Two in the morning on a Tuesday. The ceiling is high and the fragrance is dark and the season is warming. There's a car passing by as a window of shutters scatters light in crisscrossed confusion. I watch words dance along the bookcase across the room, insinuating unspoken philosophies.
Three in the morning on a Tuesday. A mug of wine wafts memories into a spinning fan above my head. Eyes sag like weighted bags of sand. A ring glints a beam of assurance from my left hand. Words spiral.
Five in the morning on a Tuesday. There's a counterpoint to the story. A denouement of ill will, perhaps. A rummage through Pandora's box for something lighter. Hope is promised. Promise is inactive. Tomorrow is better.
Five fifty three in the morning on a Tuesday. Wonder. Questions. Fear. Entitlement. Altruism. Exhaustion. Aging. Love. Divorce. Not my story. What's my story?
Alarm Clock.
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Ice Rinks in November
There's a dame in Bryant Park today. I say dame and not woman deliberately to honor the way she carries herself. Clutching a purse just wide enough to fit her opera glasses and a shivering chihuahua, she tilts her head slightly as she examines the glasswork of a particularly ordinary vase. I crane. She turns abruptly and sneers one of those audible sneers as she catches me watching her. I avert my gaze in apology.
I'd forgotten how it feels to be a stranger in New York - to be caught in the crossfire of taxi honks and the occasional blue collar whistle. I'd forgotten what it's like to order a chirashi for one and ask the waiter to lend me a pen.
I grew up this past September. It was one of those swift agings, as daunting as a Dorian painting and as inevitable. It was a Woody Allen sort of growth, with an outpouring of tangible neuroses laying claim to my autumn. The little piece of solace I'd called self for the last five years evaporated in the face of my emotional recklessness, and I began to re-enlist Edith Wharton and the decline of contemporary mirth.
Adulthood seems to be the state of shifting time, both forward and revisiting. It's the act of running without moving your legs. It's an attempt at compromising without being compromised.
How do we learn to talk to people? For every friend I have ten special silences. I've learned to talk without sharing. Feelings are for nightmares and cold showers and google searches and therapists. I feel love, but that's different. That's unavoidable.
The dame from Bryant Park walks into the restaurant and orders a sushi for two for one. She removes her earmuffs to reveal two emerald earring set in silver. Her graying hair folds across her forehead and she reaches for the soy sauce with a shaking ringless hand. She recognizes me and smiles. Perhaps we aren't strangers any longer. Perhaps she's not alone. I nod to her and whisper to the waiter for my check.
Encounters should be fleeting. Who knows what we might start to feel.
I'd forgotten how it feels to be a stranger in New York - to be caught in the crossfire of taxi honks and the occasional blue collar whistle. I'd forgotten what it's like to order a chirashi for one and ask the waiter to lend me a pen.
I grew up this past September. It was one of those swift agings, as daunting as a Dorian painting and as inevitable. It was a Woody Allen sort of growth, with an outpouring of tangible neuroses laying claim to my autumn. The little piece of solace I'd called self for the last five years evaporated in the face of my emotional recklessness, and I began to re-enlist Edith Wharton and the decline of contemporary mirth.
Adulthood seems to be the state of shifting time, both forward and revisiting. It's the act of running without moving your legs. It's an attempt at compromising without being compromised.
How do we learn to talk to people? For every friend I have ten special silences. I've learned to talk without sharing. Feelings are for nightmares and cold showers and google searches and therapists. I feel love, but that's different. That's unavoidable.
The dame from Bryant Park walks into the restaurant and orders a sushi for two for one. She removes her earmuffs to reveal two emerald earring set in silver. Her graying hair folds across her forehead and she reaches for the soy sauce with a shaking ringless hand. She recognizes me and smiles. Perhaps we aren't strangers any longer. Perhaps she's not alone. I nod to her and whisper to the waiter for my check.
Encounters should be fleeting. Who knows what we might start to feel.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Electra or Oedipus 2011
Rib after rib
He counted every keystroke
Like a xylophone of sweat,
Mallet on a resonating
Vibrato
carol King
getting high on a Monday
kgb lovegames
pretentious peppermint patties
salacious grannies
physical conspirators
an editor
a singer
an intellectual
Write out the frequencies
And listen in between the static
To the drone of sonic
Bone rattle
the bench is always sitting
He counted every keystroke
Like a xylophone of sweat,
Mallet on a resonating
Vibrato
carol King
getting high on a Monday
kgb lovegames
pretentious peppermint patties
salacious grannies
physical conspirators
an editor
a singer
an intellectual
Write out the frequencies
And listen in between the static
To the drone of sonic
Bone rattle
the bench is always sitting
Monday, September 12, 2011
Shambling
It's been a month since I last put thought to pen and pen to paper and paper to post. It's been a long time. You see, I was away for a while, walking in Eden, but I'm back now. I'm sorry. We get carried away by butterflies sometimes, but their wings grow weary so here I am, with a thud. You can live years in seconds, you know? I just forgot that the ticking gets louder, that clocks have alarms...my negligence. They're ringing so loudly these days, the alarms I mean, and I'm fumbling for the switch. I know it's there. So anyway, that's why I'm back here. To fumble and switch.
