Leave Room For The Gaps

So, I went to The Met to say Good-Bye;
Not the Final Good-Bye, but to begin a sort of 'Long Good-Bye';

I am leaving.

Soon.

I think.

I hope.

And I must pay tribute to the tribute I will leave behind;

I will return.

Soon.

I think.

I hope.

You, who's eyes look away as much as they look towards;

You, who rolled carpet;

You, who will not follow, for fear of leading;

and

They, who owe me for what they no longer have;

Will come with me for "as if it was a purse" it is ready for travel;

And I;

As I do;

Live with the over-the-shoulder-flicked: "No Good-Byes!".

But

That which is unchanging - if not for mood of light;

That which enters from the 'six inches in front of your face';

And stays visual  not animate;

That, we say Good-Bye to.

If I choose;

And I do.

Look, the bottom line is, that the Dribble above probably wont make that much sense. To you. It does to me, cause I know The Key to unlocking it's meaning. I will read it back knowing that it is Fiction simply spiced with Reality. You, who does not make sense of it, will ignore the Fiction, attach your procedure of Logic to the Reality part - because it is familiar to you - and will not be able to see the forest for the trees.

Too bad.

For if you could understand it like I, you would see it for the Dribble it is.....

All therapy lies in the process - the complete process - so the Subway ride uptown is where it begins for me. Underground trains and I have had a fractious relationship over the years, but they have always brought me upon another story and this forgives all their misdeeds. One pops back above-ground few blocks east of The Park and must walk past toy stores, street vendors, the elderly in Parisian Brown fur and the hotel job I never did take. This utility of traverse is perhaps best endowed with purpose and if one uses the time it consumes to select the appropriate album on the iPod to soundtrack the visit itself, such purpose will be achieved. Cross 5th and gallop up those off-grey steps, suggest your own 'Suggested Admission' and in you go.

Time/Place

There's a time and a place for everything.

Conversely, everything has it's own time and place.

This is what I believe. I'm not saying that these above statements are The Gospel to be taken in and under as such by one and all. No, I am not. These statements have, over the course of time, become the faith of my days and of the ones that are to follow. Occasionally, this faith will run up and against those of differing faiths and it is always, at the very least, a discord of unease that will ensue. Those such opponents may be friends living in studios or strangers hiding in iPods on trains or ex's at the beer taps or leaders written in print or lovers who disclose via street-art or hopelessly inefficient servers at a bagel shop (just because your lifelong dream of finding happiness in the warm satisfaction of a growing career with The Sanitation Department has failed, there's no need to stunt the flow of my morning by taking umbrage with the fact that people in a bagel shop just want their fucking bagels quickly and efficiently. The bagel shop IS the time and the place for bagels....).

In certain circumstances, I am not at ease with this unease - however it chooses to manifest. Mostly, I couldn't give two shits about the wider public's consciousness and expressions, but there are certain people, who, for varied reasons, have a place in my heart and their 'upset' makes this here boy 'upset'. It is a difficult quandary to be in - caring generally is -  for, though I can become even desperate at times to placate and restabilise a loved one's 'upset', I simply cannot concede any ground whatsoever in the faith I began this piece with.

There is a time and a place for everything.

Bit of Turf

It's just easier for me to associate people with places. Not easier in the way that Memory Association Triggers work. More so, I find it easier to use the simple tag of a city or a country or a place, to wrap up and concisely state the emotional compartment of my heart and mind, that I may reside a particular individual in, or express the initial first judgment I made of their strength of character, or romanticise the wistful, longing, yet forgotten or lost connection I have or had with and for them, or even just describe the way they appear in their physical presentation to me.

