sonic intoxication

transposition

2012-01-08T23:01:00.001-05:00

i'm sitting across from an old man.

he looks at me and tells me that he was young once, that he had dreams and visions and that he had worlds beneath his feet. he wonders aloud what happened to them, how age crept up on him and consumed him, hour by hour, day by day. year by year.

he tells me of things that he did and he lists regrets. one by one. dozens. scores. i find that his list of accomplishments is dwarfed by the things he counts as having done wrong, the things that he wishes he'd done differently.

i find myself sinking in his deep, sad black eyes.

he tells me of the power of youth, of its infinite ability to walk into any obstacle and come out, for the most part, unscatched. his bones are old now, he says, his flesh carries scars far longer than it used to.

he tells me of the foolishness of youth, of how those without the wisdom of tragedy will do things, will slowly pick up a day to day residue that follows them, becomes - almost mistakenly - a part of them. he sees himself no longer as the person he once was. he sees himself as a collection of mistakes, of unfulfilled promises he's trying desperately to keep to, of debts and of half completed goals.

i see his deep, sad black eyes.

he tells me how he wishes that he could step back in time, wash himself clean of living. he wants to escape, to flee to a place where he is not himself. that, he admits, is impossible. no matter how far, no matter how much distance, the residue will linger. it stains his teeth, the space in between his wrinkles, his breath - it is a part of him that no physical distance can rid him of.

his eyes glimmer now. he tells me of how, were time willing, he'd be able to relive his life, to step through time into his own past, to change the things he'd done wrong, to stop the commitments that broke him, to right the course of an unrighteous life. he tells me that, if he could just step out of his body, he'd be able to fix everything, starting with himself.

i see the glimmer in his eyes, wonder idly how long i've been sitting here, watching him.

he stretches out an arm, a leg, stretches a back from his hunched position. perhaps it was an illusion, a trick of the light that cast wrinkles on his face... he tells me that, if he could, he'd be young again, and he'd live with the knowledge of all his years, able to stop things before they happened, able to correct his own life before it went off course.

i sigh heavily, weighed down by his foolishness.

he stands up straight, fixes his jacket. he catches my deep, sad black eyes and tells me that he is still young, that life hasn't worn him out completely, that he is able to take on the many challenges of living. he can and will change his life again - he's been granted this reprieve so that he can undo the damage he once did to himself.

i sigh heavily and tell him that it takes so much courage to start every day. that life is like a residue and no matter how much scrubbing and washing you do of your own past it will cling to you - an unseen film that no one is aware of but can always sense. i hunch down and reach for support - the effort to stand with all the knowledge of life weighing on my shoulders is unbearable.

he begins to whistle and winks a gleaming wink at me.

i return a look from my deep, sad black eyes and wish that fool the best of luck.

love is like a sin

2011-12-27T21:38:00.000-05:00

standing on the subway platform at jay street metrotech, waiting for the trains to turn over so i can get home, i contemplate just how much love there is in my life.

i am full of joy - somehow, somwhere and somewhen the dark depression crept out of me and curled up and disappeared, left me for good. tonight's show was modest, but good, and the comraderie i discovered after the show was one i'd long missed. there was a feeling of belonging again and, it occcurred to me, it was i who brought everyone together, decided when to disband.

i put my earbuds in my ears and begin playing love circus by massive attack. this much love, this much joy... i'm not used to it - it feels alien to me. i feel undeserving. i need to feel melancholy - those emotions i know and can handle. that state is one i've been in perpetually and am familiar with.

i sleep neatly on the train, cupcakes and valise tucked between my shins for safekeeping on the long trip home.

as i walk off the train at 18th avenue, i slip on my gloves, find a small humor in the fact that i am clad in black, holding a black leather valise and looking to kill yet, daintily, in the other hand, i hold a bag of cupcakes. i can't help but grin at the contrast.

coming home i anticipate my laundry on the couch i'm staying on. it was, after all, left as i rushed out the door to put on tonight's show.

instead, there is a simple, elegant white box. in it, a very very nice peacoat and a gift card, with four names on it.

i put on the coat and it looks amazing.

i find myself tearing up, unable to fathom why four strangers (friends even) would be so kind to me. in my mind i'm nothing but a leech, a parasite here for convenience, trying (hard maybe, but i can always try harder) to stop being one. the kindness is overwhelming. for the first time in a very long time i cry. but the tears are of a bittersweet joy rather than any melancholy. it's a feeling i do not understand - what on god's green earth did i ever do to deserve such kindness?

