on the bright side of the road

Disaster Capitalism

2008-01-04T01:01:00.000-05:00

Last month I read this really eye-opening article in Harper's Magazine about Disaster Capitalism. If the culture, economy, and politics that affect your life and those around you is of interest to you, you can read more here: War, Terror, Catastrophe: Profiting From 'Disaster Capitalism'. There's a new book on the subject, The Shock Doctrine- I went online to request a hold at the library and of the dozen copies available, they were all already checked out with another 17 holds waiting!. The author, Naomi Klein also made this very provocative video....

From the website:
War, Terror, Catastrophe: Profiting From 'Disaster Capitalism'
Paul B. Farrell, Dow Jones Business News, October 16, 2007

Hot tip: Invest in "Disaster Capitalism." This new investment sector is the core of the emerging "new economy" that generates profits by feeding off other peoples' misery: Wars, terror attacks, natural catastrophes, poverty, trade sanctions, market crashes and all kinds of economic, financial and political disasters.

In this Orwellian future, everything must be seen with new eyes: "Disasters" are "IPOs," opportunities to buy into a new "company." Corporations like Lockheed-Martin are the real "emerging nations" of the world, not some dinky countries. They generate huge profits, grow earnings. And seen through the new rose-colored glasses of "Disaster Capitalism" they are hot investment opportunities.

To more fully grasp this new economy, you must read what may be the most important book on economics in the 21st century, Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, whose roots trace back the ideas of three 20th century giants:

President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who warned us against the self-perpetuating and ever-expanding economic power of our "military-industrial complex."

Nobel economist Milton Friedman, who said economic change never occurs without a crisis shocking the system; whether the crisis is natural, induced or merely perceived, as with enflaming public fears of war and terror threats.

Economist Joseph Schumpeter, whose saw "creative destruction" as a healthy process by which new technologies and new products made old ones obsolete.

"Disaster Capitalism" is financing a new world economic order says Klein, not just in "the divide between Baghdad's Green and Red zones" but in other disaster zones, from post-tsunami Sri Lanka to post-Katrina New Orleans.

Disasters come in many forms: Weapons destroying power plants and hospitals, nature weakening bridges, hurricanes wiping out towns, ideological conflicts turning Africa's farmlands into deserts, global banking systems favoring investors over public works, shopping malls over schools, sewage treatment and power plants, and so on.

Yes, this is a hot-button political issue. But for the moment, let's put aside partisan politics, which many will find disturbing for the future of America. Let's look at this strictly as investors and briefly consider what may also be a guide for aggressive investors searching for investment opportunities in "Disaster Capitalism." In a brilliant Harper's excerpt from The Shock Doctrine, Klein makes clear how this new economy is the wave of the future for certain investors:

"Today, global instability does not just benefit a small group of arms dealers; it generates huge profits for the high-tech-homeland-security sector, for heavy construction, for private health-care companies, for the oil and gas sectors -- and, of course, for defense contractors."

Big bucks

This new market is enormous: "Reconstruction is now such a big business that investors greet each new disaster with the excitement of a hot new stock offering: $30 billion for Iraq reconstruction, $13 billion for tsunami reconstruction, $110 billion for New Orleans and the Gulf Coast."

Get it? Disasters are "IPOs!" followed by on-going revenues for "projects" like the Blackwater security contracts and constructing the world's largest embassy in the isolated Baghdad Green Zone.

Think positive: "Disaster Capitalism" played a major role in bringing America's economy out of the 2000-2002 bear-recession: "The scale of the revenues at stake was certainly enough to fuel an economic boom. Lockheed Martin, whose former vice president chaired the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, which loudly agitated for the invasion, received $25 billion in U.S. government contracts in 2005 alone."

Putting that in perspective, Klein quotes U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman: That sum "exceeded that gross domestic product of 102 countries, including Iceland, Jordan and Costa Rica [and] was also larger than the combined budgets" of the Departments of Interior and Commerce, the SBA and the entire legislature.

"Lockheed itself deserved to be characterized as an emerging market. Companies like Lockheed (LMT) (whose stock price tripled between 2001 and 2005) are a large part of the reason why the U.S. stock market was saved" after 9/11, helping the recovery more than the housing boom did!

Plus energy: "The oil and gas industry is so intimately entwined with the economy of disaster -- both as a root cause behind many disasters and as a beneficiary from them -- that it deserves to treated as an honorary adjunct of the disaster-capitalism complex."

Citing the "outrageous fortunes of the oil sector -- a $40 billion profit in 2006 for ExxonMobil alone (XOM) ... Like the fortunes of corporations linked to defense, heavy construction and homeland security, those of the oil sector improve with every war, terrorist attack and Category 5 hurricane."

How to invest in the new 'Disaster Capitalism'

It's easy to invest in "Disaster Capitalism" and the new economy. See the Spade Defense Index (DXS) of defense, homeland security and aerospace stocks. Klein says it "went up 76% between 2001 and 2006, while the S&P 500 dropped 5%." You can trade the Spade Index as a PowerShare Aerospace and Defense ETF (PPA) .

In addition, the Fidelity Select Defense & Aerospace Fund (FSDAX) offers another opportunity. According to Morningstar data, there are similar stocks in both, including: General Dynamics (GD) , Raytheon (RTN) , Rockwell Collins (COL) , Boeing (BA) , Harris (HRS) , Northrop Grumman (NOC) and United Technologies (UTX) .

"The Shock Doctrine" is one of the best economic book of the 21st century because it reveals in one place the confluence of cultural forces, the restructuring of a world economy as growing populations fight over depleting natural resources and the drifting away of America from representative democracy to a government controlled by multiple, competing, well-financed and shadowy special interests. Here's an overview of trends from the book and related ideas:

1. Free market competes with government

In the past when major catastrophes resulted in economic disruptions and human losses governments responded with "New Deals" and "Marshall Plans," says Klein. Today, "Disaster Capitalism" companies see government agencies (like FEMA) and nonprofits (Red Cross) as "competition" taking away new business. A military draft, for instance, would lower the need for private mercenaries.

2. Privatization of government for the investor class

These new forces are screaming to privatize our economy and government: After the Minneapolis bridge collapse Klein saw many calls for more private toll roads and bridges across America. Same with calls to privatize New York's subways after rain closed them temporarily. Ditto with airports and their security. And in New Orleans, reconstruction moneys rebuilt private schools in upscale areas and neglected infrastructure in poor areas.

3. War generates profits, peace hurts free markets

"Disaster Capitalism" firms need wars to generate profits. And by sidestepping the draft, Iraq became a privatized war employing over 185,000 (20,000 more than the military), including truck drivers, PX clerks and mercenary soldiers. Blackwater was near bankruptcy before the war. Through secret no-bid contracts the U.S. pays for training centers which the companies now own. Peace does not generate disaster profits.

4. Plutocratic government favoring wealthy over masses

"The vast infrastructure of the disaster industry, built up with taxpayer money, is all privately controlled" through special interests favoring the wealth classes during reconstruction. In New Orleans Klein saw the "so-called FEMA-villes: desolate out-of-the-way trailer camps for low-income evacuees [with guards that] treated survivors like criminals;" while the wealthy gated communities quickly received water and power generators, private school and hospital services.

5. Shadow banking system

Private equity firms and hedge funds are making our Federal Reserve Bank less and less relevant. Today a private banking system is emerging nationally and globally that operates in relative secrecy outside the established system and beyond the oversight of securities and banking regulators and the legislature, out in a parallel universe beyond the comprehension of the vast majority of American taxpayers and Main Street investors.

So folks: Is "Disaster Capitalism" merely a hot short-term investment opportunity for you? Or is it a national "crisis," a warning bell, a "shocking" call to rise above euphemisms like "creative destruction," get into action and rein in the "military-industrial complex" mindset that's pushing America into a disastrous, self-destructive future? Tell us.

Consumerism & Christmas

2007-12-18T01:08:00.000-05:00

Ho Ho Ho Friends ......

Not that I'm particularly 'christian' but all of us who are non-jewish around the holidays, i guess
get bagged into the whole christmas schtick (i personally would prefer to celebrate hanukkah... i mean, it does last 6 entire days longer...awesome). I haven't really thought much about what Santa is leaving for me this year. As an adult, Santa no longer spends quite as much time shooting his bounties down your chimney (if you're even lucky enough to have one... mine personally, here in a 3rd floor greenpoint, brooklyn apartment has been cemented and plastered shut for longer than my life span, and i'm pretty sure a family of squeaky mice reside there in the winters). The whole idea of Christmas and what it has spawned in our modern day technologically-advanced-credit card-debt-ed-keep-up-with-the-jones'-even-though-you-dont-need-to kind of world, kind of grosses me out. All this stuff. Stuff with pictures of more stuff inside. Stuff that produces more stuff and requires more stuff to maintain it's function. The perpetual cycle. God Love America & the Free Market. Oh, an Capitalism. So this Christmas, my gift to our wonderful system of capitalism is this here blog. I've tried to think of some ways that this year's (inevitable) christmas spending can be put to good use. Here are a few things I've come up with. If you have ideas, please share!!!!

1. Give your friends & family charitable donations in their name. A few I like in particular:

Invisible Children: www.invisiblechildren.com -
All of our programming is a partnership between those of us at Invisible Children and those in the Ugandan community. We focus on long-term goals that enable children to take responsibility for their future and the future of their country. Our programs are carefully researched and developed initiatives that address the need for quality education, mentorships, the redevelopment of schools, resettlement from the camps, and financial stability.

Kiva: www.kiva.org
Really awesome organization that allows common folks (like you and me), not
necessarily with a lot of dough, but with a lot of heart, to help fuel micro enterprise in
the places that financing is needed the most. They connect you with & let you give loans
to small businesses in the developing world. And you get paid back (in most scenarios), just like any other loan. Help people help themselves!

2. Forget the whole charity thing (because some people might consider this a selfish gift, since it really revolves around YOUR interest in charity and not necessarily theirs)....and buy some stuff!
The catch? Buy from economies that can really benefit from the sales. Have I ever mentioned this great little city that was ravaged from one of the worst national disasters in us history? Great... here are a few really cool places to buy really thoughtful, unique gifts:

I. http://www.missmalaprop.com - Handmade, super unique finds.

II. http://www.frenchquartercandles.com - Amazingly delicious all-soy, all-natural clean burning
candles. Aside from all the hippie soy stuff, these candles simply smell amazing- as wonderfully pungent as those fancy schmancy ones big companies sell for the designer price of $30 and up. French Quarter Candles are just $12 each! Extra bonus, the mason glasses they are in can be easily cleaned and used as a drinking cups once the candle has burned out.

III. Buy art/music from New Orleans artists. I love great folk art, and here are a few different sites where you can find folk art and other styles:
http://www.antonart.com
http://www.drbobart.net
http://www.louisianamusicfactory.com

3. Support independent musicians (and artists). Buy some music direct from an artist (in general, if you buy the actual
record from them direct, rather than downloading through iTunes, etc, the artist makes a much greater profit). Handpicking
albums to give as gifts is an incredibly thoughtful way to turn the people you love on to new artists (creating a new fan,
and helping the artists you love even more by growing the fan base!).

http://www.cdbaby.com - a great resource to buy from indie artists. if possible, try to buy direct from your favorite artists
personal website (where they keep an even greater % of the profits).

So.... here's to a lovely season. Hope yours is filled with friends, family, food and quality time.

much love,
kd

Mighty

2007-09-06T01:03:00.000-04:00

Sept. 6 2007 2:50am

I have not written in what feels like an entire lifetime. I might as well not have existed before now- and it's really been that long in my mind's perspective paranoia and absolutely skewed reality.

We have played our songs. Loud & true. My lover sleeps, exhausted in the bed hardly big enough for the two of us. But we are happy. For the most part, most of the time. We are the dream that they speak of when you are young, the wishful thinking you spend your life thinking of, and the true and absolute hallelujah that resonates past the lines of religion or dispositions.

We got it good, as bad as sometimes it may seem- but only when we let our dire circumstances overshadow our real life, the real love that breathes fully in all of our hard-earned hours. The real love that is the last breath fought for, well-earned, before restless minds fall to slumber.

And at 2:55 in the morning, as the city, and my lover, and my dearest friends all sleep, I can think, so clearly, I can hear the joy & jubilation of this life that I've been missing for what seems so long. I could never even start to tell you how low this old heat can go, apathy takes over like the black disease…..the killer (unassuming) mold from the water receding hurricane, the cancer of the heart of a healthy man. It's a treacherous disease, but those who don't entirely succumb, only learn to be true conquerors. So, I've been fighting my quiet battles and feel quite certain I will come out on top. One of these days, I'll be a rehabilitated soul, one day soon, I feel for sure.

And what is sacred anymore? When myths have been relieved of their smoke & mirrors and you have been left a sober and so-much-older soul. What is sacred when you've found the muse in the machine and you've given it all up for a little piece of your own sanctity? All that you know to be true, as seldom or as often as it may relieve itself to you.

We are fighters. We are a mighty breed. We wake to seek and sleep to dream of how to better fulfill the seeking, in the waking hours, halfway such a dream. We are this twenty first century knights and chivalry, for all the joy, for all the precious, that we so often overlook in our daily marching.

At just twenty-four years of this marching, half spent in the dark, I feel almost past prime- that of some industry standard. A blackhole of time consumed by a serious of almosts and close calls. We are all almost the next big things. Don't trust the mouths of others- or yourself really. All that you can know is that feeling in your gut, when you know that you know. And I'm pretty sure, that's the only time in this futile life that you truly have it made. When you get that giddy little girl in your belly shaking around like an evangelist, and you start to believe in faith and things far beyond your former comprehension.

That is when you got it made.

This world is far, far, far from a just and fair place. I have been reading my history and if anything, all I have learned is that we are, and have always been, killers and thieves. But among the blood, treachery and toil, among the absolute most median of us are true saviors, single hearts bigger than the selfish desires of a nation worth of men, single souls stronger than the tide that moves this endless sea. And this is what gives me hope in what otherwise, can sometimes seem appear to be an insurmountable army of precedents and established protocols, for what we are called of, as machines against our far more human lives.

Slavery, in the history book sense, was abolished (technically, though, as we all know, not really at all) in eighteen sixty-five, involuntary servitude. But the rich, still, received the fat end of that jagged stick. For then on they were not only entitled to the poor black population, but the poor, the working class, at large- white, brown, black, red or fucking polka-dotted.

The bread and butter of this country, those who wash the sheets and type the petitions, grow the greens and heard the sheep- left to bare-minimum living from here until the end. Waking before the sun to work, for what? Not a ginourmous flat screen tv or vacation to Bali, but to work from dawn til dusk for the simple right to exist. To eat, find sustenance and keep a roof over their head. To just get by, and barely do that. Without the prospect of an early retirement or a life that they, themselves are entitled to. There are taxes to pay and landlords that are owed. Our modern day slave holding corporations, the bourgeois, the have and have nots, just divided by more 'equal' more 'democratic' terms. We can pretend the fight is fair. But it has never been so. We might as well be shackled in cotton fields. It's no matter of skin; it's economic class in our modern day. And the fight spans far greater than any color scheme.

Remember, those grandiose mansions are all built upon the backs of those who work because they have no other options. Who, for the majority, are not welcome to health care when they fall sick, who, for the majority, cannot afford to be sick, for necessity of a paycheck.

Wealth in modern day American equals importance, equality, reasonable treatment, and reasonable options. And I think the greatest charm of that wealth to me, is the option to change the options for the rest. We are not ALL meant to be millionaires, it's impossible. But we should ALL be able to live and love, to enjoy our lives, freely without being a slave to its modern implications. We are far more technologically advanced than we were 50 years ago, yet our work hours are much longer, and our vacation time far more conservative than ever before. This makes no sense. Someone is profiting far more than reasonable profit…..while the grunts below choke every minute of their free lives away just to be able to keep on choking.

This is not freedom. It is slavery, but worse than slavery, it is presumed 'freedom' and 'equality' only working to perpetuate the cycle of inequality and disenfranchised lives.

We are not children of a dollar or a government. We are children of God (take God to be what you wish, in any sense of the term), qualified and able to be free of our capitalistic burdens.

We are a mighty breed, after all.

And one day, which will certainly be a day far from today, I hope to be able to have the option to help change our current options. To round out the equation, for all the mighty hearts on this earth.

There are so many.

The beauty & wisdom of John Lee Hooker

2007-08-28T01:07:00.000-04:00

"I have heartaches, I have blues. No matter what you got, the blues is there.
'Cause that's all I know - the blues. And I can sing the blues so deep until you can
have this room full of money and I can give you the blues."

"In my career, people in the record business have been rockin' in the same ol' boat.
They all crooks - I'll say it clear and loud - especially the big ones."

"It don't take me no three days to record no album."

"Like you and your woman ain't gettin' along and you're in love. You can't sleep
at nights. Your mind is on her - on whatever. You know, that's the blues.
You can't hug that money at night. You can't kiss it."

"I don't play a lot of fancy guitar. I don't want to play it. The kind
of guitar I want to play is mean, mean licks."

-John Lee Hooker

Been meaning to...

2007-08-25T01:06:00.000-04:00

I've been meaning to write. I know. I know. But the days start so quick and become late visions of themselves almost as soon as the gun is fired. And most of the time, I just sit so still, in contemplation and confusion and perplexity, watching the smoke clear- and the days grow so late, before anyone even has the chance to inform me of this. Hello. Goodbye. Again? And again. Hello.

My absence, silence, distraction is not of ignorance or apathy. Quite the opposite. Everyday no matter how early I wake or late I may sleep, I do rise to hear the sound of every man, every jubilation, every bomb, bastard, terror and every charm, that which has come and that which is far gone, the fortunes gained and the virtue lost by hands very much the same as my own.

I may be quiet, but am far from out the game.

as it is

2007-07-16T14:58:00.001-04:00

Above being a musician or songwriter or singer, I've always thought of myself more of as an observer of the world. While words and melody can sometimes be elusive, things as they are can almost always be captured on film. You just have to wait for the moment to arrive.

the dirty south & ms. peachez 'fry that chicken'

2007-05-09T03:03:00.000-04:00

Where I come from is often referred to as 'the dirty south' and this video
pretty much sums it up....it's amazing. Kitschy genius. god i miss home.

lyric excerpt:

'everybody wants a piece of my chicken
southern fried chicken,
finger lickin'

now where my hot sauce?
i dont want no ketchup
just one big juicy jalapeno pepper
white meat dark meat, it don't matter
hangin with peaches dont make you fatter

i'm gonna warn you now, baby here's the deal
one piece of my chicken
you gonna call dr. phil

live in lover

2007-04-27T20:28:00.000-04:00

authentic

2007-04-27T20:15:00.000-04:00

Big Bill

2007-04-23T17:01:00.000-04:00

It's Sunday evening and the sun is low.
Old blues songs on the speakers.
It's mellow. Feeling alright.

Found this video that I thought was pretty rad. It's
Big Bill Broonzy, one of my very favorite old-school
blues-men, shot in Belgium somewhere in the 50's, looking very
Hitchcock-esque.

Check it out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhPTfPykpDI

“When you write about me, please don’t say I’m a jazz musician. Don’t say
I’m a musician or a guitar player -- just write ‘Big Bill was a well-known
blues singer and player and has recorded 260 blues songs from 1925 up
till 1952; he was a happy man when he was drunk and playing with
women; he was liked by all the blues singers, some would get a little
jealous sometimes, but Bill would buy a bottle of whisky and they all
would start laughing and playing again.’” -Big Bill Broonzy

when the world becomes so quiet

2007-02-25T17:26:00.000-05:00

we can see the beauty in its details.

(january 2007, new suffolk, ny)

The Tenacious Mice & The Things We Get Used To Living With

2007-02-25T14:29:00.000-05:00

For the past few months we've had a mouse problem in my apartment. They
came, some were (unfortunately) put to death, they seemed to disappear for a while (we let the dead bodies linger as a warning sign to new vermin who thought to cross the kitchen territory). But not long after they reappeared (note to self: they are mice, prolific reproduction is sort of what they are known for). I had denial about the mice existing, though it was clear they were back in full glory in the kitchen (this means turds aplenty upon the kitchen counter and the shells of sunflower seeds whose origin we still cannot locate).