Sorrow is Pleasure When You Want It Instead

Do you know what Sorrow is? Not pain, not depression, not misery, not sadness; not that feeling of not getting that job you really wanted; not the doubt that creeps in when you turn back from that corner you've forced yourself into, only to find that the room has cleared out completely and its just you left alone to face your aloneness; not the compression felt when happenstance runs against your best intentions and the ensuing weight of which pushes down on your tanned, but brittle shoulders; not the stranded emptiness left behind when the show you've been putting on, is shown to be just a show; not the cat running away; not your guitar-picking-fingers torn apart by a still full, shattered beer glass; not the rain, not the wind, not a storm, not the searing heat and definitely not just the clouds above.

Bring Me Release

In strange moments and at totally uncalled for circumstance and time, random memories of my youth, will dance across my consciousness. I'm not one of those that mentally suppresses a childhood passed. In the memories my younger days, lie quite the fair share of pain, shame and remorse, that I choose to not share with many - if any - but I never hide from myself. My younger days are mine and I hold onto them as proudly (and arrogantly) as I hold onto the man I am today. They are the truth and are therefore never avoided. However, considering how far beyond that fat little kid I've moved, I am understandably surprised when lessons learnt back then, finally, and for the first time at all, have application, considering the so very different context I find myself.

Breakfast of Champions

First let me start with this:


I never knew what this blog was supposed to be. I did, however, know what I didn't want it to be. I never wanted it to become a lyrical, yet accurate journal - a sort of document that documented my traverse across distance and space. Sure, there are stories from my days -my days of traverse- that make it up onto here, but my life and the dramas that pull me into it, need not be recorded. I live them and they pass. My life and my writing, whilst at times interwoven, are very much separate whirlpools and I wish to keep them that way.


This being said, there are times when one of these whirlpools spins out, over and upon the other. The past few weeks have been such a time. In fact, if I am true and honest (something  I very much like to avoid on this here page), the past few months have seen a steady increase of said swirling and distracting mass of water - the one that is Real Life. I would like to say that I am out the other end of this particular episode but, what I like and what is actual is not necessarily in perfect alignment here.


What I am trying to say, is that if my life outside this page, has unconsciously slipped onto it (and it has - not in the words and paragraphs you are thinking of now nor would be obvious to you, but it has still stained it nonetheless), I am sorry. I am. I am not so insecure that I am unable to raise my hand and admit to culpability. It may very well happen again, for I know not why I make so many of the same mistakes over and over again and when this does happen, once again, I will raise my hand in admission.


I want you to like the blog. I want you to read it. I want you to return to it. I want you to demand (as some of you have) that I return to it. And I know what I don't want it to be.




Ok, now on with the business of the day.

Old Men

My father was the principal of the orthodox, Jewish day school I attended. (For the record, someone suggested to me recently, that I may be short on material to write about and so consequently, consciously and somehow create pain in my life just to fill that void - almost like a perverse form of research. Besides being a statement that hurt me immensely, the opening sentence above obviously renders their notion completely false. Anyone who can claim to have experienced any, let alone all the elements of that sentence, possesses enough mental anguish to fill books with.) Whilst all old collegians, excepting those that may have been his oldest son, remember him as warm, trusting and as a sort of early mentor, at the time they were passing through their days of attendance, they saw him a little differently. See, the old man, whilst on the surface quite cherry and literal, was also an incredibly and unconsciously idiosyncratic fellow. Extremely.

Of Dreams and Highways

On their 2001 album, 'Time (The Revelator)', Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings close out with a sweet, sparse, fifteen minute, song that drifts, lifts and rambles its way from pain to hope and back again, in the golden way that only they can. The song is called 'I Dream a Highway'.

Oh I dream a highway back to you love
A winding ribbon with a band of gold
A silver vision come and rest my soul
I dream a highway back to you

In my favourite moments of self-determination, this song is exactly how I see this whole wandering routine that I'm on. I'm simply heading my way back to you, I just need to find the ribbon with a band of gold that will lead me there. That's wrong, actually. I have found it and I'm trying now to find you. I must have found it, for I can see it. It's real. In my mind anyway, but I can see it and if I can see it, it's real. A real passage with real moments. A real winding highway.