for now, i retire, but tomorrow will bring thanks to those who put such time into such a thoughtful (and pricey) gift. i can't not accept but at the same time it's too much - it's heartbreaking frankly.

last year i was alone and believed myself content in that loneliness, surrounded only by work and a cake sent to me by my wife. this year i am surrounded by friends and without the finances i had a year ago. i do not know how i came to live such a blessed life, but i truly thank you all for being part of it. i only wish that i will be able to repay the kindness in turn after i am once more on my own two feet.

let us, for a moment, create a fiction

2011-12-15T12:16:00.002-05:00

let us, for a moment, create a fiction.

we start with the elements of young achievement - a beautiful and exotically foreign young wife, a struggling but oft successful and notable business, a chance to live in one of the most dynamic and thriving cities in the world.

in this fiction, nothing is ever far from reach. our protagonist, let's name him, for the sake of an easy lesson to take away from this, Success.

(some, in darker tones, will call him Delusion).

Success works modestly and hard at a dead end retail job because his heart and his dreams are being fed by the money that the work provides. he wakes up every morning, well before his closing shift, to go for an easy run. he's healthy, in shape, with a body that moves easily to the rhythm of the city. he returns home and eats a light breakfast before sitting down for a few hours to tend to the communications and designs that make his dream a reality. he coordinates performers and projects, makes nice online with the people in power, offers placations to the many want to be gods in the industry he works in. things are always on time or ahead of schedule and emergencies, in the rare circumstance they arise, are dealt with expertly, efficiently and without a hitch.

after a healthy lunch - Success insists on a nearly vegetarian diet that maintains a healthy balance of chemicals in his body - he goes to his retail job where he is well liked by clients and coworkers alike. it's a menial job, sure, but it provides him constant social contant that builds on the social skills he needs to succeed in marketing his dream to others. it pays the bills and leaves just enough to keep him hungry, to make sure that the money he provides into his own enterprises is well invested so that more comes from it. he stays on the border of being hungry so that he has motivation for his money to grow.

upon closing the store, Success heads out to a few social obligations made earlier. perhaps he goes to support another show in the industry, perhaps he meets a performer or another producer for a late cocktail - in show only, Success is sober, to build rapport and reputation. then he heads home to turn on his computer and wrap up the day nicely before heading to sleep.

he sleeps well, operating on 6 hours of sleep a night or less. and when he wakes the next morning the sun cries out for him to run into its rays, and the day embraces him because forward is the only direction he knows.

a creative fiction, no? it is full of grace and sunshine and light and even the occassional bluebird that drifts down to settle on Success' shoulder. it is an ideal, something to run after and, maybe, if one is deserving, one day achieve.

---

if that is the fiction, the let us take a moment to assess the fact.

there is another gentleman. here let's start with the elements that his decisions have provided him - a wedding ring that reminds him of a fool promise and wards off people that he'd gladly welcome into his life, a business which causes him more financial grief than it merits even despite its supposed accolades, a life on a couch in a city that is slowly eating him alive.

if this is fact, everything falls out of his reach. our protagonist, let's name him, for the sake of an easy lesson to take away from this, Existence.

(some, in lighter tones, will call him Delusion).

Existence rarely works. Rather than work, he spends an inordinate amount of time creating the idea of work. It weighs him down, weighs down the people in his life. He's lost many friends to the illusion - he's always working or translates everything to work and, slowly but surely, people left him when they saw that they weren't people in his eyes. he wakes up, grudgingly, when he can, fighting the concept of this mountain of tasks. the idea of adding any form of exercise, of maintaining his body, is abhorrent to him. he turns over and slaps snooze every ten minutes for another two hours. he's skinny, but gaining weight oddly, putting on a spare tire that bulges out from his fitted shirts. he eats whatever crap he can find in the fridge, put together poorly because he doesn't have the ingredients or patience to eat well. he sits in from of his computer and paces, letting himself get mired in distraction rather than dealing with the work he's laid out before himself. things run late or behind deadline, and everything is only every dealt with when it's an emergency and even then only poorly, without polish or panache.

after spending most of the day in this stupor, Existence drags his feet to a retail job he's working only until something better and lazier comes along. it's a menial job and he knows it - he'd rather get a corner office's pay without the leg work, so he does just enough to not get fired. the job pays the bills but the money doesn't patch over his pathos. he goes hungry because he'd rather drown his problems at the bottle of a pint glass.

upon closing the store, Existence heads home, dragging his feet even then. he bails on appointments previously set, too ashamed or too broke to go out even for a single cocktail - worse, he does go out for a drink that leads to ten more. he heads home and turns on his computer and debates doing work - then he either turns on Netflix or the XBox, excusing his laziness away by saying that he deserves to defuse from the day.

he sleeps poorly, watching the sun rise as he closes his eyes. when he wakes the next afternoon, the sun is well past the high point of the sky and the day seeps rapidly into night. downwards is the only direction he knows.

a depressing fact, no? it is laden with laziness and angst and depression stemming from repeated failure. it is a harsh world view, borne out of self loathing in the hopes that there may be escape, but more likely resigning itself to the fact that Existence will continue like this, until something destroys him.