There's a restlessness sitting in my throat. It's making my tongue turn to sandpaper.
I'm beginning to understand Jane and Elizabeth and Tess and the rest. I'm beginning to understand why we love Heathcliff and why doors don't close even when the temperature is frostbite and the feeling is fever and shake.
There's a layer of dust that settled on the children of 9/11, reminding them that 10 years means it's time to grow up. They lay wreathes of flowers by fallen pedestals and hope that makes things better.
And I wonder at flowers and chocolate and painkillers and smoke. And I'm grateful that there's hope of resurrection.
The song's been playing through my head - the one I wrote but didn't share with many. There's a line in particular.
"The little girl with glasses is learning how to dance. It's the only chance she has to make her mother smile. And she wears a wreathe of daffodils, paints angels on the windowsills, and wonders, in a decade, who'll walk her down the aisle".
Life's a series of unanswered questions and irreconcilable doubts.
I'll sit and google plane tickets and Tuscan sunsets and hope that, in the dreaming, reality fades.
There's a restlessness sitting in my throat. It's making my tongue turn to sandpaper.
I'm beginning to understand Jane and Elizabeth and Tess and the rest. I'm beginning to understand why we love Heathcliff and why doors don't close even when the temperature is frostbite and the feeling is fever and shake.
There's a layer of dust that settled on the children of 9/11, reminding them that 10 years means it's time to grow up. They lay wreathes of flowers by fallen pedestals and hope that makes things better.
And I wonder at flowers and chocolate and painkillers and smoke. And I'm grateful that there's hope of resurrection.
The song's been playing through my head - the one I wrote but didn't share with many. There's a line in particular.
"The little girl with glasses is learning how to dance. It's the only chance she has to make her mother smile. And she wears a wreathe of daffodils, paints angels on the windowsills, and wonders, in a decade, who'll walk her down the aisle".
Life's a series of unanswered questions and irreconcilable doubts.
I'll sit and google plane tickets and Tuscan sunsets and hope that, in the dreaming, reality fades.
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Non Puoi Comprendere
I spoke with Verdi this evening.
You see, I've been starting the middles of my nights with Act III of Traviata, so it was important that we speak, Verdi and I. I know it to be true, you see, that it isn't the cacophony of NYC, or the bicyclist's bickering, or the panic attacks. I know it to be true that it's the cello that keeps pulsing at my insomnia. It's the cello in Act III.
So I spoke with Verdi this evening.
It's a conversation about time, really.
It's a conversation about ticking.
It's a conversation about Alfredo coming too late.
Perhaps.
But the aspiration was never happily ever after.
So I went to the place where I always go when I'm alone, the place that smells of marijuana and Russian poetry, and I sat with my purse between my legs and I prayed to God.
And I didn't pray in language. I prayed with stillness.
I prayed to God and Verdi answered.
And he said - Lech L'cha.
You see, I've been starting the middles of my nights with Act III of Traviata, so it was important that we speak, Verdi and I. I know it to be true, you see, that it isn't the cacophony of NYC, or the bicyclist's bickering, or the panic attacks. I know it to be true that it's the cello that keeps pulsing at my insomnia. It's the cello in Act III.
So I spoke with Verdi this evening.
It's a conversation about time, really.
It's a conversation about ticking.
It's a conversation about Alfredo coming too late.
Perhaps.
But the aspiration was never happily ever after.
So I went to the place where I always go when I'm alone, the place that smells of marijuana and Russian poetry, and I sat with my purse between my legs and I prayed to God.
And I didn't pray in language. I prayed with stillness.
I prayed to God and Verdi answered.
And he said - Lech L'cha.
Monday, June 13, 2011
Heath and Cliffs
In an old lime-green notebook, scribbled diagonally in my own hand, I read a reference to Rimbaud in which I once found meaning.
"I wait gluttonously for God. I have been of an inferior race for ever and ever."
