can we talk about this later?

we're living in a secret world, the kind that's exposed by only the tip bit of the edge of a broken mirror...a tiny grassy, wooded island--suburbanites' vacation escape from life's tedium [join the resistance, fall in love etched nightly in the sandy shores]--only the top of which is clear to the naked eye. submerged and extending for miles deep and wide, a whole life with a speckled, colored, uneven past, with bottles broken against walls and whispers in the 4am darkness and stories told in the mere expression of eyes. a whole world surrounded by water, so it's hard to pin down the constant, the reality. a whole world made up of memories of rooms and songs and those moments you both love and hate to recount; a place both so muddied and so totally bright that all words, coincidences, disappointments, consequences, decisions, spans of eye contact, all absences, all hopes and every single labored goodbye have 500-lb. weights attached to them, plunging us deeper and deeper. we're the brilliant glow of candlelight in darkness, we're those final hums of a person on the brink of death, we're the tattoo you just found out you had.

"dear baby"

be just as good as you can be
love,
papa

the truth is coming out. the screen is lifting, reality is coming into focus. blindingly. it's like the brightest sun, the richest colors, the sharpest edges--everything i've been dazed by, nearly paralyzed by for so so long. like years. it's wearying to pass all these days out of the shade. and still. what's happened and what i want to happen entreat and tug and yank me by the nose or the heart or whatever can be pulled, and really it's so hard to live right within it for so long. it really is so wearying and at times downright suffocating, but when the truth comes out in morsels after midnight, and when the rope i'm pulling starts to give way--some baby little morsels--it's then that i know i'd rather scorch like this in the light.

it's three weeks today that i've lived here, and the transition has been easy, really quite easy. i've etched out already a fair amount of a life, and i haven't been bored or lonely since week one. the weather's better now [in an insane way], and with a bike, a second job, and a bit more money [and yes glue and a bed and maybe even other furniture one day], days and nights will be sweet and easy and will pass with contentment [more than contentment], tenderness, fascination and you know...everything else good and nice and light [but to be burdened?], and you know.

hold me like you never held me before, like if you knew for sure

dude. seriously. first there was easter, then there was the nor'easter and then there was the best weekend of weather in the history of new york city [ok, my being in new york city]. seriously. dude. i could see just blue, just blue through the skylight over my bed when i opened my eyes this morning. it's going to be so nice! i'm going to every park! just watch me! crocheting at every park in new york city! maybe it'll be a project! maybe i'll blog about it! [ok, maybe that's dumb.]

finally finally finally! got that other loney dear record, finally. fuck, it is seriously SO good. i'm sorry but like,,,,,,,i listened to the newest one, loney, noir a lot, and it is good, butbut but i'm sorry but this record should really have been the one released on sub pop. this record, though, goddamn, it's like...listening to it's like breaking a fucking leveé. a memory leveé! it makes me think of the rain.

also! i found a sublet for june! woo!

AND i'm not hungover today!

reality?

last night i finished my ántonia by willa cather, my first finished book here. washing out a long, long reading dry spell. i liked it a lot, but i'm not sure that cather "created one of the most winning heroines in american fiction" [or that "'no romantic novel ever written in america, by man or woman, is one half so beautiful as my ántonia.'"] nonetheless, there were a couple great lines toward the end.

"'Do you know, Ántonia, since I've been away, I think of you more often than of anyone else in this part of the world. I'd have liked to have you for a sweetheart, or a wife, or my mother or my sister--anything that a woman can be to a man. The idea of you is a part of my mind; you influence my likes and dislikes, all my tastes, hundreds of times when I don't realize it. You really are a part of me.'"

"She lent herself to immemorial human attitudes which we recognize by instinct as universal and true. I had not been mistaken. She was a battered woman now, not a lovely girl; but she still had that something which fires the imagination, could still stop one's breath for a moment by a look or gesture that somehow revealed the meaning in common things."

i need suggestions for something else now. fiction, please.

can you still ruin music?

i didn't say it yet, my building is salmon-colored. my mother had said it was pink, google earth colored it red, but it is in reality salmon. a strange color for bricks i think. i had meant to mention this.

i'm slowly [or is it quickly?] accepting that i live here. it took about ten days to break down and buy the monthly train pass. "you just keep putting money on the card?" "yeah..uhm...i don't know what i'm waiting for." it took one trip carrying my dirty clothes to the laundromat to break down and buy the "neighborhood cart." i had had my heart set on one of those with the plastic flowery material, but perhaps those just exist in the movies because they don't seem to in my neighborhood. it's totally worth it.

