle myself with- i assure you] to possibly undertake a productive project. Still, next time i feel one of these days coming along I am not going to bother attempting to function, or try and pretend to have normal civilized conversations with people, in fact i am going to do what i do best: take a pint of vanilla ice cream, a portable laptop and not even try to get beyond the region of my abusive bed...... on the bright side in a couple hours this too shall pass ... and as always gd bless airline tickets...

goodbye proud world...
i'm going home.
goodbye to Flattery' s fawning face-
to Grandeur with its wise grimace-
to upstart wealth's averted eye-
to supple office low and high-
to crowded halls to court and street
to frozen hearts and hastened feet
to those who come
and those who go
goodbye proud world...
i'm going home.

who wants perfect??

At the risk of heading towards virtual diary [gag. gag] i will say that today was a nice NYC day... [think Cary Bradshaw dates Mr. Potato Head] went with wonderful photo bug friend to see Andre Kertesz exhibit @ ICP. [the one to the left is my fave... a developed broken glass (negative, i think) of Paris]. i loved his night shots of Hungary and Paris [because i love the age of night shots and the solitary feeling of being alone (and somehow not alone) with the City at night]... so while i was waiting for my Cancer friend [i'm a Scorpio and we have finally determined that know all the wrong sign-ed people] some random dude [oh why so many random randoms randomly randoming??] comes over to me [sitting quietly with my bright red Italian gloves and triangular purse [yes, the one that looks like Angelica Houston's nose]] and tells me that i look like i am the subject of one of Kertesz's photographs. odd. old world. new world. would never be able to pick. either way... i'm taking it as a compliment ... see where spacing out can get you [other than back to Planet Mars]?
whatever.
Uhm... okay. rest of the day has been a blah- i can't write for a week now...sufferring is beyond the word... i rather eat my hair and a finger or two... then again... i am also relieved maybe i'll be able to put a normal sentence together eventually.... must be something in the damn air... a handicap virus of sorts.... ugh. stupid shennanigan sentences: without men, women would rule a peaceful, cancer-free universe [an un feminist opinion]...why in Jimminee Crickets are roses on sale all over the city [poor misunderstood flower]...... must leave now am feeling totally repulsed by my own writing [this is not a call for attention, believe me, i know how to get it]... forget it. not working. i'll be back when i remember how to write again or when i come up with some interesting way to eat celery.

Memory is a 6th sense...the art of articulating artificial artificats

Shavuah Tov friends.
The house is once again bustling with company (i have proposed that we permanently remove the front door)... relatives (an eclectic menage of real cousins, almost cousins, sortofcousins, and third cousins four times removed) from remote regions of the world (although @times even Eastern Parkway seems exeedingly distant) knocking at the door (Heaven's or our current lack thereof) at all hours of night and day (or is day and then night?) loaded with pictures, gossip and futurisitic thoughts (or the idealistic appearance of such things) in exchange for a comfortable chair, a piece of cake and a hot glass of tea (and most importantly an endless audience inclined to curiously listen)...

I've been reading furiously for the past 26 hours [in attempt to escape or to better comprehend??] so it may take me a while to resurface [i am not sure if that is reappear or appear]... into the world my mama refers to as 'reality'... so leave me be in my penetrations and battling for correct words...

some random purpose-less [or ful??] thoughts...

and the two book qoutes of the week [that replenish, restore, or revolutionize??]:
I am unsure as to why both are on the subject of love... perhaps it is due to the festivities of the weekend [in the relationship of my own microcosmic world and its larger macrocosmic community], or the fact that my home is flooded with exemplary examples of Lubavitchly affection.

"Women had said 'i love you' without his ever speaking. The more you love someone, he came to think, the harder it is to tell them. It surprised him that strangers didn't stop each other on the street to say 'I love you'..."

and the far greater one...

