Salt on Everything

There just has to be a better use for cops. During this post-blizzard 2010, I was out in the late afternoon and early evening snapping pictures that eventually froze my fingers. I couldn't remember where I left my gloves the night before. Anyway, how many cop vans did I see? Maybe it was the same two, following me around. At any rate, every 5 to 10 minutes--there, on any given street, a slowly passing van, sirens muted but silently judging; 5-0 lurking like perverts through snow covered asphalt.

Honestly, someone should snap on a snow plow to the vans, or give the officers shovels to help the many citizens they're suppose to "serve" and "protect"--maybe they should drive Mud trucks and sell coffee and hot chocolate. Anything other than patrolling like watchmen, like sentinels, doing nothing besides making one feel guilty for being innocent. There's a lot of melting salt that needs to be spread, and I can clearly recall there being a great number of police officers, a surplus of flatfoots with the same confused look on their faces, like a badge, that shines like a rabbit in headlights. They're just waiting for a simple task, something that matches their abilities--salt spreading!

The Anti-Social Network

A dear friend of mine, upon observing my inactivity on facebook, sent me a concerned text. It was on Christmas and while simultaneously wishing me a merry one, she made sure to see I was "okay". I was, and so I put her concerns to rest. We continued on about projects we were involved in. My friend is a poet and a photographer. She's trying to put together a gallery to exhibit her work in The Bronx. I told her, as I've told many others when they ask such things, that I have been working on noise music and writing short stories. I feel this to be an overstatement but nevertheless it is what buys up my time, on the few sparse occasions when my time is for sale.

Her concern made me realize that deactivating my facebook page--the action of doing such a thing--is possibly being understood as, a crisis or overwhelming problem to which the attention necessary to face it has left no room for facebook participation.

I recently met up with some friends I haven't seen in a while--I wonder now, how surprised they were to find me full of spirit and emptied of any dejection impressed by my socially networked silence. Fact of the matter, when I think about it at all, I'm very well in mind to say I've never felt as much myself as I have this late Fall and early Winter. Is it only a coincidence that I've been off facebook for almost just as long? And while it is definitely true that I have narrowed down my immediate friends to one or two, I'd not deny friendship to any of the friends on that profile friend list. But because facebook has become the most standard way of social communication exchange, I am taking pure advantage in remaining mute, as that is the surest way to have silence for yourself. And I need that silence, very much now. I need all the negative space onto which to place one subject, watching the contrast and how it communicates. I feel as I've placed myself under self-examination--preserving that which makes me who I am, and carefully taking full notice of the elements that threaten the homeostasis of that identity. Or maybe its not that at all, perhaps I just want to be alone and share myself with only someone as fucked up as I am. If the latter is in fact true, then my silence is only one exercised by distraction--as I'm too busy stripping off my layers to notice I'm removing certain ties that are bound to those tossed factions.

No to N.O.

I was recently invited to fly out with a friend to New Orleans. It was very last minute and though free, would've still cost me some hours at work. I was upset that I could not go, more upset that it was due to my job. I consider myself responsible and try to maintain myself as a reliable stronghold of dependability but I often contradict this by following impulses; and letting my passion race forward in blind, frantic stubbornness. I will not be flying out to New Orleans for 3 days but I will be waking early for the rest of the year, dragging my face into a variation of a shirt and coat daily, to push myself out the door and into a city for a job that does nothing but kill the last of my yearly diminishing vitality.

To be fair, my job is very light on stress with many perks and pleasant, if not entertaining enough co-workers who help one to pass the time--but in general its just time I'd rather have to myself, I can't deny the futility in what I do. I can't help but see that it doesn't really matter to me and moreover, I feel its ridiculous that it should matter to anyone.

I tell myself I should stalk craigslist and look for an open window, a fresh start in a new job--brush out my resume and look for something better (whatever "better" means). The thing is, I don't want to work! My job is so chill and I still hate it! Hate the hours the most, its all a matter of time; Time is what I'm not willing to share. On the weekends I hide from the world, I stay in my cold room and make music that I also hide from the world--I want exclusivity, I want to grab all I can of what I call my life and draw a line, exclaim, "this part is only mine!"

While Listening to Eno's Dark Trees

I came at the draw. At the absolute. I knew only what I heard with these new ears of mine. I walked slowly and forward. I discerned limited amounts of space, time however, fell heavy and thick on me, from above like syrupy rain. I knew nothing of control--or measure. I walked pass the solid forms and soon the darkened ambiguity of tone. I held breaths and reached ahead for fear of collision. I wasn't sure but walked all the same, I wasn't there but nowhere else, absolutely soluble, solubly inabsolute. I stepped further and narrowed my heart beat. I made quiet of my nerves and tension, I exhaled and closed my eyes--there was no difference between such darkness. Only in my mind forms did visit, tones made way, spoke and danced. Branches held most of my air, like bronchi, like grape stems, I made usual my question of ease, I made content my answer of truth, nothing was here at its best. I ran dry of heat. I drew close and motioned terribly to an exit. I guessed at words and spoke at phantoms. Taking useless turns with decisions. It came to me there. At the bed, at the end of the night, at the edge of my lips, at the only moment left. I moved forward, opening my eyes and walking them to you with something to say.