---

then where's the difference between these two?

once, i thought it was Love, the almighty force that could motivate even the most slovenly of men to become kings. that's what compels vagabonds to be kings, is it not?

but love was lost and in its place, in the emptiness there grew a curious two faced entity that loathed itself and loved itself. it loved the Delusion but loathed Existence. it feared Success and clung fiercely to Delusion.

i look across the chasm to people in despair and, with a smile on my fac,e i tell them that there's nothing to it. simply - be happy. there is no magic process, for it is tailored specifically to the individual. but is this happiness i know just an idiot's smile, a fool chasing a rainbow, unaware that he has grown ragged and become a pauper?

in the absence of Love, i blame Discipline. i seek Discipline because if i behave like Success then surely i'll achieve what he has, will i not?

but how do i achieve Discipline?

i wake up every morning with these two voices - disturbingly audible in our mind - locked in mortal combat. there is so much to shed, so much to do.

why this constant fear of Success? why do i feel constantly that i am a precipice, unable to cross the chasm before me?

if i step off, will i fall or will i fly?

that is the part of the fiction that i've not yet decided yet. i've not decided where i want the fiction of my life to end.

into the crevasse

2011-12-15T12:16:00.001-05:00

look how far we've come.

it's been 8 years since we all left high school and parted ways for the great wide world and we've all gone so far. friends are now happily engaged and studying neuroscience in laboratories, others work as creative directors at ogilvy, others live happily in silver spring with their long term girlfriends, some travel the world hunting the perfect photograph, others travel the world helping those in need, some own property, some have built names for themselves.

i attended a dinner for a recently engaged friend and all i could do was feel sorry for myself. they've come so far and i swelled with pride for all of them, but that pride for them was poisoned by a feel of inadequacy regarding myself. sure, months ago i was running a profitable venture in NY while living in CA and running a large expo there... bu now, back in NY i'm jobless, essentially homeless and my business has turned on me, taking me on a financial roller coaster that i cannot get off of.

example:

walking in, my friends compliment me on my hair. immediately i stammer a weak excuse about how i am trying to grow my hair long and that it's in the awkward too short to let hang but too long to properly style phase. the inadequacy is my perception, it's all on me... my friends simply sought to give me a compliment.

when did my confidence become so shaken?

i text my wife that i'm not doing well, that i'm feeling insecure and unsure and she seems shocked. she tells me that i always seem confident.

perhaps my confidence is tied to my income. perhaps, with the well of unemployment running dry and my options for getting a job limited, i notice more how that confidence i exude is more bravado in the face of certain demise... it's easier to laugh at the devil than to fear him.

tonight, as i walked home from a dinner i walked out on (my sister and i exchanged words, my mother got angry, i excused myself and walked 2.4 miles home), i contemplated my apologies and my decisions.

my mother was caught in the crossfire... she's ever been a passive party in a family of opposing dynamics. i owe her the apology for causing a scene, but she won't accept. she'll remain cold and hostile until time enough passes.

my sister merits no apology. her personality disgusts me... while i'm proud of what she does, who she is is a completely different story. her maliciousness veers towards bullying and she's grown so close minded that, unless you agree with her, you will lose.

my father is the final figure that i pondered, and for the longest.

i owe my father a long and sincere apology. while he and i may never see eye to eye, he has never been the villain in this story, despite my attempts to place him as such. he supports me the best he knows how - perhaps the fault lies in my inability to communicate to him how best i could be better supported. our arguments are not because of lack of love so much as that we constantly talk along two skewed paths, intersecting at all the wrong points.

while he and i won't ever be best friends, it'd be nice to sit one day at a bar and raise a glass together, celebrating all that i've done in a path different than his.

for now, i wish fervently to return to NY and to dive into my business wholeheartedly. I need to elevate myself... of the class of 2003, of the peers that i knew, i'd argue that i've fallen the furthest. it's because i'm lazy, i'm insecure and i'm afraid. and coming home, thinking of my family, trying to remain to some degree aware of my family, reminds me of my many flaws.

i am strong than this, and, as much as i care about them, i really need to grow my own feet to stand on. it's time to stop worrying about my hair when a friend compliments it, time to stop feeling the disparity in wealth when visiting old friends.

it's time for me to man up and grow up.

