peep

the other day, i practically pranced out of my place on the way to work.  great music on your ipod obviously helps, but in general as of late, i've been pretty excited about throwing open the door each day.  

so there i am, truly skipping along, and as i cross the street, something horrific catches my eye: a _flattened_ pigeon.  

now, this particular type of road kill is not entirely uncommon in New York, and having grown up in the country, it's not exactly that you haven't seen these kinds of things before, but indeed, there it was: grey feathers, perfectly splayed in flat pigeon blood and guts 2D, smack dab on the street in front of the little Italian cafe i get deliciously fat French croissants at.    

i tried to quell the peasant superstitions that immediately arose from within my own healthy bowels, but the day did prove to be healthily jarring, nonetheless, and i've tried to stay away from that particular patch of street since, or at least until the movement of the masses, or the street cleaner, i guess, can whisk that poor thing away.

the next day, i set out for a Pilates class at 1:30.  the studio i belong to has three separate locations in the neighborhood, and while they're not exactly distant from each other, you should probably know where you're going if you want to get there.  

as i scooted along, looking forward to how amazing my core will be this summer, i passed yet another passed pigeon - it seemed as if the poor babe, just having had enough, marched right up to the pleasant brick wall of a popular restaurant, tucked his head down and under, crouched on his little feet, hunkered down against the cold, and simply retired.  it was kind of devastating.  come on, pigeons; i like you.  it kills me when i see people kicking pigeons around, their beady little eyes all confused, like come on asshole, this street belongs to me, too, or the worst, a pigeon who's lost a little leg...hopping around, all sad looking, or maybe i imagine that, but i do love them so although honestly, pigeons can be just as annoying as people, which obviously grants them special status of endearment, as well.

i walked into the studio for my 1:30 class and realized that the class started in three minutes, 10 blocks away.

to quote 30 rock: where ARE all the baby pigeons????

  

ribbit. ribbit.

recently i came across a self-help book i started, but never quite got through.  it's called "40 days and 40 nights: taking time out for self-discovery" and the last time i saw it was Day 11 - in January of 2007.  wow, i'm really glad i stayed on top of that one.  what's worse, i was more than mortified to flip through those few pages and find that, in fact, in these almost 7 years...not much has changed.  i still whine about my fears and struggle with trying to figure out what the fuck i'm doing; i mean, really???   now, now.  tsk tsk.  well, it was a weird year, 2007.  things were slightly upended, to say the least, but you do bring into your life that which you have the space for.  

that said, in said, same book, i came across a list of things of Who and What Do I Love:

myself, family, nature, snow, fresh air, sunshine, music, drama, Mozart, opera, a good book, good food, good tv, Belgrade, Bosnia, my friends, my [good] lovers, my passport, $$, my freedom, travel, new places, new faces, NYC, that feeling of passion when you get lost in something really amazing, whatever it may be, SEX, yoga, self-control, people with good energy, frogs, the Universe, relaxing, peace...

that's how i wrote it, frogs and ellipses and all.

really, do things ever change or do they stay the same but just get much better [or worse] depending on what crayon you take out of the pack.

now, now.

the new black, or, how i broke the mati

the most peculiar things happened today.  30 rock ended and i cancelled my 9-year membership to the gym.

the Greeks, that sprightly bunch, have this thing about the evil eye, whereas in, God forbid it's on you, but you also carry one around on every set of keys you have.  i've sometimes thought, more often than not, that the evil eye has been on me these last few years, and while i don't want to mess with the mati, i realized tonight that the only superstition i have is myself, that i'm one lucky fucking charm to have in my own pocket.

it wouldn't be fair to say i got there myself, though i've certainly been the one sucking the most out of that particular oxygen tank.  no, ladies and gentlemen and members of the academy, cue the music:

this one goes out to Harmony, thank you, my little Love; and Trust - you are nothing short of absolutely wonderful.  Maro, my Ball of Eternal Optimism - though it may just be dust arisen from dirty, thirsty children in the sand, may you ever float on the cloud of wonderful karma you've cultivated around you.  Red, you're more than a doctor, you are a veritable physician to my soul.      