Next Time

I used to manage Australia's first, fine-dining, certified organic restaurant. Or something like that. I'm not sure if it was the very, very first, or if it was precisely fine-dining, but it was at least an approximation, if not an exaction, of the two. It's regardless, for either way it doesn't really have that much to do with the story I wish to tell you here today. I used that statement, just to provide a historical timeline and framework. It was my first, real, restaurant management job. I was grossly under qualified and only won the position due to a combination of personal, dashing charm and a Machiavellian power struggle and reshuffling between some of the directors of the group, that owned the place. My hiring was meant to provoke a further on reaction and I am not so vain as to be so unawares, that I was simply a pawn in their game.

The Bicycle Thief

If you were to step out the entrance door of my East Village apartment and onto the sidewalk, the first thing you would notice would be the tangled up mess of rusted steel, that is four bicycles, chained together and around one of those upside-down-U-shaped metal pylons. The sort of thing that councils install, to act as a docking and locking up point for your environmentally friendly mode of transport.

Nothing unusual there. Yet.

Now, look across to the East (that's towards the direction of The East River, for those of you who seem confused by direction. Can't imagine why they called it The East River.....). Only but a few feet away, stands another one of these blackened steel pylons. This is a fancier one, as it  more so resembles an upside-down-W and is able support more bicycles. Congregated around this one, is an even denser throng of rusted steel. This time, the orange of said rust is darker, richer and thicker. So thick, that one wouldn't even need to notice the punctured tires or the twisted spokes or the broken chains, to surmise that no one has sat on any of their seats or turned any of their pedals, for some time. Now look back to the first pylon, the one just outside my front door, and you'll realise that the bicycles around it, suffer from the very same tell-tale signs of idle languor.


So far, not too much to write home about. These two 'Living Sculptures' are interesting enough, but perhaps they are just an odd, isolated 'Happening'.

Ok, well, now suppose a friend of yours was going away and you were charged with the responsibility of dog-sitting her little joy. Let's say, for example's sake, that this particular Jack Russell Terrier was fairly advanced in years and, as such, ambled along on his several daily walks, at a particularly sedate and restrained pace. Furthermore (and I'm sure this is the domain of all dogs, so I'm not singling out this dear old fellow), his stumbling stagger, would be punctuated by frequent attempts to sniff at each and every street-sign, tree, dust bin, flower bed, pylon and, well, virtually anything that is stationary and rising up from the sidewalk.

'How Much?' in Two Parts - Second Part

Dear Reader,

I was going to wait until tomorrow, but a bit of Britpop on the iPod has fueled me. Here's the second half, freshly minted.

(if you are reading this one first, skip to the one below it and then return to this one second.)
hershatlarge

How much?

I'll tell you how much: Everything.

Personally, I'm willing to give everything. Not because it's that important; nor because I'm the sort that is prepared to risk all; nor because I need your love beyond the reasonable level of desperation; nor because I've put you up on a proverbial pedestal and feel that the corresponding, perceived, example of perfection that I see you as, requires the highest price it's possible to be paid, in order to deserving of you; nor because a shortage of love provided during adolescent years, has resulted in a great fear of rejection and as such, I am afraid to let even the smallest spark fade out, for it brings up and out all those old, dark corners of depression; nor because your smile is my muse; nor because I'm too tired to do anything but lay my head down on your soft pillow.

'How Much?' in Two Parts

Dear Reader,


Today I wish to conduct a little experiment. All the postings you read on this page, are exercises in stream of consciousness. Not so much the flow and rhythm of the sentences and phrases, but more so the content of the ideas, emotions, stories and confessions. The ramble of the prose is somewhat more calculated and drafted, but the subject matter is supposed to be a collection random remembered emotions and happenings of the few days prior to construction. I believe this allows me to be most honest, for I am expressing with as little perspective of rational distance as possible.


However, this post will be written in two parts. The first will be with the agitated mindset of this morning and the second half will be with a more sedate and embarrassed mindset of in a day or two's time.


