movement and stoppage

Hyde Park is stifling and liberating. Colorado is sunny. I will use simple, or somewhat simple adjectives to index my life here and now. Let's talk about deixis. Mine is free-flowing and ever marked by airplanes, tickets, airports, houses, apartments, locales, hermit holes, mountains, beaches. Languages, people, thoughts, moi.
I am cloudy, expanding, imploding, revolting.
Spaces are my hands, these walls, that doorway, the face with which I am speaking, the thoughts that I am segmenting into community-defined confinements a.k.a. words which you understand at least somewhat.
I pour my imperfect self into books, thoughts, attempts at metacognition, metalevel analysis of this ephemeral biological chance.
Happy holidays citizens of Abraham land. May you sleep well, eat well, think well. May your biology compliment your evolution as a self-aware entity. L'chaim.

The tradition of mid night attrition

I left dear Manhattan.
Manhattan was a lovely busybody man.
He was beautiful but he stressed me out a bit
and he never cleaned up after himself.

I then had a sweet honeymoon with northern California.
She was pretty and sweet tempered.
I had lunch at Google, yes you Google who designed this blog interface
and I drank lots of Napa wine and looked at pretty bridges and paintings
and whimsical things.

2 days until blast off - Fort Collins seems to be an appropriate military launching pad.
Chicago awaits. I'm coming, dear sir.

Fast, fast, slow

I am loving the chance to connect with another human being. Between these moments of connection I have been trying to learn spss statistics so that I can get something done for my research study like a mofo. Once I start grad school, there will be NO TIME.
Life is funny, love is funny, but connection is much needed, and my heart is a squirmy, confused little animal.

Weddings, and birthdays, and more weddings. Parties, parties, new york, new york, new york.

Monogamy, or something like it, has re-sprung itself on me like a hair rooted in the skin of my life. Shave it, tweeze it, but it always grows back.

Less than 2 months left of office drudgery, thank you sweet jesus. And then I can be a full professional nerd at last.

Though I may still be confused about men and love, and about how to deal with myself as a passionate woman always looking for a worthy vessel for that passion...at least I can appreciate human goodness. This wedding-studded summer makes me consider what I want. As my friends walk down the aisle and promise themselves to each other I see that this promise, this faith, this promise to struggle for as long as they both can in this complicated, fucked up, convoluted human existence in which nothing will ever be "perfect" is more beautiful than any fairytale.

Metamorphosis vs. Stagnation

Woman is a place. Just read Angier's Woman: An Intimate Geography, a wonderful book, which did much a few years ago for my envisioning of female sexuality and selfhood.

People are places. Therefore home is likely to be a person. Like you or I, or the combination thereof.

Groundedness is far more based on self-understanding and comfort than latitude and longitude.

People morph more quickly than places, more like frogs or butterflies, but like places in that we keep our foundations. The groundwork, all those geological layers unavoidable - certain volcanoes and tsunamis uncontrollable.

Is that not modern life? We are all either constantly in transition to becoming something else, or we are stuck - and then yes, there is a category of people that seems pretty content with its status quo.

The pressure to morph, the need to morph, the flapping of wings against the gauze, and then flight?

Death, rebirth, the rising of Frankenstein - rejuvenation, artificial rebirth, identity creation/recreation, we are our own creators?

Identity order and disorder: construct a city in your mind, construct yourself, deconstruct/reconstruct yourself, clean up the mess, the facades, the fake buildings (like in one of those old western flicks) - your self should not be a movie set, your city should be thriving full of warmth, nourishment, people, movement. I want people to empower themselves, to take control over the rotting buildings, to spring fresh life from the neglected earth.

"There's a chair in my head/On which I used to sit/Took a pencil and I wrote the following on it"
-K's Choice

Sprung

Twilit, happy, silly, floaty.
The season of love and baby-making makes me smile. New York smelled like the country yesterday. Overwhelmed by spring-ness I suppose.
I like where I am right now. I like who I am right now.
I've been meeting so many people lately. I've gone out a lot, gone on a few so-called dates, but mostly enjoyed myself with good people. I don't think I want to tie myself down right now, monogamy can wait, sorry suitors. Life's too good for haste at the moment. ;) (I think.)
Yay for the rebirth of earth. I always liked Ceres, though the mystery and power of Artemis inspires as well. I'm pulling my arrow taut this spring and aiming at the moon.
(Howls, smiles, goes back to work.)

