Hills of Sleeping Horses

my horse is dead
run over by an suv
my dog forced from me
by cruel and empty threats
a friendship maimed
false power gained
beat down in this city
by the fists all fighting for fame

let her ride her high horse
she needs it
frail heart
frail mind
an illusion of authority
from her soapbox she decries

in this corporate kingdom
castles built out of lies
glamorous parapets guard against a hollow inside
seated at the throne: science, progress, and pride

I can see right through this beautiful shell of you
sold your pearl for a slice of pie
holding your ticket for a turn in line
telling yourself you'll make it in time
rise in the ranks of this hierarchical prank
believing you're happy when your only tied in
turn the crank
unleash the sin
contributing your life to this mess we're all in

you lured me close only to push me away
sold your heart to get rid of the pain
as you whore yourself to fabulous fortune and fame
masked in virtue
a poster child for the new
same brand repackaged
as more to consume

and I want to believe and to forgive
believe that inside there is hope for sunrise
mend this broken hand and forgive these crimes
forgive people and this city
believe that they care and want to learn to change

still clinging in fear to the culture they revere
New York has them bound by their feet
never forget this city has no soul
they will rape me again the first chance I give
save my love for those who want nothing to hold

too good for the city
I will always offer my love
to those who are without
to the city of none

so rape me, my friend
with your smiles of concrete
fortune and fame never stung so sweet
drag me across your broken sidewalks and streets
you will never destroy what you cannot defeat
your threats and violence are useless to my ears
you cannot control what has no fear




artwork by Paul Antonson

taking the hits

This city all over again

pulling my arms, pulling me in

to this glowing hot waffle iron grid


"C'mere bitch! You thought you could leave?"

hit me with an SUV

bike smashed

arms scraped

and I walk away


How have I lived this long?

How did I survive that with only a scrape?

What am I doing living in this hostile place?


I could bark a million questions into the wind

hear a million voices echo within

and still I'd keep taking the hits


this city is a fist and I'm black and blue

a bloody pulp still beat until dry

but these tears held in

too many reasons to cry

a broken heart

a broken mind

broken dreams and 8 million lies


I surrender to you, New York

I care not to try

your game is hollow

your only virtue: pride

destroy me while you can

this bloody mess you've made of a pure hearted man

New York City is a Nuclear Bomb

It has to be admitted, permitted into dialogue, confessed, accepted:

New York City - one of the "greatest" cities in the world - is an ecological disaster, an eye sore on the planet, comparable to a nuclear wasteland. This is the dying heart of the war machine that breeds destruction all across the globe, propagating it's hostile culture generation upon generation, while raping other cultures in an attempt to satisfy it's appetite for exploitation and domination.

There's no way in hell this city could go green. For it to be green would mean to undo a century or more of ecocide - it would mean that the city would have to die and be reborn from it's own ashes with an entirely new purpose for existing - not commerce, not profit, not grandeur and luxury, excess and pride. This beast's heart is still raging and will not pitter out or change easily. If anything, it'll explode - implode, rather.

I've tried it. I've been here and I've honestly embraced as much of this monstrosity as I could without being completely repulsed. It's just not for me. I grew up outdoors, playing in fields and along irrigation canals. I'm from a different culture. I speak the language of the land.

Of course, the dominant western culture was shoved down my throat, forced into my veins through television and the educational system. I had no choice but to drink the poison. And it made me sick, maimed and tamed me - domesticated me like a house dog or zoo animal.

Then I spent time in the desert and the rain forest. Listened to the voices I had known as a child. Let heal. Let go.

But western culture is so good at domination that it perhaps never fully left me. I was always hooked in some way, surfing on its flawed structures, dependent on the resources it took by force and offered me with so many easy choices that any alternative was beyond recognition.

I can't say why I came to New York - the belly of the beast - other than that I was drawn here by the mystery of it all. The cities I knew of in the west were still small craters in the vast and open spaces of the landscape. Nature was never too far away and always felt like a greater force than the city, looming in the mountains that never leave the horizon. But here you get the feeling that the city really did conquer nature. There is no reminder. Everything living is domesticated in some way - forced to live in a very controlled and bleak environment.