i feel so in-between, over some edge or fissure, and my toes keep falling in. in the middle of the night, during certain songs, on certain notes...i'm transported elsewhere. to places that don't really exist, or maybe only in that 50% past. smells and the lighting and notes and how it all felt.. but none of that's here, and only somewhat in spirit. i'm willing it away. but there are new plans and times and people and delights. i have so much hope.

i danced you across the wooden floor and you signed the lease

a dearth of words can only means good things: old friends, new faces, things to do, bar hopping, yummy french food, making split pea soup, afternoon in the park, coincidences, big surprises, brunch, making plans, staying up late, &tc.; the first days i've been really glad to be here. and the same continues throughout the week, and then 6s and sunny starting on the weekend and going on and on..

[ohyeah and then there was that nor'easter: equal parts tempestuous and angelic; one whole part persistent; brought cold wet feet and may have hit sick at my throat; unknown quantity of parts metaphoric.]

serenading

the forecast here is exhausting. every morning i check, and then throughout the day i check semi-compulsively the 10-day forecast, and then i sigh audibly each time when not a 6 appears. no 6. 4s and 5s and even 3s in the nights. no 6s. just low 5s. not even between a 5 and a 6. it's friday and if there'd just be a little 6 on weather.com, we could all lay in the park and do something frivolous. and be pretty damn happy.

the last day of 6s [and 7s!] i remember clearly, on that very good bad day. i didn't want to face it, but the weather was so so gorgeous it was quite a helping hand. the sheets were red with the imprint of my tattoo. you went out onto the balcony, and until i joined you, i didn't know the weather was so perfect. i stood beside you for a while, but the warmth--or the something, something like warmth--was too much to handle. it felt like standing on the edge a cliff and peering downward. my stomach hurt. we did everything slowly; i doted upon every moment. i remember all the music we listened to that day. i remember lunch: how i took too long to decide, the way my soup tasted, the old man you wanted to become, the cartoon character t-shirt, the dr. seuss lady, the temperature of the drinking water, the clink of the silverware, the sound of the espresso machine and the juicer, where i put my purse under the table, the way you barely looked at me; how we ignored the inevitable, pretending that the day was just another. i remember driving east, and slowly, and finally stopping in that baby little town; you making me stand outside of the car. i remember everything about the dog chained up there and how many clouds were in the sky and exactly what the gravel felt like under my feet. i remember the "watch your step!" all the time, the button lady, the cast-iron banks, the photos, the old baking supplies. i remember standing close, how long i took to decide on a button and stopping for moments in that side room. the drive further east was even slower. my stomach dropped when we turned down the street. i remember how the grass felt under my feet and exactly how the sun shone into the front room, the cats, the couch, your things piled up in the corner. we moved slowly, and i left quickly. i didn't look back to see if you were watching.

well not in the surf of course

things i'll never hear of. old ears hear better anyway.

listening to that decemberists ep. wonder whatever came of that little mouse.

the sound of silence

the city is inspiring, but the loneliness is deafening, but sometimes the loneliness--or, more like the lonesomeness--is sort of inspiring. it'll inspire me soon enough to make art -- out of inspiration or out of boredom, does it matter? i went out alone this evening, and i wish i had a dictaphone hooked up to my thoughts. upon moving, i've suddenly become a devourer of media once again. i went to the record store today...err, make that TWO record stores. proud? looking for the same old things from lately, no odawas, no early loney dear record. i instead got that new adem used. i heard it on the listening station, but i think i remember its recommendation? something, maybe in some past life. next was really blah tom yum noodle soup. i think i'm going to become a connoisseur on tom yum soup. i spent quite some time today studying various recipes for it. i also found a recipe that combined canned tuna with tom yum paste. hmmm. hmmmmmmmmmm. not sure really what to think of that. walking up and down bedford with the coffees, the juices, the health foods, the organic and local produces, the record stores, the places to drink whiskey, the dogs, the studios, the labels...you could have everything for a full life here within a mile radius. you wouldn't even need a bike. and the beach is here! in brooklyn! that really always excites me the most.

this entry didn't go as planned. it felt good to get out, so i couldn't keep up my solemn tone. smile. it's so quiet now; it feels so strange. like the loss of an arm or a pet or a favorite crazy lady standing on the corner every morning who always makes you laugh. but in the quiet, there's still this din, it's so faint, the faint tink of a metal connector in the mind. a soup can on one side of a string. it always baffled me how those worked.