i woke this morning from a dream in which i was counseling the dead.

sometimes, it's not what you see, but what you're looking at.

well....the world did not end

abandoned book, alone in the cold outside a cafe in Brooklyn.
"a state of denial"...

which is what we're all in, which makes me feel a bit like this really famous image, currently on view at the MOMA: 

and sometimes i walk around feeling like i might look like this, despondent and with dirt on my face, not entirely unlike the woman in Dorothea Lange's "Migrant Mother", an image iconic and important, albeit significantly staged: 

and then i realize that really, we all need to get over everything, like really, who do you think you are?  thinking this, I walk into a boutique, bored, to peruse, and find a candle that can help me achieve a real miracle, that is, love myself......

for only 64 fine american dollars, i could have achieved nirvana, which makes me think of this 

translated roughly into, "the more you know, the more you ignore", and don't i wish i were considering the writing on the wall, in PARIS

this is the sound glass makes when it breaks

i have a girlfriend who is fond of looking back and saying things like, "so much has changed"  usually, i'm a likewise stickler for romantic notions of this nature, but lately, it's kind of been making me majorly sick.  this time last week i was crowing about what a great day i had had.  i talked about food and friends and fugly looking dogs and god wasn't it great that i was just so fucking amazingly perceptive and gregarious and great?  well, it's a week later now, and i really can look back and say it myself: so much has changed.

i'm not one to disrespect the elements, and for Water i have a profound and rotund respect.  the Chinese, as a matter of fact, in all of their thousands of years of wisdom look to water as the ultimate of elements.  it resists nothing and can take away everything, so, yea, props Water.

i know other places have it far more horrible, as in wars and little girls not allowed to go to school and what not, but it's hard to think about them when you're seeing the things we've been seeing here these last few days.  what do you say to someone who has literally had every plank and nail of their home washed away?  well, i can tell you that you pretty much say nothing.  you stand there feeling a scream inside and your mouth opens and you say a lot of nothing.  how many empty faces can you look into and still feel ok with, "it could have been so much worse"?  here's some leftover Halloween candy, try not to think about the car floating in your kitchen.

honestly, these last few weeks have been straight up shit.  death, blood, broken dreams, death, full moons, rising tides, zombies, destruction, death.  what the fuck.  how about a little Special Sunshine up in here, and we don't even need to discuss the still-indefinitely-submerged L train.

so much has changed since last week and here i am thinking i need to get ready to go out, it's someone's birthday and we still need to go lower into Manhattan are we actually ready for that and suddenly i realize that six years ago - today - i was getting ready to go out for another birthday, not remotely knowing that in just little over an hour, my life would completely change, forever.  would i have stayed home?  should i have stayed home?  what the fuck would have happened had i just NEVER EVER gotten up off of my couch, this time, today, six years ago...

a moment ago i went into the kitchen for a refill of drinkable water which is far more than i can say for other people in this place when my arm caught a large, heavy wine glass that had been teetering over the edge of the table.  the sound that glass made behind me when it landed was somehow the most beautiful thing i've heard in weeks.  i wish i could have made that sound myself.  i wish i had a hundred of those glasses, i would have thrown them all down as hard as i could and then if i could just fucking cry already, i'd stand over all of those gazillion shiny shards and let all the tears i have in me just flow over them and they'd all just sit there together on the clean cold white shiny kitchen floor.  broken glass and a whole bunch of tears.

so much has changed.

i'm at 8

i'll be honest.  saturday was such a fantastic day.  yes, i am a few days late, but today is the first day that i've done absolutely nothing.  i woke up grumpy - saturday - because the thought of an impending hurricane gives me some uncomfortable but seriously stupid memories, but thankfully, i was able to move myself, that is, mainly out of bed.