It's funny because sometimes I'm fooled into believing that I'm experiencing nature here - when the trees are all in bloom or when I'm walking through the parks - but it's just a prop, an artifact, manipulated and poised for the purpose of serving man's interest. If the trees in the city existed for themselves no one would have planted them. Sure, they make it look nicer here. If this city had no trees it would be absolutely intolerable - but it would reveal what a wasteland it really is. The trees are prisoners forced into 3x3 squares in concrete, their roots suffocating under asphalt, sprayed with dog urine and herbicide - all so city dwellers can go on pretending like everything is okay - "look, how beautiful, spring in New York!"

And I'll confess I'm guilty of these crimes. I've fallen prey to this city on several occasions. It's so easy to. But I'm learning with each time I get hooked in that it's just a gimmick to keep me satisfied, to keep me spending my money and my time here, to keep turning the wheel and propagating this war machine.

I often liken myself to the savage, John, in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and his experience in the World State (huge city) after being brought there by Bernard. It's clear that he's so alien to the city, from another order (nature), and can see it's emptiness and wickedness, while everyone else finds him attractive for his novelty - a new commodity to be exploited, dominated, manipulated and sold.

I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do with myself. In a way I feel like if I retreat this island I'll be giving up too soon. On the other hand, I feel like I'm hypersensitive to environments and cultures and can clearly detect the inimical effects of living here. Staying in this city is only subscribing to it's destructiveness, supporting the war machine by paying taxes here, and promoting the lifestyle and culture by participating in the structure. Granted, I'm clearly not living the typical New York lifestlye (I shop at the coop, work for a non-profit environmental organization that educates the city's imprisoned youth, and ride my bike - to name a few).

I mean, I came here thinking if I could change or influence New York I could change anything. But is that not also a desire to manipulate and control? Even if it is for the good of the planet? I'm starting to wonder if the best way to stop this behemoth of a civilization is to leave it - rather than try to dismantle it from within. Is it time to jump ship? I have a plan and a life boat.

Bombs and Babies = Destruction

so I've given in to New York - wooed with blossoms and soft warm air.

I'm a deity of warm weather - and people take notice

as I also notice other people, now divulged from their chrysalis of cashmere and wool

bight colors on bronzed skin

so many beautiful people

how am I single?

Yet I have the whole city to share a romance with

a bike that can take me anywhere, anytime

I'm kinda in love with it all right now

and then I see babies....

I mean not to offend, but to have a baby at this time in the evolution of life is..... so selfish. The amount of resources that a human life requires while living within this techno-industrial civilization is simply criminal. Any yet, it's spring and there are women all chatter with baby fever, mom's with strollers, and children sprouting up through the sidewalks like dandelions.

There's this great idea I have where all babies, or fetuses, would be property of the state until the parents could prove, through a comprehensive application process, that they would be suitable to raise the child. If a child was born illegally, it would be seized, the parents fined, and placed for adoption. Basically all children would have to be adopted, just some would be adopted by their birth parents. I know this sounds slightly like orwellian state-control madness, but it would be effective at ending overpopulation and irresponsible parenthood. If only the state wasn't run by corrupt corporocrats....

eventhough Nueva York is seducing me right now in a serendipitous splendor , I haven't lost sight of the state of the world. If anything, I feel more alive and more concerned, more impassioned - all this beauty is worth the struggle to save it from careless and greedy human destruction.

I'll leave with a few quotes from a book that I'm reading, "Listening to the Land" by Derrick Jensen, recommended by a friend of mine who's a truly beautiful human being, working hard to make a positive impact in the urban environment - and elsewhere.

"The history of the world has been a parade of doomed civilizations, some noble, some corrupt, all of which thoughtlessly destroyed their ecological base. We may be following that same march to oblivion, unless we have the courage to change.... Our particular culture has become so inimical to life that in the next generation it's going to destroy one-third to one-half the species on this planet."
- Christopher Manes

"you can't take a California Condor out of the wild and put it in the L.A. zoo and still have a Condor, because the being of the Condor does not end at those black feathers at the tips of its wings. It's the rising thermals over the Coast Range. It's the rocky crag where she lays her egg. It's the carrion she feeds on. The Condor is place... and we are place too."
- Dave Foreman

Yet here we are in this zoo of artifice, concrete and steel - lost from our place and clueless where to find it. Throughout the book each conversation evokes a similar call - that of courage. Courage is what makes someone capable of facing extreme danger and difficulty without retreating. It implies not only bravery and dauntless sprit but the ability to endure in times of adversity.