"'No," Grandfather said, "my ghosts are not there."
[you have ghosts?]
[of course i have ghosts.]
[what are your ghosts like?]
[they are on the insides of the lids of my eyes.]
[this is also where my ghosts reside.]
[You have ghosts???]
[Of course i have ghosts.]
[But you are a child!]
[I am not a child...]
[But you have not known love.]
[These are my ghosts, the spaces amid love.]

brilliant... what Dickinson called the 'heaves of storm'.
breath. G-d. air. life. wind. wisdom. clouds. soul. rain. art. storm= torrential downPOURS OF FUSION... THE PULSE OF SILENCE. THE VACUUM THAT CREATED CREATION
breath. MAN. air. G-d. life.... BIRTH- SPACE.
again. and again. and again.
to nothingness... to everythingness...

as some of you know i have a thing with walking in the rain [that's what happens when you're born rosh chodesh cheshvan i suppose]. Tonight i went out for a midnight walk [& also to splash- test my new polka-dot galoshes]. While i was in the midst of licking the sky's tears away and simultaneously washing the tedium from my own dry mind, the fluidity of the moment hit a sore spot, and the simplicity of simplicity caught me so off guard i almost tripped over the sun-bathing moon...

yes, we all find that place of personal outerspace that we tend to hang out in...a playground for one in our own little heads, our own Bermuda Triangle of consciousness, a gingerbread house of reality. its the place that we escape to when things make no sense, when you yourself finally realize that you will never make sense, and you no longer feel any need to make sense again. This niche is hole, a void, a vacuum removed from everyone and everything. There is no humanity, no art, not a single thought but: I am, I am happy to just BE.

This is the home of Isness. No excuses, no pretenses, no attempts at trying to convey a sentiment that is barely a fluttering wing of the spirit, no attempt at gravitating words and pinning them down to linear coherency. Nothing matters because it is all insignifcant to the state of Absolute Isness of You. Its a g-dly space, an intimate sphere, like a boudouir of spirit that opens only in a communication with Oneness and the knocking of Essential Things... leaving everything else outside...to fade with yesterday's rain clouds.

Lots of people think this is some kind of psychological/spiritual loneliness... naaaahhhh. it's not a defense mechanism...it's privacy. it's spending time with yourself [something i highly recommend to those of who you still feel awkward in your own presence].
You know what, people...
i decided in this particular puddle on New York Avenue that:
three times done, and it's done. because i do believe in humanity and in the power of art, and i believe in the potential of all things beautiful, ugly, wrong and right, i must admit to something.
i know that it is probably true that we can't change the world, heck it's probably pointless even trying to change our darn country...we can't change peoples' prejudices [they must be taught], politics [they must be sold] and religious insecurities [they must be made and defended]-
but we are born of yellow sand and black mud... there is no end but in the beginning, no beginning that isn't the end, no set stone that didn't birth a river, and no water that didn't split like stone, we are free, we are always free to change ourselves...

and to those of you who have persistently argued in how pointless my 'logic' is, here's my thinking, maybe just maybe if we all just altered one little part of ourselves, if we made one stone fluid, if we stepped out of our comfortable homes/boxes of reality for just a minute on one soggy night and stood out in the rain without an umbrella of pretention to protect us from feeling the wholeness of the experience, we'd actually enter a dialogue with the world...
if we just tried till we soaked our sox...
maybe we'd change the world
and maybe we'd do it without even realizing it...

i found a place in outerspace...3 times gone

Meet my BOOO, Eddie

its the great life.
I WANT HIM.

Shawn and I.
our Saturday nite date in cyber ville
shopping at yahoo
for available men...

the beginning of the world often comes

i am bored off my rocker of premature middle-aged hood.
thank gd.
i was a cat with a crippled hind leg that loved/hated tuna
then a fish that couldn't really swim downstream
the tooth fairy has thus retired to the bathtub.
i'm done with people who keep teeth in jars.
i am going to fly south with a kite
to bermuda
and get lost in three scoops of ice cream.
will follow the directions
i got from a leprechaun i met on Nostrand Avenue.
batGURL out.

and so it is...friends ;)

I had resigned myself from blogging for a while... after reading the responses of my morbidness i thought a while... and in truth i wasn't planning on responding. but today... today the wind was just right... the smell of fallen leaves so perfect... i twitched till i found a working pen. all darkness contains some light and all light contains some darkness, so says Chassidus, so says the ancient Chinese [as in ying and yang] etc. etc. so stop thinking in binary terms... it hurts the world.

here i wonder-
in this place of unimagineable stillness-
where language and thought
blend seemlessly,
endlessly-
a troupe of ballerinas
playing
on the last ivory keys of sensation.

here i walk-
in this indifferent city
of indifferent people
that in its repulsion
give me
the wallpaper
for my endless
blue space.