Feel free to Feedback me in between.


Hershatlarge

Love, or the expression of it, requires self-sacrifice - the sacrifice of 'Self'. To state it; to show it; to convey it and pine for a reciprocation of it, requires an action far outside one's 'Self'. An action that, if it is committed in a true, accurate and total way, removes one from within the comforting barriers, borders and turf of Self and Self-Preservation and risks the probable concession of some of those very borders and turf. To me, love needs expression. Not to make Love 'real' - not to validate it by action - but rather because Love is not and never can be passive. Otherwise, it is simply a deduced opinion on the emotional position one may have towards another, existing only in the mind and not in The World. One needs outlets to bring Love out into The World and one needs The World for Love.

Turn Off The VCR

Do you suffer from Vocabulary Correctness Readjustment? This is the syndrome that describes the particular type of confusion, blended with personal embarrassment and panic that one experiences when faced with the sudden realisation that a word, phrase, cliche or proverb that they took to mean one thing, actually means something else. VCR specifically only applies to that exact moment and not to the process of incorrect use of language prior to the realignment. I once went out with a girl who would mix her cliches in delightful fluidity like "don't burn your bridge until you come up to it" and "the early bird is better than two in the bush".  She has never experienced VCR, for, still to this day, she believes those tellings, those usages of language, to be correct. Her vocabulary has never been realigned and she has never had to suffer the reentry pangs of such.

But, to those of us who have experienced the rug of correctness-security being pulled from under our feet, the debilitating symptoms of VCR are well known. In a shifting flurry across the memory storage areas of the brain, the sufferer of VCR scans in harried, mental desperation back over the past for all the times his or her vocabulary was misappropriated. At the same time, he/she stares madly off into an imagined future, creating supposed instances where vocabulary is used with more accuracy and relevance, in a bid to reconcile these new requirements with their goals, dreams and visions for their life to come. Its a frightening moment, akin to the seemingly endless increasing peak of a panic attack, but, because attacks of VCR subside and pass with less visible impact than other social mental syndromes, many would not even know it exists or existed and choose to not even acknowledge it - just like the piece of outdated technology it shares an acronym with.

The Word and You

A couple of weeks ago, I went to Panama. All I wanted to do out there, was sit on a beach and immerse myself in The Pacific - some sort of quasi-metaphysical quest for cleansing and recharge. So I packed light. A few shorts and T-shirts, the obligatory couple of white button down shirts and some underwear. I packed it all into the overnight bag I had borrowed from The Luxembourger, and threw it on the floor next to my bed, where it sat half empty and projecting a depression at it's unfulfilled potential. It was still in that pose, slouched over and deflated by emptiness, when I arose at 4:30am to head to LaGuardia Airport. It called for more contents. Dazed by the premature rise from slumber, I scanned my room looking for what void in packing I had left. Of course! I had only thought of clothing, but I had forgotten to preempt for other requirements of eventualities. In the muted shadows of the early dawn, I danced around my bedroom gathering a couple of F. Scott books, a Hemingway and even a Saul Bellow. Then I tossed in the iPod, followed by all my writing gear. In went a half dozen varieties of pencils, a couple of sharpeners and the black Moleskin. Ontop of all that, went a copy of Vanity Fair and the bag was now full;. my luggage was now complete. I had packed 'Distraction'. 

The Deep South

Out on a far edge of Melbourne's inner-city, Hipster neighborhood, sits a small pub. In my mind, I can still see it clearly. The all dark, time stained wood, dusty floors, worn high-stool seats and formica tables, with dozens of retro, antique cowboy boots snaking their way along the top shelf of the island bar. There's a pool table directly to the right as you walk in, dual Technics Decks in the left hand corner and a small dining room and kitchen out the back. The men's toilets are lined with a wallpaper that consists of black and white, sketched recreations of famous photographs of greats of The South like Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, The King and others I can't seem to remember.