The landlord gave us glue traps to catch the poor fuckers on. Now I know death, no matter what the variety & apparatus used, is not a pretty sight. But the glue traps! What happens is the mouse gets stuck on it, but not poisoned or snapped in half or anything, nothing quick or easy. It just sits there and waits for it's certain death to come. While waiting the mice defecate on themselves, generally freak out, and often try to chew off their own limbs to escape. This is more than I can take. I love animals way too much.

So, I decided we'd catch them on the glue traps, then I'd put on my dish gloves and snow boots (necessary precautions) to enter the mouse territory, un-glue them by means of "goo-be-gone" which reads in very bold & red letters "do not digest. do not give to animals" (but there's no other way to get them off that doesn't require cutting off limbs). The mouse gets all slicked down like it's coming out of the womb (in a way this event is giving them life, a new one, a second chance), the goo-be-gone is like 'dapper dan's' hair jelly for mice. The mice do not appreciate this. Nor do they seem to appreciate that I’ve bothered to take a good hour of my day to save them from the pads, resuscitate them, give them water, and food (food!), time to rest up & warm up in their temporary resting accommodations (a mop bucket well cleaned & lined with soft paper towels), then set them free in the endless streets below.

The mice are ungrateful, so my softness to saving them is quickly refrozen and again, I can handle the killings (this mixed with the fact that I have to wash the CLEAN forks every time I grab one from the drawer because mice turds and god knows what else may (or may not) be on it).

I've been on a nocturnal schedule these days (read: I see about 3 hours of daylight each day, maybe 4 on a good day), so the mice's schedule has been colliding with mine every evening. I sit up and watch them in the kitchen, run, chew, make really creepy "squeak squeak, i'm a mouse, i'm so small you can't find me, and even if you did, what you gonna do about it? we're too smart for the glue traps. we own this joint!" noises and I envision all of the perfectly sanitary items in our apartment that they are contaminating with their diseases. We're pretty sure Cash (my 6 pound chihuahua who is the most passive, loving, push-over of a creature you could imagine....he gets scared when we make barking noises as if they are coming from his plush 'hello kitty' doll) stepped up to the challenge and ate one of the mice a few nights ago. Fortunately I didn't have to witness the corpse, my boyfriend found it. He came into the kitchen in the morning and there was the dead mouse spread across the middle of the blood smeared floor, skin & exterior in tact, but entire insides eaten out. Gruesome. Though, in a totally inappropriate way, I was very proud of Cash for being so disgusting & bad-ass.

We've tried to get the landlord to take more extreme measures, get an
exterminator or put out poison, but he's either too drunk or too cheap to get it done (maybe both).

So it's 2:30 am right now and the mice are at it as they always seem to be at this hour. And I realized that I kind of don't care anymore. I mean, they've been here a while already, we haven't died yet, the world hasn't ended, I'm sort of used to seeing their shit everywhere. I feel as if the familiarity of them has somehow placated me into accepting their take over of the kitchen, as if it were only logical, normal, entirely fine. You know, I just am not that passionate about getting rid of them. Better things to worry over.

And I wonder how often in this life we get used to unacceptable things and stop fighting for what we deserve, what is fair & what is righteous. How often do we just get too tired or apathetic and just start accepting whatever it may be....we begin to think it's okay to live with certain things that we really shouldn't live with.......diseased mice, mediocrity, unhappiness, poverty, shitty jobs, unjust wars, people who don't really love us enough......because we've become too worn down to fight (and we really should fight, in most scenarios).

My heart has been feeling so worn down these days, raggedy and tired. The ways of this big, beautiful, but sometimes difficult world, kicking that old heart in the gut, keeping it from making much progress, because just plain living is sometimes almost too much to handle. And a heart that knows it hasn't yet quite fulfilled it's purpose is a sad sad heart when it hasn't the blood pumping through it to keep moving toward that higher place. And so that old heart begins to slow, to acclimate to the pace of the mundane, to turn the most colorless gray, and begin to think that this is okay, this will make it all 'easier.' But ease does not equal peace if such hearts aren't doing what they should.

I realized that I can't quit fighting, even if I wanted to, I couldn't. There's this pre-paved path up to the sky that I've been walking on since the day I was born, and I'd be a fool to try to deny it. And I know this, of course. But sometimes I need to be reminded. Funny how vermin could do that for me. Beauty and wisdom in the most unlikely places. And the color has come back to my heart. Full force. I will make a beautiful painting just as soon as I can.

And I hope we all are fortunate enough to keep getting these little reminders, in whatever form they may come, to keep us marching forward to all that is bigger and greater then we can imagine in our present states.

Hearts.

2007-01-30T01:28:00.001-05:00

Change.

2007-01-30T01:26:00.000-05:00

Dear Someone,

2006-12-08T03:06:00.000-05:00

I am out here on the edge of the earth. You could hear crickets, if there were any. But crickets seem to prefer being in company, and out here, there is none to speak of really. I’ve been sizing all things up lately, perpetually seeking the remedy for ailments so plenty, that one cure creates the new disease. I’ve been reveling in this land of plenty and have concluded that excess is not any better than deficiency. Atleast with the latter you strive for more, whereas with aplenty you only resent your self induced boredom.

At nights the cold metal sign on the liquor store below sways back and forth on its long un-oiled metal hinge. I imagine this only adds to its discomfort in being a metal in the freezing cold. Not sure if this abused sign is made of iron or perhaps aluminum, and I wonder if this industrial blue-collar metal, envies it’s kinsman of luxury metals who will never be left out to brave the elements of the very earth which created them; the gold that sits warm as an indicator of promise upon a married woman’s cozy, well manicured finger; the bronze sculptures that rest so well adjusted within museum walls, who are only demanded of for their beauty by passing eyes and never, absolutely, never asked for any utility in their form.

The winds blow formidably at this hour in Greenpoint. I don’t know what their message is, but whatever they are trying to get across, they deliver with fervor. We’re less than a half mile from East River, and the gusts from her belly would make you think we must be in a far more exotic place, with much greater peaks, valleys, trees and things. Though, there are trees here actually (a rarity in nyc), the kind of trees some hard working immigrant probably bought from the k-mart agriculture aisle many years ago, on discount due to it’s sickly size & stature (the trees are still slightly sad looking, sunken, a little behind). I can hear these trees sway, with great clarity, just from sitting in my living room with the windows closed. And when the liquor store sign starts to dance on it’s hinges, these noises combined sound strikingly like the ocean’s breeze and dainty seagulls chirping. If it wasn’t below freezing outside I might even be able to convince myself I was somewhere tropical, Florida perhaps (okay, Florida isn’t exactly tropical, but it’s the closest one can get state-side, plus most décor in its hotels and restaurants employee the color sea-foam green. If sea foam green doesn’t insinuate ‘tropical’ I don’t know what does).

Sometimes, like right now, the moment keeps me awake into a far later hour than I had anticipated or desired. This seems to be when clarity comes, with its greatest precision and purity. My mind is a circus most days, filled with sonic booms and color kaleidoscopes so enrapturing, it’s often hard to climb out of their grips. The infinite possibility of the entire universe and my human form within it, run around my brain like carousels of cotton candy and unspoiled children giddy on sugar and the immeasurable love in every atom of the earth around them. I, unfortunately am no longer a child, so such (relative) delusions and mind excess, bring me the most worried heart when I take in the world that actually exists outside of my internal play land. I worry, how I worry. Though ultimately, in some more final & absolute way, I always know everything is going to be just fine. Then I worry some more. And I pace back and forth in my apartment in this state of progress-less motion.

So, it is late at night, when all else is so quiet that the only things I have left to consider are inanimate objects (limited in the amount of time a person can spend speculating about them), when the truth of life in both mind and matter come together and seem so seamless and graceful. When it all seems all right. And alright.

I don’t feel the need to find some esoteric answers to questions that I never even knew to ask. I don’t feel like I’m forgetting to do something, I don’t feel like my last chance (for what? – I don’t know) is passing me by, I don’t feel like I need to jump ship and become a hobo roaming free in the world. I finally feel like sitting here, now, is a fine place to be.
How unbelievably fortunate I am to be here right now with breath in my body. How I don’t really need anything more.

Recalling the past with too much regret or considering the future with any amount of speculation is really quite a waste of time. It distracts from the only thing which a man does have any say in, the here and now, right now, right exactly now. That is all I can take part in really. Tomorrow is just speculation and yesterday is mere memory. It happened, but it has no holding on what can or cannot happen this very instant. Every instant is a clean slate, a new world, an absolutely open earth to explore as is called for in that irreplaceable moment. This idea is far harder to remember and employee than it is to comprehend and believe in.

So I am leaving a paper trail, to remind myself of this.

Longing & Desire

2006-12-08T02:39:00.000-05:00

The things I want, are the same, and have changed little since I can remember even having desires. The context and the execution has changed, but not the root of the desire. And I wonder if we sometimes keep ourselves from embarking upon those hazy eyed desires, for fear of knowing the likelihood that the magical will vanish once we are upon it.

The funny thing about this human condition, and how we begin beneath the earth and steadily rise to reach the sun, as so many things, dandelions, pear trees, magnolias, shrubs, weeds, oaks, vineyard lines. We all have out varied forms. And from the moment we are born, we begin to scurry away from our roots, beneath the soil of earth's sleep, scurrying to reach up above, to where the sun and company of others illuminate our limbs and eyes. Our clandestined paradise. Our forms twist and stretch, and become almost entirely new entities. We become such magnificent things by the light of the sun and warmth of those by whose company and wisdom we are nurtured. And at some point, we are cut down at our knees, picked, ripe, ready or not. And our forms are in no sight upon the ground. They have been taken by hands of strangers. Consumed, admired, annihilated, or mistaken. Our stalks and stems are no longer, and those circumstantial vestiges are recycled back into the cycle by mouths or smiles or compost piles. The soil is barren, flat, and without us above.

And just below what has been reaped, the quiet root remains. Still and steady as it came. And we can remember where we came from and why, and see clear again. And so we begin again.

Self-Reliance

2006-09-06T00:08:00.000-04:00

"The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray. We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. It may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise, shall give him no peace. It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In the attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no hope.

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being. And we are now men, and must accept in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny; and not minors and invalids in a protected corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but guides, redeemers, and benefactors, obeying the Almighty effort, and advancing on Chaos and the Dark." - Ralph Waldo Emerson, excerpt from "Self-Reliance"

Most days I find that while my mind is capable of it's very own genius, my mouth is no more than a mute. The gems of this world that are the most glorious, are also the most elusive. And when you began to consciously try to find it, when your focus gets caught up in the desire, instead of simply being in the moment of the process, it becomes near impossible to find the magic.

My heart swells up with the entire joy of the entire universe and that is a heavy load to carry without the means for it's release. The body and mind work themselves into a frenzy when they are swelling in such a way. And I am paralyzed because I know with too much of my desire projected into proactive hunting for a release, I will loose the whole thing. So, I wait, and try to convince myself of patience.

Today I got ahold of a podcast of Ralph Waldo Emerson's Self-Reliance essay. This essay in particular so eloquently makes sense of the human condition, which also provides such great insight and validation of the creative human. How the ultimate truth lies within, the trouble caused by not allowing it to live, as well as the great rewards for trusting in it.

For those who don't already love Emerson, reading his work can be like running a mental triathlon. The intensity and potency of every single sentence, while captivating, can also be exhausting. Being able to listen to the essay being read in audio, somehow breaks the words down a little more, making the whole piece much easier to conquer. It's linked below, and you can also find it HERE from learnoutloud.com. You can get the read-able version HERE.

I think what is so compelling about Emerson's work is that he is an intellectual, but not an elitist. While many men of equal intelligence and education might have committed their potentials to highly specialized pursuits that are of importance to a small few, but relatively useless for the vast majority.... Emerson is every man's writer. He can speak to the heart of any man, by concerning himself with the core values of all. He was a wonderfully humanistic writer. Absolutely one of my favorites.

New Podcast of song in progress

2006-09-06T00:04:00.000-04:00

Hi Friends,

It's 9 in the morning, far earlier than my usual waking hour. I'm in Roatan, Honduras right now looking out the the Carribean Sea. Been having plenty of time to escape the impositions of what is considered the 'real world' and contemplating far too much about existential matters. This of course, leads to being up very late at night. And last night, as I was restlessly trolling the internet, searching for something that I can never seem to find... I thought perhaps it was time for a PODCAST update with another 'song in progress.' I've been meaning to post more of these, because there are dozens of songs not yet recorded, and many not even played live.

This one is called 'What Price Does a Poor Boy Pay?'.

Check it out HERE.

Hope this finds you all well. Thoughts, always appreciated.

big love,

kd

Bedside Remains

2006-09-05T23:55:00.000-04:00

left over romance in the morning.

what today looks like - may 26, 2006

2006-07-15T03:51:00.000-04:00

notebook scans pt. 2

2006-07-15T03:48:00.000-04:00

(click to enlarge)

notebook scans pt. 1

2006-07-15T03:46:00.000-04:00

(click to enlarge)

homeward bound

2006-06-30T06:45:00.000-04:00

Today as I walked home from an egg salad sandwich lunch, I passed by this
house that I always pass by and take notice of when doing so. Most buildings
in New York are built right on the street, there aren't usually front yards or
any barrier between the concrete of the sidewalk to the first of the front
steps. But this building is set so far back in it's lot, it's a whole building inset
between the ones next to it. And filling the space from the front steps to the
sidewalk is this lovely yard. It's unkempt and there are weeds taking over
all sides of it, there's a bathtub sitting lonely in the middle, there's a simple,
straight pathway to the front door, though the weeds obscure the straight
line and make it look more like a magical pathway of some kind.

I've never seen anyone going into this building or leaving it. The paint on
the outside has been neglected for longer than my lifeline. It always seems
so peaceful, this house that no one seems to live in.

As I was passing by it today there was a crisp breeze that overtook the
brooklyn streets. And for no longer than a minute, all of the sticky-fume
ridden air was pushed away, and the streets got so quiet, the world stepped
forward in slow motion, swirling vision, there was quiet, I could hear
stranger's hearts beating and I was engulfed in the breeze that captured
some essence of this life that so seldom has the opportunity (or audacity)
to be savored.

The grass in the yard was slick and vibrant. It swayed so soft, as if it was
the tide upon the infinite sea. Every cloud like blade became this massive
sweeping dream vibration. The most fantastic whole, the sum, something
so much more magical than any one of it's parts. And this is the way of
all things.

These few moments of the greater kind brought me back home. To the
ones that I miss and love even more than I did the last time I left and
thought that my cup was already overflowing. Down in Louisiana where
I usually seem to find alot more breezes just like this one, grass to be
appreciated, and dilapidated homes to be loved for their unwavering
foundations that have withstood the trivial pursuits of time, bad weather,
and modern man's increasing inclinations to make this world perfectly
angled, technologically advanced, and concrete boxed. To the place that
is as ugly as it is beautiful, and that is proud of it's imperfections. The
place that knows imperfections are what define us, that rough edges,
and chipping paint, slurred vowels and preoccupation with domestic
pursuits are the pathways to a life lived richly. The most quiet of all
wisdom's.

I thought about how I so much wish for a little house, just like this little
house, and one day I will have saved up enough nickles and dimes to
buy myself a house like that. Since I was a little kid I have dreamed
about earning myself a home, where no one can tell me what to do and
there is no landlord to answer to. A place where I don't have to rent my
life. A place where I can own it.

And I will fill this house with books from dedicated garage sale hunts.
There will be bookcases from the ceilings to the floors, and by the time
I pass away I will have read them all. Then they will be passed along to
the public library. Outside the windows of this house will likely be the river,
churning strong, a streamlined freight train of life, rolling on down to the
sea. I will plant trees and flowers and fill the window sills with hanging ivies
that will keep watch of the river when I am otherwise occupied. My sweet
dog Cash will be there (he will live forever, of course) with me and he will
nap underneath the ivies in the late-afternoon sun, with his blond coat of
fur smiling in reflections of the light. And he'll look up at me from time to
time with those all-knowing green eyes of the old soul that he is, and we
will see each other clearly, and every time remember how lucky we've
been. How good this has been.

There will be a telephone that collects dust most of the time, but a writing
desk where I regularly contact all the ones who are not nearby. I will write
to them of all the exciting news of my days, which will be limited and not
seem very exciting to them at all. My days to my grandchildren that I will
write about will seem so boring. So passive. But I will know that they are
fuller than when I was young and full of restlessness and ambitions to grab
on to all the transitory pretty things along the way. I will have learned to be
still. And happy. Which is of course, the same end my grandchildren will be
seeking in their bounty of youth filled with their wonderful big dreams, cotton
candy, rainbows of lovers, and insatiable thirst for more. I will smile when
they quickly get bored of my humble small talk of slow days and simplicity.
Because I was once so young and full of that dewy skinned uncertainty, and
I will finally know that eventually man can settle into his own heart and does
not always have to keep running the exhausting circles of being a worldly
creature, and instead can become, of the world. I will smile because I know
they too will find this one day.

There will be a claw foot tub in the bathroom that has been there since the
house was built, long before I was even born. I will wash my clothing myself
in the bathtub, to keep my hands limber and my quiet mind quiet. And from
time to time I will draw myself a bath and sink beneath the water and pretend
that I am still a beautiful young girl and the entire world is before me to
explore. I will think about all the love I've found, and I will think myself to be
quite lucky and quite blessed. I will take notice of my body and my skin, how
it has carried me through so many years, and considering what a harsh hand
the word can give a being, I will be impressed that it is still intact. My hips will
be rounder and my hair will be thinner and I will have sunspots criss crossing
my body from the heart to my palms. I will think of all the places I have
travelled and all the times I have laughed when I see the lines of life softly
engraved upon my well-lived in skin. I will no longer care that my face isn't
as symmetrical as I'd like for it to be, and arms not as thin as I'd like for them
to be, and skin not as tanned as it could be. I will love my form, as much as I
love the rest of the intangible life. I will laugh at myself about all the things I
thought I knew, which experience had proved to be entirely wrong. There will
be plenty to laugh about.

There will be tree's in the front yard that will bear some kind of fruit, so the
neighborhood kids can make a game of sneaking them off the branches
when they think no one is home. Behind translucent lilac curtains I will
peacefully watch them as they enjoy the thrill of what they think is stealing
from my tree, but what is as rightfully theirs as it is mine or anyone's. They
will laugh and play as they eat the fruit, they will revel in it's sweetness.
And I will smile as the seed is carried away to it's destined place upon the
earth. We will all be so happy.

But for today, I am still that restless young woman, glory bound, and saving
up my small change for a sum greater than it's parts and far more beautiful
than I could ever foresee. One day I'll live in my little house down in New Orleans.

lines on the road

2006-05-25T01:22:00.000-04:00

a song in progress:

you flew into my city
to see another friend of yours
we'll pretend not to know each other,
in these new lives
that we have forged
but you'll be sleeping on my open floor (heart) tonight
we will make nothing of it
and i'll pretend that i don't mind,
that catching up on lost time
is only cause it is convenient
tonight

and you know, when you go
i'll be counting the lines on the road
until i remember,
this life moves slow
but it's always moving along

and we don't ask why
we just hold our tongues
but we all become lovers,
beneath tomorrow's sun
in every line,
on that road

the one i'm thinking of, he's got eyes as wide as diamonds
and he's running wild tonight, just across east river's skyline
yeah, he's filling up his hands, with the trappings of the flesh, oh
just to try,
and ease his mind

and you know, when you go
i'll be counting the lines on the road
until i remember,
that love moves slow
but it's always moving along

and we don't know why
sometimes we fuck it up
but we will melt into lovers
beneath, tomorrow's sun
in every line,
on that road

hanging heavy in this starlight air,
they are baking tomorrow's, daily bread
to prepare for all the starving bodies
who do not know that they
are hungry yet
i can smell it oh so strong,
thought that i felt it on my tongue
but i could not
quite taste it yet
and it's funny how sometimes
senses we normally rely on can deceive
us just like that

and you know, when I go
i'll be counting the lines on the road
til i remember,
that this life moves slow
but it's always moving along

and we don't know why
we always get it wrong
and we will find our answers
beneath, cathedral skies
and in every line,

on that road

in every line,
yet to come

perspective

2006-05-25T01:18:00.000-04:00

a tiny dot upon the ocean, can be the most beautiful of things.