Haunted hearts and pithy shorts

Walking home last night, my head abuzz with the stars of Tribeca, (the series of shorts, "Cold Feet" was pretty swell,) the hollywood and international actors/filmmakers were exactly in life as you see them on screen - no surprises, but oh the rapture of the flesh - my own life became cinematic for a minute.
- - -
I came upon a box of love chocolates from my past, near my front steps. They were staring up at me from the sidewalk, the plastic torn open by a bum, who-knows-what chocolaty creep crawlies spilling out. He must have rummaged through the garbage bins in front of my apartment building, upended the bags, discovered the lusty chocolates, left the torn box body like a sad little carcass for me to find.

I ended up talking to a hollow voice mail system for a moment, a loved voice explaining his unavailability to the world. For the best? Don't know. I proceeded to call an old friend, to bitch and screech and rejoice into the night. Until I passed out, of course.

Good morning.

To monks, nuns, and ascetics

Today I wrote a letter to someone who is rather preachy with his Buddhism. This is my response to him and to monasticism in general. Marianna the Prophet-much? ;) Warning, the content you are about to read is itself preachy, serious, abysmally long, and full of helium. Beware before you take on this acid trip.
PS: Oh yeah, it's also biased, argumentative and probably overly confident and cocky. Forgive me, I would like to be the first to admit my flaws galore. On the other hand, I do believe in the way in which I try to live, and I am not sorry about that. Take it with a grain of understanding, this is my blathering blaaah-g after all.

About your monastic longings:

I appreciate that the skills you have acquired through meditation are useful for controlling yourself and I realize that I myself could benefit from such an ability - I overreact to life sometimes, and yes I see the value in your ability to separate yourself from your surroundings, to float above it all and be at peace with the world. That's a great skill to have, one that I could have used while growing up with my mother - I turned to poetry writing instead. It helped, but of course only afterwards, not during the horrible fights, the skandali we used to have. (In fact, the more I think about having such a skill, the better it sounds because yes I am overly emotional and reactive at times, and sometimes wish I just didn't care so damn much.)

While I agree that your ability to not be bothered is a wonderful one, I see that it is ruling your life, and I would not want such a thing. The monk and nun's life was never for me, nor the life of any ascetic. Only at times of great pain have I wanted to be "comfortably numb," to anesthetize myself from the hurt, the bullshit, the prickly thorns everywhere. I would like to have access to this "skill," it is obviously really useful, but everything in moderation. The problem for me with the preachings of ascetics, monks, and nuns, is that while they can teach you to live a peaceful existence in which you are constantly striving for some connection with a greater being or knowledge, this is too extreme a disconnection from the world.

You say that you love people. In an "at peace" sort of way, through the lenses of the monk that you wish to be, I'm sure you do. But you do not love the world. You do not want to be part of it. You want to be beyond it. You do not wish to be involved with it or with the people that reside here, you just want to "love" them from a distance, like a god or a deity looking down on the silly humans with their silly, silly emotions. For me, this is not "living," this is a fear and restraint of the corporal, the emotional, the bodily, the animalistic, the physiological. I am proud of my ability to feel pain, love, attachment, anger, irritation, warmth, affection, frustration, etc. Yes, pain and all the negative stuff as well. That is experiencing life - not being afraid to experience the nuances of emotion that come with this strange condition of being human. I embrace it.

You want to escape involvement with others, and that is your choice. I cherish my involvement with others. I have understood much about myself from the reflection of myself in the eyes of the other, mainly through my relationships. That is the most intimate place in which you find out who you are. You can separate yourself from that for the rest of your life if you want, some do, but you will never experience the passion, the joy, the bliss, that I do. I'll take the emotional roller coaster over the monk's peaceful nothingness on most days.

As you have noted, I love the workings of the human mind. But the mind is not some disembodied, spiritual entity floating in outer space. It is physical, corporal, chemical, and emotional. There is no disconnect, disconnect can be a useful or detrimental illusion - depending on the circumstances. The body-mind split has been a topic of debate for centuries, but now we understand that the only split that exists is a fantasy. We are not gods, we are incredibly intelligent animals, endowed with self-consciousness, with the ability to appreciate the absurdity of being Einsteins who shit and sleep and fuck.

