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.

value: EVERYTHING you save: NOTHING

i'm a total whore for Groupon.  it's embarrassing.  Subway sandwiches used to be my thing, but now i find myself waking up in the night in the throes of my early morning sleep disruptive disorder stress patterns checking out the latest must-must have deals on my smartphone.  i'm afraid to look at "My Groupons", the place where those deals are stashed lying in wait for their day in the sun.  what the F?!  did i really need $200 worth of framing from some place in Chelsea?  all the laser hair removal packages go without question, but the body-reading class taught by the former spy?  well, shit, that actually sounds super exciting, and i saved 80% on that deal, so lay off already.  the half-price tickets for live mystery theater on the LES?  don't you DARE tell me i didn't need that.  other items on the list include sheets, teeth whitener, a trip to Jamaica, acting classes, painting classes (BYOB!), belly dance classes, magazine subscriptions, mani-pedis, language learning aids, entrance to the Museum of Sex, massages, facials, and multiple, and i mean MUTLIPLE, half-off passes to the Russian Bath House on 10th Street where Zhenya, THE most muscled very tall Russian man in all of New York will spend an hour walking on my back at 78% off the regular, significantly more expensive price.  in a word, or two or three, Groupon has changed my life and i just happen to know that i am far far far from being alone.

now i hear they're going under.  what the fuck, and why can't all good things in life just mother-fucking last ALREADY??!

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