Can we let go of this culture we know and hold so dear? Can we relinquish our fear of the unknown, be brave and listen to the land so it may guide us to our place?

Be Brave. Have Courage.

....and Love

Urban Doggie

Photos of BC and I at Brooklyn Bridge Park in D.U.M.B.O. today.

a pitbull, a knife wound and a good deed

His barks scrape through me

one after another

growing hoarse and hopeless

but still crying out for what?

I hear myself in his raspy call

the same desperate longing

all this hot breath into cool spring air

only to be carried along with fallen flower petals

down and out amongst the howling city sounds

Was I wrong to think I could save a life?

"That's a good thing you're doing"

and at least he's not dead

but still, he barks because he's alone

the time I have to give isn't enough

and never will be - this is temporary

so now I carry his hulking cries along with my own

a companion in my crime of virtue

reminding me with every harrowing yelp

that I will come home to an empty house of chores

cook and eat my meals in solitude

seek out the little that sustains me

before this consciousness abandons me

leaving me to dream alone in my bed

howling in my sleep for what I'll never have


Hah! I read this over and it sounds so pathetic. I guess it's okay to "be" pathetic at times.
But really, there are times when I feel so terribly alone and I wonder if everyone has these moments in their lives.
And why do we feel alone? Why do we bark? What it is we are howling for?

ADDENDUM

The lyric above is an attempt at communicating a complex matrix of emotion, a moment's feeling fluxing into the next. What it means is irrelevant. What it evokes - a complex thought or feeling perhaps - is all.

Fostering a pitbull hasn't been the easiest thing I've ever done. Over the past few days I've been asking myself why I did this - which leads to thoughts about why I choose such things for my life: service and volunteer work, teaching inner city and at-risk youth, environmental activism, riding a bike instead of driving a car, eating vegetarian or vegan, scrupulous consumerism and cooperative living, and on and on.... any of these things aren't easy in themselves and yet I think I can do them all at once. Why do I choose to make my life difficult? Why do I make myself suffer such hardship?

Don't misinterpret the text here. I'm not complaining, just asking why - as a critic. I mean, there's a reason not many other people do this kind of stuff. It's fucking hard. Why am I drawn to it?

It's a question I'd like to explore. Am I really getting anything out of it that I wouldn't be getting if I were working for a huge corporation or some fancy firm? What if I spent my time on a yacht or in a laboratory? And am I doing these things because I'm looking to gain something in return? something that isn't money? Or do I do it simply because I enjoy it?

Questions barking into the wind....

Let Your Leaves Out to Green

leaves breaking the buds in my backyard and beyond

solopsistic city solitude

Indulge in this

a city to fulfill my every wish

breed this wantoness

hungry for what doesn't exist

with these salivate eyes

sold on every disguise

mine, mine, mine,

these vindicated buys

still sold

still tied

crying virtue

no other way to survive

(this is where I take a shower only to return and write more)

I never knew I could want so much

and I'm glad that my needs are few

and my wants are little

yet this city still calls

still tempts me with perfumes

who knew life could cost so much?

what does one do in this place if choose not to spend?

where does one go?

I'm looking for these places. Alone.

Free stimulation - nothing produced, nothing sold

only found, perhaps discovered
{space}
I don't know why I'm still spacing my lines. Is that wasteful? Should I care?
I drank spelt beer tonight. I felt high and slightly drunk and now sober. It was nice. I wish I could take up drinking as a hobby, only I know I'd bore of it too soon or find it repulsive. I don't like to loath who I am. Perhaps that's why I suffer pride instead.