763; september 2011 through november 2011

2011-09-09T01:20:00.001-04:00

today was a rather serendipitous day. most memorably, the walk back to the F train after business meetings and street teaming and just being on my game.

jesus walks plays as the hair on my arms begins to tingle with anticipation of the oncoming storm. i feel like a part of the Divine and a maniacal laughter ripples through my frane, coming to a halt as a smile on my lips. the world is charger, i am charged and am waiting for lighting to strike.

i reflect on the fact that i just had a business meeting with my capable assistant taking notes as i conversed over the noise of the babershop. jokingly this morning i set out with the idea of living out that movie moment, and by four in the afternoon i had. funny how conversations about business even in a barbershop opens doors... lenny, finishing my styling with panache, mentions how we should get in touch about hosting an upcoming show in the barbershop. it's a preposterous idea, and i like it.

the walk home is full of latent meaning that is felt just as a tingle in my skin. i know great things are coming; i've planted the seeds tediously and i can feel the charge of them, the weight of them. my head expands and i loop kanye as i let the feeling develop into my inflated ego. today, let me be the oncoming storm, today, let me be greater than myself.

once home, it's back to the maintainance. upkeep, we call it. the dozen small tasks that define a life. i ask her for a word, she gives me murder. i write.

---

out in the streets we call i murder.

this is involuntary manslaughter. this is an accumulation of small tasks and we, sisyphean in our own struggles, fail to recognize the avalache before it is too late.

this was the needle that broke the camel's back.

some of us blame the city and seek its constant escape. here, in a grid of buildings that drawf the mind how can we even think about climbing mountains? the grey gutters are our inevitable conclusion. we will be crushed and our bodies, stripped of our hair, our wallets, will be left to decay, to feed those barely above us. in this city, we all know the taste of human flesh.

some of us blame those around us. years of looking too deeply inwards have given us a sociopath's eye; we see our own weaknesses, our own faults, the cracks in our character so vividly that this city's constant pressure feels like constant intrusion. a knife wedged too deeply in our mind's thigh.

this is murder bty acquaintance, friends who carry us to death.

some of us learn to sharpen our fangs in this city, learned to fight tooth and nail for what we believed in, leaving a trail of entrails and rent hearts. we fly to other cities, full of our feral confidence and we unwittingly slaughter the nests we touch. we ask for things as we learnt to and even our words draw blood.

some of us buy our own gilded coffins. our coffers too full to worry about digging our own graves, we hire help to tie a ball and chain on our ankles, hire help to loop a noose about our neck. we celebrate our own death with anniversaries and nights out on the town, unaware of how our house grows empty, full of dust and mold, decays.

out in these streets, we call it a lifestyle.

sometimes though, the pile of bodies gets to be too much and a voice, stifled by maggots and rotting flesh abpve will cry out simply: enough. and from that gloom, out of gutters and war wounds and razor lined nests and gold coffins, an echo will rise, allowing just enough life for us to take a moment to wip the sweat off of our brow, to look back at how far we've come and to smile.

just a moment of life.

then, with a signature sigh, we shoulder our burdens and push again.

---

a possum crosses the courtyard as i smoke a cigarette in the dark. the fact of it astounds me. here, in this city, a possum. for a moment i wonder if it's a large rat, but then dismiss the thought. there was a reason this animal came before me tonight.

i look up the meaning of its mythology when i can.

despite my workout, despite cleaning the apartment and helping a friend, despite laying the groundwork for success in a movie setting, despite the assurance of the Divine that i walk the path i need to walk, the universe closes the evening with a single lesson.

i read about how the possum lost his tail and i am reminded to remain humble. while i have worked hard to get to where i am today, there is still so much i have yet to achieve before i can rest upon my luxurious fur. and that too can, at any moment, be stripped from me.

my time here comes to a close, i think as i put out the cigarette. it is almost time for me to be moving on.

equally unreachable

2011-09-01T23:26:00.000-04:00

she is firmer than a ghost, this one, this shock of red hair that conjures itself to memory when i stumble across an old sketchpad. i remember hazy marijuana smoke, broken walls, murals painted arching to ceilings, the constant sense of drowning without ever realizing we were in the water at all.

