#07:: "one art"--elizabeth bishop

prospect park, brooklyn, nyc


someone I was corresponding with on here in the autumn turned me on to this villanelle. it sort of stuck with me, in all of its bittersweet glory--as one none too keen on loss. ::rather recently, I let go a 10-year friendship. I didn't want to let it go, despite its increasingly caustic nature. my friend didn't want friends anymore--it was boiling down to the fact that she neither wanted to rely on anyone nor have them rely on her. she became mean. and medicated. the antics of my "life" + lack of a "real" job served to annoy her to no end. ::letting go, I realized how much energy I was putting into maintaining a sinking craft. I realize how I am opening up to new friendships + collaborations on creative projects. no, 'twas no disaster, but of our good times, I miss the laughter.


The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.


"one art," elizabeth.bishop
heartless (1997), john.currin

#08:: la belle et la bête

I get so easily transfixed by certain films + their visual stories. I finally saw cocteau's la belle + la bête.beauty + the beast at ifc. nothing like a french fairy tale {with surrealism thrown in--making me love gondry even more} to make one's afternoon. I was in such a good mood, I didn't even mind that the drawing center was closed for the week. the layering of metaphor + visual allusional references were awe-inspiring. not quite as campy as the venture bros. I was explaining to a good director friend of mine this week that I feel like such a dope, since I have no way of articulating the visual that isn't flat--no magic, no verve. just words that hang there for another to visually translate. I love how cocteau draws you in, but keeps you uneasy. oh, like in post-liberation france--treachery abounds. hmmm. yes, greta, I can see why you wanted your beast back.

:on the f-train, a hipster mom was having an outing with her 6 or 7-year old daughter. the daughter was naming the stations before the signs were visible, noting the distinctions between street and avenue and correcting herself. the mom was explaining how there were more elevated lines back in the day + talking about the old 6th. avenue el. "was it like the 7?," the daughter exclaimed; "yes, like the 7," mom assured. oh, they were off to the a at jay street, dashing across the platform on an adventure.

#09:: "my god, it's full of stars"

prospect park, brooklyn, nyc


::august 2004, after a wonderful evening, I had to return from cole valley {realestate term for lower haight} to oakland. I love taking the n-judah + hearing the speakers say, "inbound n-judah" in the underground stations below market st. makes me smile, as I think of the film alphaville. it's chilly in sf in august. a cold fog was blowing in from ucsf. I hopped on the n-judah to get to bart. to confound any possible assassins {my dad's excuse for always taking different routes going places}, I got off at...civic center, powell, montgomery, embarcadero...embarcadero. I go up to switch to bart. in those days, I just needed any train not going frémont or dublin/pleasanton, since the rest went through my stop-macarthur. in the transbay tube, you pick up speed. maybe up to 70mph. when one emerges in west oakland at night + it's clear, it's like scifi. the cranes at the cargo terminals are lit up + you can see the stars littering the sky. there could also be a 10ºF temp. differential, which I find is an odd reason why I love california in the summer.

::oct. 2004, dec. 2006, I'm not a fan of the jmz. it reminds me of long walks on hot days or cold nights/mornings + going up countless steps hoping the metrocardreader is working. I was reminded recently of its redeeming glory. that view when one emerges from manhattan on the williamsburg bridge. no, you're not going 70. it's like an old man well past 70--with a walker, ambling along, but the view of the east river, the bridges, + the lights below make me happy

#10:: 22,241 statute miles, geosynchronously yours

prospect park, brooklyn, nyc        


I step through every shade,
All the color you bring,
This time, this time, this time,
Is whatever I want it to mean.


And everything and nothing is as sacred as we'd want it to be,
When it's really all,
Make it really all,
Compared to what?

It's like living in the middle of the ocean,
With no future, no past,
And everything that's good about now,
Well, might just glide right past.

bethorton, centralreservation

#12::falling

east haarlem, nyc


I now admire more cautious hearts, as I think I've been rather reckless with mine over the years. perhaps it has cirrhosis after years of such treatment. ::I tend to fall hard for people. it's always been this way--all fire and incandescence burning white-hot. although, the {sub.obj}ects of such aren't always clued-in, so perhaps there is a bit of caution there. ::there is a muse whom everyone is in love with. collaborateur.raconteur. I am content in the haze of a drunken hour to ford metropolitan/union+slip down to the L, intact in many ways+heaven knows I'm not so miserable now.

image:: susanne fleischhacker, sichoverlieben

#13::glitter + doom

east haarlem, nyc


I don't think I could ever see too much art, well, at least in nyc. carmel or laguna beach are quite different stories. ::the glitter + doom exhibit at metmuseum, along with seeing soderbergh's the good german, rekindled my 1987 fascination with interwar european history. in the autumn of that year, I had a visiting prof. who sounded like ian mcculloch + did my term paper on vichy. I never did manage to see the sorrow + the pity, despite said prof. recommending I do so + the reference to it in w. allen's manhattan. I remember seeing photos of shopsigns with prices in tausend milliarden, depicting the rampant inflation + earlier in the year kcet was screening berlin alexanderplatz, so gloriously dreary + chronicling how hard life could be in weimar deutschland. ::in the good german, the lena brandt character reminded me of some of the pieces in the exhibition--how people did what they could to get by. this begs the question for me of how this affected a national culture, as well as how "terrorism" {i.e., reactions to it--real, imagined, or manufactured.} is changing ours? ::seeing those pieces at metmuseum was quite transformational for me--as was the hopper exhibit at the whitney--so full of brooding juxtapositions. btw:otto dix rocks.

