breeze, window, stop

a friend of a friend is releasing a book today:

and we spent nearly an hour on the phone this morning, discussing various madnesses and stratagem. i hope to purchase, read, and rant about the book soon, but this is beside the point.

the point is that my brother came by this afternoon, and our conversation ranged from gnosticism to migration patterns to the Qur'an to Warren Buffet and his derivative-writing ability. these wide swings are not atypical for our interactions, and he said cool things like "i'm not a black separatist by any means," which only begin to hint at his ability to turn Tuesday afternoons into veritable models of banter and repartee.

since then, things have slowly died down, as he, my yin and i have retreated to our respective sofas and diversions. he's trading stocks, my yin is journaling, and i'm writing about them unbeknownst to either, half spacey and rambling from fore-mentioned conversations. this is not helping me to understand his explanation of how the Chinese yuan is bought, sold, and revalued for the purposes of pension plan investment. this, too, is beside the point.

the point is that all this peaceful, idyllic mountain living is growing on me – good food, nice weather, surrounded by family. the only downside, as far as i can see, is that this machine in my lap seems less appealing with each passing day, and it's serving as an amazing reminder that we, as humans, are meant to breathe and live and be. i watch the words dribble out, watch my attention shift to the people around me, to the breeze coming through the window

un

til

it

the motivation to write, at all,

stops.

vacation, the birds and the bees

my yin and i have been in North Carolina for less than a week, and i have already felt the shift in my internal clock from South Florida to Blue Ridge Mountain time. i cannot understate the discrepancies between these two climates (both metaphorical and literal), but i think this photo taken yesterday might help:

bees having sex

bees would never do this in South Florida because it is way too hot. in fact, in spite of all the claims of "local honey," i have yet to see a single bee in the past four years. maybe i just don't go west far enough, or maybe they're special Florida insomniac bees that only come out in the middle of the night, or maybe they use artificial bee insemination – do bees even have semen?

this is definitely beside the point.

the point is that i don't have time to watch bees having sex in Florida, and this is one of the great hyperbolic tragedies of the past decade. we don't spend enough time learning from the birds and the bees and, as if to underscore this point, soon after watching the fornicating bees my yin and i heard a strange clicking noise coming from this animal:

bluebird in a tree

in spite of having grown up here, i had never heard a clicking bluebird before, and i still don't know if this behavior is normal or if it was some sort of strange Morse code, meant to alert us about impending fortune ahead.

thus far our vacation has been replete with such signs – bunnies, horses, cows, deer – and there is even a goat living below my father's house, whose former recalcitrant nature has been replaced by a profound contemplative solitude. his (or her) mate died some months ago, and (s)he has been moping around, munching grass without enthusiasm, and staying indoors for inordinate amounts of the day. i wonder what sadness it feels, and how it makes sense of a life upended without ritual, reason, or religion. how much do we rely upon these things to explain the things that can never be understood?

and now, a moment of silence for all the lonely goats in the world...

grading key

note: this grading key applies only to my summer reading list.

A

imagine that Jack Kerouac and Ernest Hemingway have a child, but abandon it at birth on the doorstep of Gabriel García Marquez. Márquez, in turn, hires Vladimir Nabokov to babysit. after reaching sexual maturity, the child pens a novel inspired by his crib memories, vows never to write again, and promptly travels to Paris to make a documentary about Chris Marker.

B

imagine that Allen Ginsberg and Fyodor Dostoevsky were lovers in 19th century St. Petersburg. the two men spend frigid Russian nights conspiring to strangle their landlord and picking the lice and nits out of one another's beards. ultimately, they decide to write a self-help book for couples about what they have learned. a new philosophical movement is born from these nights of passion – sexistentialism.

C

imagine that James Frey and Elizabeth Gilbert meet, fall in love, and escape to an exotic tropical island somewhere in Minnesota. they laugh, they cry, they take long walks in the surf. they come to experience a profound affection – the likes of which the upper Midwest has never known before – and write a book of poetry to share their love with the world.

D

imagine that John Grisham, Tom Clancy, and Dan Brown are locked in a room with stainless steel walls, one set of Encyclopedia Britannica missing the "R" volume, a television tuned exclusively to Fox News, and the complete archives of the Toledo Blade. once they manage to get their gums to stop bleeding, the three men reach an agreement, stop trying gnaw their way out of the room, and commence to pen a work of non-fiction.