i type up a poem of hers to send to her and notice its title (on leaving) and its sentiment are the same as mine are still, five years after the fact. now, there is distance and the idea of apple picking in mexico spans the separation between us. perhaps one day, in the summer light, a reunion, but for now there are two separate lives rotating on separate ends of the world, of continents.

she lingers while the other one haunts, and she leaves a trail of bread crumbs that brings him to someone real yet equally out of reach.

this is what house cleaning is about. pulling from dusty shelves old memories of pain and turning them back into memories of love.

yggdrasil

2011-08-29T12:55:00.000-04:00

what happened to my childhood?

back in maryland for a family reunion, i pace the empty rooms of my parents' house. there's nothing to do in this state, not for me... i require noise, interaction, sweet constant sonic intoxication, it's too quiet here, to the point of being disquieting.

i go up to my old bedroom, the one i had through highschool, and there's no evidence of my life in there anymore. since my parents became estranged, my mother stays there. my things have all evaporated into boxes and been moved to the basement, the garage, new york... things scatter and, in what should be a reminder of who i am, all i have left are a few scattered photographs, a stolen tuning fork, a sculpture i once made out of refuse. there's so little of me left... i have to wonder if that's a reflection of who i am, or just a confluence of circumstance that has erased me.

my sister's old room is still intact. it looks as if she's stepped out for a second and is planning to return. her things are in place, and everything is in order. maybe it helps that no one took over her room, or that she chose to stay in maryland after graduating college. either way, her presence is still felt.

i end up wondering how hard it'd be to disappear all together from this house, how plausible it'd be to simply shut down a part of my life entirely. i've tried, but something always brings me back. i haven't the heartlessness for it.

my entire life after middle school feels like a dream if i stay in my old room too long. i have a photo of my middle school girlfriend, but none of meg, or of alix, or of marzena. there is no evidence of my romantic life after middle school. scattered fragments appear of the rest of my life after: a gift of a book of love sonnets from the head of my high school english department, a picture of me smirking as i graduate from bmcc.

it wouldn't be hard for me to go. just a few more things to be put in boxes and that room would have never been mine. just photos on the wall as reminders that my parents did have a son. one that didn't walk the path that they determined to him and now no longer brings anything back to the crib.

i have to contemplate why i keep roots here still. perhaps it's because if i don't, i worry that i will simply give myself to the wind and drift forever, with only a half planned future ahead of me. maybe it's the constant clutter that i know exists in my parents' house. it's the accumulation of four lives spent in the same house that has never been addressed again aftr being first acquired. it's layer upon layer of memory and memory and none of it, save mine, has been moved or altered. it's all the baggage between my parents that needs to be moved, cleaned, forgiven.

i know they're not up for the task and i, despite my compulsion to live as lightly as i can, cannot accept the burden of helping them sort out their things, their home, their emotions, the remnants of their lives together.

i've a hard enough time keeping my life to a minimum.

i feel old when i wander the halls of my parents house, but no older. i feel like a tired teenager that never grew up, who is still lost and trying to find his way. despite having plans for the future, despite doing things that i desire, i feel empty somehow. it's as if all the things that they have anchoring them remind me that i've still not done well enough for myself to plant roots as solidly. they've built here a tree that has deep roots, that has never been tended to and has now grown too much to be tended to, no matter how badly it is needed.

i'm still a leaf, drifting on the wind. seeing the tangle of branches of roots and withering tree that i was born out of, i know why i avoid settling down proper. it wasn't my parents that took over my childhood, systematically erasing the parts they disliked of me so that they could pretend that they had a model son... it was my choice to allow my childhood to fade away, to allow myself to drift in the vain hope that one day, should i ever touch the ground, i'd grow into a different home that theirs altogether.

character notes

2011-08-23T02:25:00.000-04:00

scribbled thoughts in a moleskin in the back pocket of a distressed pair of denim jeans:

the cowboy. the prodigal son. the exiled prince. the villainous hero.

the king in waiting.

i recall sharply words spoken to me after a performance. adrenaline flowing through my system. the soft touch of a hand on my arm as a performer i admire tells me that she hopes to see me perform more.

the words echo again in a thought from a month ago that i need to become a character in order to proliferate my ideas, my brand. i remember a long phone conversation as i try to determine what that character is. for so long i've convinced myself that there is no self but in others that myself has evaporated, slowly. part of that evaporation is self defense: i know there is a darkness inside of me that is me and i try hard to supress it.