Here i am suffocated-
by a wind that is both
invigorating
and crippled.
here-
where the world seems perfect
in its imperfections-
awesome
and suicidal-
fatalistic
in its
breathtaking
sadness.

Only here-
under a sky quilted
with lost visions
is the expanse great enough
to relieve my thoughts
from a vessel
of broken
words.

here-
is the port of the emigrant soul
here-
is darkness that mothered light
here-
is the fragmented mirror
slilently reflecting
the disquiet of universal
wholeness.

the impatience of stillness

your silence today is a pond where drowned things live
i want to see raised dripping and brought into the sun.
it's not my own face i see there, but other faces,
even your face at another age.
Whatever's lost there is needed by both of us-
a watch of gold, a water-blurred fever chart,
a key... even the silt and pebbles of the bottom
deserve their glint of recognition. i fear this silence,
this inarticulate life. i'm waiting
for a wind that will gently open this sheeted water
for once, and show me what i can do
for you, who have often made the unnameable
nameable for others, even for me.

Is it normal to want to delete your blog every time you log onto it? I hate it. I love it. It's my only current form of free writing, pathetically, it is my only form of creative writing...

i am posting more often than i ever was... more time? more fallacious thoughts? more publicly shared stupidities? a dying creativity? an exhausted artistic conscienceness?

bear with me here. i'm on the backlash of an incredible high.... i am feeling it slowly slip through my body, through my legs...it's a torturous sensation...every adrenaline charged atom is excrutiating, pulling...sucking...taking it all out of me into an indifferent vortex of gravity. damn reality. i've had the most fabulous experience this morning and i am angred by its departure. i am furious that i have no choice but to embrace the process. i am pissed as hell that it's leaving me.

maybe i'm blaming this blog.
maybe i'm blaming myself.
maybe i should stop drinking so much fuel inspired coffee...


my fingers are crying...
they miss the piano
they miss pens and paper...
i wish i had more time to really write what i wanted to...

Snails, Eggnog and Fillets of Flamboyance

To tired to be original...

I
turn
its
pages:
caporal,
capote,
what a marvel
to pronounce these plosive
syllables,
and further on,
capsule,
unfilled, awaiting ambrosia or oil
and others,
capsicum, capricorn
words
as slippery as smooth grapes,
words exploding in the light
like dormant seeds waiting
in the vaults of vocabulary,
alive again and giving life:
once again the heart distills them.
from "Ode to a Dictionary"

I've got to make my work exciting somehow.... What are your favourite words???

knock knock knockin'

Yup. I did nothing tonight. 20 years old. NYC. and i didn't leave my house. Absurd. Go figure.
as i did some serious h & w i was thinking of some of tonight's instant im's and spontaneous text messages.

and then it hit me: i have a thought to share:
next time you are caught up in the greatness of others, remind yourself how fabulous you are. That's right. tattoo ten of your most fabulous faboulosnesses and every once in a while tell yourself [outloud] that you have every right to feel beautiful in your underwear and dance without a single reason on your front porch.
sounds elementary, no? nope. it's really not. so many are leaving their wonderful selves for a permenant residence at the Bleak House. I assure you won't become an egomaniac, and if you do, i swear i'll make sure to relieve society of your presence by running you over with a U-Haul truck... until then tho'....

This very mature thought naturally led me to a fit of insane laughter... how absurd things are... how ridiculous my beloved penguin sox look on my feet... how absurd that i am basing my entire educational thesis on pink floyd lyrics..... how absurd to read a 600 page book to find only one good line [see below].....how absurd that i want to date my very sexy i-pod nano.... how absurd that i write on a blog?... how absurd that blogs even exist.........???

i'm no camus, but i can't help but laugh... laugh at myself and the things i do. i highly recommend it especially for all of you returning from your very anti-climatic saturday nights....
laugh.
and especially laugh at your own corny self. that you are reading this the ramble.
laugh that i am in Dr. Phil mode [certain convo topics just do me in]

speaking of random absurdities, this Shabbat i was reading Pablo Neruda's Book of Questions, here are few i think some of you will appreciate:

Whom can I ask what I came
to make happen in this world?
Why do I move without wanting to,
why am I not able to sit still?
***
Where is the child I was,
still inside me or gone?
Why did we spend so much time
growing up only to separate?
***
and my own creative version:
What the hell ever happened
to clear Pepsi
in the summer of '69?