Polaroid Visions.

2006-04-30T16:19:00.000-04:00

brooklyn views, from a bicycle.

Cash.

The King.

hearts, stagnation, beauty & photographs

2006-04-06T01:43:00.000-04:00

myspace cannot possibly be a healthy affair. our misguided ideas of
friendship, which really amount to some non-existent degree of
popularity that we've created in this e-world. on principal i'm
entirely against this whole thing. and i'm a god damn hypocrite. i
know. someone recently equated myspace to being something like
the end of a year in high school when everyone goes around
soliciting people to sign their yearbook. "sign my yearbook... sign
my yearbook." and we all know, of course, that your value as a
human being is based upon 1. how many people sign your yearbook
and 2. how endeared to you they are, judging on how many
gratuitously complimentary things they write ("oh my god, B.F.F"
" you are the hottest girl i've ever known!" "the cheerleading team
would have been nothing without you this year. you are soooooo
amazing." etc). now, as young adults, we realize the perversion of
this immature insecurity, but shit, we've just re-created it, in a more
colorful, technologically advanced way.

but it is fun... isn't it?

the burning desire, necessity, of proving something is the beauty of
myspace. the collegegirls can prove how hot and sexually desirable
they can look in their push up bras and over exposed shots taken in
bathroom mirrors (hey, i've done it too.. i know), the bands can feel
validated as real bands once they have more "fans" on their profile
than they've ever had show up at a show, the budding writers can
post their deepest works for the world to see and comment on, the
high school kids can just continue the year book signings, etc, etc.

and i'm as guilty as all of the above, cause i'm here too. i'm
participating. but i still am against it in principle.... so....i would like
to come clean and let you all know that while i've accumulated some
ridiculous number of friends on myspace, in real life, i'm mostly
anti-social, sometimes reclusive, and have only a few close friends,
whom are the very finest of hearts and souls. i feel like myspace is
cheating in representing it's inhabitants, its internet trollers, its
patriots. because on myspace we present the very best versions of
ourselves. the version where we can highlight all of our
accomplishments and virtues and supreme taste in books/music/film,
but we never display the mountains of ignorance in other areas, or our
bad habits, or nasty personality quirks. we present the version of
ourselves who's photographs do not show the flaws of nature,
disproportionate facial features, or that extra ten pounds. if myspace
is anything, it's an attempt to exhibit the version of ourself we would
really like to be. so, in an effort to escape this cycle of the trickery we
allow beauty and to try and exhibit the version of myself i'd like to
be...... these are photos from my day. i am not in any of them. but
they should show you more of me than any glossed, dolled up photo
of my mug ever will. it is beyond skin and body.

converting the heart's intrinsic knowledge to that of human form (words,
photographs, songs, all in between) comes easier to some, than to most. and
while i'd like to think my little body was built for making songs, some days i
can't even bring myself to try. some days i can see nothing but beauty in clouds
and strangers busily scurrying by me in the street. and this is so overwhelming i
know of no sound that could touch it. some days the love in my belly is so
overwhelming i just have to lay in bed, indulging in this beauty that holds no
form to vision. some days i get caught in a sound, incapable of understanding
anything outside of the sound.

there is beauty, and the proper way to execute it for every day, for every mood,
every love, every hurt. they come, for me, as sound, sight, and words. in that order.
the sound being the most frequent.

so today i laid upon my couch most of the day. i felt bad about this, i tried to
parent myself: "self, you have work to do, get your ass off the couch. you have
phone calls to make and errands to run, and songs to work on. get to work."
but my body wouldn't move, my soft little heart just laughed, and kept me laying
there, to fully discover the place that today had brought to me. it was an
important day in self renovations, and i understand that now, as i am again,
laying on my couch. small dog radiating and curled below my knee, and a swollen
heart deep in my chest that is happy. happy to be here. comfortable with this
feeling of pure floatation and no prospect of gravity to bring me back down
anytime soon.

today there was no music. instead i took pictures of things as I lay paralyzed in
the beauty that is beyond our merely aesthetic forms, the beauty that is represented
in 3d, by the culmination of the entire heart of some collective universe, and here they
are for you.

we are all lovers

2006-04-02T04:34:00.000-04:00

it has been confirmed, that our bodies
hold no form to gravity
to push or pull by hands
that are not for holding

we stretch our skin, bending sharp
to man's cathedral skied vision
turn your head any way, but away

every heart swelled up to exceed the eyes
which were such deceptive sensory ties
and our memories of ourselves escape
our futile attempts seeking salvation
behind those pearly gates

new york city is made of lovers
the homo boys, the singing lesbians,
the husbands and wives in the grocery lines
everybody to each other
every lover
every one
we are all the most devout of lovers
when these streets will hold us up
we are all the god creators
in these endless, many, hands to hold

yesterday my body melted
in this new york city skin
and i became every woman and man
that had ever known of love
by name & by shapes of experience
I learned to live free, by sight, without eyes, that only can see
the beauty boiling just beneath
our ever so polished, numbered days

and we charged our hurricane hearts
as criminals
but kept marching forward
momentum as our lord
we were simply mistaken, with a simple
misinterpretation
of the eternal language
long lost to our illiterate souls

in flesh, fear of losing has left me
left me bare as i could ever be
and i'm letting the sun bear down upon me
a body need not look for a shield
as long as we are all here as lovers
swollen hearts should have little to fear

hearts & sleep

2006-04-01T14:50:00.000-05:00

can't sleep for shit
when you miss somebody
don't need the sleep
now anyhow

it's nice to feel your heart beat
again

it's been a while

today

2006-02-26T19:58:00.000-05:00

fri. feb 24th, 4:30am

My hearts gonna explode into yours
friends

one day.

i was driving home
maybe i had too much to drink
maybe my perception is just too precise now

hearts have been lifted
and i'm here
and i hope you are with me

i was drivin' and cryin'
this is a twenty-somethings winter fucking wonderland

the lights evade us into the evening skies
and we tip toe into the skylines of a city
that shines too bright for us mere men to ever hold

vital is every hand and pair of lips, red and wanting
much more of this
the city of seekers, looking for themselves
by the flickering wicks of inexperience
we all know, two lonely hearts do not make a whole
but baby, it's so damn cold outside and i got no place better to go
atleast we understand each other for this moment
and we are only here in mere moments, you know

we are weary and so aware
of our fragile upkeep here

the young men, how they are handsome
they are bearded like fathers before them,
full of wisdom, in an age long gone from now

i love these handsome young men
just about every last one of them
and my fragility lies in this
being in love with the whole world in such a way

the night sky plastic bags, blowin' in the wind
they were alive in their conditions
dancing for the sake of dancing
such joy was there, for such an otherwise, inanimate thing

and i wonder if i too, am weightless, wandering
so joyous but ever so lonely
blowin' around in this brooklyn wind

mostly, it doesn't worry me much at all
cause i quite enjoy this dancing
though i wonder if i will ever find a still.
and a warmer heart that isn't too lonely to fill
because i filled up my own, long ago
i've just been blowin' around in this brooklyn wind
for something still
but not frozen from blowin' round far too long
like this

the precious white

2006-02-12T13:50:00.000-05:00

it's snowing my friends!

and the kids are rolling around in this dainty powder like it was confection sugar on a sunday morning's breakfast.

and it is that, and more.

i'm giggling looking at it. the wind is mighty, and those confection crystals harsh when hitting the face, but nobody seems to mind too much.

it's a snow day, and the kids and grown ups alike are walking
down the middle of the streets. like we lived in a little village in a place far away from here, where no one yells at you for walking in the way of the cars, machines, chugging along in their day.

all the clocks pause their hands, and it's like we're allowed a short leave in this ever transitory earth. like the whole city gets it's soul back, free of the dirt and demands. hearts all wrapped up in this confection sugar.

everybody is smiling. hello my friends.

the humans get the streets back today.

what a sweet little dream.

this evenings prayer

2006-02-06T05:52:00.000-05:00

i gotta be up before noon
and the eternal sunshine is
blazing down my moonlit spine

must sleep before the new day catches up to me
for i must be up by the noon hour

and hey!

i look up astrology
at five forty seven in the morning
i have not yet found a time for sleep
for this heart is spinning

out of control

i ate popcorn for dinner
and i will fall to sleep
satisfied with this consumption

because i have expelled
more love than i knew i could

and if any heart could rest sound
it would be
because of this

giving even more
than you were graced with

hallelujah.

save your soul.
hallelujah.

god will grace us all.

at 3:32 in the morning

2006-02-04T04:05:00.000-05:00

at 3:32 in the morning, i drive like a careful employee
i stop full at every stop light and turn a full perpendicular at every corner
ninety degrees complete, without so much as veering
into the lane corresponding

at 3:32 in the morning, the taxi wails his horn
i do not jump the light, and hi-jack my acceleration before
the burning green light has been born

i wait with prudence, that i don't ever seem to have
in the far earlier hours of the day

at 3:32 i miss my mother, and my siblings
at 3:32 i give a good friend a ride home, because he needs it
and I go home with the infinite loneliness
to consider my location,
alone

at 3:32, new york city halts and I can digest myself
among the terror and fervor of the purest lost hearts
i can hear the delightful melodies, just beneath the boom
of the burden
of these many,
endless,
recessant
parts

light is of me
good is of you
we shall all come together now
and such soul is finite
and futile
in our boundless decrees
bound, infinitely

you

and

me

the sweetest of all,

you
&
me

here we are.

alone in our own rights
and connected by power lines
and traffic lights

we can laugh at each other's trite fancies
but our blood runs deeper than we'd ever let on.

the sweetest of all.

you & me

here we are.

....

2006-01-30T01:57:00.000-05:00

my heart hurts.

i took myself out to dinner....

2006-01-30T01:46:00.001-05:00

......on october 5th, 2005 and had this conversation with pen & paper.

did i not bring you to the place?
boasting the finest women and most beautiful faces
where always the pauper will find a knights bed,
where they all shall bless your body,
by offering their only bread

we dined on our multi-course meals
we could never afford it, but
who should go without the sweetness of this?
the fifth course
most importantly
sweet

you, good friend who's hand was held into the promised land
hasty, I, to forget
it was promised, but not procured for you
i led you to the water, but could not make you thirsty

i am dining along tonight, searching for fare
between dramatic street lights
the weight of a body pressed to the bone
falls heavy on the foot, whose imposition is to carry me there

i'm terribly aware of this all
my hair is matted, just like the hair of a person who eats alone with their self
while the cigarettes spark from the tables of
stock white hands of young lovers chandelier dreams
I do always think
how different this should look
in the flesh
of the real thing

when I was still young, I would go to work with my mother
she was in the business of houses
and finding them for people
my mother and I would enter the still life houses,
the family absent for their display
I learned well the lives of so many,
through carefully arranged photographs and coffee table magazines

within a real home, there was still warmth
even though the family would leave
there were houses and there were homes
and in these borrowed places i soon learned
to distinguish the myth from the real thing

the soul from the speculation
the muse from the machine

and here too, I know the difference well
and that this is no time to be afraid
of manning this machine
for it must be faced to be defeated
finally

(yet)

my hair is still matted
and that fifth course has yet to come
my belly will be awaiting
for your thirst, yet to succumb

i

2006-01-21T19:45:00.000-05:00

leather jackets, fashionishas, rebels without the rebellion

new york! ah, you pretentious bastard of poses.
you lied.

we're all glued to our fucking i-books
i-pod
i-sight
i-fucking
i-love
i-forgotmyself

i-wonderwhereconversationwent
i-gnorant to the blood beaneath your
i-skin

i-amgrowingtired

of this.

i-disspel you

trash culture
i-21stcenturytransgression

i-amleavingyou

goodbye.

immeasurable time

2006-01-18T18:14:00.000-05:00

there is an immeasurable time
just beyond the minute hand
when you sit with the silence
that is always at your side

there are no more men
to bend down to or circumvent
there are no trains, no passer-bys
no flesh to fill your hands with
no smoke to obscure the fire

the skin upon my knee is still recovering
from a concrete slip battered street
that had branded my body new years eve
it's been well over two weeks
shouldn't i be healed by now?

i have reached the immeasurable time
the battles of a tolerable body
pale next to an intolerable mind

the effortless grace of universe
to tame our unkept houses
into the tapestries of a home
to harvest our immortal trouble
into the feastings for mortal souls

we dine with the greatest pleasure
in these immeasurable times

my tv dinner life

2006-01-17T20:49:00.000-05:00

some days feel much like this

cold
compartmentalized
shaped into questionable forms
solid, yet only because frozen
not because of internal makeup

resembling something of content
nourishment
but devoid of mineral values

atleast it looks.....
almost right

i'll cook myself something delicious tomorrow
to make up for it

how to stay free?

2006-01-16T18:38:00.000-05:00

When I was a girl and told not to do certain things,
it was my invitation to go right ahead, with the
extra exhilaration of not getting caught while doing so.

I'm still a little kid in that way.
The curiosity has kept me free.

Exhibit A: Letter to a good friend

2006-01-12T18:29:00.000-05:00

Dec. 25th, 2005 5am

There is no sound here in a white-walled condominium, erect two stories high in destin, florida
earlier this evening there were lightening storms that blew apart the emptied skies
grandiose reminders of what little things we are beneath such beauties
but that was early evening, long passed now. it is quiet as i've ever heard now.

but there is space, infinite space, and it sounds like jet plane engines racing in my head
it's 5 am on a beckoning christmas day
in three hours my five year old brother will be eagerly awake with amazement and faith in the world
there will be magic for him when he wakes
gifts, good tidings, tactile charming toys and treats
he will be a happy boy
all will be right in his world
he has more than enough
and more reason to project into tomorrow
for he has love and magic.

i have more less wasted the past six hours using this machine
as a mode of education, enlightenment, spiritual and intellectual
stimulation. i've been viewing art, reading journals of strangers,
planning my future, if for no other reason than to not have to
think about my not so distant past. those ghosts with such fast
feet, always running past my present.

some people have a television, a gossip magazine, a dildo, a
basketball, an argument, a lover, kids, cigarettes, booze,
prayer, etc to keep themselves entertained and stimulated
.... and i've wasted away to merely needing a 5 pound box
of wire. shit. shit. shit.

and this little metal box of cables and power is as warm as
a puppy in my lap, but it feels ice cold somehow. it feels,
simply, wrong. i realize that life cannot be wrapped
up in such a convenient package, though it is deceivingly easy.
and vulgar in it's accessibility.

or maybe it's me, not the computer.

in any case, it led me to you. as i peruse through
your myspace profile looking at a photo of you with a strange
girl, my heart sinks. it's funny. cause i'm not entitled to you
any more than that girl, your best friend, or even your mother
or father. we're not entitled to anything at all, really, we just get
really lucky from time to time and get our good blessings, our
good moments, our laughs, or lovers, or friends, or foes....
but entitlement, nah, never. and i was amused at my innate,
instinctive heart drop to go reclaim you or something. without
any contemplation i immediately thought to myself.....
"must go get him and spend much time together and probably
do things that are affectionate and expressive because CERTAINLY
I care about him more than that girl in the photo, and we're here,
and alive, and this must be expressed. must get all the love out in
verbal, physical, tactile ways before it's retired, or i get too lazy, or
disillusioned or simply lost. "

and it's funny how what we say and what we do, most often are not the same
thing at all. even what we merely say to ourselves. i don't even know why i'm
telling you all of this, certainly such outbursts of instinct are usually kept to
one self, but I don't want to be that way. atleast not with you. i may be living
through a fucking computer screen temporarily, but it would be a tragedy to
start acting like one.

and it was refreshing for my mind and heart to conjure up such instinctive
claws of possession, because i don't believe in possession. it's like myself
was keeping myself in check. throwing a curve ball, and serving as a
reminder of the possibility of change, of deviation from what i thought i
was capable of, what i thought i knew of myself and my own inclinations.
that the certainty i had built upon knowing myself and myself in
conjunction with the ones I love, was no certainty at all. just as fragile as
the plates beneath the earth shifting and causing earthquakes, just a
possible as the ocean waters getting riled up and taking over dry land
- where they never should be. it was a little godly glitch telling me, hey
girl, you're just a kid, take it easy... you don't know shit....shut up...
sit down... and enjoy.

and you can laugh at your mortal self sometimes... when you're
pulled out of the illusion of body and ego and importance of this
skin, and observe your motions and predispositions. it's funny.
we're such ridiculous creatures. likes children given a kitchen full of
candy & cigarettes, and a living room full of explosives.
how disciplined can we be?

strange things have been happening. i've been living in a god damn
black hole. devoid of real joy or real sadness for the most part, just
this fucking numb. like the hum of those innocent imaginary jet
planes in my head.

i worry that my futile mind is not of the presence enough to carry
and nurture a significantly more capable soul. the push and pull of
skin vs. spirit, intellect vs. emotion, rationalization vs. truth....
.....damn it is exhausting.
And terrifying. Absolutely terrifying.

Cause even on a good day I'll probably sell myself out. I'll be practical
or responsible over being absolutely true. The skin, intellect and
ration win the majority of the time, leaving the spirit, emotion and
truth dangling in their ruins. And I have to stop this shit somehow.

Its just terrifying having such fire in your belly. Cause once everybody
knows about it, it is expected of you. Once everyone considers you
great or accomplished or valid, then it is expected of you ever more.
Yet, you are not in control of such great things. You're no more than
a finely painted vessel for that greatness to project through, you're
just the faucet and you have no idea if the water may be cut off at
some point, or if it'll keep running for all of time. it's daunting to
be accountable for that......to be responsible for something that is
far greater than you, just a man, will ever be.

how do we get around this?
do we just gag ourselves to prevent success from ever
happening......so we don't have to be looked up to as some great
source of creation..... or do we just go with what graces us and
hope to not get eaten alive by it's byproducts?

i dont know. i honestly dont. but i know this is why i avoid creation
as much as i can. its funny, cause somehow i'm still a creator. i just
create about .01% of what I'm capable of creating. i feel pretty
certain this is going against the winds of the universe, but
i'm not ready to be good at anything yet.

i just read over this letter and realized that i've gone on a tangent,
not having to do with you. and really, this had something to do
with you when it all started. but i guess this whole bit about the
creative masochism, actually goes hand in hand with the inadvertent
emotional actions that keep me less than present, and much colder
than such a warm heart ever should be. and i don't want to be that
way, either.

i've lost whatever circle of idea i had originally. should have finished
this when i started it (it was 5am, and i literally passed out from
exhaustion..... guess that's when the brain works best, when you've
wrenched all the formal thoughts out of it, and are only left with the
ones that are usually far back in the queue, much more mangled
and disoriented).

hope you're holidays are sublime.
see you soon.

love,
k

brothers

2006-01-04T04:49:00.000-05:00

My sweet little brothers.

Carson is 5. Adam, 18. Carson loves to hang with his big brother and trail in his footsteps and hang out with his friends.
One of Adam's friend, Nickel, is from India.
Conversation:

Carson: So your friend Nickel is Indian right?
Adam: Yeah, he is.
Carson: So does he carry a bow and arrow?