tonight, a forty minute conversation as i stand before a twisted metal cross in the gothic lighting of a downtown memorial where a friend tells me that everything that i want rests on me becoming someone. on me becoming myself. when he says that i feel an abyss yawn inside of me, beckoning me with the promise of jazz and liquor, of reckless nights with no end because nothing is real and everything is permitted.

as i pace before the entrance to the subway, i feel as i am pacing the edge of a sharp precipice, a dark sliver of rock over an even deeper oblivion.

nothing is real here, in the internal landscape.

i agonize over the thought of having to become myself again, to regress to a former self that was far darker and more dangerous than i care to be these days. this state of being, whatever it is, is safe. it is safe.

safety plateaus. there is only so far you can go being safe. eventually you have to leap without looking, to take risks in order to gain something. safe, as the cliche goes, is boring.

here, standing on the precipice, everything is permitted.

writing this character, writing myself becomes an impossible task. perhaps i know myself too well. perhaps i still cannot own up to things i have done, to things i have said. perhaps by admitting that they are part of me i am afraid i will become them again, that i will lose all the strength i have harvested in the years since my fall. i see who i must become and how i can do it and the fear takes me. i blame alcoholism for my problems, and i use the excuse of drinking to shy away from embracing myself. i blame my sadistic tendencies for my losses, and i quietly tuck myself back inside of my internal armor.

see, the common thing in the archetypes that come to my mind of who i am now is one thing: they all return. the cowboy eventually returns to the homestead, to a warm hearth. the prodigal son eventually returns home and, despite having squandered his fortune, is celebrated. the exlied prince eventually returns to his father's kindgom to save it from its disrepair. the villainous hero eventually finds redemption in his heroic acts, despite the darker aspects of his character.

then there are those that are meant to be kings.

i do not want to be any sort of king. i approach the title with reluctance - not for a fear of responsibility, but because i know there are so many more people who deserve the title, the accolades. there is such a degree of self importance, of delusion, of ego in seeing oneself as a leader that i'd rather have no part in it. perhaps that reluctance to lead is causing me to stagnate.

at some point in his journey, any king in waiting must realize that he is meant for the title, whether or not he feels he is ready to accept it. eventually he simply must because it is so. the reluctant king will place a crown on his head and lead, because it cannot be any other way.

he returns to the throne.

if i am to run as many business as i have plans for, if i am to impact the world in the way that i believe the world needs to be impacted, i need to accpet that i am to lead. i need to accept that i chose to be a leader through my actions and that i am now so far in that i cannot back out. there cannot be any other way.

should i stand on this precipice much longer, it will crumble beneath me and i will fall. but if i leap, i may just land somewhere else, higher than i was before. perhaps then, all that i have laid plans for may soon come to be. if not, at least i was unafraid to try.

this is for diane

2011-07-19T15:23:00.000-04:00

i. geography
i have no concept of south korea.
in my mind i try to conjure its location:
is it northerly or southerly in relation to china?
how big is it compared on the map to japan?
how far is it from hong kong?
these are simple questions, easily answered by
pointing, with ease, to a drawing on a map.
oh... (as a false realization settles in place)
that's where south korea is. one small, roughly edged speck
bordering other squiggly edged countries.

ii. population
what are south koreans like?
growing up, i knew a pair of kims.
both were studious, calm, over achieving.
were all koreans like this?
where in korea did they come from?
seoul? is that in south korea?

what i know of koreans is
a dark skinned ex-american woman,
displaced from her life and on a
journey of self-renewal. she
has come to mean a south korean to me,
because i know she's there. i can place
her there and nod sagely as i lie:
yes, i know a (south) korean.

iii. major imports and exports
south korea imports an education.
i've known some koreans (by now i assume south)
and they've come here all for the same reason:
a college education.
since our first encounter in 1st grade,
all i've known of the kims was study.
fun and socializing were reserved
to other koreans, or so it seemed.

she is in south korea now. i know;
i've placed her there.
she has learned more there than i
ever heard her learn in new york.
in new york, she learned to lose herself.
in south korea, she is learning who she is.

south korea seems to export isolation. loneliness.

she tells me of overcoming depression, of
learning to love, of trying to move slowly
for herself. of learning to be alone.
the picture she paints is a lonely one: in
a foreign country, seeking the comfort of
the familiar, yet unable to accept it.
to hold something perpetually at arm's length,
just in case it hurts.
that is what i get from south korea.

iv. political climate
for a while, south korea and the united states were tense.
we, the united states, had placed troops at her door,
hurled flaming bombs into her underbrush,
called out insults to expose the enemy to combat.
maybe it wasn't our battle.
the united states and south korea are now
similarly aligned, she admitting the
abrasive antagonism of the past was for valid concern
of her enemy.
the enemy is still uncomfotably close,
threatening to brim past control at any moment.
but south korea and the united states
watch its border carefully, making sure that
conflict does not once more consume them.

v. tourism
if one goes to south korea, it will
most likely be to go to the military border.
gazing on old scars, tourists will
shuffle their feet uncomfortably, cough
at the uncomfortable silence and,
turning away,
begin talking loudly about getting drunk in seoul
even as north korea watches from afar.