I Need the Time but I Got the Energy

This afternoon I felt, among other things, a decent amount of energy. Good energy. The kind of energy you become conceited about. I couldn't keep still and what seemed then like a permanent smile, had conquered my face. I wanted to create something; that, I knew instantly. That energy is very familiar, when your senses open like floodgates and roaring waves of external influence crashes in all at once, sweeping away the standstill, the paralyzed, and uninspired. I was walking around like a crackhead, hearing songs in my mind and laughing at invisible jokes--

Only problem, I was at work, on the busiest work day of the week.

My thing about my energy is if its there, I am going to use it--there's no such thing as storing it for later with me. I want it all and I want it now. Wasting all that good energy on work was and still feels like a shame. I didn't even have time to write this entry at work, I had to wait till I got home and then only after an epic power nap. No one is ever around when I feel that way, at least not anyone that I would want around me. Its always a solitary experience to feel excited by and with creative energy. "Is that premeditation or is it by design?" as Illogic asks.

Anyway who cares! As far as energy goes, all I have to say is there's more where that came from--Its probably as easy as convincing my body that 3-5 hours of sleep per day/night doesn't help and may possibly account for why I'm generally too tired to do anything but work during the week. When I confess that I do do more than just work during the week, I remember why I'm so exhausted most mornings and am obsessed with my face on the very seldom occasion when I don't look like a zombie in the early AM. I mean, these bags under my eyes are carrying enough for 4 vacations and its been 4 years since my last vacation.

Suddenly Last Summer

Letter to a Rainy Day

Good friend, as you drop lightly, from the room where I type this letter I can glance over my shoulder and through a window observe the gray you've casted and framed. It is September and the air has cooled. In the morning I commute on trains that once again carry students, still refreshed by their summer vacations, some sobered by the dawn of their freshmen year. Everyone looks so stern and rigid, stubborn as the last leaves that cling to branches; everyone has returned to September with their collection of reluctance, anticipation, and nostalgia. Memories of past Septembers, prospects promised by a fading summer, threats whispered by a not too distant winter--the day you fall upon, my dear friend, is a subtle Friday where no one can any longer doubt, September has arrived.

It is only a few days before fall officially opens. If counted in steps, it is no more than three forward; fall, stands away just as far and no further--she knows there's no need to move, everyone is walking towards her. Perhaps friend, you are the last rain of the summer. How would you feel if you were? No one usually takes note of such things. A gray Friday with fields of clouds like a silver fleece of cotton, covering us in from above; the last Friday of the season. With it, what shall the summer take? What is it you're washing away? Don't answer any of these. Hopefully these questions aren't boring you. It is my only intention to take note of you, address you, introduce myself and say farewell when the time comes. Still, you must notice it yourself, do you not? The change in the air. Everything gains gravity, heavies and becomes dense. The cold, first as a breeze then a restless chill, will soon howl in an icy frenzy. This is when the soul hibernates, so to speak. Hiding in the deep warmths of the heart, safely tucked and wrapped in all the electricity that plainly vibrated through the skin during the spring and exploded throughout the summer. The soul is away and the rest of the body and mind, observing its absence, searches for their missing peer. The less its available, the more desperately valuable the soul becomes as winter approaches through fall. Without our soul, our lives gain weight; the lightness with which we commanded action swells into a clumsy bulk.

Have you ever observed this about us my friend? Our life under our calendar also follows its own set of seasons. Soul and Sol are more than homonymously linked. Within you, your soul shifts, expands and contracts; leans forward intensely, and later withdraws in arctic ambience. At its closest, the soul is magnificently ignored, its in use like a pair of good legs that walk almost involuntarily without the step by step command of the mind or body. When hidden, its adamantly desired, analyzed and stressed for its lack of presence. Here, I laugh. Embarrassed at my words. I am getting ahead of myself--sorry. I don't mean to imply these things to be true, its only my imagination getting carried away like a newly wedded wife out from the altar. If there were such a material or immaterial as a soul, and if it were impressionably receptive of environment--then what a thought to imagine the season of a soul. The shying of a soul, decreasing in size and brightness, buried carefully and living off the energy it stored during its fall season. Which leads us back to September and the sense of seriousness and responsibility, much contrasting the frivolity of June and the two and third months that follow.

Anyway, so long friend. I've kept you long enough, you are a saint for reading my wrinkled thoughts. Goodbye, thank you for the morning.

For in That Sleep of Death What Dreams May Come

In the Solid Solitude of a Dreamer

My sleepy eyes, your quiet little smile, the heavy evening over us like a sheet--no, not a sheet, over us like a casket that we must carry into the burial of the night, the hours dug out as by the spade of want and need. Prayers for the morning by the forward pulse of our lips and their secret names that part backward, out of rooms and into the dream of a bedroom. There it be that my sleepy eyes whisper out through the fog of sense to find you, that which it seeks, that which appears there for it. A tremor possessed hesitance when across does this feeling take you by the face, blooming your cheeks and reflexes pull like a curtain and the actors dance upon the merciless stage. Wish I to close my eyes and invite gravity to wrap its hold tight about me, press these rhythms dry from the sponge that beats nervously in the closet of my chest. Take care to note my shade, make haste to observe its shift, its discord, its improvised maladjustment and obscurity; from whatever clarity of light it may find an object from which to cast its contrasting signature. Hollow me from that quiet smile, make louder your worry, your distrust, your instinct and its prejudiced prophesy. As my eyes beg to close, shut you out and myself within myself--A perfect dream will make true desires of me till the dawn, my dawn and the dusk of my sleep.