The scribble is in pencil and I toy with erasing it. It could be as though thoughts never were...
Then an ambulance speeds past my window and I look up at my reflection in the cold glass. I don't seem any older. I'm 22 and my shoelaces still untie when I walk too quickly. I still wonder about words like thither and happenstance. I still have questions about God.
I outline the quotation in pen and return the notebook to the bottom of reverie's heap.
When I was nearly eight, I dreamed of being Atlas. I kept a globe atop my dresser and lifted it with young abandon. A chiropractor's dream. And with each year its weight increased while my abandon faltered. And with each year my shoulders shook and balance turned to bitter. And now, uncertainty.
A man on Columbus stopped to ask me why the words Hashem and Hashish barely differ. I didn't know. The man had been holding his cellphone to his left ear, pursing his lips as he spoke, and I shook my head in reply to the anonymous caller on the other end. He seemed disappointed.
I wonder if I believe in God or if I just believe in 'Jewish'.
My email has been inundated with horoscopes lately. I don't subscribe. The subjects read "I'm sorry for your sadness" and "How to care less and learn to live". I'm deleting them one by one to remind me that I don't wish to change.
Instead, I wear stilettos to mask the fear that I may be falling from this wuthering height.
"I wait gluttonously for God. I have been of an inferior race for ever and ever."
The scribble is in pencil and I toy with erasing it. It could be as though thoughts never were...
Then an ambulance speeds past my window and I look up at my reflection in the cold glass. I don't seem any older. I'm 22 and my shoelaces still untie when I walk too quickly. I still wonder about words like thither and happenstance. I still have questions about God.
I outline the quotation in pen and return the notebook to the bottom of reverie's heap.
When I was nearly eight, I dreamed of being Atlas. I kept a globe atop my dresser and lifted it with young abandon. A chiropractor's dream. And with each year its weight increased while my abandon faltered. And with each year my shoulders shook and balance turned to bitter. And now, uncertainty.
A man on Columbus stopped to ask me why the words Hashem and Hashish barely differ. I didn't know. The man had been holding his cellphone to his left ear, pursing his lips as he spoke, and I shook my head in reply to the anonymous caller on the other end. He seemed disappointed.
I wonder if I believe in God or if I just believe in 'Jewish'.
My email has been inundated with horoscopes lately. I don't subscribe. The subjects read "I'm sorry for your sadness" and "How to care less and learn to live". I'm deleting them one by one to remind me that I don't wish to change.
Instead, I wear stilettos to mask the fear that I may be falling from this wuthering height.
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Slowly
A distinct waft of lemonade sidles its way through the crack in my bedroom window, pauses just above a half open copy of Catcher in the Rye, and drifts on. I open one eye and observe the clothes I've been meaning to hang in my closet for the past week and a half.
Needs sugar.
Tripping over a Chumash and pulling a robe around my shoulders, I watch the digits of my bedside clock click to 5:30. Classic. May settles onto my calendar and I wave to the man jogging down 86th street. The ducks are back.
My mind drifts to a year ago. My mind drifts to a small room on the lower east side with unswept corners and bright red sheets. My mind drifts to the bouncer on Rivington who used to kiss my cheek and rub lipstick off his. My mind drifts to the graduation I decided to skip and to getting hit by a bicycle. My mind drifts to flying and falling.
I toss back a shot of mouthwash and wince as it burns my tongue. The face in the mirror doesn't look any older. And still.
It happened last night - the realization that I didn't need to assert my independence anymore. Now, I am looking to trust.
I throw on my jacket and grab my keys. The air is fresh and I look toward where the ducks go. A taxi whizzes west and I'm reminded that it's Tuesday. They'll have to wait.
Needs sugar.
Tripping over a Chumash and pulling a robe around my shoulders, I watch the digits of my bedside clock click to 5:30. Classic. May settles onto my calendar and I wave to the man jogging down 86th street. The ducks are back.
My mind drifts to a year ago. My mind drifts to a small room on the lower east side with unswept corners and bright red sheets. My mind drifts to the bouncer on Rivington who used to kiss my cheek and rub lipstick off his. My mind drifts to the graduation I decided to skip and to getting hit by a bicycle. My mind drifts to flying and falling.
I toss back a shot of mouthwash and wince as it burns my tongue. The face in the mirror doesn't look any older. And still.
It happened last night - the realization that I didn't need to assert my independence anymore. Now, I am looking to trust.
I throw on my jacket and grab my keys. The air is fresh and I look toward where the ducks go. A taxi whizzes west and I'm reminded that it's Tuesday. They'll have to wait.
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