July 2008 Archives

hiding from the sun at the table in the living room. were i a plant i would look forward to the giant orange to turn its fire on over the roof of kings county hospital. sitting here with one eye open, the blurry screen in front of me, the air conditioner running. some strange dreams still tearing at my neck. how much more fragile could it make sense for me to be? perhaps i'll have some water and then go right back to sleep. the screen just turned into a blob. it is getting brighter. maybe i should water the plants first. hmm...

into the little window, as if it were a piece of paper, as if it were a wall in the sun and this here were a piece of brush. not a whole brush, just the painted end of it. perhaps yellow and brown. and maybe there could be some numbers embossed in gold. something like that. the plants will need to survive inside. many will. some will not. for seven days. a shot glass with a few now dead wild flowers is surrounded by a circle of white pollen. the small sunflower i have recently brought in left a cloud of yellow on the table cloth. it looked beautiful and spooky. it felt like a scream, recorded in little dots on the dark blue of the table cloth. now the table pretends to be covered with small ocean plants. all of them have seven leaves. all are facing north. this one is actually a bedsheet. it is too long. it reaches the floor on one side. not for very long maybe. my dinner is a series of disks, a third of a red moon, a whole bunch of little green leaves, half a lemon, a spoon of salty stuff, a few spoons of olive oil... and a tiny wooden cup of small water. frozen. hot. really tiny. just two more days and we will be able to float on top of unconnected ideas, and aimless plans, images of things to come. maple leaves and rocky mountains and unexplored places. just read an article claiming that 0.3% of the light falling on the sahara will be able to supply all of europe with electricity.. make it 0.6% of the light and turn all the cars electric. i could imagine that the next push for the economies around the world is going to be the true conversion to the so called alternative energy sources, the renewable ones. all buildings should be suppliers of energy, not just consumers of it. the wind should not be wasted. it should be harvested. the sun should be eaten. pieces of it. particles... they already are being eaten... maybe more should be. the words here are powered by wind. (switched to wind about two years ago?, maybe three? not sure.) i wish the subway in new york used electricity from wind power. i would pay more for the metro card if i only knew that my share of fare is being used to purchase renewable energy. wil there be electric jets? the plants will need to survive without water for a week. in a few days. so glad we will take some time off. really.

the day tasted freshly ground. the kind that is turned to the lightest powder between age old stones. i thanked the guys for laughing at my stupidest jokes. i know it is not fair somehow. they still do. it is very nice of them. it is going to be good when we are gone for two weeks. no stupid jokes. the water evaporates from the plants so quickly, it feels as if i were watering some dying weeds on the side of the road. the wild flowers might as well be weeds. their flower heads are tiny and rare and... i still like them. when we will be gone for a week, the pigeons will have to learn to use the watering can. i could take all of the plants in, leave the air conditioning on, put things in buckets and then deal with all the animals later. no. not a good idea. very much looking forward to lake louise now.

A new group of pictures of the bear just went live on The Morning News. (Thank you Rosecrans Baldwin.) The whole set is a bit darker than the previous ones. Some of the images contain, more or less hidden hints at places that open doors to stories. Some of the clues are much more obvious than others. But perhaps that's how most of the world around us works. There appears to be a very familiar layer, one that responds well to our predicted views of it. Then there is the stuff which we expect to be surprising and new. Then there are the things which fool us and do not open up to us until much much later. And then... some never do. And perhaps most never do. It is perfectly possible to reduce the world to a place of one point perspective, a one dimensional string of events and places and encounters, (a straight line for some, for others a spiral, or a knot.) And yet every, even the thinnest string is made out of billions of little particles which just "happened to be" in that right place at the right time. And it is not like they would be the only ones that could have been there and then. It is a little harder to imagine that each one of the particles of the universe is somehow as central to it, as the thought that crosses the mind of the reader right here and right now. And each particle is as much dependent on previous generations of itself and shaping to future ones?, just as that thought... (Though they might actually be all at the same time?) The world is a mysterious place. And it is perfect, just the way it is and was and is going to be. And it is much, much more complex than any image or thing or... word? We seem very aware of the mystery before we learn to expect and learn to read and "understand." At some point things become business as usual. But secretly they never are. Or so i can only hope.

the rain was not very heavy. it was still a surprise. i could have just turned around. only the doorman would know. nothing bad. i unfolded the scooter, locked the security latch, put on my skating hemet and kicked myself south towards the first traffic light. then towards the other side of ocean parkway and just kept kicking. avenue c, avenue j, avenue... kicked on for the entire alphabet. all the way to z, then beyond. then towards the smell of salty water, all the way to one of the wet benches overlooking the ocean. it is the ocean, isn't it? the air here was very humid, cool, desaturated and quiet. it was not even 8am. and so the average age on the promenade was maybe 75. a few old russian men without shirts stretched their loosely wrapped bony limbs away from their silverback belies. women, in colorful tight outfits pretended being as beau-tea-ful as 50 years prior somewhere near odessa. i kicked the scooter down the boardwalk, by the wall of the aquarium, towards the cyclone, the parachute jump. the wet, bent, partially detached boards clacked loudly under my wheels. and the men and the ladies and even their dogs looked at me as if they really knew my name. for them they did. i was the "idiot." i was the guy wearing a helmet, riding a grown up version of a kick scooter down the coney island boardwalk. for what? why would anybody in their right mind do that? at 8am? and so "idiot" was my name. or maybe "idyot" and they would forget me as soon as the clacking sound of the wheels disturbing the boards would no longer be audible to them. but they would not forget my name. they would just give it to some other guy. he just had to show up. this early. on the boardwalk. in the morning. in the rain. maybe in a helmet. maybe under 50.

it felt very different to have the camera pointed at me yesterday. and i do not know what i ended up saying. i just don't. now i am worried that i looked really dumb. it is okay. somehow. the shoot today was rather excellent. i am much more comfortable sitting somewhere near a monitor, far away from the camera, able to trust an excellent crew... we shot at this beautiful house in ditmas park. it was somehow magical. the air was fragrant, somehow sparkling with goodness and brilliance. it is so amazing to be in a house that carries such good karma. so good. it felt very special to see three of my little pieces on really good walls inside of the house. i can not even describe how special it felt. a great, gentle house, filled with a real soul, with brilliant and good people living in it, and then these tiny translucent slices of my life somehow interwoven into this fabric; a picture of the bear from that very big trip with my father; two drawings i like so much... wow. and i was able to visit the house by scooter. on my way there i saw bryan's bike parked in front of his building. are these all little pieces of a puzzle that are assembling themselves into the picture i will see when i look back at my life and smile? what a day.