with love and squalor

saturday was a lazy, wasted day spent in front of the television. watched entire season four of curb your enthusiasm and started on big love. after almost two months of living here, i just now realized that we have hbo on demand. i'm smart like that, ya know. i'm having a capricorn day today. worrying about money. you see, since i'm on the cusp of capricorn and sagittarius, i'm not as concerned with money as the next cap, but some days, man, it really consumes me. and living in nyc, the reasons are tenfold! it's like a see-saw where the amount of things you WANT increases and the amount of things you can afford decreases. the see-saw's on an angle much closer to vertical than ever before. it's pretty frustrating, but it is worth it, absolutely. since i'm only subletting here, i don't have a pantry full of backup food like shitty soups you bought because they were on sale, pasta, weird frozen things, &tc. so when i just have raw cashews and tortilla chips left, that's it! great meal. this whole thing makes me get obsessed with cheap foods, cheap good foods, cheap but good meat [nonexistent category], cheap veggies. i have come up with canned tuna and celery. and kinda potatoes; they're pretty cheap. now that i've given up dairy for digestion's sake, i have to get creative with my tuna. my sister bought me a jar of harissa last week, which is a moroccan chili sauce/paste, and i've found that goes well with tuna.

i fly home on thursday, and i'm way more excited about it than i thought i would be [admittedly!]. lots of unfinished business and loose ends over in detroit, and i plan to tie them all up in nice pretty bows! then the national is on tuesday at the bowery! then i move to clinton hill. so much excitement outright and between the lines.

but i'm still not sure that i've totally internalized my living here yet. i live in new york city? i live in new york city. right? for how long? two months? for forever? and not in michigan? pretty weird. but i can say with full internalization that--barring any tragic/dramatic unforseen circumstance--i won't return to michigan for residency again. i'm sorry.

maybe i should scratch off that tattoo on my wrist.

[why the garbage bag?]

do yourself a favor:


eleven days until we see them! god i seriously cannot wait. i hope they play this.


insane.

i have so much anticipation, i swear my blood's flowing five times faster.

printemps dans la ville

"that's where the whale was that DIED"
[i.e., gowanus canal, sludgy the whale, 4/19/07]


dyker heights park, consisting mostly of athletic fields


same field, with olympic-style seating
verrazano-narrows bridge to stanton island in background


belt parkway




you can smell the salt in the air


looking east, coney island


cutest kids ever, cab, poughkeepsie, ny










fish market, chinatown, ny








the shellfish are my favorite


fresh tofu on the street in chinatown, $1


off a greenpoint rooftop, mccarren park and pool,
ominous new williamsburg developments


in the shadow of the city


greenpoint, brooklyn

let nothing hang you down...now let it go

i received a most unconventional gift for a most unconventional mother today [on account of me not exactly being a mother!].

been busy and happy lately, as is always the reason for such absence. i have a lot of pictures to post, but i don't have much to say except that i live in the best place on earth.

til tomorrow..

without reproach

washington square park, ny, ny, 30 april 2007
odawas -->alleluia

it was a new year and a new time, and there was a new hallelujah. the kind of song for both active and inactive listening...so effected, so effective if you paid attention and turned it up loud, but set very low, it's a mix of rumbles and whistles and something quite unrelenting. it was february, and i waited, sucking down almost an entire whiskey&coke waiting for him at the bar. it was february, fat tuesday to be exact, and at 7pm the place was filled with drunk middle-agers, necks strewn with plastic colored beads, toasting the commencement of lent with shot after shot. i sat at a booth, luckily--it was one of those rare times to find a booth empty at this bar--reading and rereading an advertising booklet for southern comfort specifically for mardi gras, which included recipes with the liquor that i read and reread, finding them both repulsive and nearly unintelligible in my present state. it was february, and it was the very first "warm" day of the year. i remember exactly what i wore, which enthusiastically included on account of the favorable weather shoes without socks and a three-quarter length vintage jacket. all day i wouldn't admit i was nervous, but it was one of those days where nothing would satiate the edginess. i left my house to run errands three hours early, stopping at my mother's to pass some time. conversation nor television served as successful diversions, and i was quick to change the subject when she tried to point to the source of my agitation. i left for the post office, wasted time in the thrift store, used the bathroom at the coffee shop, tried on clothes at the vintage store, and the entire time--despite my very real skittishness--i did not believe that he would actually come. i sat, purposefully, with my back to the door, the drink quickly disappearing and my stomach turning from the soco recipes. he did come. at first, i didn't rise to greet him, and he gave me a look nearing insult. i got pretty drunk and can confidently say that i can't recall anything we talked about. he came in for a bit, and i turned up "alleluia" over and again. "how many times are you going to play that?" i heard new songs that would soon become my favorites, and with each one i was conscious of the increased weight attached, as it always had been with him. they were all indelibly burned into memory like tattoos you couldn't think twice about. i kept my distance. and no sooner than three days later after having not met for hundreds, he confessed at the brink of a shot of whiskey, "i'm going to miss you so much."