- Christopher William Lee
June 19, 2011

the next great (american) novel

2011-07-12T01:28:00.001-04:00

it begins with erotica.

small fragmented images, lingering kisses trailing in a slow path down a stomach (the tightening expanse of a stomach as the back begins arching upwards), small pieces, breadcrumbs on a trail (anticipation created by lips moving slowly down the body) leading back and back through memory to dark, comfortable spaces (the porous skin on the inside of elbows).

i remember the dim red light of the neon sign filtering in from the front of the bar. the bartender's eyes aren't on me, even though her body is facing me. the tv above my head flickers, casts its moving silhouette across her soft features.

the man that is sitting next to me is going on about writers. i half listen to him. the alcohol's getting to my system and the words he's spewing are lacing in with the insidious poison now flowing through my blood. he's holding the slowing disintegrating scrap of a bar napkin, the running ink of a haiku hastily scribbled that i had passed to the bartender to make her smile, to make her feel her life wasn't confined so terribly to a place.

he's poisoning my blood with the idea that i will be the next great american novelist. the alcohol's poisoning my mind.

part of me rebelled against his words, against his dangerous insinuation that greatness was within my reach. 'look at me,' i felt myself railing from behind my politely condescending chuckle, 'i'm a directionless asian male college dropout. there is nothing great about me, nor nothing so truly american that i would be that person.'

i'm not the voice of a generation, much less a word to be heeded for generations.

but he wasn't the only person who made that assertion.

i remember another bar, the same dim red lighting (funny, how sometimes entire eras of a human life are lit, as if we all go through a red phase or a blue phase or an amber phase). we met there almost on accident... i can't recall how i met him. we made arrangements to meet again, over pool, where the light was fluorescent and conversation could almost be heard.

i came with two friends of mine. softly, in his eyes, there was scolding. we hung out, the four of us, and he was polite, but i felt a door close when he told me as we parted ways: 'next time, lose the entourage.' the greatness that he alluded to, that the other man in another bar alluded to, was not in others supporting me. it was a quality i had to find in myself.

i stopped writing. on occasion the words bubble forth but they come either as small gasps of air, incomplete and refreshing, or overwhelming bursts of oxygen, toxic at the depths that they come from. i felt that the words were false, felt that i hadn't lived enough to write about the things i did, felt that greatness was something meant for others, that america wasn't my home, that ultimately, i was neither great nor american.

i constructed a lie, a story within a story to bury that fear of the words. to bury the belief of strangers in one directionless asian male college dropout. i told myself, night after night, day after day, that my life would be my story. that i would never pen a tale because my entire life, the way i lived and the things i did in my life, would be that story. that one day, looking through the amber tinted lens of nostalgia, someone else, someone who was truly the great american novelist, someone unafraid of words would pick up a pen, take notice of a pitiful life and spin the tale that my actions cried out for me to pen.

it excused me from ever committing to a goal, from finishing a plot line, from building characters, even my own. for if it wasn't written down, it would not come to pass and accordingly i could live my life forever without definition, forever without the terrible restraints of other peoples' ideas of greatness, of americanness.

how can one look upon an asian and tell them that they will one day be great, that they will one day be american?

but now the words are coming back to me (breadcrumbs). i'm starting to believe, just maybe, that greatness is not as terrible a thing as i had feared. that shouldering some of what greatness entails is something that i can do. frankly, my boots have grown weary of wandering, of traveling from los angeles to san francisco to denver to chicago and back to the grimy streets of new york. did those travels make me american? maybe, but mostly i feel i still haven't mined her spirit, still haven't crawled enough highways to know what composes the entirety of this country.

i'll end it now with erotica. trembling kisses on eyelids, the matching of fingertips in an opening hand. the intimacy is right, fitting. the words wait for me to write.

revolver

2011-07-05T02:59:00.001-04:00

this morning, hungover despite my weak attempts at sobriety, knowing full well i had overextended myself financially, i wanted nothing more than to stay at home, cancel all of my social commitments and be miserable in my own failure.