Well of course!

wield

2006-01-03T21:04:00.000-05:00

we wield our bodies like machine guns
pressed tight to the silver barrel cold

girl, where'd you learn to move like that?
we knew of these things before we had
skin to express them
we've just been waiting for the right time

painted things in carnival motifs
there are painted flowers
don't you dare try to water them

a blanket sky falls upon this southern city
to wash it of it's neon skin
the grand illusion of itself
in what it could have been

the kids go wild at night
as they await their fates to greet them
though they do not know this yet

it is sugar plums and kung-foo
it is love and it is certainty
the persuasive truth of all one knows
or needs to

i am a creator, above all else
and i know this, like a sickness, like a disease
that runs rampant in my veins
yet belies my mundane refusal hands

we are pushing against the parade
kneeling beneath this structure of all things
we have the lightest of all burdens
to keep us hopeful on safe knees

coffee is getting cold

2005-12-21T11:22:00.000-05:00

strike!

stuck in brooklyn, cause the mta workers are sick of the shit.
yeah man. i'm with you. except it takes about 3 hours to travel 2 miles.
and unless your inclined to swim 'cross the river, you're stuck
in brooklyn for now. those wings i put on my christmas list
sure would come in handy now.

art. selling art is like selling unflavored snow cones in the middle of a blizzard
in alaska. i am not saying this out of cynicism, but from experience. it's funny,
when you love creation, you try anyway. but sometimes you just gotta take
what is, for what it is.

there's a man sitting across the way from me at the coffee shop. his graceful spider legs are draped over the table in front of his chair. they look nice, and he looks enticing with those graceful legs. but i know he's only enticing cause i don't know him. in all reality he's probably a prick, boring, sloppy, inconsiderate prick. but i can atleast dream, as i conjure up how sexy he might look naked. though in all reality, i have absolutely no desire to try to find out.

tonight i was asked "so how did you and trevor meet?" and upon churning up the memory, i realized it was one of the few memories i had of him that was really positive. the sad, the mean, the pathetic were all in greater quantities than the good. but remembering how we met forced my brain to reverse to that moment, when it was actually good. and i remembered how much i had loved him, how one hundred percent i became at the birth of that love.

which made me all the more mournful of how incredibly hateful he became. of how inadequate hands will break budding love like the irreversible concrete on the back of a chick who's fallen from his nest. we endured that fall early on, and
spent months trying to overcome a fractured body that would never be overcome. it's greatest hope was simply that it end. but we struggled in the deepest of pains before releasing our reigns tied to torn limbs and malfunctioning appendages.
i had tried to find peace and a gentle passing, but that man wanted nothing but the bitter end. he insisted upon it. there could have been flowers, and cleansing tears, goodbyes, and fare the wells, wishes for what is to come. but he insisted on the bloody end, the pistols and punches, the blood for sake of scarring, the misery for sake of something to hold on to when all else will one day be gone.

he only knew how to create sadness, madness, chaos.

so how should the end be any different than any other time?

our fatal flaw lies in this.

above all else, when all else fails, he clings to darkness
above all else, when all else fails, i cling to the very faint sliver of light just beyond

we both understood that the world is a mean place.
but i prefer to offset that general rule of thumb by not participating in the ills that abound
he only knew how to give in to them, indulge them

and so our love was consumed by all the ugly in this world

and i mourn for him more so than for the love, really
because that's no way to live
those evils will perpetuate themselves and eat him alive
unless he realizes he is still a child
and does not have to be that way

but that man thinks all that he reads becomes understood
when really words on a page, are merely shapes
until you have lived them and put the momentum into
their steps and fire in their hearts

and he will not hear of it, even by the tongues of gentle friends
who wish nothing but love
because that man still hasn't learned how to love himself
so how ever could he trust the love of someone else?

love is like a wrecking ball

2005-12-18T22:55:00.000-05:00

it's hard to come home and be idle.
hard to sit in silence with yourself.
the walls are echoing his words
there are scraps of paper left behind
there are voice mails on the phone
there are mixed feelings
apprehension
doubt
something that is missed, but in it's current incarnation, loathed.

so i've been avoiding home. i should know better.
and i do.
but i do it anyway. cause i'm old enough to make my
own decisions, and hard-headed as a kid enough to knowingly make
the wrong ones.

shit. i've been mostly good most my life.
i figure i'm entitled to a period of fucking up.
and even my version of fucking up is pretty mild.
pretty average and docile.
not disastrous or intimidating other than
drinking too much, sleeping too late, and
finding myself in strange places in an
alice and wonderland sort of way

played a show with my friend, guitarist Gary Lucas.
i had roughly intended on going back home after
the show and writing. but the magic wand of beer
and whiskey touched my lips, and once their powers
had awoken, i felt compelled to partake in a saturday
night out in manhattan. hell... everyone is just so
young, thin, and beautiful!
aren't we supposed to go out and do things young
attractive people do? isn't that our role to play?
before we get old and die. there's a party on every
corner and in every refinished unknown basement.
a drink to be poured and a body to make the most of.

after an evening of such, lights and motion become
beautiful stimuli. you're a kid in the carnival parade,
the colors and possibilities endless, the smells are
all sweet, and the sounds are full of joy. your heads
spinning in this grand ball, and you're content as
can be watching it all pass around.

it's a pleasant enough distraction for now.

2005-12-18T01:19:00.000-05:00

.

2005-12-17T15:28:00.000-05:00

Evidence

2005-12-14T17:22:00.000-05:00

Sometimes the only way I can remember I existed before right now, is by finding scraps of things I made along the way. This is the appeal of songs, sound, words, photographs I guess. It's nice to be able to observe yourself almost from an outsiders perspective when finding something from your past. It's good to remind yourself where you were, how you've changed, and that some kind of progress is being made. You haven't been as idle as you thought.

This was from about this time last year.

Dec. 21, 2004

I've decided to give up computers.... at some point. Spending the past three weeks of travel and recording documenting experience via photo and words, all saved on this box of metal and plastic. and then the devil came down. and he ate it.

I'm standing on the edge of the mountain and there's fire below, embers burning up to my face. They are dancing for me, challenging my form with their lack there of, chartering a system overhaul on all my systems. The dedicated and fearless mind is a precious asset to the soul, but it will be the breaker that holds the clenched fist deep within the gut of the muse. Here I am with more love than I could ever ask for, and yet I'm eternally sad, alone, in question. A human possessing dense amounts of love and projecting that supply freely and without expectations, to the world around him is no less than a blessing. But at some point it becomes apparent the need for a reciprocation, in equal degrees, by relation of another breathing soul. What is the experience if it cannot be shared, and understood by someone else, who could only truly understand it if giving at the same level. Perhaps this is what makes for lasting love?

I'm battling between realities that do not co-exist. Two opposite worlds, both of which I seem welcome to, yet can't decipher which is most real, which has substance and which is only a mirage. Right now, everything in me just wants to surreder to the whim of youthful ambivalence,

This all starts and ends, again and again. Repeat. This all will recycle itself eternally. You'll never sleep with the comfort of certainty. There is no such thing. There is only love, essence, the experience you can depend on. Any promise of the return and perpetuation of those things is an impossibility, atleast that's what i've concluded thus far. I'm trying to prove myself wrong.

last night i fell to rest
to feel my body melt
freely into a borrowed bed

i was not the only one

your breath, an invocation
to the introduction
of your skin

your pulse, a lifeline
shadowed insight
to your crowded quarter's den

what would be found
by finger tips against
your unknown condition

Polaroid Dreams

2005-12-12T23:20:00.000-05:00

The beauty of a polaroid is that it provides you with the instant gratification you need, yet it cannot fully capture the detail and full depth of the image. It serves merely as a vague visual reminder of the moment, but without the extra-sharp-crystal-clear-megpaixels to give you such easy remembrance of all details. The polaroid forces you to remember all the nuances, and smells, and taste for yourself. You have to keep those colors and patterns deep in your womb, the photograph will not let you know those underground secrets when you look at it later on. A polaroid allows you to keep your memory of the belly of that moment, rather than erase it, and rely on a photography crutch to secure your favorite moments for the future. A polaroid reminds you that the glory was in the midst of those times, not the reminiscing you will do for a lifetime after. The meat is in the moment. You'll never have that same one again. And you can't fix the angle or the lighting, you can't smooth the lines in your face, or alter the red eye, or change the poor posture or pose. All of the nuances, the most beautiful and the most grotesque are there in 3.5 x 4.25 inches for you to accept, as they are, as they always will be.

The polaroid speaks truth, while allowing you to remember all the rest, without imposing it upon you.

L-R
1. Old Love
We are graced with lovers for some reason that I have yet to understand. But I do know in every other body that is intertwined with yours, you find a mirror of yourself. All the ugly habits and exceptional ones are brought up from the bowels of the solitary life, and rage through your days in all their fury. You discover how stellar the human spirit can be, and how equally horrific. There is God in two hands together, and the right man with the right woman (or man and man/woman and woman). The universe reaches it's balanced orbit, and the constant motion and noise all cease. You become one with the other, you become a "we." We is the place to be. There's no question about that. And this new state where two merge into one, likely will not last, so dig deep as long as you're there. Be there while you are there, worry about all else later. We cannot build sustainable homes unless we throw our stakes deep, and pound the hammers even harder. When the body breaks, the soul runs free. So, be it this way. What will be, will ever be.

2. Rejoining .... Rejoice!
Winter erupts in New York. The first snow fall is always the most beloved. As if it purifies the bastardly dirty grounds below, as if it erases all the contours and shapes, all the mistakes, cracks, imperfections,
and gives the whole land free reign to be something new, something much better. I was somewhat resentfully making my 20 minute march to the subway from my home. Any walk longer than 5 minutes becomes an effort, breaking sweat on one's brow and nurturing calouses on the arch of your feet in their snow-boot armor. But the little graces get the best of even the day's worst pessimist. Every stepping-crunch of the snow started to fall in place with the next and it grew into it's own rhythm, it's own heartbeat. I fell in love with that snow, and the calouses would come later, they didn't bother me now. I watched every step, eye to toe, and saw this pattern upon me. The place I was, this asymmetric pattern I was walking in, yet was not previously conscious to. My steps were far away from all the others. They were rounded, with no equation, no straight line in sight. They were just dancing around in their very own rhythm, completely oblivious to the dozens of feet that had passed before. And when those feet were full of dancing by themselves, they continued in their line-less motion and rejoined the steps of all the others. To take part, to share in the discoveries they found while dancing freely in their solitary journey. We all join back together at some point, however distant and erratic our individual sojourns may have been.

3. Old Friend
Stu and I met at years ago at the late Ichabods, Baton Rouge's hometown refuge for budding musicians and degenerates alike. A British accent comes with it's assumptions in a town that only knows the colloquial sounds of 'coon-ass,' 'trailer park trash,' or your garden variety 'southern' tongue. Stu was an exchange student from the UK and was an exotic creature in this land, with rounded inflections, a gregarious disposition, and strong inclination to employ the word "cheers" without reserve and on a regular basis. He also called the bathroom the "loo," which is a terribly endearing way to refer to the ceramic hole in which every drunk bastard's bodily expulsions would be emptied into by the end of the night. I figured any person who can make a toilet sound endearing, must be pretty special. I was a kid, merely 18. Was about to embark on my first self-routed 'tour' 'round this great country of ours, and I had yet to find someone to go with me. Was planning on brining my long-term love, but he had recently left the picture. I had my clean slate and all of the searching and idol time that the solitary soul finds when their love has suddenly flown. I was a lonely kid with big ideas, and I needed someone to come along for the ride. I had left this undetermined person to present him/her-self as appropriate. A big leap of faith, considering tour was about a week away. But synchronicity, having it's way, poured Stu and I drinks until closing time at Ichabod's that night. And if I remember correctly, by the next time I saw him I asked if he wanted to join me on the tour. He obliged, and that was that. Stu was supposed to be going back home, but re-booked his ticket, and took up the spare bedroom in my shabby two-bedroom apartment just off campus for the week before we headed out. I remember drinking pounds of tea. Between my friend Ken (who was a British South African and drank tea like a poor man drinks PBR), and Stu, I think I drank more tea in that week than I did in the 17 years previous. The habit has stuck with me to this day, always a reminder of these friends in far away places. A reminder of how we all live within each other once our paths have crossed. This is the first time I've seen Stu since that tour, over 4 years ago. He's managed to keep up with me cross-country, many addresses, and even more telephone numbers. Was as if we didn't miss a thing, picked back up where we left off. He still calls the bathroom the loo, and I'm still just as amused by it.

god bless the...

2005-12-09T02:19:00.000-05:00

what price does a poor boy pay
for love?
i asked my mamma
she said it wasn't much
what home could a wayfaring man ever have?
only the shoes upon his feet
and bible on his back

god bless the lonely soul who sleeps alone
god bless the lonely boy who left in such a hurry
god bless the weary ones who know not what they do
but we know that its coming real soon
know that its coming
coming for you

and if patience could be gracious to us
we'll know that it's coming real soon

the winter blows in

2005-11-30T18:07:00.000-05:00

A rustle of the freshly dead leaves, and a slight chill up your slinking spine, the mother frost is upon us and she's landing gently before she breaks. The kids are still playing out-side though our days, by definition, cease before rush hour, when everyone begins their real day. When we all go home.

Brooklyn spans for what seems like an infinity to one who had never lived in concrete playgrounds before transplanting to new york. Brooklyn runs deep, in years, miles, cultures. Brooklyn runs deep man, and Brooklyn has not it's own soul, but the collective conscious pulse of millions, millions who are not natives, and who have yet to imprint their feel on this American soul. Brooklyn is the Puerto Ricans, the African Americans, the chassid jews, the polish mothers, the dwindling tree-lined streets, the abandoned prisons, petty thieves or saviors disguised by second language or shabby attire, the lonely-long dry-community pool, the dollar bargain on every corner, the FBI jacket dance into the nights, the fire hydrant waterfalls, the graffiti on a cold-hard-fast-transitory building where people live inside and call it home. And then call each other on their cell phones, and pagers, and nine million foot high satellites to keep us all connected in these places we call home. We're all keeping connected man, but I have yet to know my neighbors.

Brooklyn is a fat lip to it's hard fist.... Fat, proud, and true.

Brooklyn, man. Brooklyn.

So, my home. I have accepted home here, in this squat that has all the luxuries a a young-attractive-intelligent-creative-twenty something person should want. But it still doesn't have jambalaya, my mamma, my siblings, and the bartender friend who knows your drink, and your mood accordingly. The porches here are cold and angular, they just aren't the same as the the shanty-shotgun-creole porches at home, adorned with acquired "antiques", rocking chairs, and a little old lady/man to watch over the neighborhood from this crumbling throne.

My my Brooklyn is lonely this time of year. I've been counting my blessings, friends, and possibilities. They measure up to more than enough, but it's lonely none the less. I'll blame it on the weather.

Though at this point, I have come to welcome such lonely disaffection with open arms. Because it, above all else, is the catalyst for change and progress that one-self left to their own devices, never would have figured out. So, this imposed state is the boot-camp sergeant, and me, a malleable, attentive devotee to truth and pursuit. Ready for my work out. Ready for what's to come. However strenuous or exhausting it may be. And it will be that, and more.

The good word. The good sound. The good vision. It comes only with much patience and pursuit. To quietly remove yourself from the world around you, just to be a silent observer can be so heartbreakingly beautiful, to this day, I am still amazed by the most simple things. The kids playing ball in the street with their star-lined eyes and easy hearts. The small-slow-moving Latino man who always has a smoke in his hand, and who sits on the sidewalk with nothing to occupy him. he just watches everyone go by, and he looks so fucking happy. we say hello. and he says "hello, sweetie, baby, honey" in that order. Every single time. As many pet names as he can conjure up in a broken spanish accent. And this is highly endearing.

I've been seeing God in the perversions, and perversions in the God. An indicated that this is all connected, as was suspect. That there is not good or bad, black or white, there is merely perception. And for those with perception omnipotent enough, the world unravels all it's gems and glories. A flooding rainbow of touch and smell, sight and color, a parade of the most beautiful.

I just recalled these visions of cities that don't exist and experiences I've never had. It was a monstrous concrete place with no resemblance to anything I have ever seen. The buildings were lush extravaganzas, opulent plush concrete palaces to the sky. There was no regard to gravity or the confines of acceptable behavior or movement. There were cities within cities, and one turn could lead you into new dimensions. There were couches in the sky, and places of dwelling that felt suitable.

These places are so vivid, and yet they don't exist at all, atleast not in this plane. I have been lost for quite some time, and I hope to come back around soon. While the opulent visions are charming, the warmth, blood, and bone of loved ones is ten-fold as wondrous.

If only I can melt my winter heart.

scraps

2005-11-27T07:03:00.000-05:00

from a notebook of possibilities, not absolutes.
- - - - - -
nov. 3rd

they were given flight by the will of the winds
not by graceful wings
or the world's modern machines

they received flight as I receive sights often unseen
bypassed by the bridges
only there for the journey

they were uprooted and lifted beyond reason
beyond what the comfort laden mind would allow

they did not ask for this, nor was it every denied

they clergy men have been preaching
but their robes are still black
and hands, ever, so, stark

my old friends rest fast asleep
though the overhead light is just burning on

if ever we knew certainty it was merely an oversight
of the blood, the love, the sinners, and floods
we have yet to belie

we were sitting by the river with our tin cans
down to the court house
with all our thirsty complaints
just waiting for the rain
we were waiting for that rain

money will make a man go mad in given time
and adult paradigms will suffocate the former child

it is a luxury to be an honest man
a tragedy to not
it is a futile decree to love a man's beauty
yet deny the asymmetric thought

- - - - - -

nov. 16th

It all looks good from here. Comfort is the killer and I've found clarity but without the crippling consolation of comfort or certainty. At the cafe on the corner, here, there are young hard working kids who sit among each other, full of flesh and vitality, yet only acknowledge their glowing machines of function. It is a sight to be seen- a real modern tragedy. The backward swing of technology whiplash, supposedly meant to propel us forward, but violently throwing us back before we reach that future position. What have we been seeking on these portable machines of wisdom?
knowledge?
companions?
free thoughts?
kinky photos?
like minds?
the right opportunities?
porn?
love?

How much do we find and how much of the relative is obscured by the limitless numbers of options it is placed between.

There we all sit, ready to bear life and were just looking in all the wrong windows. naive as we ever could be.

- - - - - -

nov. 17th

patience knows not
the inflection of a man, who knows not of him

we were taught how to love,
though our teachers knew not of it
we were given books as if they were answers
as if they equated to articulate experience

the scholars waive their parchment degrees
the lovers are screaming ever so softly

a man sits alone, in the afternoon
to drink his morning tea

we got real good at pretending
but there's nothing like the real thing
- - - - - -

cash-the-wonder-dog-with

the day chris whitley saved my life

2005-11-27T06:19:00.000-05:00

the hardest part of being a seeker in the barren landscapes.....is how seldom you find it (beauty, truth, creation?), in it's true, most, rare, unrefined state. it is a gem like no other. there is nothing that provides a weary soul more security and comfort than finding these faint rays of light that cut through all the crap.

in back door conference rooms, and the bowels of major label employees, I'd heard stories of chris whitley. cause every musician and industry guy knows about chris whitley. he's that important. so important, he was too good for the masses of trl teased kids to know of. only music lovers know of chris whitley, cause what he made was what music is meant to be. he was a tremendous talent, with unfortunate habits, and this undeniably present soul that seemed to carry him through it all.
earlier this year i finally had the chance to witness this beauty. i bought the tickets early, and was giddy like I haven't been since I actually got giddy over music (teenage pop radio days). felt as if i was going to be able to breathe and swing and live for just a few moments with one of the greats. the few musicians who've made me understand what music truly is. most of those greats, have already passed before I was old enough to even know. so, seeing chris whitley felt almost like a golden ticket to the time machine. this would not happen again for some time. i knew this, and so did everyone else in the club.

the room was small, the crowd anxious and ready. our hero walked on stage, faint steps, slight movment. as he slumped down to his guitar, there was a hum, a consistent rhymic heart-beat that began before all other sound, and stayed consistent, symetric, and true for the rest of the night. that foot stomping. his body was begging for mercy and his foot just marched right along. the outward heartbeat of a man lost to the world, but found in a soul.

so now chris whitley has left us. this is the end of the possibilities of a wondrous pathway. and i'm reminded how in sound we become bigger than ourselves. within sound the entire world becomes immortal. we live forever, by giving beyond our own life. those words, and slides, and melodies will last as long as the surviving find them relevant to pass on. there becomes order in the unknown, beauty in the chaos, freedom in the possibilities.

he was one who gave to this process. to the turning of the muse, to the passing of hands and hearts. it's been a pleasure knowing you through the speakers and pulse. thank you, sir. you should rest well knowing that you'll never really leave us at all. we will all live on forever now.

pretty colored things

2005-11-27T03:34:00.000-05:00

This will make your heart rise:
http://www.ninjatune.net/videos/video.php?id=56&type=qt

That's it....