@#$%%^^[and that one good sentence: "The maker of a sentence launches out into the infinite worlds and builds a road into Chaos and Old Night, and is followed by those who hear him with something of a wild creative delight."]

ta ta dearst dahlings-
the tooth fairy must make her rounds.

1:13:05 AM

i found the nicest street in Brooklyn today:
E24 St. and Glenwood, check it out... stumbled upon it accidentaly when i was leaving PS 351 Performing Arts [the place looks like a misplaced Irish castle].

go there with a cupcake and mike & ikes-

(AM GODDESS, yes, YOU, Weeds Junkie on the phone: i can't help the fact that i hate Mike & Ikes [yes, even Jolly Joys and Hot Tamales]. !!!)

yes, the street really does exist... jiff. spiff. whiff. miff. riff. spiff. niff. kiff. liff. qiff. piff.

there are kids walking on campus today
and for some reason they are sporting rifles.

my lesbian friend just invited me to her wedding.
even tho' she'll have to settle for a handfast.

but, you know what.
i am not talking controversy right now. it's late. someone's paying me to do some hw for them, and in order to collect i need to do it [in addition to my never ending pile]
i am no longer taking phone calls calling me out to dawn duels
nor am i accepting im's or emails of cyber hatred.

tonight's philosophical, metaphysical, theological post:
i want a pair black boots from Zara. if you are going into the city: size 7.

how to make g-d sneeze [a story told under a lemon tree in 4 seconds or less]

okay.
straight up.
title has nothing to do with anything. my brain is just unloading all excess words from the day, and that line was mental remnants of earlier writing...
hmm.
nothing like a good meta-cognitive post to get you missing the unbearable lightness of being. i'm all biz eating my frozen grapes [takes exactly 42.01 hours to get them perfect], staring at my empty diet pepsi can [i wonder if i can spell caffeine backwards or forwards for that matter], wondering why the book i ordered still hasn't come [a contraband mexican children's book for Berkie] and why that hyena of a cow thought jumping over the moon was ever a good idea in the first place.

besides i'm abstaining- i'm stil stuck scrubbing off all my Breughel doodlings from my legs.
things are coming, things are going, well almost everything, except this fabulous weather. lately, i find myself dressing to match the current shade of falling leaves [which in my opinion has become a briliant but slightly burnt creamsicle orange [somewhat in the school of sorbet], refer to said location on President Street], a very poetic image i know... maybe i should write a poem about myself- ode to the lady of the brooklyn leaves [running with all that color and away with a very gay Walt Whitman]
or not.

poster droppings and their undies...just how domesticated is Desperate Blogville??

back to my yummy grapes and Frankenstein [we're bonding- he says hello at least i think that's what blinking at the screen translates as]

so i am back to contemplating the laughing cow jumping over the ridiculously serious green moon.
wonder if that square man on the moon thought it was a tad strange to be staring at a huge canvas of black holes as it sailed over his head.
maybe he did.
probably not.
i'm going to ask Frankenstein.

while you are reading this, you are not the same person you were before reading this

yes... i keep changing my posts... seems that whatever i am thinking in the mornings is always different from where i find myself in the evenings... night time has strange way of shifting form and shape, patterns move until the quintessential shadow is only visible in total darkness. there's something about the handicap of sight that illuminates everything. besides i like not having set 'absolute articles' (which like ART is such a pillar-ed capital ISM word). i hate all derivatives of Absolute Art. what an inflexible notion, a totality of finality, an embodiment of human ugliness... especially when there's no such thing as pillars of thought...when all we write about is really just words and ideas caught in transit... shadows moving in a perpetual stream of consciousness, hesitantly and briefly caught in lighted fragments on white paper...

tonight i went to the jonathan safran foer book reading/signing. nice guy. but pete hamill didn't shut up about the dodgers... guess nostalgia is really just an endless mental run-on...and once started the listener is stuck on an awkward treadmill of misplaced memory. still despite my lack of interest i attempt to respect the age of old eyes, and sit still quietly, flowing with my directionless thoughts and shadows, making small doodled maps all over my marble legs.

besides for my observations on subconscious flirting- i think of my recent exciting news (5pm to be exact). finally, my education research project has been approved by The Panel. i am relieved...i won't bore myself or you with details, but there's a chance, if successful, for APA publication and landing a position in a good Ph.D program. thrilling news for a research geek... a research geek who celebrates paper with more paper. but right now its hard to move or get too excited with the notion of more paper in my papered life when i am occupied with making neat little rows of desks on my calf.

in this apparent happiness of what should be considered a very monumental moment [and i am being told to be happy]... I am shrouded in the quiet, the drone of Pete Hamill's monotone exulting the F train and the hum of a 1950 treadmill running in the distance to some unknown direction.... I alone spin the spoon of my soggy luke-warm tomato soup, creating a vortex with a curious solar system from bits of green peppers and plastic onions. With effort the metal hits the bottom of my ceramic mug echoing a taste of acute hollowness.