I am not afraid of this. I love it. I love the paradox that we are. I would never wish to escape my appreciation and connectedness with the world, except perhaps temporarily, to avoid getting unnecessarily upset about something that is not worthwhile, but otherwise never constantly. Restraining yourself too much from physical pleasure, desire, connection, and emotion is a denial of what you are - I would not wish to live under a rock or in some monastery, (real or symbolic.) The very understanding that I have of the world, the clarity with which I appreciate its nuances, comes from the openness with which I experience its complexity. It is unhealthy to be avoidant of your body and its needs. That is when a human being can eventually explode from the buildup of imbalance in his or her life. I believe in balance, and in not unnecessarily restraining the body but understanding how to help it best work in the crazy, complex reality in which we live. And keep this in mind: while some cultural ideas are useful, others are not. Just because an idea has survived for a long time does not mean it is a good one. Obvious examples being kamikaze pilots and suicide. The same goes for religion, customs, traditions, stereotypes, etc. Try to see beyond what your mother or your father or your teacher or anyone (including me of course,) tells you about the world when you make up your mind - question, question, question - that is one of our greatest powers as human beings.

Questa notte e per te

Buonanotte fiorellino, good night little flower...there seem to be quite a few little flowers I have said good night to this year. Who and what are these flowers? They could be people for whom I must set the sun of my affection, or hopes that have become frustrations, a flower that has become a weed in my mind.

Sometimes we encounter a lovely flower and for a while it blooms beneficially, we water it tenderly as the little prince watered his rose, we listen to it, care for it, we might even draw it a sheep to keep the Baobabs away. How often is that rose a rose that by any other name would still be meant to stay in the garden after days, months, years have passed? The Garden of Eden will always be a confusing place, full of posers and half breeds, snakes and lilies, apples and poisonous fruit.

I revel in the wisdom of my 16 year old sister. While my gift is imagination hers is wisdom. She was born with it, as healers, psychics, and witches are fabled to be born with certain powers she was born with an innate understanding of the social world. My eyes are perceptive but innately naive. Hers are innately wise. I am always seeking the greater truth, always fiddling in the bowels of the clockwork, looking for the switch, but I think in some way she was born with her hand on it.

Can she describe that magic button? Probably not fully, but she can tell you what it does...the symptoms of power are fascinating, spasms of reality unknown to the blind - blinding to the sighted. There is an illness in this world, a disconnect, there are few with whom I can speak so as to be heard. When I talk I feel like I am either speaking to those who half-hear me or to those that think they have already been/there done that merry go round of thought, or I am listening to others who are repeating everybody else, a collection of monkeys with whom I am acquainted, all monkeys and geniuses with little in between. I am also speaking of the confusion, the "anomie," the identity disorder of modern society in which everyone is grasping for easy answers, buying into this or that religion, car, pack of cigarettes, drug, false prophet, etc. (And perhaps we are all monkeys and geniuses, gyrating between repetition and insight, inspiration and regurgitation.)

All right, buonanotte fiorellinos, amores mios, back to coffee and keyboarding and daydreaming about fall, fall.

On people, expectations, brains, sex, etc.

The usual issues...I'm going to bed too late once more. It's simply clear that I need to cut men out of my brain as a concern (if that is at all possible,) because most of the time they are not worth thinking about.

Let's see, let's focus on the good stuff again: my study - analysis and final article, my poetry, friends, seeing plays in New York, more art, more shows, more goodness. I've blogged it so it must be official. Also health: I'm joining the Columbia gym damn it, time to move those little legs - plus they found that exercise is the only effective prevention for Alzheimer's and memory loss, the dentate gyrus in the hippocampus (a brain region significant for memory,) actually regenerates after a work out!

It's official and wonderful: I will be a professional geek at Chicago next year, YES. Yay!! I want this. Focus, happiness, goals, life...the rest will fall into place like a silver chain around the neck of a beautiful woman.

artistic masturbation

In honor of today I'd like to say: Boo.
I'm going to make poetry and music with a jew.
He plays on his flute and his guitar verrry nice,
could I be the Ali G to his Miss Piggy?
Alter ego puppets making sweet poetry,
out in the park, on a bench, on the grass?
In a tree, on a plane? Could it be, super jews?
Making juice in New York, so sweet, so sweet,
tangerine delicious, I'd like to eat that richness,
mmmm...
--------------------------------------------------

That was just a warm up, friends. I can't give you the good stuff only the appeteasers. I'm concerned about copyright - what if someone decides to be me?

Happy Sunday-ness.

March on

Dear random readers: I almost completely neglected you, this entire massively moving, marching, thumping, month. No, I will not neglect you.

Let's see: did I fall out of love? Not entirely, but the future Dr. Mar will be ok.
Did I fall into some kind of unusually more-defined future-ness? Kind of.