F

imagine that our 43rd president learned to read, decided to write his memoirs, and then hired Paris Hilton as his ghost writer. the tome grows to more than eight hundred pages and is released to rave reviews. in a final act of NAFTA-inspired kindness, the 43rd president agrees to record an audio version of the book and read it himself –

in Spanish.

Committed (book rant)

summer has officially begun, and my yin and i have settled into a spare bedroom in North Carolina that is larger than our entire apartment back in Florida. but this is beside the point.

the point is that i have finished the first book of my summer reading list. as promised, i am offering a brief rant. and so...

the astute reader (of this blog, not the book) is probably already asking the question: "wasn't this book supposed to be week 4,
not week 1?"

yes, it was.

but the strict adherence to self-made dictums is one of my many (although less colorful) faults. with this glaring oversight duly noted,
on to the rant.

Committed is quick, easy, and full of the sort of lay anthropology that one would expect from Gilbert. this is not an insult, but neither is a compliment (except maybe back-handed one), and i generally have difficulty trusting authors who throw out loosely researched information for their own self-serving comedic purposes.

(i am one of these authors.)

otherwise the book was quite pleasurable, although i must confess to abandoning it about fifty pages from the end. while this decision was influenced largely by the fact that i wanted to cut down on my packing for the trip, anyone that knows me also knows that i have a propensity for hoarding tendencies (just ask my brother). this being the case, my unwillingness to bring it leads me to conclude that it wasn't all that engaging.

on the other hand, i am engaged, which would seem to make me the ideal reader for this book. so did it change my own thought on marriage?

not really.

Gilbert's take on marriage seems to be primarily contractual –
a well-historied, ever-changing, culturally-determined, much-
contested, under-hyphenated social institution. the story she tells is alternately (and sometimes simultaneously) cautionary, apologetic, and cloaked in a sort of clever sentimentality that allows her to be ironic on the one hand, and profess love and affection for her mate on the other.

there are plenty of anecdotes about Laotians and love and umbrellas and obligations, but ultimately none of these go any deeper than the most superficial of levels. Gilbert does not even break the skin of a grape, much less delve into what the implications of matrimony really mean.

in my estimation, marriage is not just the contractual joining of man and woman, but the symbolic union of masculine and feminine energies of the universe, the dance of Shiva and Shakti by which creation springs forth into existence. granted, this conception falls outside both our our society's present and historical norms, but why limit ourselves to re-creating the same ideas as our ancestors? why lock ourselves into the customs we are born into? or, on the other end of the spectrum, why reject them without seeing what they have to offer? what are the meanings of the vows we speak?

an example:

"til death do you part"

one must interrogate the terms:

"til"

(what is the nature of time?
what does it mean to change?)

"death"

(corporal death?
emotional death?
spiritual death?
what does it mean to die?)

"do"

(what is doing whom?
can one merely be?)

"you"

(who are you?
who am i?
are we not one?)

"part"

(is this a departure?
or a fracture?)

my yin and i have spent (and continue to spend) time with these questions, and we do not pretend to know the answers. but through the act of writing our vows, of interrogating ourselves, of interrogating our beliefs and fears and assumptions and presumptions, we have found ourselves growing closer, learning more about the parts of our beings that lie hidden not only from one another, but even from ourselves.

these types of questions are the very nature of commitment, and although Gilbert offers some admirable insights on codependency, she seems oblivious to the esoteric potentialities of marriage as union. this being the case, Committed receives the following grade:

C-

look for more book rants in the following weeks, and i will post a grading key sometime during the coming days. until then, as ever...

5½ things i learned in Atlanta (over the weekend)

my yin and i spent this past weekend with her cousin and husband in Atlanta, and, in spite of my (real) forty-eight hour bout with (faux) diverticulitis, i learned innumerable things during our stay. five stand out more than others:

1) Atlanta is hip

my first impressions of Atlanta are from childhood, traveling there with my tee ball team to watch the Braves lose game after game, year after year. i still remember those dreadfully hot trips to Turner Field, screaming for Dale Murphy to hit a home run and wearing my baseball glove in the futile hope that a foul ball might reach the most remote regions of the ballpark.

while the team eventually improved, i lost interest and wrote the city off as little more than a disastrous mélange of traffic, unbearable heat, and various oblique unpleasantries (see #2).

this weekend changed all that, however, owing largely to my yin's cousin (yousin?) and her impeccable hosting. although technically a yankee, she's spent the past decade in Atlanta and showed us some of her favorite spots, like this exotic fruit tree somewhere in Atlanta:

mmm... delicious!