"I thought about life, about my life, the embarrassments, the little coincidences, the shadows of alarm clocks on bedside tables. I thought about my small victories and everything I'd seen destroyed, I'd swum through mink coats on my parents' bed while they hosted downstairs, I'd lost the only person I could have spent my only life with, I'd left behind a thousand tons of marble, I could have released sculptures, I could have released myself from the marble of myself. I'd experienced joy, but not nearly enough, could there be enough? The end of suffering does not justify the suffering, and so there is no end to suffering, what a mess I am, I thought, what a fool, how foolish, how narrow, how worthless, how pinched and pathetic, how helpless."

-from Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

riding the waves

waves are always highest
when you are stuck standing
in an enormous puddle
while waiting for the lazy bus
to decide and show up.

Such a stupid thing-
moronic behavior-
Allowing
the dirty city water to soak your ankles
and ruin your nice sox
till this odd wet claw reaches up your spine
and makes your toes cold.

i've never understood
how to ride those persistent waves
the rhythmn of schedule
of work
and life-
how do you take the energy of 40 waves
and ride it?
move with it?
and flow as they do in desert California?

40 waves that crash endlessly
knocking stubbornly on my wall of words
beating their demands
for paychecks-
for tax breaks-
for utility bills-

40 waves soaking
in one lousy misplaced puddle-
while i wait on the corner
and glare at the obnoxious sun-
waiting
and waiting for that damn bus
that i know will never come.




and for late night conversations with people who have no teeth:
"Somebody at one of these places asked me: "What do you do? How do you write, create?" You don't, I told them. You don't try. That's very important: not to try, either for Cadillacs, creation or immortality. You wait, and if nothing happens, you wait some more. It's like a bug high on the wall. You wait for it to come to you. When it gets close enough you reach out, slap out and kill it. Or if you like it's looks, you make a pet out of it."
- Charles Bukowski

another year...another post

Funniest twilight experience today. My friend Sabina was telling me about a reggae concert she went to and about this new singer she's currently obsessed about...turns out to be Mattisyahu. Talk about multiculturalism- such instances rock my world.
So it's my birthday today. I'm 20. I've officially shifted from an irresponsible teenager to an irresponsible adult. celebrated last night with a few friends which was really nice- its good to go out now and then to experience all that we read and write about.
so i'm currently reading teaching against global capitalism and the new imperialism this book is my Bible to hex blood sucking capitalists (as you'll notice my rage on their blogs).

i'm trying to prolong the eating of my fat free, sugar free, taste free muffin for as long as possible because i don't have food for the day. i've come to the conclusion that crumbs are purely psychological phenomenon.
sarah jessica parker is filming outside in front of the library for her new movie. she's got brown straight hair. Apparently our campus looks like a New England school. Amazing how you can manipulate image. and get this...the movie is about racism...how ironic is that???
I'm feeling a bit restless.
Life's becoming a bit too habitual for my liking.
It's infringing on my style.
a-typicality can become very typical.
i am still debating what programs to apply for grad school. Literacy specialization is what i want to go into but its such a specified field Yale doesn't even offer it. Problem is I am not a die-hard idealist. Still, some of my teachers are encouraging I pursue some academic career in English. Reading and writing are so intrinsicly a part of me, that living a life in their absence would put me on dialysis. Yet the thought of spending the rest of my life analyzing Milton and the works of other people is pathetic. Difference is important. Academic work must translate into real life and real time of it is a purely selfish endeavor.
Hmmm...
i'm ranting
i'm late for class again. And i actually love this one. French poetry of Baudelaire. I found the language soothing.
okay i'm out.
perchance i'll replace this with something more comic later.
namastaei friends. a cyber blessing to you all: may you have all the things you should wish for.