24 hours. but who's counting?

i took the train up to broadway late this afternoon to go to the capezio store. while packed against the other bodies of rush hour, there was a familiar smell. cinnamon. i looked down to see a woman seated gnawing on a toothpick, the kind with a ridge at the end. smell is such a strong sense related to memory. it made me glad i never had a t-shirt or scarf or pillowcase or something. just be out on the curb with everything else. this way nothing's really been infiltrated. my room is hundreds of miles away, touched; virgin. something that's totally mine, a thing you can't ruin, a new life with new memories and new songs and new places, totally totally untouchable to you. save, of course, for your presence. a ridiculous mention. ridiculous, so ridiculous that i entertained even for a moment that i'd ever gaze off the balcony at the empire state building accompanied. i bought a leotard, tights and split-toed canvas ballet slippers. tomorrow i have to figure out how to sew the elastics on the shoes, otherwise i'd start ballet class tomorrow. it'll be wednesday instead. i shopped for groceries in the neighborhood and made tacos too heavy on the olives and cilantro [this i know is what anyone would say about me]. tomorrow i'm gonna go spy on a bed. this room considerably uncooperative with a queen-sized bed, let alone a queen-sized air mattress. i'm reading again, too. new life, new activities right? ballet and my antonia.

let's not try to figure out everything at once

you were always weird but i never had to hold you by the edges like other men

yesterday, too many anniversaries. of moving, of the closet, of lemon chicken, of bad easters, of good easters. it's becoming quite laborious to count time like that. perhaps we should forget the phrase, "this time last..." forgetting and regret. it's better to be on this side of regret: the short end of the stick, the "no choice" side. this side of regret has no regrets, no power, no hope. it's easier to just have hurt. hurt and memories and forgetting. it's comforting to know there'll be no "moments of clarity" in the future. it is, however, perhaps a bit regretful to have had clarity through all times, like those times when others were totally fogged up. knowing what you have when you have it i suppose is both a gift and a curse. you end up with the short end of the stick but on the sunnier side of regret. perhaps it's some kind of sage-ness. some kind of maturity. it's like you're this master draftsman, drawing all these lines perfectly straight, perfectly in line, perfectly perpendicular and parallel; your rulers are impeccably straight, pencil point always sharp, level always aligned with the moon or the stars or the tides or whatever levels are controlled by. lining up reality with hopes and wishes. lining up heart and mind. perhaps it's more about turning off the mind. perhaps i should stop telling you what to do.

there is a light that never goes out

i can only think of everything that will never happen. and of course the never agains. never the four corners of the country, never montreal, never cross-country. never another show. never mentioning most reminiscent songs. never recounting the first days. never hines, timberlake on country roads, dixboro, woodward, belle isle. never chicago, westerly suburbs, never walking to the park in ferndale after dark. never that tattoo. never your whisper half-asleep. never little gifts. never new memories. never the catherine wheels, lows, will oldhams, minerals, slowdives. never my cover album. never another nervous serenade. never the sunrise, morning music, taking breaths on balconies. never whiskey and wine. never the sameness. never those wide-eyes. never that fascination.

in case you want some ham

said you didn't love me, it was right on time, i was just about to tell you that it'll be alright

the knit cafe hit the spot this afternoon, just as presumed. a spot that needed to be hit and hit and hit, over and over again. listening to the ladies in greenwich and sipping and chatting and knitting [and crocheting, as we're anti-knit],: jasmine tea, perfectly brown coffee; meeting men off craigslist, where to buy the best bra [not victoria's secret they said], men who confess their love years after the fact [after babies and all], yankees versus mets men, comfortable camper wedges; what do you wear a red and grey scarf with?, through the back loop, too tight?, singles versus doubles, knits, purls. the sun peeked out here and there today, and greenwich was beautiful, as always [guilty pleasure?].

now we're welcomed home to some finally-defrosted slices i chiseled off the honeybaked ham [!] my mother surprise-sent here yesterday morning. it's ham and crackers and sharp cheddar on the air mattress. we've been talking for an hour about what to wear out tonight.

i've come close to thinking about attempting to write something for the last week. after all, i did move to brooklyn six days ago. what am i supposed to say? all the beginnings and endings are so wrapped up in each other that i can't really discern what is what. or rather, what i'm feeling about what. a mix of happiness, anticipation, elation, boredom, restlessness, anger, disappointment, heartbreak.

coney island