2) degeneracy is overrated

i happened to live in Atlanta for about five minutes in the spring of 2000, during a period when my ability to discriminate between informed dissent and pure foolishness was at an all-time low. thankfully my faculties have since improved, but it was odd for me to see old landmarks popping up as we motored around the city.

it was as if certain intersections and storefronts existed in two separate geographical contexts: one, the real buildings and streets of present-day Atlanta; and the other, the psychic Atlanta of my memory, where the mental images exist in isolation, divorced from the materiality of previous encounters.

strangest of all were places like this one, which seemed to have been plucked from the mythical Denver of my memory (itself a shabby re-creation of Kerouac's mythical Denver) and plopped into East Atlanta:

this bar, if open, would have been worth a look-see

3) Hari Krishnas are (still) creepy

i remember first seeing Hari Krishnas in Fort Worth, probably around 1994, outside a punk rock club. even in my (non)blissful 17 year old ignorance, i considered the group highly suspect. there are few white populations more alienated from their families and society than punk rockers, and i was indignant that some religious organization had sent missionaries to a Pennywise concert.

over time, however, this sense of outrage gave way to intrigue, and by the next time i saw the Krishna-ites, my atheism had mellowed enough to view them with a mix of curiosity and ironic judgment. they were giving out free food on a university campus in Gainesville, which seemed a nice enough thing to do for broke college students, but i, an avowed carnivore, was highly suspect of their ingredients (you call those green things vegetables?). this, coupled with the risk of some mantra-mind control agent, was too much for my 19 year old (only slightly less ignorant) self.

since then, i've overcome my aversion to vegetables and mantra, but the Hari Krishnas still leave an awkward taste in my palette. (so to speak). this picture of them carrying a scarily realistic stuffed version of their guru down Moreland Avenue shows why:

an effigy of Swami Prabhupada... really?

4) NPR really does need our support

i have learned many things from public radio over countless road trips and drives to work, and it has occupied a sizable area in my psychic landscape for at least the past fifteen years. one thing that has always eluded me, however, was any sort of specific knowledge regarding what NPR is, or how it operates. this trip changed that, however, because an old friend (see #5) works as a StoryCorps supervisor in Atlanta. after a last minute cancellation, she arranged for my yin and i to go to the studio and do an interview about my yin's dead grandmother, Shirl the Pearl.

but this, for the time being, is beside the point.

the point is that, at least at WABE, there is grass growing up through the pavement in the parking lot, the brick is weather-beaten, and the bathroom smells like a gas station lavatory. what i felt wasn't disappointment though, but rather a deep sense of satisfaction in knowing that NPR is not spending the pittances i've sent them over the years on fancy buildings or espresso machines or self-flushing toilets:

this rundown building, a Saturday afternoon Mecca

5) reconnecting with old friends is
better than expected

i have an old friend in East Atlanta who, in spite of her name, does not look like a piece of fruit. we met our first year of college and if not for her, i would have likely gone that entire year without knowing a single person in Durham.

on of my peculiarities during that portion of my life was an absolute disdain for all matter of photographs. owing to various yuletide traumas from my childhood, i refused to have my picture taken except in only the most dire of circumstances, which has created a virtual vacuum of images from the period of my life ranging from ages 16-29.

much to my amazement, however, my old friend had snapped several photos of me unawares, or at least unremembered, during that year we lived fifty feet from one another. she had pictures of what she subbed "the old me" who, if he met "the new me", would "totally kick this guy's ass." she was correct and, furthermore, she was comical in her correctness, which made for an absolutely amazing reunion dinner:

my friend's groovy table in her groovy house

½) on photographs of "me"

many of my friend's photographs were taken of events i do not remember, and while some of them did jar loose specific recollections, the vast majority are merely a haze, so nebulous that it is impossible to tell how much is an actual memory and how much is fabricated from seeing the picture on my friend's couch. this leads to some interesting questions.

first, are the things i don't remember more or less important than the things i do? to privilege those experiences and times – simply because we have access to them – seems impossibly flawed. the moments we hold onto, the days and nights we remember with such vanity and vigor, these things matter more only if we choose to privilege the past over present and mind over being.

moreover, what about our misdeeds? the times we fall short of the people we aspire to be, the things we do and regret, the people we like to believe we are – but aren't. in my experience, you can learn more about someone by how others regard her than by how she regards herself. for example, one enlightened being, perceived as a jerk by 2 out of every 3 people he passes in the street, may, in fact, be a jerk.