2005-10-22T02:51:00.000-04:00

Here, here we are now.
We arrived without so much as a jolt or nudge to our dreamlike state.
We arrived safely without the brusing of skin, or the bone beaneath.
Were we packed cautiously in preparation for this delivery?
It was a long journey indeed.
And it is damn near a man made miracle
that we were not distroyed by the hands of man along the way,
especially those of our own.

And we sank our morphine motions
in between then and now,
like the fisherman sinks the hook.
The bait.
The tackle.
The anticipation of what is to be.
Or not at all.
Atleast not on this cast of the reel.
But there is always the next,
there is always fresher water,
and stronger wire.
But not for the faint of heart.
Good fortune only casts itself
upon those who are willing to accept
it as such.
It is all in your perception, afterall.

In the tragedies are most certainly
the beacons of truth and clarity
you've previously been so overzealously
making futile attemps to set afire,
but without the ammunition to do so.
Only in the flood waters, once engulfing you,
in the midst of debris and waste,
comes your holy water, washing you clean once again.

What you previously knew to be clean and good,
is now just flowing away down a drain,
deep beneath the earth we have yet to ever truly see,
flowing down below, to never be touched or savored again.
That was then. That was then.

It has left you now.

No longer in form, color, or smell, a scream or a tear.
No longer in the hands that demand answers,
but in the memory
that allows the necessity to take it's course.

THEN, is what leaves us in order to propel our limp bodies into waking life.
THEN- will abruptly leave you
like a lover who was not created to make love.
Like the lover who reminds you
of what love most essentially IS.
THEN will teach you the truth of Now.
Just like this. We are here now.

And it will teach you
that you and I and the water flowing, is all momentary.
And to marvel in those few moments
before they pass
is to love,
is to know one's feet upon the earth,
one's heart to it's synchopation,
and one's ear to it's orchestra.

It is all in your perception, afterall.
and what a grandiose elaboration this can be.

When faith has woven your canvas
truth becomes your savior.

color blind
and color bound.

The rats, the expectations, the possibilities?

2005-09-22T03:34:00.000-04:00

They were philandering in the midnight lined garbage cans. The rats, or the hungry? Both? I didn’t look to see. It was enough to keep on walking. The churning, the loitering of the plastic ballerina-dancing- jewelry box song via a cold, steel, garbage can on the side of a Brooklyn thoroughfare. It’s harsh. But it’s not even winter yet. It is still temperate, mild, and accommodating enough to look as this distraction. But the senses have been so long distracted, I just keep pacing forward. It’s not interesting or compelling anymore. And I wonder what I’ve lost by that. What of myself I threw in that garbage can by choice, circumstance, or subconscious action.

With guitars and bags of gear slung over the shoulder like the work horse that I am, I was on my way home. And all I could think of was that. Home. And the little dog that would be awaiting my arrival so eagerly, with the love, warmth, and joy a person can never find in all the parties and pleasantries of even the most divine. A place something like home, but never just so. A place with the accoutrements, and the silverware, and sitting area, but never quite the same appeal, the same soul, as home as I once knew it to be. We’re all just transitory strangers to ourselves and each other at this point. Even as I walk home with my significant other, and the philandering scavengers I don’t bother to look at or perceive. I hope we can overcome this. I hope we do leave eventually. Cause these concrete livelihoods are no place for fragile hearts softly beating. We all know this.

By 6am this morning (it’s now 2:37) I’m supposed to be on a flight to New Orleans, from which I am supposed to be driving to North Louisiana, Shreveport to be precise. There is a very big hurricane to hit by night Friday. But I’m still expected to fly into the middle of the impending disaster. Is any music really that important? (No). Because no one knows the trouble at hand. This is sad, and frightening. But it looks as if I’ll just fly right into Shreveport anyway, instead of new orleans. I should just barely miss the hurricane. But who won’t miss this hurricane is what worries me.

The dollar of everyone is at a higher premium than safety, prudence, and reasonable judgment. And we’re all victims of this crutch. Hey, I have rent to pay. So. Do they? So do they.

So we’re not isolated, free orbiting beings. We are connected after all. And when this category five lands, we’ll have a whole new land of brothers and sisters stranded. But hopefully this time we’ll know better, know we should react before, not long after.

But who am I to say that? With my family in tact and a temperate bed to rest in tonight. I am no one to say that at all. But I can’t help but keep thinking of change to come. What change we can make. Or can we?

I don’t mean to be idealistic. I know the world is a mean place. But even the rats in the garbage cans have their good days. And there is more possibility for goodness than we ever knew.

Perhaps we just have some digging to do.

Is this bothersome?

2005-09-21T18:21:00.000-04:00

A corporate conversation: Delta Airlines.

2005-09-21T16:48:00.000-04:00

So, I'm often perturbed with the horrendous customer service (or lack there of) and corruption, with the entire corporate paradigm- the phone companies, the airlines, the credit card issuers. All a bunch of vulchers and thieves who slip in extra charges in hopes that you don't have the time or patience to sit on the phone for an hour to get them to fix it, or do not provide the service you paid for, etc. But every now and then I feel as if a company treats me like a real human being. Like they respect fairness, and value. JetBlue is one of these rare corporate utopias! They are helpful, well-priced, give a great service, and are fair to their customers (like refunding money if you don't wish to fly yourself into a hurricane in your destination city).

It's been a while since I've used the other corporate evils for flight. After Katrina, JetBlue is not currently offering flights to New Orleans.... where I had to fly into to get to a show I have scheduled in Louisiana (northern part) this week.

I was routed to Delta on travelocity, who was up and running in New Orleans. Now, the new hurricane has caused evacuation of the city, and the Gulf looks like it may be in a bad place this week. I called Delta to cancel the flight, and get a refund because of the weather. It went something like this....

(After holding for 10 minutes listening to elevator music).

Delta: May I have your flight number?

Me: 1415 from New York to New Orleans. The mayor has ordered the city be evacuated again due to the new hurricane hitting this week.

Delta: Okay, let me check on the bulletins.
.....
That flight has not been cancelled. But since there has been an evacuation posted, let me double check to see what Delta is offering, we can probably give you credit for future flight or a refund. Let me check. Please hold.
......
Okay mam, I have my supervisor on the line and Delta is not issuing refunds or credit for this flight since the flight has not been cancelled. You'll have to call tomorrow to find out if the flight has been cancelled, or pay for the ticket even though you aren't making the flight.

Me: But my flight leaves tomorrow at 8am, tomorrow is too late to work out flight details. The city is being evacuated, it's unreasonable to fly people there right now.

Delta: You don't have to take the flight, but it is your responsibility since you booked the ticket and Delta has not cancelled the flight. You can check the status in the morning.

Me: I understand they haven't cancelled the flight. But the city of New Orleans is being evacuated, there will be no one there for transportation to as a means to get out of the city, the airport, etc. Do you guys usually continue with flights that are going directly into a current natural disaster?

Delta: Since you booked your flight on September 15th, you were aware of the problems. It is not Delta's responsibility if you knew the potential hazards.

Me: No, on September 15th, travelocity routed me to New Orleans on Delta. On Sept. 15th, New Orleans airport and roads to and from it were functional. Delta was up for business and operating to and from the New Orleans airport which had power, staff, and transportation to get out of. If Delta felt it reasonable to operate business to New Orleans after Katrina, then I assumed the same. If Delta was unable to refund tickets due to NEW hurricanes and disasters then you shouldn't have booked me for the flight.

Delta: This is our policy and no refunds will be made unless the flight is cancelled.

Me: What is your policy? To keep as much money as possible even if it means flying your potential customers to their deaths?

Delta: We are not responsible for hurricanes. The flight has not been cancelled.

Me: So the city will have no one in it to get people out of the airport, but as long as lightening, the 150mph winds, or the good grace of your bad karma, don't physically take your airplane out of the sky then you'll keep the flight scheduled and not respect my request to have the ticket refunded because it is unreasonable to fly someone into the middle of an impending category 5 hurricane?

Delta: I can't answer that question for you. You can call tomorrow and check on the status of the flight.

Me: Well okay. So, Delta gets to keep my $200, and I get nothing. (thought to self: you cheap bastards just filed for bankruptcy anyway. it's not like you have to account for your lost profits anymore. just give me my fucking $200 and respect the fact that I value not throwing myself into the middle of a category 5 hurricane. no wonder you bastards went bankrupt. corruption comes back to get you! karma suckers.)

Delta (impatient/pissy tone): You can call again tomorrow. I cannot refund your tickets, is not our policy. Is there anything else I can help you with?

Me: You know, maybe you can just reschedule my flight to a different place.....
....... how about Iraq? Likihood of survival is about the same there I'd guess. Or do you guys have any packages to North Korea? Maybe you could even just drop me out the emergency exit somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean, atleast I wouldn't have to worry about deranged, dehydrated gun-wielding looters if I got stuck there.

Thanks for your help!

---

So, I thought I'd look up more information on the poor treatment of Delta's customers and I found plenty of treats!
Perhaps the fact that they just went bankrupt has to do with their unacceptably poor service.

http://www.deltareallysucks.com/

http://www.boycottdelta.org

Stewardess fired for Blog.

A Plan to be nice?

Mercy Corps

2005-09-15T18:23:00.000-04:00

I recently played a benefit show and the proceeds went to Mercy Corps to aid in relief from Hurricane Katrina.
This organization seems to have a very comprehensive approach to disaster relief, including long-term
goals to help rebuild lives and communities, economically and otherwise. This is important, as
organizations like the Red Cross serve immediate needs, but not long term rehabilitation.

www.mercycorps.org

Also http://www.charitynavigator.org gives them a four star rate of approval. Charity Navigator
is a good resource to check out non-profits efficiency (how much of the money actually goes
to programs rather than salaries/administration).

How we love New Orleans.

2005-09-05T15:34:00.000-04:00

Sweet New Orleans.

Certainly you have heard the back-alley stories of the Big Easy: the booze, breasts, and brawl of mardi-gras season bourbon street, the witchcraft and esoterically indulgent corner shops selling everything from authentic voodoo dolls to authentic plastic mardi gras beads (made in some sweat shop in China).

New Orleans, unlike most of the places I’ve been, has a real soul. A dark soul, but a soul none-the-less. The culture of New Orleans, the heart beat of it, runs as deep as the roots of the Magnolia trees, and is as staggering as the dewey stormy skied moss that hangs from it’s branches.

New Orleans is where you go when you’re a kid from Baton Rouge who wants to be rebellious and go out drinking all night even though you’re still 17, where you go see chicks strip before you’ve even conceived the idea of sex or such adult perversions, where the riverboats are just as grandiose and beautifully painted as they were when Mark Twain was writing of them in the long passed golden days of a purer American sentiment, where you can go to café dumond into the morning hours with a cup of Louisiana coffee and plate of powdered beignets and let the world sink into your skin with the humid breeze coming just over the levee from the river.

The river to your left, the late-night wayfarer characters to your right, and an infinity of history more steeping into your bones. Almost any hour of the day there is a jazz band playing, a bright eyed little boy tap dancing on the corner, a gypsy promising to tell you of all that is to come, artists working their art on portable pop legged tables, seafood just off the boat being fried. This was New Orleans.

New Orleans is a James Dean, a Janis Joplin, a Jack Kerouac, a Martin Luther King, a Robert Johnson, an Elvis, a King. New Orleans is what all the affluence and architecture of an increasingly pretentious modern world cannot forge. New Orleans has a soul.

And I sit here in this metropolitan island, isolated and paralyzed. While the rest of the world is mobilizing, I can hardly move. What do you do? Giving money right now will certainly help the immediate needs, the food and water, and rescue efforts (which the federal government should have already taken care of, but clearly we can’t leave such issues as survival up to them… at least not when the people in need of survival are not privileged and white. Fuck!). But what about six months from now, a year from now, when our memories have been cramped with the latest news, the latest preoccupations, and more selfishly indulgent ways to again return to wasting our disposable incomes?
That’s what worries me. Because all the people were helping feed and house right now, will still not have homes to return to six months from now, or jobs, or any resource to provide for themselves. This affects the very poorest, the middle class and rich will recover. One third of the population of New Orleans lived in poverty before the hurricane hit. What now?

Mother nature’s tantrums can’t be prevented, but our civilizations and governments have significant resources on how to minimize (and possibly outright prevent) the damage caused by such disasters. The scale of disaster was well known and predicted. Officials KNEW the levees could only handle up to a category 3 hurricane, when Katrina was supposed to come in as a category 5 (she landed as a high 4).

Why has this hurricane affected so many people, and left so many people stranded without means for escape? We knew it was coming; we had time to get people out. Where was the National Guard (30-40% of Mississippi and Louisiana’s Nation Guard members were in Iraq)? Where were the evacuation teams, cars, busses, helicopters to get the people the hell out of there before it hit (those who did not have the luxury of owning their own cars or having the means/money to escape)?

It’s sick. It’s shameful. And it’s outright fucking unacceptable. And what a shame it is that it had to take such an extreme event of devastation for this inequity and discrimination rampant in our current governance to be highlighted and put on the neon signs.

The breaches in the levees could have been prevented, had proper funding requested been granted. It was denied, due to budget restraints because of the war in Iraq.
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/politics/12562638.htm

“The Washington Post reports that the project, which was supposed to cost $744 million overall, needed $62.5 million next fiscal year. The Bush administration proposed $10.5 million.

Engineers in the area had warned about catastrophic flooding for years. That left a Corps of Engineers spokesman offering this hollow explanation to USA Today about why New Orleans was so vulnerable: “We're talking about a tremendous effort at enormous expense at a time when the nation is strapped.”

Some resources to immediately help those in need:

http://www.hurricanehousing.org
http://www.secondharvest.org

Online Things

2005-08-29T10:05:00.000-04:00

This morning I was greeted by Malcom X in my in-box wishing me a good day.
I wondered what genuis could have produced such a useful e-product.

PBS!

You can make personalized E-cards celebrating Ella Fitzgerald, Martin Luther King,
Frederick Douglas, and more!

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/aaworld/free.html

Aw...

2005-08-23T14:03:00.000-04:00

Bow and pearls aside.....this is a ridiculously cute creature. I think it's time for doggy #2, to keep doggy #1 company. Cash deserves a friend. And I deserve a puppy. Right?

Pros (in getting another pup)
-A friend for Cash
-A friend for Cash=Cash no longer thinking human hands are other animals
-More cute-ness
-More love
-More snuggling

Cons
-More poo
-More pee
-Two dogs to pawn off on someone when trying to go on vacation as opposed to one

Hm......

scraps of paper relay this:

2005-07-27T17:13:00.000-04:00

July 2, 2005

Leave it to us then,
to make our arms strong
let us sweat
and push our uncaloused hands to the tasks
in which we can become builders
and learn by the bearings
of such an earth

Let us be men,
as we swagger in between
the wombs of our own children
and the beggars we should meet

Let us too, find God
within splintered skin, where we reside
for the glory of love is only known
by unsheltered men,
who don't fear their own kind

Let us stay here
beneath scarcely lit skies
with their invocation of terror
shadowed kindly
by a morning's reprise

July 17

We move through these things
carelessly shuffling between
the good gifts presented
and the necessity of one's needs

antenna fingers press the petal cheek
and run down the solemn chin,
to the other half, mirroring

those lips,
which carry the truth
become petty thieves
when allowing such a construction of
words to pass through

a dialect of defense
concrete letters to an
articulate inflection
of barbed wire fences

the uncertain soul held HOSTAGE
by willful intellect
just to keep the others out
no as not to be vulnerable
to a soft heart's hard attack

but I am not the undertake of your scarlet lined fears

i am another,

not the others

for a mute's safety net

for the one who makes love

2005-07-21T22:45:00.000-04:00

our bellies were full
we wept over this great fortune
as if it could have been
more than humble skin could contain

all hunger ever satiated
fleeting skin to remain

in tact

Keep it together, kid

2005-07-08T17:55:00.000-04:00

This is what I've been trying to tell myself, and convince myself of in recent days and weeks.
Simple concept. Hard to do. Highlights have included:

-being sentenced to my bed, in a prescription drug induced horrible body cramp, ache, shake, that took half a day to wear off. twice.
-during this time, sleep was impossible, and excessive analytical thinking was copious....and that burden made me even more ill than the physical disfunction
-Walking out of the art class I've been taking in the middle of the session, without justification... leaving my drawing paper behind with some slightly psychotic cryptic message about art not having purpose. After staring at inanimate objects (pots, pans, a chinese takeout box) with light flashed on them for an hour, I couldn't take it anymore. I figured that there had to be something with more purpose to go find before jumping out of the art studio window....
-coming to the conclusion i never want to make a record again unless someone else, or lots of someone else's, can fucking deal with getting it recorded, produced, and completed in a packaged, buy-able, cd format. my brain and body have been sucked dry, and I can't take it no more! it almost makes me hate music all together.

Dear World: Fuck Off!

I had lunch with a friend of mine, and I indulged in a sympathetic ear and finally admitted to my declining state of mind, and general disinterest in being a being on this earth. There's nothing more repulsive to me than being pathetic, helpless, and complaining about it....admitting it to another human being. Acknowledging the condition just makes me worse off, as the original depression just gets partnered up with a completely gross self loathing euphoria. I know, I should have no reason for complaints, I have more than I need. But that doesn't make things better when you feel that you've completely exhausted any good thing you ever had in you. You're at the end of the toothpaste tube, and it's just getting messy and depressing at this point.

I've been a blogophile today, perusing through the lives of dozens of people I don't know, and upon reading more about, have decided I don't WANT to know. I don't get the blog phenomenon. I hear some of these bloggers are celebrities in certain circles.... where does this exist? Do THAT many people really read any one given blog (even the "cool" ones) or is this just some bogus perceived value we've hyped up to ourselves because we're young, or hip, or just tragically doomed? Or maybe it's the manhattan appeal? Like all those really fucking cool ny based magazines that no one actually reads.

In any case, I feel certain that at most, maybe two or three people read this here blog, which of course would make sense considering I'm highly anti-social, post infrequently, and usually don't have much of a point or current news of hipster happenings. So, if you will humor me, if you are reading this blog, leave a comment. Make your existence known. I just want to know how few people really do read this. It would be good for me.....it's the least you can do, i mean I went through the trouble to spell check this post and everything.

See I've been thinking that maybe art and creation (including these writings) may be nothing more than some lame mental masturbation in which all us "artists" forge some "meaningful" life from. Dark thought, I know. And I'm trying to save myself from actually starting to believe it. It's a dangerous prospect.

Please fucking prove me wrong.

someone!

Toxic Culture

2005-06-30T17:43:00.000-04:00

The Blood you didn't know you had.

2005-06-29T18:05:00.000-04:00

http://www.crisispictures.org

Dear Mamma,

The world is on fire, I hear. But I stay inside most days because I am terrified of knowing what exists beyond my comfort level. Because when we were kids, Mamma, they didn't teach us about the world when we sat for 9 hours a day staring at the chalkboards.

They had created a picture perfect world, full of facts and evidence, a science to save our feeble minds. But the scientists can't stop the fires. God can't seem to stop them right now either. This isn't what we were told when our primarily educated minds were being developed.

And I can't help but feel a little misled. The truth, the whole picture would have brought us much further, had they just let us know. But candy coated anecdotes of what the world is, I suppose was a plan easier to digest. Less headache, right? We couldn't be bothered by headache, even at the cost of progress and empowerment. And I wonder now, since I have been misled, surely there are others in the same position. And where have all of my peers been misled to in their discourse? I escaped, but did they? Can they? Can we create hop for a generation of kids robbed of their consciousness, for the easier escape in formulas, pills, television, and vicarious living through celebrity’s personal lives and the want-more-want-more-want-more mentality.

I dislike having conversations with most people. I find pop culture disgusting, and I want to throw myself from a very high concrete building when I engage in the world somedays. Because it's appalling. The misunderstanding. The lack of knowledge, this bankruptcy of consciousness that has been slipped to us in mass doses from that silver spoon, from the elementary school days of reciting our patronage to the American flag each morning, to the mass media marketing machines of our adult lives convincing us of the ailments and inadequacies that didn't exist until the pin-up girls and boys told you they did (and classified your inferiority in exfoliated skin, lean enough muscles, a big enough penis, voluptuous plastic breasts, and all the flora and fauna of such a manufactured existence).