Is cross-examining the things that stick out of the back of my consciousness like a bunch of assembled busy bodies telling me "Hi I'm problem Grad School." "And I, I'm Mr. Man of Not Your Dreams but you need to talk to me, tell me what you're gonna do." "Hello I'm the voice of reason and grandmotherliness and everything will be ok." etc, kind of interesting? Sure, it stimulates me on a slow Friday when the over-priced starbucks caffeine runs out and there is not much I'd like to pretend to do while sitting in my little office. Bad girl, yes.

Schizophrenic self-conversations aside, I'm gonna go grab some lunch with a side of sanity.

Later humans. :)

The Wrong Chardonnay

I was at the Greek Kitchen today enjoying a chicken souvlaki dinner, (it's just down the street from my new home,) and decided to try some Greek chardonnay. Big mistake: yet another chardonnay that tastes more like apple juice than wine. Where oh where is the good New Zealand stuff? Mostly in New Zealand, though I've found a few imports....

The chardonnay may be shot, but my job hunt is not. I'm starting work at Columbia on March 10th. I just accepted the job offer - thank God. I plan to march in pretty triumphantly and enjoy my own little office - I'm going to be in charge of the new doctorate of nursing, there appear to be heaps of responsibilities involved to keep me busy, and yay for amazing university benefits and free tuition!

My Boston weekend was intense/awesome/fun, the snow seems to have found its way down here from there, I'm going to walk down the aisle in Olivine (an olive green color that the bridal gods created,) as a bridesmaid in August, I'm trying to use these next few free weeks productively, and really it's all pretty bitchin'. ;)

Happy Vaginal Thursday tomorrow, eat lots of chocolate, a friend of mine is making me brownies, what better way to cope with all the hearts.

Manhattan witchiness

Like clockwork on the 4th I write again. Almost like I planned this...visit. I am living in a "haunted" apartment and I like it. At least this one comes openly smothered with history, murder, love, sex, kick ass vintage furniture - the works. I like it. Bring it on ghosts, I have a bit of spirit of my own. Anyway, the wonderfully loony landlady is dancing to classical music in the kitchen, I moved out of South Brooklyn three days ago and feel beautifully autonomous and happy with my new dwelling, and today I'm starting to feel settled, yay.

Listen to The Pierces if you haven't, I'm loving them, and we're cohabitants of the same witchy Manhattan soup now. That's their whole shtick: witchiness. Same with the women I'm living with now, but they're good "witches" and I'm glad they're on my side. ;)

I'm drinking a stout that was brewed with chocolate.

I'm going to jip you on this post and cut it off right here. I will come back again in February month of love or loneliness or apathy and write again, make it up to you.

Brooklyn mochas and reflections on cities

I'm sitting in a Brooklyn cafe called K-Dog and drinking one of the best mochas I've ever had...it must be the chocolate they use in this mocha, it tastes like they mixed high quality hot chocolate with espresso, mmm.

As I sip this I'm applying to more jobs, getting ready to check out apartments, etc. The internet connection at Totya Rita's (the family friend I'm staying with in Brooklyn,) is pretty on-and-off as I'm pilfering it from some neighbor, and I have begun my exploration of Brooklyn cafes with free wifi. There are none directly in Rita's neighborhood, as it's located in the bowels of Brooklyn, not far from Brighton Beach. What can you find there? Orthodox and Hassidic Jews, Russian food stores, random junk stores, and if you happen to be heading home at 5am (I don't really recommend it, I did that on New Year's,) there might be strange men cat or more like dog-calling at night. I say dog, because when I think of cat-calling I think of harmless Parisian stalkers who might pester and follow but never do a damn thing about it. The men in NYC have much more of a sense of desperation about them, so little girls beware, look local, and walk fast. After that night I started to look up pepper spray vendors, but really it's much better at most other hours, even at 1am it's less creepy.

A little black boy just came up to me and popped his head at my computer screen, he startled me and I pulled my computer to me and recoiled scaring him away too in the process. In the past two days I've noticed that these little clean bohemian cafes seem to be a safe haven for kids in Brooklyn. Earlier this little boy came in and used their phone to call his mom because he didn't know where she was, and yesterday a little girl came into a different cafe on the other side of Prospect Park and sat in a booth doing her homework - she must have been only 8 or 9 years old. Brooklyn is certainly a weird mix of religious, hipster, and dirt poor people from every continent. I never had a chance to take such a close look at it before and see the socioeconomic problems of America so vividly. Capitalism is at it's best and worst in this city. The struggling, the dreaming, the successful, the hopeful and the hopeless. Of course the faces on the trains are typically incredibly tired and sagging - but still people are moving here, always moving.

Ok, I have to be a little more productive now - and I'm seeing my first prospective apartment tonight - it's in the East Village, wish me luck.