I (yeah, this is about me and my own solipsism, remember?) was involved in a bike accident today. I mention it because it's worth mentioning, not because I want pity or for you, the reader of this blog, to worry about my health and well being - that's up to you and I'd prefer not to hear about it. Yes, it was the highlight of my day - and I had quite a grand day! The most visceral experience. It happened on my way to work. I'd say it was like a fender-bender, only I flew over the handlebars like some rag-doll ballerina and rolled it out down the street. Flying and rolling are best, I've found - and I'm glad they come to me instinctually. I was only slightly injured (FYI, I'm okay). Just some scrapes, a lump and a contusion. Although the experience concerned me. It hurt. So I've decided to buy a bike helmet, though I'm against helmets. Just for myself. Other people should probably wear them, if they want. My bike will need some minor repairs. I ride like a maniac and it's the only way I can ride. I'm not afraid. I rarely worry. Risk is being blind or brave? I let the asphalt decide.

I like those days when you can't quite tell the difference between dreaming and being awake.

City at Night

pictures taken from around the DUMBO waterfront and along the Brooklyn Queens Expressway - hours after midnight, April 13, 2008.

walkside way - photos from an exploration

the story about story

I've been musing on story deeply these past few days along with immersing myself in Cormac McCarthy's effervescent desert portraits - his stories about stories and the stories of his heroes and the land, the ways of people, told with such magical austerity.

The story continues. My story. There is no remorse about that. Though perhaps the style in which is it told will shift and coil and then uncoil and coil again, proceeding much like the body of a snake, undulating back and forth and looking as though it is confused about where it wants to go but moving nonetheless across sand and leaves, through the grass, hidden and yet there all at once and continuing on to wherever it is that snakes go.

I think that there is a distinction between writing one's life and letting life write it for you, because perhaps it is just like a story that has already been written, only it is being read for the first time and with each page comes something new, something revealed - and yet it has been there all along. The end waiting behind so many more pages of unknown words and sentences.

There is a style to living just as there is a style to writing. Since I've been out here I haven't been living in the style to which I find myself most suited to live. But I aim to reclaim that now that I'm aware of it. Not sure how to explain this style and perhaps I will save the attempt for another blog entry. I will say that it's magical and real, romantic and fearless, adventuresome - like dreaming while awake. The limits and lines are blurred or maybe they just don't matter because I can live beyond them while existing within them. I'll leave it at that for now.

The last week in March was perhaps the most trying week I've had in NYC - work, home, weather, emotions, relations - all a fiery tempest swirling me about. On friday night (the night of earth hour) a friend and co-worker invited me into Manhattan to attend Dark Fair - an art fair in the dark, light by glow sticks and candles and powered by renewable energy sources. The event was nice but that's not the story I'm going to share.

I had wanted to bike across one of the east river bridges that night to see if new yorkers would turn off lights in mass - something noticeable. I decided I would bike into manhattan to the art fair via the manhattan bridge. The night was chill and a bit breezy and I set out on my bike towards the navy yard and then heading left down flushing ave, past the warehouses and vacant sidewalks - a route I hadn't taken since I first moved to the city and sought out the way to the bridges for the first time.

My breath growing quicker and deeper and my heart beating faster as I pedaled up the slightly sloped black-topped streets marred with pot holes and patched with huge metal plates that separate an unseen world excavated and accessed through these trenches now sealed in the night.

The ramp to the bridge path spirals up and from there it's an uphill voyage felt vigorously in the thighs and loins, the hissing and fluttering of cars as they passed somewhere above and between the huge steel trusses and cables like some elusive thunder clapping out from within the clouds. As I reached the crest of the bridge the pedaling eased and I stopped my bike to look out over the city. No other bikers passed and the chatter of the cars faded into the perpetual buzz of the city, the boats and helicopters, airplanes, trains all careening about in this space all at once and becoming one sound, like that of the river - the sound of the city.

Blue lights along the banks of Williamsburg reflected broadly into the gentle undulations of the black river, mixing with thin wavy lines of orange, pink, white and green. A large boat, perhaps a ferry, pushed off from the Manhattan embankment gliding out into the ripples of the glassy plane below me. How beautiful and frightening it all looked, like one of those miniature model cities that toy train hobbyists construct as a complete artifice to capture the fascination of children and adults alike so they stand and watch as the trains whirl around along the tracks, following the engine with their eyes as it crosses bridges and vanishes into tunnels only to emerge from a styrofoam mountainside littered with plastic trees and goats. I felt at once immensely large and small, lost in the scale of the earth and that which had been mounted upon it. All the lights beacons of the structures they illuminate stacked in a vertical grid insistent on defying the darkness that encroaches and threatens to wash centuries of tinkering and building figures and figurines all to black.