second, my friend possesses frozen images of me, or rather a person i used to call me. i have seen the evidence; all the markers were there: blond hair, Minor Threat shirt, Iron Cross necklace, and impromptu birthday party (my 19th). intellectually i know this day occurred, and yet i do not remember it in any substantive way.

in other words, the photograph is fragment of my history, but not my memory. and since this relic is in the possession of my friend, does that moment belong more to her than me? is she the custodian of my past? the caretaker of a day i do not remember? if so, how many other people possess pieces of our being without our knowledge? how many histories do we leave littered over the course of a lifetime? how much do we trust the people charged with their safe passage through time?

and if, as Marker says, the picture has come to replace our memory, then is my friend in possession of both my history and memory? am i left with nothing but the fiction and fabrication of the person i was fifteen years ago? i had forgotten the shirt and the necklace and the room and some of the people in the room; and now, after seeing the picture, how much of what i think i remember is recollection and how much is reconstruction?

finally, addressed to my unseen, imagined mentor, the one who speaks to me in images i do not comprehend, i state with full acceptance and understanding: "i have only the memory of the photograph."

a photograph of me, with the friend who inspired these questions

Boston was like...

my yin and i have arrived in North Carolina and find ourselves staring out at the expanse of the Blue Ridge Mountains from a bedroom slightly larger than our apartment. the trip up was eventful, the layover in Atlanta was inspirational, and i have much to say about both these things. but this is beside the point.

the point is that my latent obsessive compulsive tendencies require that i take tasks to completion; and therefore, as part of my annual homage to New England, i offer the final installment of things i've said before (with pictures). and so...

Boston was like:

waiting for the other shoe to drop

waiting for the train to stop

transfers from green to orange and
ice cream parlor experiments

flirting in art galleries

trying to impress Stephanie Schneider

with out of print paperbacks

and vegetarian meals in Chinatown.

cannoli and cappuccino with

a handful of Hanover holdovers
sandwiched between the sandwich shops

guided through the North End by
the social security Irish of Arch Street

and whispering confessions to St. Anthony

about where the bodies are buried.

thronging south

on Newbury Street in chic boutiques



and sliding

velvet walls

f
a
l
l
i
n
g

in love with girls on sofas,
long talks with Mardou in the park

dodging weddings and avoiding
the marbled gaze in the courtyard shade of the library

l o n g i n g

for my pen.

Cambridge was like...

apparently my latest fascination lies somewhere between collage, reflexivity and self-plagiarism. i have said these things before, but this time i am saying them with pictures, the second part of my second annual devotional to New England. and so...

Cambridge was like:

sparring with sparrows

over scones

as the girls from Radcliffe walk by

thinking about the ones that could have been the one

and meeting comrades last seen eight years ago

i
m
age
miss
in
g

day after Christmas, talking about
miscarriage and apologies, the sea
sickness of conference rooms
missing horizontal reference.

fighting robots

designing computer chips in the key of E flat,

his sister still living at home,
spaying cats eighty hours a week

between bouts of drunkenness

pink-haired sex ads

perused by lesbians on trains and midget
junkies stranded by boyfriends, asking for a dollar

the nostalgia of Harvard Square in December

the wistful wisdom of intuition, knowing
it was too soon to say, too late
to stay, the futility and
frustration watching friends fall apart

and post-parade confessions of wall-eyed strangers.

Vermont was like...

this time two years ago i was in New Hampshire, en route to Vermont, still oblivious to the perils of border crossing bus stops. seeing as how i've already recycled these concerns once, i've decided to try something a little different this year and offer up a collage in celebration of the Green Mountain State. and so...

Vermont was like:

fornicating Buddhas outside Woodstock

and the drift of hot air balloons over the Quichee Gorge

gorging on pumpkin seeds in White River Junction.

picking up hitchhikers holding park service hats

and angry bus station declarations

by employees of Vermont Transit

downtown cafes with sad women

legs white from the long winter



the slow spring and cut glass eyes,

blue as the ones I left behind.

the sunset over Lake Champlain

after a long day of writing and meditation

trips to the market seeking hot chocolate

and finding topsoil, six bags for ten dollars.



sleeping windows open with 90 year old
nightgowns under my pillow

and dreams so crisp as Plattsburgh breezes across the water

learning about karma and the trembling Fear

the long ride back to Boston

still shaking, trying to breathe,
sitting next to a middle age woman

from Montreal with lust in my heart.