rechtsanwalt dr. fritz glaser mit familie

#16:: francie nolan + "in our old colonial home, we drank our bitters while the empire fell"

east haarlem, nyc


"they ambled along, stopping now and then to breathe deeply of the smell of newtown creek which flowed its narrow tormented way a few blocks up grand street. ::'god, she stinks,' commented the big boy. ::'yeah!' neeley sounded deeply satisfied. ::'I bet that's the worst stink in the world,' bragged another boy. ::'yeah.' ::and francie whispered yeah in agreement. she was proud of that smell. it let her know that nearby was a waterway, which dirty though it was, joined a river that flowed out to the sea. to her, the stupendous stench suggested far-sailing ships + adventure + she was pleased with the smell." A Tree Grows in Brooklyn [1943]

:: I recall a hot august night + the ruddy glint of a unravelled sinatra tape fluttering in the briny breeze off of the east river, while carrying late-night tonic water--for a gin + tonic--from hama on metropolitan. union, bedford, guernsey {with the canopy of trees filtering the sodium light}, messerole, banker, calyer.

::the night was spitting in a semi-tropical circumstance. I surfaced at carroll, through what seemed a nice neighborhood which gave way to an industrial zone. I crossed gowanus canal on union + thought of its toxic infamy. I arrived early at an event--a winsome, artsy type at the door started to talk to me, as if we sort of knew each other. she gushed about how gowanus was changing for the better + encouraged me to check out the quirky installations in the galleryspace before the talk. I thought of how greenpoint + williamsburg were dead to me at that moment. I thought of colonialism along the L--the beachhead now being bushwick, forlorn since the unrest of '77. I thought of the numbers of stops into this brooklyn: york, jay, bergen, carroll; high, jay-borough hall, hoyt-schermerhorn; clark, jay-borough hall, nevins. the far rockaway a-train to jfk. ::later I would head to a wonderful winebar in flatbush with my friend I met up with at the gowanus gallery. we talked--mostly I listened, as she {the coolest architect/writer in the world w/ a kick-aß taste in music} + another friend of her's {an urbanist} talked about architecture + nyc, 'space & the city.' ::at midnight, I had to wend my way back up to haarlem, as in a few hours I had to stuff myself into a jetblue flight back to the land of the lotus eaters. the next time I would see nieuw amsterdaam, it was gloriously frozen.

#21:: what did you say?

she was an odd one. quiet + withdrawn, at least on dates. I never saw her outside of that circumstance--I find it telling how someone interacts with others. a self-professed "country girl" from a place of 255 cities, towns, + gores. we were far from there. downtown berkeley to be specific, a few years ago--a place not immune to the kids with their car stereos that went booooooom-boooooom with bass-heavy tracks. this upset her. she professed a need for quiet in her world + said, in a pained manner of a confessional, that loud "urban" music made her think *very* bad thoughts. --cue sound effect of brakes squealing ending with a car crash-- huh? when I recently showed a class an episode clip of 30 Rock where jenna {jane krakowski} says {after finding out she was still mic_ed}, "did I say the 'N' word? not that I would," I thought of this incident. it bothers me to this day I didn't confront her on that one then + there. oh, it was clear what she meant, but how someone professing to be sooo open-minded + liberal can easily slip into the realm of generalizing epithets was troubling. no matter, things followed some kind of "borderline" personality trajectory of 180º "I love you-I hate you" and derailed shortly after this incident. she's a journalist + her stuff shows up on my radar every so often--with all of its blatant posturing, I know better.

#22:: fragments of life with better packaging

in groundhog day, phil {bill murray} laments how unfair it was that he couldn't relive one of his better days:

"I was in the Virgin Islands once. I met a girl. We ate lobster and drank pina coladas. At sunset we made love like sea otters. *That* was a pretty good day. Why couldn't I get that day over and over and over... "

in that vein, every so often I think about my versions of pretty good dates. ::before that evening, we never met or even talked on the phone. sharing pixels + other bits of electronic ephemerata. how is molly the cat doing, anyway? I mentioned I was going to be in town + asked her if she was free on a particular evening. there was a band playing + as it turns out she went to grade school with one its charismatic members. I got tickets + was racing around town trying to get various things done. I left a few messages + was beginning to wonder if this was going to happen. she finally called my cell + we met up in a dive bar, me trying to rein in seemingly alcoholic tendencies. oh, how on great dates you lose track of time--of course we did + realized we better get to the concert venue. we had to wend our way across the city--me with a fuzzy sense of perceptions and she without her glasses, there was quite a bit of conversational meandering. when we finally got there, it was a wonderful space with perfect acoustics. I was mesmerized by the songs, sometimes raucous, oftentimes lilting. I was sort of curious to see her interact with her old friend who was in the band. it was quite a sight to see their faces light up, as they hadn't seen each other in a few years. she introduced me + I was walking on air, concealing in a veneer of coolness any sycophantic fanaticism. I bought her a CD that meant a great deal to me + gave it to her explaining how this music affected me. she was delighted and said it was as if I were a magician. of course, I was not--only perhaps in a john c. reilly sense in magnolia or akin to stephane's mother's boyfriend in la science des rêves, as I would have used some of said magic to prolong those few weeks of bliss. that evening ended with her inviting me to dinner with her sister + close friends. as I grow older + more deluded, I choose to just remember these magical montages, but long for even better dailies just around the corner.

#23:: newtown creek, from "mccarren park"

alta california sur {los angeles}


in raw february
newtown creek
chilled lifeless
in still sunshine
under the bqe
but nasa tells another story
on google maps
she saw shooting stars
the bluegreen hues
one could imagine
tidelands near nauset
with reeds and grasses and delicate light