I took a photo and climbed onto my bike. From there is was a coast downhill.

This Story Untold

Maybe this one entry isn't about New York, maybe it is. What I'm about to write is a sharp contrast to the content in previous blog entries. Perhaps it's pretty personal, but I strive to live openly, publicly. I have nothing to fear about myself, who I am, what I think and feel. This is my voice, my thoughts and feelings about my life right now.

As for New York... for me, New York is a story I'm writing as I live it. In the same way, we're all the authors of our own lives, our own stories. We choose, consciously or not, how to color the experiences we live through, how to interpret the world we live in, how to characterize the people we meet and see - we make these decisions just like authors who plot out stories with characters in a setting. Perhaps our decisions are even influenced by other stories already written that we believe in and adopt into our own lives (media, entertainment, religion, politics, history, etc).

What's New York like? Well, millions of people, tall buildings, concrete and asphalt, bridges and tunnels, rivers and a few parks, wealth and poverty side-by-side, a mix of races, cultures and lifestyles, tons of businesses, restaurants, bars, endless entertainment and distraction. It's a big city, that's it and that's all. But begin to craft a story and it becomes something else, something more. Add characters (like myself) and fill them with emotion, tell about the ups and downs using figurative language and climactic events. Soon you have a story - a story you made up and that only exists in the telling... whether you're telling yourself or others.

What's life like without story? When we remove the colors, the details and descriptions, the identities we hold on to so dearly that characterize who we are and what we do, what's left? Can life be lived like a blank page? Can we stare into the white pulp or the white pixelated light and still exist?

In some ways I feel like I've fallen out of my story. And in some ways I don't want to get back into one.

How does one fall out of story? For me it happened when suddenly it was revealed to me that the fabrication I was living out (the story) was just that, an illusion I had applied to the world around me, to the people, the places, the events and experiences. I made them all what I wanted them to be. Why? To make life more interesting, I assume. To give it meaning. To believe in something: a path, a journey, an evolution, progress, hope, something, anything other than what is... this... blank.... and bleak... existence.

Of course this knowledge isn't new to me. In college I read about it in Nietzsche - "The Birth of a Tragedy," where he recounts an ancient Greek legend in which King Midas sought out the wise Silenus to ask him what was the best thing for human beings, to which Silenus replies, "Wretched, ephemeral race, children of chance and tribulation, why do you force me to tell you the very thing which it would be most profitable for you not to hear? The very best thing is utterly beyond your reach not to have been born, not to be, to be nothing. However, the second best thing for you is: to die soon."

Nietzsche goes on to explain that this is why the Greeks created their gods and the stories about them - to give their lives meaning in a world without anything but life and death.

The same knowledge is woven into every masterpiece of literature, from Chaucer to McCarthy, the discreet disclosure that it's all just a story.

A few years ago I made an attempt to live without story. To be nothing. Colorless life. Blank.

It was nice for a while, then I quickly got bored and concluded that it was only natural and human to create stories of our lives - they're what make life worth living, give us feeling, depth, meaning. I dove headfirst back into my own personal narrative, living richly in great detail and a multitude of colors.

Now I find myself second guessing story again. The dangers of illusion. The potential to lose oneself entirely in story, mistake it for reality. Within I'm yearning for simplicity, a monochrome life. I just want to be and in being not be at all.

A complicated matter in this complex world saturated with story upon story.

So for now, until I figure this out, this story (as told in this blog) is on hiatus and I am just going to be.