It's not anything personal against these aspects of this American life, it's simply that I, personally, do not see the purpose, or interest. And I worry that these easy opiates desensitize us to ourselves, and to those around us. It's no wonder everyone is depressed, we've repressed our true natures by a neon screen and purchasing things as department stores. We can almost always recognize material value and interest, and when viewing a photo of a man (your brother!! a brother!!!) shot down by cops, it can only be seen as a material photo, not an internalized, very real event, with cause for concern and action.

Is this why the vast majority of our kind walk around self-involved, and not only ignorant, but dis-interested in the slow, but certain degeneration of our country and our world? If we don't care to live in a healthy environment, eventually, we will not have the luxury of living in one. If you do not pay your house note, your house gets taken away. If you do not care for your children, the government will take them away. If you do not nurture your freedom, it will cease to exist.

Everyone is angry, mamma. Everyone is waiting to be offended, to be attacked, and to saddle up on a partisan group, to distinguish their beliefs from everyone else’s. But we're not going anywhere like this, are we? The anger is just growing, and we're beginning to forget why we're fighting, but it's all we know now. Anger and segregation, a habitual mannerism, rather than a necessity. I’m sick of fighting. It never changes anything.

What ties the human heart to it's creed, is a tie that cannot be changed by force or by fire. A man will live and die with all in the world that is true to him. But we're still waging holy wars, trying to rob each other of those gems, which can never be stolen by life or death. Imposing our ideals upon everyone else. But everyone else did not ask for it.

My concern, what's been on my mind, is that, no matter how divided we seem, we're all here together, and that's never going to change. No matter how much blood shed, money, love, war, or theft. It's been that way since the start of time- it's tested and true, that we all have to live together. And to do that, we have to be aware, and steady in keeping ourselves educated to the world around us- because it exists even if we choose to ignore it. And the longer we ignore the world outside of our shuttered windows, the worse the world gets.... the weeds grow, the ground becomes unstable, the roots in the yard begin to destruct your foundation, the winds blow, the rain beats your rooftop, and eventually, the world will consume your beaten vessel because you've chosen to ignore the powers that be, rather than accepting them, and finding a solution to preserve your happy home. It doesn't have to be this way.

I don't have an answer. I don't have the slightest clue. My ideals are a scratch on an immeasurable surface than is rooted in thousands of years and lifelines. But I do know the answers lie somewhere in truth, self-empowerment, and awareness. And it’s time we all recognize that so you, me, and the rest of the world can move forward. Mamma, will you move forward with me?

To keep us from wanting more . . .

2005-06-13T15:50:00.000-04:00

We tried to buy the world and it was never enough.

When we were younger we were hungrier. Starved for the solace secured in the self-projection of the self. The comfort in knowing that the world around you, too, would know you as you are without the social filters, without the freshly hemmed trousers, resting like a trophy down the fall of your leg.

When we were younger we did not know that our personal injustices were likely far surpassed by those without even the luxury enough to consider such spiritual repressions. Those souls whose daily battle was mere survival, to whom the prospect of the opportunity of developing a self would have been considered as fine a gift as fresh fruit, miraculously birthed from the deserts drafty pockets. A gift that would not be seen by such battered eyes. Nor the taste ever known of.

And there we were in our air-conditioned middle American homes, crying over our own frustrations of the middle-class warfare. Boredom, ignorance, and bliss. Our neighbors in the other worlds did not even have terms for such words. We got real good at hating ourselves, and hating one leads to hating the next.

We learned about education, and power, and monetary units we could hold in our hands like prophet’s words. Like a solution. We lied to ourselves and stood on our new thrones of ash to cast down potentials on the pure we had squandered. We drank heavy these distractions, as they comforted the ever churning mind, into its peaceful submission. We could hardly live the other way. What were we supposed to do? We were sad, and so affected.

He could consume everything with a single swoop. He found more in wanting more, and he paraded in this gluttony for a few years. He was running to and from the gut of these things, in a roundabout, circular fashion, until he once day ran back into his own arms. And away from inadvertantly killing himself, by the previous excursions. He seemed surprised I should understand this falling, but should it be any surprise at all?
We’ve all been trying to annihilate ourselves since birth, by force, by right, or by walking through the lines of fire, on our way to someplace else. Honey, I’ve been choking on those words so painfully long as you have. And I hope we don’t have to any more.

Because more,
Is never enough
For the insatiable soul

It’s not in the crisp green papers of freedom
It’s not in the golden brimmed bubble in the mug
It’s not in that plastic bottle with your name on it

No it’s none of those things, which provide us the freedom of confusion
It’s always in the things we’d prefer to be confused of

Cause they sting on the tongue as they exit your mouth
They tremble in your throat as everyone’s having a good laugh
And they stick to your skin like the sweat of another
Who feels like they should have been there from the start

So as our brown skinned siblings are plowed down by our boredom, I sit here with my new vision. I received glasses today, and have seen more distinguishing lines than ever before. And I talk about the other world as if I knew. As if my mother had been blown into stars by sensationalist antics and their mighty forces, as if my best friends had died without even trying. There may not be stained battlefields of bleeding red, of flesh, and demolition. And I may be trite and self-involved by even tainting such happenings with my own colors and visions, but it’s the best I know how. And my privileged, freedom bound friends have, in fact, been dying their mighty deaths, by the hands of their own repressions. But we, we here in our “civilized” world, we have the privilege of the walking dead, in their burial suits of gray, flimsy white-washed skin, jaundice and wanting more (air, life, love, peace, a fucking hamburger?). We watch our dead as they go about forging a life, filled by haunted memories of what once was. Our imaginations of ourselves. While the other side of the world has us to blame for their lover’s and loved ones tombs of eternal sleep, we too have ourselves to blame for the graveyards upon which we walk every day; the vast neon streets of candy-colored flesh in New York City, San Francisco, Las Vegas, all the way down to Little City X, America. The walking dead firing its weight to the eternal dead. I’m wondering who is fighting who, and if it’s fair to point any fingers at all.

You see, sadness and hate are world epidemics. And they plague our evil President like they plague the linen laced extremists blowing up the innocents in the name of their saving grace. It’s easy to forget how to live, when we’ve fogged up the glass, that could only be wiped clean by good love. We’ve become so consumed by fighting, either for the fighting to stop, or simply firing the guns, that we have nearly forgotten how to love. And now, most of us would find it easier (and more practical), to scream at politicians, or simply fire a gun, than to do something as simple as say three one-syllable words. (without flinching or thinking that the world might end).

And is life worth preserving if the preservation bears no fruit? Why is it so critical, so important that we stop the killers from their killing? If you want to stop the babies being aborted, you damn well better have something waiting for them on this other side. You better be sure you give them life, if you deny them death. You must sleep in the bed that you make, not force others to lay there. This is critical. That our good intentions, can march further than just principals, and the moral, and deliver those good intentions to fruition. Once we have stopped the killing, what should we have that warrants living for? These do not singularly exist. If we are so overzealous to stop death, and the hate, perhaps we should start exercising our capacity for the opposite as well.

And I’m trying to find some sense in this delicate web. The best way to invest the good intentions. Because we are unaware of most of what will grace us. Too inexperienced to know of the celestial that will sweep our paths to come.

So, I’ve been reading the news,
Been thinking of how to use it, and
I figured it’s best to just keep pushing …..

Until we’ve arrived.

And I wonder,
Will a lifetime ever be enough,
To keep us from wanting more?

The First: God in Man

2005-06-06T22:02:00.000-04:00

There have been a series of firsts
All of which I was unable to commit to memory
When they were a first
Because fresh minds do not know of their impending life’s significance,
Until the moment has passed

I was thinking of a friend, a special friend
Remembering when he had sent me postal mail
Inside, a creation of true form, made by hand
With intent and ideals placed beneath it’s crisply sticky package
It like was Christmas for a kid, with faith not only in an imaginary man,
But the good of man kind

Upon unraveling his gift, a creation meant to serve as tangible evidence of loosely placed feelings
I received a sharp pang in my belly
Like had never been there before
The mundane day had broken it’s own skin
And now there were streams of bloody tears turning from the source
It was good to be alive again
And there was God in that package in that way,
Making me see God in the man.

And when you see God in a man
You love the man
But the man is no more than a hazy façade of atoms and skin tone
Tactile charms, curious fingers, and open wide tongues
You think you have found what is worth holding on, but
it’s really the God you want

And sometimes a simple man will deliver
Deliver the gifts you did not know you needed or were even looking for
He’ll get caught in the doorway, between the words that prophets read
And the uncertain spaces left waiting on the pages in between

But now as I have seen the ghosts divide
and the mystery distill from the science
of this
I have seen that the man is no more than a myth
Charming, warm, but nothing more than an imaginary magic man is to a wishful kid

He is not the bible or the serpents tongue,
Or the apple, or the cavalry’s guns
He’s a man who showed you some,
Some of what now you can’t remember

We were just searching for truth
And once, we thought we had found it
In the God that we could channel by
Mortal fingertips and two dreamer’s prowess

There was a first evidence of truth
Progress
And the love that a man can deliver
Thought he was not the one, who should deliver you

Like a Carousel

2005-05-25T15:30:00.000-04:00

So here I am. It is May nineteenth in the year two thousand and five, but those numbers have lost their weight. I have been without them for a while. No longer racing, because as it turns out, I’m the only one in the race, and whatever pace I make, seems to be just about right. That pace has been constant, with little rest, but for a few hours when the world dreams of the love that we’ll make in the morning.

There is nothing but green lights streaming before me, a frenzy of neon truth, luminescent god gracing this broken little vessel with the ornaments of heaven and beyond, in wavelengths that pierce you beyond bone, and sit marinating in your heart for as long as you’ll allow it. It’s really quite wonderful. And it just keeps on coming.

And when this joyride ends, there will be stories for a lifetime of wishes, and faith that has found its place in this perseverance of truth.

It all comes around. You’ll see.

Imposters & Truth

2005-05-08T12:54:00.000-04:00

May 8, 2005

Chemical clean and air-conditioned cool. This is often the way of things in such a modern world. I wonder how it got to be this way. Hundreds of years ago when we ran around in scraps of clothing, without running water, the luxury of electricity, or prepackaged home cleaning agents, what was the standard, the archetypical “clean?” What was the smell of “clean” then? Fresh lilacs from the garden, a long breeze from across the horizon, a hot glycerin bath, freshly baked bread in the oven? Naturally occurring niceties were surely the gold standard…..at least I’d like to think so.

And I’m curious how we got here from there. Here and now, with our chemically manufactured, emotively, Pavlov-ian tailored products to seduce our every sense….. from the smell of McDonalds fries to the “sea-breeze, linen” scented Lysol cans that smell nothing like a sea-breeze or fresh linen, but rather their chemical counterparts that have been constructed to closely mirror their original superiors. The verisimilitude of the imposter often hard to recognize. But when you have stood on the edge of a ship in the ocean, or frolicked in between sun-lit crisp line dried sheets, you know this difference. You know this difference like you know real love by the softness of a tongue, like you know your best friend's body-movements, and like you know of the blood that whirls through your veins when you're hanging off the edge of yourself. When you know this difference, real, the prototypes of these things becomes sacrosanct to your thriving existence. The imposter nearly unbearable, and absolutely unacceptable. And if you want crisp linen sheets, you'll wash them yourself, rather than spraying them from a can. No matter how inconvenient it may be.

In the south, summer is unbearable without air conditioning. A metal clicking, energy-sucking unit plugged into the wall that indeed conditions your environment to be conducive to functioning without having to shower every 15 minutes. But I can’t help but feel something very good is lost in the churning in and out of re-constructed and conditioned air particles. I have no tolerance for a/c blowing directly on me. I prefer to be hot and perspiring than to have contrived ice-air bellowing around me from fans, or machines, or car dashboards. It feels as if it’s an attempt to further homogenize the soul, the natural commitment a human body has to the organic earth, as uncomfortable as it sometimes may be. I’m not saying there is some conspiracy being plotted and primed, but for me personally, these machines make me cold in more than one way. Cold and conditioned are not of much interest to me.

Maybe I’ll move to Mexico.

The beauty of uncertainty

2005-05-07T22:32:00.000-04:00

Sometimes, if not more often than not, the words of others speak truths which your mind has yet to let you articulate. The words and creations of others propel us into our future states... into a better developed and functioning mind. Here's something I thought was so eloquently written....on a topic that is often in my thoughts, especially at present.

HoBO Magazine
(www.hobomagazine.com)
Issue Number 5

The Beauty of Uncertainty
BY BRIAN HENDRICKS

"Doubt is not a pleasant situation, but certainty is absurd." Voltaire

People with missing children. Children without parents. People without food or water. There are many who are destroyed by not knowing what the future holds. For those of us more fortunate, the beauty of uncertainty is that it motivates us to seek certainty. We are compelled to replace doubt with conviction, to replace confusion with clarity, to be more fearful of old ideas instead of new ones. Nothing is more disparaged than the person who is lost, hesitant, and anxious. Yet the true path to fulfillment comes from these conditions. Uncertainty becomes truly beautiful when connected with the certainty that there is a better life beyond the life that is known. The artist, scientist, entrepreneur, athlete, and traveller: all embrace uncertainty as their muse. What is going to happen next is more enticing than what is happening now. The thrill of anticipation, the mystery of the unknown, the open road, mistakes as portals of discovery, the inevitability of change, purpose from chaos, questions leading to answers, failure as the threshold of knowledge. All of these conditions inform the life of the adventurer, the human being who is engaged in becoming. The beauty of uncertainty is that it prepares us to embrace life in the face of death. Allows us the strength to deal with the freedom to choose. To willingly exchange the fear of uncertainty for the security of certainty is to admit defeat. To surrender to the fear of actually living your life. As T. S. Eliot observed, "Where is the life we have lost in living?" Nothing moves forward except by the craving to seek certainty from uncertainty.

"For without risk there is no faith, and the greater the risk, the greater the faith." Soren Kierkegaard

We are prone to fear. The world is a mass of confusion. Traditions are ridiculed. Mythologies are forgotten. True freedom is a curse. Natural disasters are unnaturally common. Celebrities have replaced heroes. Ideals have been replaced by images. Many are running scared and only too willing to embrace the forces that offer a respite from the winds of change. What can we believe in? God, country, ourselves? What can we be certain about? Death, decay, oppression? What are we willing to risk, defend, support and dream? What would we like to be certain of: life span, love life, finances, and security? Can we gain anything without giving something up? Is there faith without risk? If you knew without question what was going to happen next, would there be any real satisfaction in it happening? The greater the risk, the greater the faith. Embracing uncertainty is to say yes to life: to say yes to the death and destruction, the success and failure, the tragedy and the triumph. Lord Byron said that the great art of life is sensation, to feel that we exist, even in pain. The beauty of uncertainty is that it allows us to overcome our fear. It allows us to take risks so we can experience faith. A life without uncertainty is the end of the imagination; the death of the imagined; the negation of faith.

"I think the main reason I travel, if I were to sum it up in one word, is for ambiguity." Pico Iyer

Why are the least informed so certain and the thinkers so full of doubt? Our culture is a business and we are the shareholders. We strive to maximize our profits, to eliminate ambiguity in favour of certainty. What is the film we all want to see, what is the book we all want to read, who is the icon we all want to emulate? How can we be different yet all be the same? Amuse us. Distract us. Assure us. Guide us. Tell us what to do and how to do it. Let Martha Stewart design our kitchen, Dr. Phil will raise our kids, Dreamworks will provide our narratives, and ad execs will supply our thoughts. Where can we even find true ambiguity in a world of invented certainty? Whos dreams are we dreaming? We travel to experience ambiguity. To remind ourselves of the diversity of landscape and the spontaneity of existence. To feel the sheer exhilaration of a new experience. To remind ourselves of the endless possibilities that our lives consist of. The journey we are on is fraught with difficulty. No one here gets out alive. We are constantly challenged to perform, to succeed, to overcome our difficulties and win the race. We come to realize that performance itself answers the challenge. That life is ultimately defined by our difficulties. The race is won in the opportunity to run it. The beauty of uncertainty is that it is ambiguous and ambiguity encourages us to create, search, explore, and travel. As one of us once said, "When you are tired of change, you are weary of life itself."

"It's one thing to be certain. But you can be certain and be wrong." John Kerry addressing George W. Bush in Presidential Debates, 2004.

The world has never been more chaotic despite assurances that the situation is under control. The only thing under control is the manipulation of perception. Global warming is a scare tactic. None of Georges friends are getting rich from Middle East oil. Freedom is Americas greatest export. Baghdad will get its Disneyworld. Lets not quibble over details like weapons of mass destruction. Osama Bin Laden? Axis of Evil? Crusades? The American Presidential election was a victory of certainty over uncertainty. Tell us what we want to hear and we will follow you. The message was there is little beauty in uncertainty. That uncertainty is ugly, and dangerous, and destructive. We must have resolve. We must kill or be killed. You are either with us or against us. Confusion is a luxury we cant afford. The religious right is never wrong. Give us your fear of the unknown and we will turn it into the security of the known. Go back to sleep where you will be safe under the intoxication of your agreeable illusions. If you shine a flashlight in a dark room there is light everywhere the flashlight is pointed. We live in a world wherein we are compelled to follow whoever is handling the flashlight. We ignore the reality of the darkness that exists wherever the light is absent. The darkness is the uncertainty and the light is the beauty that helps us overcome it. But we need to hold the flashlight ourselves and recognize that the darkness exists. The people who are selling us certainty can indeed be wrong. As Goethe said, "When ideas fail, words take over." The beauty of uncertainty is it allows ideas to cultivate and grow and hopefully transcend the tyranny of the untested word.

"Man can be destroyed but not defeated." Ernest Hemingway.

The recent tsunamis in the Indian Ocean. Thousands killed, millions displaced. Entire villages gone forever. Unparalleled uncertainty. Where is the beauty to be found here? How limited our vocabulary becomes when confronted with the often devastating forces of nature. All perspective is lost. Better to remain mute than to scream obscenities at the storm. But perhaps the beauty is to be found in the stories of the survivors? In the stories of people helping people. The rich helping the poor. Christians embracing Muslims. Warships dispensing medicine instead of missiles. Already we have witnessed one of the most humane and heroic aid operations in world history. Unprecedented acts of compassion and generosity. Combatants have paused in their battlefields to reflect on their own inadequacy in killing fellow human beings in comparison to this subtle shift of the earths weight. Will this holocaust of uncertainty lead to the resolve necessary to eliminate the disparity between the first world and the third? Will we gain the wisdom required to create a future rather than add to the destruction? Hopefully we will stay reminded of how fragile life can be. Learn to appreciate what we have, instead of what we think we need. Realize we are all in this together. Recognize the unparalleled beauty that comes out of unparalleled devastation. Our thoughts and tears go out to those who have lost everything and everyone. There is no one to blame. We can only accept the uncertainty and continue on.

'The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty; not knowing what comes next.' Ursula K Leguin

Hobo Issue #5. Living with uncertainty. Who reads us? What do we have to say? Why are we compelled to say it? Who is willing to advertise with us? Who wants to come on board and travel with us into the future? What makes us think the world needs another magazine and are we even a magazine? William Blake said, "If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise." Lets hope so. We venture into 2005 with the hope that Oscar Wilde was just being facetious when he observed that it is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating. We have gathered some writers, photographers, thespians, models, artists, thinkers, and people of the planet who have contributed to and therefore have an understanding of the beauty of uncertainty. We welcome the chameleon prowess of actress Naomi Watts. We revisit the diverse film worlds of Barfly and Jean Luc Godards Notre Musique. We travel to the realm of the grizzly bear and the enigmatic landscapes within Quebec, Iceland, Ibiza and Japan. Music is celebrated with profiles of Feist, John Frusciante, and Donovan Frankenreiter. The life of the artist is appreciated through encounters with Seu Jorge in Sao Paulo, Joana Preiss in Paris, and Aaron Huey in America. Fashion takes us to Vancouver Island on the west coast of British Columbia. Hobo continues to travel to mapped regions of the known world in pursuit of evidence that curiosity will conquer fear as much as courage will. We venture into unrecorded areas of the imaginary world to ascertain that life isnt about finding yourself - life is about creating yourself. We dont want to live in a world that is so small we can comprehend it. We collectively welcome you to the magic of the mysterious and the infinity of the unknown. "Nothing is built on stone; all is built on sand, but we must build as if the sand were stone." Jorge Luis Borges.