i've been taking these body reading classes and they have been amazing.  not a chance sorry that i'll give up my secrets here, but they have certainly made me more perceptive on so many facets and for that i am so beyond grateful because who doesn't want to be more in touch with this place we're living in otherwise known as the world.  that or crawl under a rock, i suppose, but i've always valued the more gregarious side of my social little self.

so, things i saw.

the sky over manhattan, the hurricane still churning some 200 miles away.  the Williamsburg Bridge.  i've seen this scene a million times, and it's still always so pretty looking down this kind of shady little alley, i really don't know exactly why.  Diner, i do believe the best place for hot cuisine sex in Williamsburg.  they write out the menu on your table or on a slip of cash register ticker tape - they can't keep a standard menu since everything is always being switched up since it's always so goshdarn freshy fresh.  there was duck fat donuts soaked in creme anglais with chunky sugar that shouted "i love you and only you" to your mouth buds, scottish eggs that positively made a chaise lounge out of the back of your throat, what's better than deep fried perfect prosciutto wrapping soft boiled balls, duck crepes that's duck confit mixed with sweet shredded crepes from the tables of mount olympus, sweet trout making out with bacon, and homemade salt and vinegar CHIPS that actually DISSOLVE on your tongue.

i'm not done.  i was so jubilant over brekkie that someone asked if it was my first time in restaurant, but look why can't one just be happy about life???  then there was the puppy that was really a big fat warm potato and the wall of red ivy art that i thought about stripping to take away for my All Hallow's Eve costume but the neighborhood residents would probably tar and feather me, the cutest ever grungy little gremlindog that i loved so much for its ugliness that it hurt and then lamb pizza for dinner.  actually, i love life so much it hurts.  actually, it hurts.    

this morning i ran into someone who knows someone i love.  at the body language reading class, we were asked to guess where Americans fell on the internationally recognized happiness scale of 1-10.  there were confident shouts of "three! four!" throughout the room, peckered with cynical scoffs, to which the instructor, who trains the secret service when not dealing with rooms-full of self-righteous depressed urbanite paranoics, replied congratulatory, "you are TRUE New Yorkers!" evidently, the average American takes his mass of sunshine at 7.5

no sesame

it used to be, for many a moon, that i was a vegetarian.  well, technically, a pescatarian, or whatever i was, it didn't matter, but i did spend a lot of time practicing and legitimately making looks of utter disgust coupled with condescending sneers at the losers around me who would tear into their steaks, burgers, birds and other bloody shit with nasty abandon.  gross.  not only were you just fat and seriously ugly, but you were going to die soon, that was pretty much the gist of it.

well, what can i say, life ebbs and flows.

for some reason, mainly because of bacon, i started eating meat again.  i can't get enough of it.  salads?  fuck that, do i look like a cow??  all these things being highly considered, i've realized rather quickly that just like the cattle in the pasture, one burger is far from being like another.  oh burgers, how i love thees, let me count the ways:

your juicy greasiness that leaves a delicious amino-acidy film in every crevasse of my mouth
your heft, as i hold you in my hand
THAT TASTE, you know the one
ketchup
ketchup
buns

i've decided i need to dwell on this.  don't be surprised if there's a post on burgers twice a day now; i mean, why not?

here's a burger i had w my gf Laura at Morgane, a newish French joint on Bedford that you think could do sexy a littler better than literal grease-juice running in rivulets down my plate.  how do you say "barf" en francais?  no amount of fromage bleu is going to cut the serious [lame] cheese factor on this one.  thumbs DOWN!!!!

not long thereafter, on the brighter side of things, Jack, aka "my building husband"slash"pension partner" as in we'll live off my pension whilst living on his island, traipsed across my threshold waltzing a pint of Steve's orgasmic i don't even care if that's cliche this is frozen salty sticky caramel sunshine from the land where everything is really good no simply amazing 1000 our of  scale of one to ten food no not sunshine that doesn't make sense it would melt it's inconceivable this taste oh my god ice cream.  and THAT'S what i'm going with.