Feel free to comment on this. I'd like to hear your thoughts/reactions/responses.

the resurrection of this city within me

Today was possibly one of the most intense days I've had here in New York. I'm just getting over a cold, I didn't get adequate sleep last night, and I had to teach three classes today plus prep for three classes tomorrow, in all, lugging around materials for six classes in three different bags weighing in total around 60lbs (because of the times of my classes tomorrow I can't go into the center in the morning to pick up my materials, so I have to take them home the day before). To make things more difficult, I was only given an hour between my second class and third class of the day, the first two being in Park Slope, the third in the middle of Bed Stuy (30-60 min. commute). Oh, and I didn't have a lunch. Crazy. I know. So I'm living this day, going through the motions of this insane schedule and the whole time I'm thinking to myself that I should have said something to the scheduling department at work - it wasn't right for them to schedule me with only an hour in between those two classes - no, wait, it wasn't right for them to schedule me for three classes, all in the middle of the day (so I can't have a lunch) and then schedule me again for three classes the following day. But, I looked at the schedule last week. I knew what I was taking on and I didn't say anything. I figured I could do it. But there I was, living that day and wishing I hadn't been so ambitious - so eager to take on such a challenge. I was starving, exhausted, sweaty, pissed off (at myself and at my work), hating everything about New York - the traffic, the walking, the waiting, the people, the students, the cold air. At every subway and bus station, just as I was arriving, the train or bus was just leaving - honestly, at every single one - and I had to take one train and two buses to get from the school in Park Slope to the center (I walked) and then to my house (to drop off the materials for tomorrow) and then to the school in Bed Stuy. Oh, and the students at that school in Bed Stuy - so rowdy - 6th through 8th graders that are throwing things at each other, fighting, yelling, cursing, and difficult to manage. They don't listen, they don't do what I ask them to and when they do it's so mediocre. They just don't care. It was the worst way to end one of the worst days I've had here.

I got home and felt completely defeated. I said to myself, I hate New York. It's not for me. I want out. I want to cry. It's so hard here. Life is so hard here and it doesn't need to be. Why do people live in this place where life is so difficult. I felt like I finally understood why people out here are so impudent and brazenly self centered - and I didn't want to have anything to do with it anymore. I wanted out.

Of course, what I want isn't always what I'm going to do. I think part of me is a little bit masochistic because when things get tough, and I mean really tough to where I want to break down and cry and run away from it all - I force myself to endure. Perhaps it's because I've learned over time that, usually, when you do stick it out it makes you stronger, the experience is much more rewarding and you achieve a greater understanding of life.

Don't get me wrong. I've had some really great times since I've been here in New York. I've met some amazing people who have definitely enriched my life and inspired me, moved me with their presence. But in the end you're not always with those people and living those "high life" moments at some VIP celeb packed party on the roof top of the Gramercy Park Hotel. The majority of my life is spent waiting in musty subway stations, walking broken sidewalks inhaling exhaust, cleaning up after other people (though not so much anymore) - or just dealing with other people - millions of them - every day, alone. It really is a tough life out here. Unless you're disgustingly wealthy, life New York City isn't easy. It's really quite monstrous.

But I'm out here. My lease isn't up until August. There are a few people in my life here who perhaps make it all worthwhile to stick it out.

My roommate comes home and I confess my sentiments. She listens (I love that about her) and tells me what the masochist within tells me - stick it out. I've only been here for four months - all of which have been in the winter. It's too soon to make a rash judgment, to write off NYC and kick this city life goodbye.

I know. I know. But still, I can't help feeling hopeless, defeated, and sick of it all.

I left the house and headed for thy gym. Hot Yoga. 7:30PM. I biked in the cool air. Breathed it in deep. Let the chill feel good over my warming body as I pedaled quickly to make it in time. The female instructor was one I had never had before. She had a germanic accent, shorter thin hair that sort of spiked off her head a bit, adding a fire to her sinewy frame. We worked on focusing our energy and mind on the four points in each of our feet and hands - the extremities of the body and the poses.

We began with three chants of Om. Breathe in the sun. Oooooooooooooooommmmmmmmmmmm. Feel the vibration within. Breathe in the sun deeper. Feel the vibration deep within. Exhale everything we've been carrying. Let it go. Out with the breath. Breathe in the Sun. Oooooooooooooommmmmmm.

Every pose we engaged out hands and feet. Toes off the floor and spread wide, feet squared, palms flat, finger tips "like claws" with fingers spread wide. I could feel each pose stretch deeper, stronger. One of the challenges in Yoga is to keep all the muscles engaged throughout the poses. Focusing on keeping the feet and hands poised and square on four points and pushing out while pushing out with the breath really helped me get deep into the poses, getting a deeper stretch and releasing deep tensions throughout my body and mind. I've never had a stronger full bridge pose. She even advised focusing the feet in this 4-point "push" while riding the bike. "It'll fix any problems with the knees."