Follow your bliss. Imagine. Seek the high road. Know thyself. Embrace the earth. Stay awake. Hobo invites you to the journey, and to the beauty of uncertainty.

Dear Friend,

2005-05-04T01:08:00.000-04:00

Dear Friend,

As I sit here alone, after days of little sleep, and impending disillusion that such misuse of the body typically evokes, I have been thinking about you. You and I, more specifically. I can’t help but wonder what pieces of our puzzle, our ever more intricate web of conversation, experience, warm hands on hands all build up to right this second. I could be in your thoughts just as easily as I could not exist at all. I wonder which it is, and I wonder what it one day will become.

Because you see, my friend, this skin that I have met you in, is so stifling sometimes. We get so accustomed to these fancies, the paradigms of proper conversation, standard course of action, we’re so set in our ways we don’t even realize it on an average day. And we can talk, we can provoke thought and conversation, and know that the company we’re in, is privileged and true. But my friend, I wonder what more lies just beneath. Just slightly beneath where we’ve already gone, past the clean glistening plastic honey encasement of this human form, just a slight fracture on the unwilling skin and structure, to leak even the slightest ray of light, of the embers that flee from their confinement like school children on recess in an autumn afternoon. Just a slither of it, that place, that substance which created you, the place that can siphon all the atoms, and chemicals, and inexorably tied soul from one heart directly to the other. The real, the truth that would tie you to altruistic ties with a friend for life. Where faith and truth are kind, and consistency of kindness and dependability as a friend is never questioned. No hidden agendas, or false desires, just an eternal band-aid on your soul that’ll always be there to keep the fracture from destroying you. Pure Love will now allow for anything less. And Pure Love is a nearly extinct commodity.

I would like to live with every one of my friends in that place. And I try. But even friends will rip the bandage off, without even trying. The good heart that gives, will just as soon be trampled on, as it will be cradled. And it’s paralyzing.

Paralyzing to know the likelihood of such vulnerability and honesty, yet letting the fracture bleed, every time you find a prospect worthy of it (which of course, is not often).
I have very few friends who are wholesome and true, through and through. Friends who treasure this blessed fracture, and revel in the lifeline within such ties.

So, friend, I am thinking of you in highest regards and wondering which one of these friends you will one day become. We should never be able to know at present, for it is time, the ever-towering monument of ultimate truth, that will enlighten us eventually.

I have been experimenting with operations in truth. In experimenting with your human confines to seek what is true to you, what seems inexplicably right for you. You can seek whatever piques your curiosity or desire for experience, anything at all, just as long as your intentions are honest to anyone else they may affect, and of course, to yourself. When you place such faith in truth, no matter how terrifying questioning the long ago constructed gates and barriers of conditioned living, and a conditioned, biased, right vs. wrong, no matter how futile it may seem, the discoveries you will uncover are such enlightening nuggets of vibrance and jubilation, you’ll never again think twice about sticking to your new path of truth.

And when you do, you have to defend yourself as you walk down it, from all the ones who haven’t been fortunate enough yet to be graced with so much love and good blessings. They will eat you alive if you let them. And because you can no longer see evil, since it does not exist to you, it is nearly impossible to recognize these spies and assassins. It’s only once they have been invited in for tea and a place to rest on your couch, that you can see the truths or mistruths of another human, another soul.

And so my friend, I hope you stay here in good company. For future cups of tea, conversation, and love. I don’t expect anything but what the day provides, but I have hope and faith in something great. So please hang on, please remember these things. The rewards for us both could be so sublime. If you’ll just be kind, I will promise to try and always do the same.

DEAR AMERICA.

2005-04-15T03:18:00.000-04:00

DEAR AMERICA,

MY HEART IS BROKEN. TODAY. DEAR, SWEET AMERICA, IT’S BROKEN, ALL BROKEN, YET AGAIN.
I PLAYED MY SOUL, LIKE A SOULLESS UNSTRINGRD HARP
PLAYED IT LOUD AND WITHOUT RESErVE.
I MADE NOT A PENNY TO MY UNKNOWN NAME
AND OWED MORE THAN I OFFERED TO THE SOUND MEN
FOR LENDIING ME THE CHANCE
I WALKED HOME IN THE DEAD COLD
AND ITS APRIL FOR CHRISTs FUCKING SAKE
AND I TREMBLED IN TERROR, AMERICA,
OF WHAT YOU CREATE

THE DRUNKARDS ON THE AVENUE
THE COLLEGE BOYS WITH LIBATION AND NO BOOKS
THE BEAUTIFUL GIRLS WHO KNOW BEAUTY IS A HIGH EXCHANGE RATE CURRENCY
AND ME, WITH MY AMERICAN BROKEN HEART STRAPPED TO THE ASPHALT, DRUG ALONG THE CONCRETE
THE END. THE GOD DAMN END OF ME.

AND AMERICA,
I SAW THE MUI MUI ADS
WITH CELEBRITY SALESMEN PLAYING THEIR ROLE
TO SHOW WHAT BEAUTY IS AND WHAT IT AINT
AND THE SMILES BROKE MY HEART IN A HOLE

I AM DEVOURING A BAG OF COOKIES, SWEET AMERICA
BECAUSE THERE IS NO MORE SWEETNESS LEFT
BUT IN A BAG, IN MY HAND, PURCHASED WITH MONEY I DON’T EVEN HAVE.

AND GOD DAMN GOD DAMN AMERICA
I’M DRINKING MILK OUT OF A CARBONATED CAN!
IT TASTE LIKE WATER, TASTES LIKE POISON
WHEN WAS IT I LOST MY TRUEST LAST FRIEND?

I LOVED MY MOTHER MORE THEN EVEN I, SEEM TO KNOW
SHE TOLD ME OF SHELTER AND MAKING A GOOD HOME
AND SHE VOTES NOW, EVERY FOURTH YEAR IN VAIN
FOR THE ONLY MAN WHOM MOST HER RELATIVES DON’T SHAME

AND AMERICA
MY HEARTS BEEN BROKE IN HALF
FOR MY MOST LOVED LOVER LIVED JUST DOWN THE HALLWAY
AND EVERY NIGHT WHEN I STUMBLE IN, I SEE HIM
I CONSIDER HIM
AND I HAVE A KEY TO HIS ROOM
BUT HE HAS THE KEY
TO ME.
IT’LL NEVER BE RETURNED, OR COPIED

GOD DAMN IT BREAKS MY HEART, DEAR AMERICA
HOW YOU SHAME YOUR “CIVILIZED NAME”
I SRENT MY DAY TODAY IN A WAITING PLACE
FOR THE DOCTORS TO SAVE THE POOR HUMAN RACE

AND THE DARK PEOPLE THEY CRIED,
THE FAIR SKINNED MOANED,
NOT A MAN WOMAN OR CHILD WAS JUSTLY OCCUPUIED
IN THEIR SLIPPERS FILLED BY THE POOR

THERE IS NO RACISM.
THERE IS NO CALVINSISM.
NO BLACK, WHITE, OR GRAY

IN THE WAITING ROOM OF THE WORKING MAN
WE’RE ALL FIGHTING JUST TO LIVE TO SIMPLE ENDS

THERE ARE HAVE AND HAVE NOTS.
THERE IS NO LONGER IN BETWEEN.

AND TODAY I SAW THE SWEETEST CHILD, WITH A HEART BIGGER THAN GROWN MEN. AND A SOUL MAYBE OLDER THAN MINE.
HE COULDN’T HAVE BEEN MORE THAN THREE.
AND HIS HEART WAS FULL, HIS FEET WERE DANCING FREELY
HE ROCKED HIS BABY SISTER IN HER CRIB FOR CARRYING
AND HE SMILED AT THE WILTED, GROWN LOST HEARTS,
FOR ALL THE FAITH HE STILL KNEW OF

AND MY LITTLE DOG WAS GONE WHEN I GOT Home
THE OLD LOVE TOOK HIM IN FOR, LOVE.
AND WHAT IS A LONELY GIRL TO DO.
I LOVE THAT SIMPLE ANIMAL
MORE THAN I LOVE MOST CREATURES WITH BRAINS AND LIMBED HOOVES

AND GOD FUCKING DAMN
I DO LOVE YOU AMERICA
LIKE I LOVE ALL THE LOVE THAT I’VE LOST

AND YOU’RE A TORN AND UGLY THING
BUT I HAVE FAITH IN WHAT YOU ARE TO BECOME
AND GOD DAMN, DISTANT AMERICA
I JUST WALKED MY BROKEN FEET OFF A JET PLANE
FALLEN HALFWAY ‘CROSS THE EARTH,
AND YOURE POLITICS ARE JUST THE SAME

AND DARLING AMERICA,
THE POOR ARE EVEN POORER THAN WHEN I LEFT
SWEET HOME AMERICA,
IT ONLY BRINGS TEARS BY KNOWING WHAT WEVE PROGRESSED.

GOD DAMN, GOD DAMN AMERICA
I’M SO SORRY ABOUT VIETNAM
I’M SORRY ABOUT HIROSHIMA
I’M SORRY ABOUT IRAQ
I’VE BEEN READING THE HISTORY ACCOUNTS
THE ONES WHITE, PRIVELEGED MEN DON’T ACCOUNT.
AND I’M SORRY FOR MY BLOOD
BEFORE I COULD RECOLLECT

AND SWEETEST, MOST PURE, DEAR AMERICA
I STAND BEFORE YOU
SO PROUD

NOT OF WHAT YOU ARE
A DISMAL, BLEAK, BATTERED SOUL
BUT SWEET, SWEET, DARK AMERICA
I’M WAITING FOR YOUR RECOURSE
WAITING FOR YOUR TURN AROUND
TO WASH HANDS CLEAN OF THE CAPITAL MACHINES
AND SWIM FREED IN A NEW SEA OF
PURE PURE PURE
PURITY.

GOD GOD GOD DAMN! AMERICA
YOU GONE AND BROKE MY SAD HEART IN HALF
CAUSE I LOVE YOU SO,
I LOVE YOU SO
AND YOU’LL BREAK ME DOWN
BEYOND THE BONE

OH I LOVE YOU SO, I’LL ALWAYS LOVE YOU SO
BUT I’LL CALL YOUR HAND
WHEN YOU’RE STEALING BONES.

I LOVE YOU SO.
I FUCKING TOLD YOU SO.
BUT I WON’T STAND BLIND
AS YOU BREAK MY HANDS so UNKINDLY

I WON’T STAND SMILING AS YOU
WEAR NEW SHAMES.
I WON’T BE JOYOUS WHEN YOU
RAPE MY WHOLESOME NAME.

AMERICA, WILL YOU HEAR ME NOW?

AMERICA, I LOVE YOU.
WITHOUT A DOUBT.

DON’T LET ME DOWN.
DON’T LET ME DOWN NOW.

SWEETEST DEAR AMERICA.

From a smoky southern bar

2005-03-22T23:10:00.000-05:00

Phil Brady's Bar
Baton Rouge, LA

I must be morphing into a fucking Yankee. The whiskey-to-coke ratio in my drink is stinging my tongue like rubbing alcohol on an open wound. The shotgun cigarette smoke is overwhelmingly swelling the room and to my eyes it's absolute poison- acid burning them to ruins. Girls down here are more beautiful- the generalization that most everyone accepts, is mostly true after all. Gods Aphrodite prototypes.

The drinks are stiffer- you can taste the poison drowning your soul. No telling the horrid effects it's going to have on your stomach, intestines, liver, colon, and thereafter. But that doesn't concern me so much right now, really I'm just pleased I got a drink poured right for a change. My hands become much lighter, almost limp when gyrated against one another in an attempt to applaud the band playing. I wonder if my hands might just fall off, right here and now, drop to the floor like soggy biscuits. No good anymore. Maybe this is the end. My blood will soon fall to pieces, brain will atrophy and crack my skin like an earthquake, and I'll fall dead to the floor with my hands.

I realize that I'm being paranoid and I need another drink.
..
...
..
Life is an excuse to get drunk and sad
So we sing along to old soul songs when the world is going bad
and salvation ain't nowhere to be found
streets of mercenaries screaming the word of the lord we don't believe in, but fear everyday

and the billboards on the highway were from God and they said
"I'm coming, I'm coming for you. Will you be ready?"

they got a first class budget for judgment day
got a round trip ticket from heaven to this awful place.

Cowboy Boots & Glory Pursuits

2005-03-19T19:27:00.000-05:00

Austin, Texas.
South by Southwest

Cowboy boots, but no cowboys. Glory pursuits, in line with the fashion. We wave our arms to the motions, bend our wills to our ways, and in this mob of confusion, face value appears to replace faith.

The circus, the brigade, the hand shakes, and free drinks.... privilege for remembering strangers names. I really can't complain that my belly is full and head of libations enough to make such social fancies work for me. But these social implications soon loose their appeal and I'm about as inclined to speak to a new stranger as I am to shoot myself with a shotgun. Just feels like one long gambling night that never ends and may amount to some profit, but will always be lacking in payments of comprehension of further enlightenment or soul revivals. Most of this playing dress up seems just a distraction from the point, from the truth, and I want to run back to the studio, back to my room, back to the arms of old friends or a library of books- anything real, anything away from this royal jester parade. It's just not my place, that's all. It takes all kinds, and my kind, of like mind are increasingly harder to find- the divide between my skin and all the others becoming indelibly more pronounced.

I don't do the rock star thing.
I do the musician thing.
And I want to go home.

Convenience, Quality, and Bar-B-Que

2005-03-17T22:21:00.000-05:00

The roads have been clear- the ominous skies dissipated as the day rose to it's feet- well strapped laces, freshly shined and ready for any variable to come. Got Neil Young to accompany us through the speakers and we're shooting straight through Houston like it were a contagious disease, which is many ways, I guess it is. Paul refuses to stop in this fabricated Tex-Mex caucasion circus and I don't blame him, even though I'm copiously salivating over the idea of some bar-b-que- as it can only be found in true form here in Texas- Bar-b-que that could easily be obtained at any Houston interstate exit, lodged between trails of truckers litter, Wal-Marts, a myriad of Ethnic cusine restaurants all in Americanized Uniform of hideous neon signs and shiney plastic accutrements, gas stations, and shit-kicker western boot outlet stores. A proletariats paradise, free of the shackles of ambition or motivation. Apathy and good cuts of meat, Gods of all these things round here. Fair enough. I can taste the tang of bar-b-que already....

But Houston won't receive our patronage today. I personally would have given in to my stomach pangs and weak will and exploited Houston for what it's worth (damn good bar-b-que), but Paul has remained steady and true in his resistance and unparalleled disgust of such a tacky paradigm. He is clearly much more of a purist than I am, though he DID very eagerly scarf down a full McDonald's breakfast this morning: cheese egg buscuit, hasbrowns, coffee and all.

We try.
Convienence often runs a close second to quality.

Fruitition

2005-03-01T22:51:00.000-05:00

Connection to other sacred souls
Provides no guarantee of consistency or truth
For most with such conditions are so complex
That there are many truths and persuasions,
Some of which contradict one another
And within skin and context
You could call your friend a liar or hypocrite

Those who proclaim their thoughts loudly
Find it harder to change their minds later on
Those who embrace prescience, speak softly
And do not invest their futures before they reach them

The purest souls often have the biggest mouths
And while in this human context, they make themselves out to be frauds
When really they are pure kid hearts, just playing dress up
Testing their condition, and toying with skin and such
To see the limits, and the definites

A cherry in the dewdrop morning
Will rot in passing days
Though the seed will survive it’s vessel and produce for ages
While our skin and fruit appears bruised
The bedded seeds remain, steady, constant and true.

muse in the machine

2005-02-24T22:18:00.000-05:00

We may well try to listen
Though curled words fall upon deaf ears
We will crawl to our convictions
Though mighty winds blow straight through pretense

Call at your will
But for will there is no place
For future arms of
Black veiled brides
Fall dead at creation’s fists

Murder to the martyrs
Who built their articulate falls
Instead let us Sing lost songs to silhouette men
Who were saviors with no need for applause

We all bellow at the muse in the machine
With her courage, her course, her disgrace
As she charges the helms of our vessels
We shall sink beneath her inexorable grip

May you be freed.
May you be freed of me.
May you be made.
Be a made man, as the muse leaves the machine

Fresh

2005-02-23T03:30:00.000-05:00

While it’s fresh. While the wheels are still spinning, and altered states of mind are still altering, I will do this. Before it become too late, before we are past our prime, before I wake up at 7am tomorrow and realize how silly I was this night before, I will document an evening. We are at some grandiose pinnacle that will never falter. I have a gut feeling that even 20 years from now, regardless of how kind or unforgiving music business and aging will be on us, we will always look back at right this very second and realize how spectacular it was. Where on earth would you find yourself in a bar crawling with respectively talented writers, singer, musicians, and minds, and stay all night enjoying the good company and cheap bar drinks. The possibilities are endless, the inspirations overflow, and if heaven were to bless us now, in a very average and expected demeanor, it would be exactly this. Brittle hearts finding broader spectrums. Gentle minds gracing greater stages.

For as much as I complain, really, there is no other place like this one. It doesn’t matter the end result of everyone’s hard work, poverty and struggling really, cause we’re all here now. And now is truly a lovely place to be.

We trekked all the way out to Brooklyn, and didn’t make a dime. We played, lugged gear, sweated, tried, killed, died just a little bit and didn’t make enough to cover the cab ride to actually get back home. We got free drinks and good company though, and in those payments you can’t ever really complain. For that is the brilliance of such endeavors. I guess we made just enough to get us through this night and into tomorrow. And tomorrow we will start all over again, our occupations, never ending. For even in slumber such motion will consume the muse filled mind.

But we can’t complain of our occupancy any more than we can of our poverty. We welcome these things, and there is absolutely no greater place to be.

a momentary thought

2005-02-18T23:03:00.000-05:00

The city has been passive since we got here, leaving most of it's usual burden's to rest, sleeping soundly beneath the frozen asphalt streets. I haven't paused long enough to realize that I'm actually here. These days have been nothing more than a dream periodically woken by the light of day, or the shimmer received in kind eyes and warm breath beneath another's brow. It's cherry red, gleaming, fire of destruction into reconstitution, it's kid stuff, parades, lights and we're easy like this. Free men flow through the city streets unknowingly now protected by armor of purer hearts pacing themselves toward each other with rapid enthusiasm. The creators take their appreciated stages and squint their midnight eyes to the imposed smokey lights, showcasing this dewey skin's human condition. It's quiet in a small crowds arms of undivided attention. Gentle souls can travel freely through these places without fear of being harmed.

There is salvation for those in search. For those who fear not their conditions, glorious things are to come.

While you were out...

2005-02-18T21:34:00.000-05:00

Dearest Friend,

I came by to give you a hug, but no one was home. In your absence, the room was hollow and I realized that having the luxury of love just down our dark and ominous corridor is more of a privilege than anyone deserves. Maybe sometimes over looked, and even taken for granted in its accessibility and open arms. A fault easy to fall into when inundated with general happiness and unrestricted love.

I went to your cabinet to feast on some bread and jelly and noticed that there was still coffee in the coffee pot. I had been thirsting for coffee, and was not expecting this lone room to provide it for me. Coffee, a delicacy, a necessity in the first hours of a breaking day. It looked promising, and I crossed my fingers in hopes it was still warm, as if it retaining heat would also mean this room was retaining more of you than I could actually see. I considered momentarily, and gently pushed by fingertip to the glass. It was warm, very warm, and I couldnt help but think it must have been by design of the hands that made the coffee earlier this day. Did you just forget to throw the rest out, or did you leave it there for the remote possibility of consumption by someone else? By me, more specifically. The thought of that prospect alone was enough to make lukewarm coffee engulf my tongue like a warm kiss of relationships long gone. Embellishing on mere possibility was enough to start the day off right.

