fields of rightdoing

today is the birthday of Jalal ad-Din Muhammed Balhki, otherwise known as none other than the most amazing, THE GREAT SUFI poet,  RUMI.  my heavens did this man ever know what to say.  how did he know, how did he get is so right?  "out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field.  I'll meet you there"?  or, " lovers don't finally meet somewhere, they're in each other all along"?  why can't it be so easy?  why can't Love be pahretty fucking simple, like you just look at it and you're like oh wow that's Love, there it is and that's that, till the end of time.  i mean, shouldn't it be?  or i guess it already is?  

it's possible that i read too much Rumi, it's possible he made it all up, maybe Love really isn't that all-consuming, maybe it really is just our brain and useless chemicals that make us think we'll fling ourselves off a cliff for THAT Love.  

if i felt that way, i wouldn't love Rumi.  i think that there are no human words to describe how wonderfully right and wonderfully wonderful LOVE is, but he was pretty fucking close.  

trading post

somewhere out east, there's this ancient little old mill inn that was quaintly turned into a high end-ish restaurant, quaintly now called the olde mill inn restaurant that lots of white people with money like to go to, and it's a place that sometimes i frequent with a certain favorite someone, usually for the 3-5 daily special of one dollar oysters in the summer, so isn't that just ironic.  it is, by all means, other than the oysters and the alcohol, extraordinarily uneventful and quiet and just lovely, usually with a handful of out-of-town New Yorkers at the bar slurping on two dozen or so of those cold little blobs of ocean spit-up that oysters really are.

one particular day, we had walked in expecting the expected, when rising from her place at the bar and greeting us gregariously at the door came one of the most beautiful women i had ever laid my blue-grey peepers on.  she was black, her skin glowing like she had rubbed it vigorously with some magic powder of mother of pearl, her hair dark and wild and framing her face the way i envy so much with women of color, her large black watery eyes outlined with kohl and the slightest flash of silver and the most luscious lips you've ever seen smeared with hypnotic hot pink matching her very very short dress that flashed across her dark skin making it impossible to look at anything other than her lips as she said something along the lines of "welcomeeewouldyoucareeeetositattheeeebarr?", some sort of lilting south american accent just barely whisping around those words, a glass of white wine gathering dew and raised like a trophy in one hand, her other gesturing toward the run of the restaurant, do vhat you'd like, dahlings.  

naturally i was feeling immediately entranced by this 55 year old with the most amazing ass ever, and that feeling of feeling like the frumpiest person in four counties is pretty rough to deal with when you have a senior citizen checking out your date and that witch really was.  as we took our seats, i caught those round eyes take him in, then me, and i like to think i know enough about sex now to think for a minute that maybe i should leave the room before i got it together enough to give this woman the mental props necessary for being very obviously the most hypnotic thing on the North Fork at that very moment or perhaps even ever.  

for some reason, they served us our oysters on a bed of not very cold ocean pebbles, which although aesthetically pleasing, truly ruins the fresh cold ocean idea on a really hot day.  an elderly couple that looked exactly like us but forty years on plodded in and up to the bar - they had not much to say but seemed fine with it and we looked at them and each other and laughed then for whatever the other reasons were, that weekend proceeded to turn into a living hell shortly thereafter.

always give a witch her props and never ever ever turn your back on someone walking into a party

slippery souls

i have been here a million times before, i can literally see the sun streaming through the cracks in the door ahead of me. yes, someone else's naked ass may reach it incrementally before mine, but there is a time and place for everyone to reach the light.

i'm at the seedy Turkish bath house on 10th street, and i've just come out of the Russian room where i scrubbed sea salt so fiercely into my hot skin in the 1000degree room that my shoulders are still screaming lay off bitch and now it's just slippery. it's so slippery now walking up the stairs in the flesh-colored rubber plastic sandals they give you that someone's great-grandmother wore in '52 because the salt is still on my skin and it's turning to soap in my rubber sandals and i'm walking timidly but fetchingly i would say up the stairs to roof deck, water streaming off me into my sandals making it all the more slippery as i clutch the rail and try not to think about the reaalllly bad fall i could take down three flights if i lose it in the sandals now and really bite it, just when i'm so close. that's the way I feel now, really, waking up every morning thinking shit this is scary but I really might reach it and I'm so close to the light.....

yes walking in those terrifying sandals is the way i feel, although i'm not really walking, i'm just trying to make it out of the slippery shit i've been sliding around in for years without falling down three flights of metaphorical stairs and calling it quits and not just him, but everything, this that, everything. i'm following the "no contact" rule, which really, i feel is the dumbest rule there is, but everyone seems to swear by it - it clears the mind, soothes the soul that type of thing. actually, i think that's what he was trying to tell me too last time we spoke, right after he threatened to call the police, but come on, can't he realize there's a little bit of psycho in each of us and then there's the sign i saw on the fridge behind the counter at the bath house:

ping

having unfortunately laid this post to the wayside these past few months, it is with great pleasure that i once again take up the noble pen - so to speak - now.

it's funny...it's not that i've been extraordinarily busy.  i haven't saved any orphans, dug any wells, adopted any kittens, none of that no sirree.  when i think about the last few months, i see nothing but a haze of colors swooping by, a face or two here, an experience there (some super shitty, i can't lie, some so so so so sooo great), all wrapped up in just about the greatest most glorious summer days one could ever ask for.  truth be told, looking back over the ribbon of memories that constitutes what i remember of those days that have streamed passed, what sticks out most glaringly are those moments when i felt like i actually came up for air...there's a massive hole in the ribbon there, and there's just not much, except air, pure clean hey i'm alive air, and i'm breathing and i'm living, and all of that seems so very very good.

while i wasn't writing, i was keeping some notes on the things that i would have liked to have written about, so i'll take the liberty to share them, in no particular order, here:

- really, what the fuck is this thing called "Love", and why are white boys so short?
- full sleeve tattoos, how do i really feel about them?
- why is it that when i'm in a rush to get coffee on my way to work, there is inevitably a person of obviously lesser pressing issues taking their sweet dandy time ahead of me.  I PARTICULARLY hate when it's grungy skateboard dudes who are in their 30's.  two words for you, buddy: "fuck", and "you"
- sometimes i watch those "gotcha" tv shows on cheap cable tv networks at the gym and find myself feeling really really sorry for the jackass who stole the car while all 17 of the hidden cameras surrounding him catch every single painfully sleazy move.  man buddy, even i feel bad for you, is pretty much what i'm thinking when the cops catch up to him and his (or her, sorry - don't want to seem sexist) face is now broadcast in gyms from sea to shiny sea.  that is just sad, you dumbfuck.
- linden trees in Brooklyn in early summer smell so sweet.  i didn't know the word for "lipa" in English. my mom had to tell me and my grandmother makes one tasty tea out of those little white blossom suckers.
- FaceTime faces look absolutely fucking ridiculous.  it's mortifying.
- subway elevators smell so fucking rank.  who's in charge of Fabreezing the shit out of that shit??
- why do hand dryers always seem to run 10 seconds too short? seriously - "wtf"?
- a white line someone had chalked on a brick building on Broadway.  underneath, they had written, "this is where i draw the line"  ha!!

i may have mentioned this before, but there is a Crest WhiteStrips commercial that i find just too uncanny - as all the flashing pearly white start fading away, the pleasing, bodiless female announcer's voice says, real spunky, "When you open up to Life - Life opens up to you!"

if you weren't near blinded by the sparkle coming off that one, you should have been.