One of the best yoga classes I've ever had. Afterwards I felt amazing. Not a 180 from my mood before - more like I achieved a harmony, leveled things out. I could think clearly about things again. My mood wasn't clouded by all the negativity. It was all released. Gone. We finished with three more Om chants, remembering the sunshine - now manifested within.

I stepped out into the cool night feeling great. Rejuvenated. Calm. Engaged.

While biking home I thought about how I was feeling before. I realized that I had turned New York into a monster. All the hard and horrible things amassed into one behemoth that was beating me down. Yet, I created this behemoth. I chose to see it this way, to let it defeat me, perhaps because it's easier to play the victim, to give up or believe that there is no chance for a positive and beautiful life here in this city - because that could take a lot of time and effort with unknown returns. So why not write it all off as a hopeless endeavor and go back to the calm, the beautiful, the natural west. basically it was all a fabrication so I could give up. I made it into a monster I had no chance against, one that would defeat me. And it did.

Like the phoenix, I rise from my ashes into a new life. Deep down I know my roots were born in western soil and that is where they will return - but they can certainly be nurtured, stretched and strengthened on this shifting sojourn in the city that never sleeps.

Spring is here. Rejoice.

deeper in, now than before

There are layers to this living here in this city. I was riding the F train home tonight after a dinner party in Manhattan and I had one of these moments that I experience every so often - it's a moment when it suddenly seems to settle in me that I live here and this is my life, these trains and tunnels, the waiting, the watching, millions of strangers, the longest winter of my life, all the dirt and grime, trash and endless overheard conversations, screeching silent subway rides. In one moment it all seems to dawn on me as if I never really saw it before - because I think usually I envision my time here as provisional - never permanent - and yet, here are these glimpses at what permanent life might be like, feel like, here in this city. And each time I catch one of these glimpses, as new york settles within me, it's as though I've experienced some rite of passage that leads me deeper into this inferno of concrete, steel, electric light and human life. How much further there is to go, how many more layers to spiral up or down - unknown. Perhaps living here is like passing through an abyss - maybe there is no bottom or end, only deeper in.

If it wasn't for Brooklyn...

If it wasn't for Brooklyn I probably would have never come out to NYC. In my last post, the behemoth, the sinking ship - that's Manhattan NYC. The two are entirely different worlds, separated by a river. Some Brooklynites may dream like Manhattanites (they just can't afford to live there), but for the most part, the people who live in Brooklyn live here because they want to (or they don't have choice), because they know the culture is different, more laid back, more about people than commerce and flashy wealth. There's definitely a gradient to all the boroughs, a slight blending, but generally the cultural stereotype holds true. You'll see restaurants or boutiques in Brooklyn that look like they're trying to be Manhattan - and they stand out like a boob job on an old broad. Whatever, some people are into that. I'm not. There's something very real, genuine, and organic about Brooklyn. Eventhough a lot of it is cracked and crumbling, many parts have been preserved and restored, protected by the members of the community. Neighborhoods like Brooklyn Heights, Carrol Gardens, Park Slope, Fort Greene - all have preserved the historic infrastructure fairly well, businesses are locally owned, they have active neighborhood organizations and fight against unreasonable (Manhattanesque) development.

Today the sun was shining, it was 56 degrees and felt great outside. I rode my bike into Park Slope's 5th Ave commercial strip to check out a vegan restaurant (V Spot) and a few second hand/vintage/thrift stores while on my way to the Park Slope Food Coop (where I do most of my grocery shopping). I ran into my co-worker who lives next to the coop and she invited me onto the roof of her building, which has a great view of the city. Below are photos from my day.

Park Slope Architecture




A faux-dobe facade (notice the faux vigas) on a tex-mex restaurant se llama, Lobo. Looks like they mixed Santa Fe with San Antonio (interior had cow hide covered booths) - I looked in the window and cringed.


Outside the Food Coop on Union St., Park Slope


Views from the roof






This is why I love Brooklyn.