The room was sweating and sticky in its own heat. I opened your window to let loose the moldy smell and constriction of air. I hoped this was good for you, upon your arrival home, whenever that may be. Because you deserve that comfort.

Thank you for the coffee.

City Streets Howl

2005-02-12T20:07:00.000-05:00

The city streets howl at me despite great height and thick windows, they don’t loose their volume or presence. I forgot to go outside today, the sun left, and it’s eight o’clock in the evening. My humble room stays dark most of the day, despite personally installed lights and lamps trying to combat this dungeon like appeal. I can’t tell if this has been positive or endlessly dangerous. I’ve been trying to think of what I did with the day. A lot of things, but mostly negligible in a grander scheme. The endless things to fill the day with, I will always fall to sleep at night feeling as if I fell a little short of fulfilling. The mind in a constant frenzied whirlwind of possibility, the dance and shuffle of the marvelous experiences you can partake in. We have feasts before our eyes every single minute, and perhaps I’ve stuffed myself so full I can’t move.

I will be leaving soon though. The night calls. And I have a lot of eating to work off. We’ll find gods and monsters. We’ll dance to the constant rhythm of our million feet rocking together. We will fall at each other’s doorsteps, uncomfortable and afraid. The sound will carry you through. Chance, will take good care of you. Surely, libations will befriend me, and when I finally stumble home to slumber, I’ll be gently rocked to sleep by sweet whiskey’s peace and the dream of humming city streets that no longer howl at me.

delicate, verbal snapshots

2005-02-08T02:42:00.000-05:00

pieces from a closely kept notebook

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

01.04.05
the conductor

the lovers laughed cold
as their weightless hands
and heavy bodies
inspected their condition

what price do we pay for sentiment, for comfort?
what sacrifice is made when all senses scream,
halt! this is it.

your final destination?
the train stops here, now you may land and be grounded
now you may build your world from the
scraps of beauty and misfortune you've been
collecting for hundreds of lifetimes

the conductor tips his hat to you and
in the winking of his eye, indicates
that indeed, this destination is yours

and he has seen these destinations
seen the doe eyed children hand in hand
seen the creator's build life,
he has seen them

he has seen the squandered time, salvation..
hands of the poor mans redemption
rejected
by hearts too worldly conditioned to care

but the conductor only winks,
as if to transfer all omnipotent knowing
into the crevices of your vessel
words are most often unnecessary
when your pulse beats straight into another's

in the ebb and flow of the conductor's eye
an invocation
of both futile lives
and the faith of an ornate future
soon you too will find

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

01.11.05
11:45 pm

If ever I
stumbled to your door
begging for shelter no one else would afford
If ever I
gave all my ways
to the pull of your gears, long turned into place
If ever I
loved
I did you
If ever I
broke anything
I did this too
If ever I
never meant to pull from the seams
know that it was for you, only you
I'd try at the very least
If ever I
scolded my own lies
it was by the light of faith
that I let gently die
beneath our shadowed, palm-to-palm ties
If ever I
woke with relief
it was by the shape of infinity to come
forshadowed between your borrowed sheets
If ever I
failed, to be good to you
know that I fought
until blood fall
If ever I
hear you question the curse
may you rest easy, dear
with no regret from this discourse
If ever I
lived, I surely did within you
If ever I
tried
how i tried to be true.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

01.11.05
my city love

french toast in the mornings
tucked in before bed
you, my city love
will always be with me

you, my city love
who saved this lost heart
years before, forgotten by
the racing pace of a millions pulse

tied tight to the inflection
of your own mostly solitary tongue
i found my way down your vessel
to rest in the comfort of your throne

started with the disclaimer
of neither's expectations for anythings
and bit our tongues when devouring
hopeless attempts to evade this implication's inevitability

i miss you, my city love and i always will
there will never be another of you
not in the city markets
not in the thousand subways tracks
or perpetual traffic sounding
not on the stages, not at the bars
the island of infinity will never again find such hearts.

fare the well.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

01.28.05
Return

The sharp snow engulfing the streets is worlds away from the streaming subway holes below. The fluorescent glow transfixes the thousands of pattering eyes, there they all are, so somber by all outside accounts, yet their mere existence and excess of collective energies bring my visions back to full blown technicolor. Gradually, you feel your body melt into this limitless collective of motion, of life. Bustling, gurgling, ripping from it's structure. Your feet become weightless as you pass through these wonderland scenes. Embers rose from deep within my gut and I felt revived to all around me. Reminded of the substantial effects such fervently provocative city protocols can induce. Pushing the budding soul to seek further, greater truths, convictions and interactions. Here was mother Manhattan back to greet me with her now gentler hands. I guess she was over her upset of me wanting to never return to this wretched place, to just stick to the creature comforts of a real home, with a real history. In her forgiveness, I too forgot all consideration of possibly living anywhere else but this city. I remembered the essence of reason in my need to reside in such a place, despite it's endlessly harsh in's-and-out's, and despite it's fist of ambivalence. Home was now to be found in these swirling motions, sounds and fluctuations. A constant change and challenge to lift hearts and heads.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

02.01.05
winter's casual observation

black is the unspoken uniform of new york city.
black, sleek, wool, leather, silk, the finest dark threads,
no doubt made by meticulous hand made hands,
a glamorous price tag affording you a place as a mere silhouette

mostly places next to others in this dark abyss, turning you into only
an unknown with no reference for the divide between individuals.
but my how they do look nice juxtaposed next to the snow,
they always stand out when outside in the cold
they are so, manhattan aren't they?
perhaps trying to hide their fame
or scandal
in a cloak of unwritten codes

Electronic Revival of Old Friends- A Dialogue

2005-01-31T11:29:00.000-05:00

The Electronic Revival of Old Friends
accidentally stumbled across remembrance via Myspace.com....

----------------- Original Message -----------------
From: j
To: kd
Date: Jan 18, 2005 11:21 PM
Subject: there you are...

ha! i found you. i'm on here as an individual and as a corporate art identity. i hope you haven't gone back to new york yet. i miss you, call me sometime.

-----------------------------------------------------
To: j
From: kd
Date: Jan 19, 2005 06:07 AM
Subject: RE: there you are...

you.

upon receiving your message, i was curious who the fuck was messaging me on myspace. I figured it was another band trying to promote their mediocre music, or some random fan trying to "connect." so, i ventured into the discovery of this online identity which I assume I did not actually know in reality.... in the tangible, waking world.

your profile does not state your name, or any real basic facts of your existence, such as eye color, hair information, etc. yet, by a simply glance of just one artistically inclined photo (i'm assuming of yourself) i knew without a doubt, it was you. it was in fact a very tangible, real human being who I have shared many conversations with, and seen in both northern and southern states of this country. and perhaps missed in between all of the many points and persuasions of our respective interests and obligations along the way.

so while i'm feeling verbal....you are a good human being. and from now on, if your asinine ass calls me to see me, and then doesn't call me back again on an evening where you originally scheduled to see me....and I had scheduled my life around doing so.... if you don't call me back, and then leave the city in which you said you planned to see me.... I'm not ever calling you again. your soul is too sweet and wholesome for you to be a flake, an arrogant flake at that. and my head would be to frustrated. don't get ahead of yourself.... you are a good one.

i remember two years ago. right before i left for new york, for the new land of uncertainty and completely unfamiliar grounds. you and i spent some time together, you were long welcomed company, to this long solitary heart. and i met you just in time, as i was leaving this all behind. what a shot to the foot. as things always seem to be, i suppose. but i remember whiskey and bon fires, conversation, dancing hippies, talk of first loves, and children, and what better people we would one day become. you were quite a pure, good soul, despite your constant engulfment in school and all around you, all the things of the day you busied yourself up with. and I remember a feather and waking up in a bed, in a one bedroom apartment where the living room was actually the bed room. actually the truer room of living. where i fell to sleep, comfortable and warm. and all wrapped up. in arms and it all. i was a nomad on the run, and in the morning i no longer wanted to run. but the plans were already in action, and my chariot was waiting for me to take the reins. it was time for me to go then. i couldn't take back my previously scheduled escape... planned long before i felt that maybe i didn't need to escape anymore. that morning.

funny how all circumstances morph into their newer incantations, and it's so far gone to think of the original nature of interactions... once time and distance has distilled them into silly long-shot dreams. but they are not dreams, for they happened, and will always be privileged pieces of memory. of truth. of peace. and maybe flutters of human connection of a greater kind. in whatever capacity they were meant to last. i remember you. and i remember every moment.

so I guess I'm saying, don't think I forgot all that. because right now, at 7:39 in the morning, after finishing off a very important first record, after falling in and out of love, after feeling lost, after feeling alone, after feeling saved and then broken again, after uprooting to the opposite half of this country, after sojourning all around the many places i have been called to go, I am remembering these precious things from what seems like ages ago. the things which I always know, but brush off in mundane interactions with intents of being nonchalant of such a brilliant history. but you and i both know the beauties of this all. don't we?

so next time you are in nyc, or i am in baton rouge....don't be all self involved. you're too good for that. music is just music. it's an extension of the greater things. career is only a career. it's not something of existence in itself, it's just a part of the day. in the end, it's just music, it's just goals, it's just imposed successes that are fulfilling but hold no life of their own. but real life, these kindred hearts beating, will always be in rotation.... at your doorstep, and at the pulse of your fingertips.

hello.

glad you wrote me.

i am in baton rouge for just a few more days. and I guess we should get together soon then, eh? call me, ok? (917-xxx-xxxx) hope you're smiling.

xo
kd

-----------------------------------------------------
From: j
To: kd
Date: Jan 19, 2005 09:37 AM
Subject: this is me

thank you for that- those were things i needed to know wrapped in a pretty package. despite how i may come off at first glance, i am naturally very insecure and in fact tormented when it comes to the subject of love. the combination of the fear of hell as a consequence of sex when i was a child, enough heartbreak for two lifetimes, and the analytical process that follows everything that happens has brought me to a point where i am constantly struggling to see what is right in front of me.
you have such a beautiful way of looking at life, one i have tried for a long time to see (i think i'm getting better at it). i think you truly see the moment for what it is and you are able to move on without having to distract yourself from it. your life is a heterarchy, not a hierarchy- an ever-changing dynamic path of history and not a prioritized order of goals.
you touched on something with the preoccupation with school, plans, art, etc. i immerse myself in these things because this is something i intrinsically have to do as a man on earth. but please, do not for an instant think that the reason i flake out on you is that i'm busy or preoccupied.
the reason i have a history of doing this is because i am very confused about the way i feel about you and have a hard time gaguing the way you feel about me. when i see you my heart races and i get nervous (this doesn't really happen with anyone else) but i feel at ease in a way that's contradictory to the other reactions. i've always been wary of really opening up to you because we are so geographically challenged, and i have often doubted weather you have similar, if not reciprocal feelings for me.
it seems that we have the same false notions of each other; when i call you to meet up, you are usually already planning to meet with other people- when you invite me out, it always seems as casual as possible, and i infer that you're busy or you have more important people to see. the other thing is that when i see you, i don't want anyone else around because i'm nervous enough as it is and frankly, i want you all to myself. this is no excuse, and if i had the resolve i would jump to every opportunity i had to be with you, weather alone in your room or surrounded by your adoring fans.
i'm telling you all this in hopes that you will understand me a little better. i am inexpressibly grateful to even know you, and i am awestruck that i have been able with you in such a meaningful and intimate way. i think about you more than you know, and i wished you were here when i woke up this morning.

in all honesty- j

-----------------------------------------------------
From: j
To: kd
Date: Jan 19, 2005 09:41 AM
Subject: friday

i don't know if i told you how much that message meant to me. you melted my heart just now.
i'll be in town on friday to meet with clients. i'll call you.

-----------------------------------------------------
To: j
From: kd
Date: Jan 19, 2005 03:06 PM
Subject: RE: this is me

hi again.

thanks for your well articulated response. it is good to know all of those things. makes our interactions much more lucid.

i could tell of your torment in love, intimacy in particular. i've seen how you shy away. but i wouldn't hold that against you. we're all pretty damaged in that way, though we all have our particular afflictions from previous experience, deeply burned precedents. i feel like most of the good hearts i know, the very few, all shy away from illuminating themselves, making themselves too apparent....myself included. it's a dangerous prospect. but lonely, enclosed hearts are only halfway beating. and to always go about like that would be a shame. we'd miss half the wonder of the world. we try, how we do try.

maybe it's just been an emotional month, or thinking upon thinking has taken over my outputs, but i figure it's about time to stop bullshitting the precious few people who are very very special to me. and by bullshitting, i just mean pretending to be less connected than we actually are. i'm tired of being afraid of our conditions. i'd love to hold on to all of life's glories just as much as any one else, to build something that doesn't change, doesn't leave, doesn't disappoint and make you lose your faith in the prospect of anything being permanent. but the very nature of life is impermanent. and i've decided to embrace this truth, and enjoy the cyclical nature of things, rather than beating myself up over what's right in front of me (or what is not). it's like flying, nothing to hold on it, but all the world at your possibility. and all the love you locked up to save yourself no longer has any place to be locked. so you let it go. you give it out, as you should have long ago. and you let everyone know. cause you can't deny the truth of these things. it's pretty liberating.

i'm not really concerned with the classification of our relationship, you know? i think love (in general) is freer and truer when you don't have to explain it or enclose it within some definitive terms. i'm in no place right now to try to start a romantic commitment, as much as i wish for it, i know i have some experience to go through before embarking upon another one. that being so, i've come to a place of trying to simply be as open, honest, and free with love as possible with those around me who are dear. it's very possible that perhaps we are meant to know each other in a more dedicated capacity. and it's also possible that route isn't meant for us. i'm not the one to say. i've tried to stop attempting to read my own fortune, because i'm not a palm reader or prophet. i'm just alive, here, now. so i embellish on that. on what i know.

and i know that i think you're wonderful. your energy and mind have been blessings to me, in many ways. i appreciate your existence and enthusiasm with all around you, that you don't waste time, that you're a creator, that you're following what calls and compels you. watching you live in such a
way helps me keep living in such a way. and all of this is good enough for me. i'm happy with that.... i don't want to dilute all the ways we enjoy each other's company by worrying over the circumstantial places in time.

don't worry if you feel flustered by my company, i'm not one to ever abuse such privileged relationships. not that i won't fuck up or perhaps make mistakes, but i'm not here to break you. i'm just here to experience, find truths, and share it all with the ones who understand. same as you. i don't want you to feel uneasy around me.

and i am sorry if i've come across as placing other commitments above you. i think we probably just fell into a weird cycle of confusion, me feeling you were always putting me off, and i inadvertently did the same just as instinctive reaction, and there we went, back and forth, perpetually. i'll make a point not to fall into that again. ok?

hope to see you friday. call me before hand if you get a chance and we'll make plans (in advance). :)

k

---------------------------
From: j
To: kd
Date: Jan 19, 2005 04:53 PM
Subject: the verge

maybe i haven't had enough written messages from you to infer this before, but you have an exceptional handle on writing prose. your words form a cohesive whole that expresses what you mean masterfully.
that being said, i think your respose was the most appropriate and uplifting i could have gotten. i was a little worried today that i had opened up too much and freaked you out or something- there go those insecurities again. but i'm sure now that we are on exactly the same page. labels and boudries at this moment seem to only inhibit the possibilities of being part of this state of inter-being. i think commitment can be a beautiful thing, i've seen it before, and what i've seen is that the only way it exists as it should is when the members of the relationship are still individuals with their own desires, beliefs and missions; it's really absurd to rely on another human being for your own solace and sense of being.
by the way, i won't feel anxious around you on friday, at least not in the same way. now i think we know where we stand with eachother.
have you noticed that every time we start to open up and be really honest with eachother it's on the verge of a long-term separation? whatever this means i'ts intriguing to me.
you inspire me in more ways than i've ever told you. you are one of the only people on this planet that is truly beautiful.

i'll call tonight. xoxo

Hours Move Slowly

2005-01-16T04:08:00.000-05:00

01/16/05 1:08 AM

The hours move slowly when you are waiting for something. Times escapes all definitive confines and you find yourself moving much slower toward nothing at all. The divide between past and present no longer exists, and you are of free form, free mind, drifting endlessly into your very own imposed state of exile. This free disaster won’t wait for a more appropriate time, for an appointed place, because it never had one to begin with. You just tried to make yourself think it did. So, here you are, in the heartbeat slowly palpitating, as you listen, while trying hard not to listen. Comfort does not know of this place, and hope would only be a transitory stranger who accidentally rested his head on your doorstep due to lack of better options.

You pause. Take note of surrounding conditions, and quickly consume your hands or lips with something of interest. A lover, a guitar, a pen, a piece of literature, a song, a pat on your puppy’s head. It doesn’t matter. Anything to bring you back to some other thing’s vision of reality, rather than being lost solely within your own. You write your proverbial ransom note, to yourself. You create the existential, spiritual, transcendental works of the solitary mind. A plea for redemption in a world that you must share, and learn to give and take part in. A reckoning of intent to all in the world that has been imposed upon you, yet has given you the breath beneath your otherwise jaundice, lukewarm skin.

And perhaps reality can only be defined as a place where one person can meet others. The solitary mind has little use for reality and the luxuries reality may afford such eternally single souls. But it is our perception of our collective selves within the paradigm of this plane of reality we find each other within, that often keeps us tied to such measures as time, dates, and moralities. By your existence and my undeniable need for you and others, we are drawn down by the gravity of other’s minds, words, and emotive executions. And we meet here, on our glorious concrete bound earth. But what do we have to say to one another? Should we perhaps just retreat back to our personally designated wavelengths and stay there? Avoid the confusion of body language and misinterpreted interactions. Avoid this whole thing completely, and live a little bit more peacefully, knowing at the very least, the solitary self. Or would we ever truly know that without the contrasting bodies to challenge it and give it its nutrition for further fruition?

And as dark as I have seen the souls around me, far beyond these transitory states and inconsequential incongruencies of perception, I can’t help but be cradled and rocked to sleep by the immortal prospect of the beauty that may be to come. Somehow the ghostly prospect of that alone, with no promise or certainty, can keep the futile heart running for infinities. Faith. Hope. Progress. Potential. The potential to one day, redeem all of these moments of absolute lack of willpower, control, understanding, into riches of wisdom beyond what your currently feeble mind can fathom.

We have spent lifetimes questioning why we must endure such ambivalence in love, and in personal discomfort. What are we really trying to accomplish here? When do we really make our minds up to come to a plateau that doesn’t only have plateaus stacked above it for ages?

The hardest hand to hold is often, your own. Kamikaze gifted lives, is what we have here. This is all just a test in make-up, in potentials of old souls given freshly formatted conditions of further confusing compositions. But we are here now, there’s no way around it. As hard as you try to cheat the hand you’re dealt, you know all the hands, and just what place and purpose yours holds to your trembling fingers, and only your own.

Truth is not a smooth, softly coated pill. It’s a bastardly dagger, and often every bit just as asymmetrical and horrific as it is healing and pure. The blessed can only enjoy their privileged state after long periods of terrifying vacationing within the gut of their respective curses. They don’t exist independently. For every smile you are gifted by, there was once or one day will be, a symbiotic deafening tear to compliment it.

Welcome to your life. There has never been a better time than right now.

brave new world

2005-01-12T06:32:00.000-05:00

I have been meaning to switch over all cyber accounts of written life for some time. And due to exhaustion of the mind, this evening I spent hours, a drone, drolling at the computer screen trying to busy myself up with gaddgetry to distract from such intense creative engulfment otherwise.

This is going to be a fresh start. Maybe I'm feeling dramatic because the number on the year has changed, but I feel it's about time to break free of old skin, and push toward a new relief. I do wish to become more of a writer someday. A novel, a book of poetry, a screen play..... in what capacity of the many options, I don't know. I simply understand the necessity and creative excess I find myself in. So, this will serve as my testing grounds.

There has been a lot of redemption around me these recent weeks. It's a breath of fresh air.

I'll start all this very soon.

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