fortunately my friends are unrelenting and, after a few hours of convincing, i was out and walking in the sun, heading to a friend's independence day barbecue. after socializing (poorly) with the people i didn't know there, and then continuing on to the pier to watch the fireworks and socializing (not as poorly) with the people i didn't know there, i headed home to speak with the wife about my financial issues and to watch a movie i had selected to play while in the dark hangover mood.

the movie was revolver, by guy ritchie, and i think that it was by no small coincidence that the powers that be decided to wait until i got home before allowing me to rewatch it. if you haven't seen the movie, i highly recommend watching it, several times in different times in your life.

the main premise, as dissected afterwards by imdb and wikipedia, is a focus on removing the ego so as to earn greater control over oneself and one's situations.

with such a heavy message, delivered in such a masterfully done film, it's impossible not to ask yourself how the lessons of the film apply to your own life. i personally feel that i strive to remove ego from my own life... my business is not about me so much as it is about providing a stage for my performers. in my mind, the perfect operation would have me invisible, always unseen.

perhaps that's a dangerous construct, riddled with so much ego that it is poison. it's hard to say... the mysterious mr. gold in the film is a construct of pure ego, but he is invisible and yet controls all the strings.

in boulder, i had the pleasure of walking with an old friend of mine that i have not seen in years. after parting ways, he approached me in an email, stating that he felt that our interactions were one sided, that i had only indulged responses about myself. he feared that i was becoming self centered.

on the other hand, i googled the effects of a lack of ego. disturbingly i fit a lot of them: restlessness, a lack of motivation, a low feeling of self worth... all things that i experience daily. perhaps googling a self diagnosis isn't the best method for answering deep existential questions, but it did provide an alternate interpretation of my situation.

point to this note being that i feel that i am at a threshold. in my last note i asked for help in overcoming some of the most powerful demons i have: that of my social alcoholism. in this note, i'm seeking feedback in simultaneously destroying and building an ego.

perhaps it's not something to be asked of friends, as the internal struggle that this entails is something that only i can see to its fruition. but being out among people that i didn't know, people supportive of me choosing not to drink, whether openly vocal about it or with the simple inclusion of "oh we have soda if you don't want beer"... i feel that these situations help me destroy the person i believe i am. for far too long i've held foolishly to the image of myself as a nightlife promoter. someone able to walk into a club and get bottle service and drink the night away because i live fast and free and money flows easily.

truth is, i can't live like that anymore. it's making the walls close in in ways i am only now beginning to see. i have trouble interacting with people normally... i've forgotten questions beyond the most basic 'what do you do?' and 'what is your name?'. social interaction, in sobriety, has become a chore.

a large part of that self image comes from the era of self destruction following the end of the most beautiful relationship i've ever had in my life. it's time to discard that image so that i can begin anew, as someone who is not hellbent on drowning sorrow in a bottle.

the image i'm coming to now is that of an event producer. while my shows are currently limited to burlesque, i do have a unique skill set honed over time and jobs that make me a versatile event planner and producer. i can arrange flowers quite well (a sabbath in denver allowed me to explore that), know the basics of french table service and can arrange logistics easily and respond to emergency needs efficiently and effectively. these are all marketable traits that i should take more pride in, despite the slight ridicule that comes from some of my peers, or the incomprehension that comes with being associated with burlesque.

i am more than just that scene, than the tawdry display of female flesh on a stage. currently my productions limit people's perception of me, but i shouldn't allow that external perception of my skills limit my perception of self.

to be honest, i'm not used to taking pride in things. i'm all too used to existing quietly, doing enough to get by without being actually proud of what i do. it's an odd feeling, one that i need to build and develop before i succumb to the self destructive behaviour of drinking myself into myself.

in brief, this note is to thank all those people who are accepting of me in their lives, and who know me in a context outside of the bottom of a bottle or outside of a bar. it's a challenge to me, to exist in the day, as something that should have the sun shine on it, something that should be seen. today i celebrate my internal developing independence as well as that of this country.

after all, the only way to get smarter is to play a smarter opponent, right? and the greatest opponent, at least for me currently, is myself.

getting back on the wagon

2011-06-22T19:15:00.001-04:00

yesterday i dropped by a venue in midtown as i was venue scouting for a fashion show i am hoping to produce, two beers in my system. despite not having seen her in nearly two years, she asked me a simple question: are you still on the wagon?

i haven't been. i've fallen off that wagon and have been dragged in the mud behind it, tearing myself to shreds. it was hard to be sober while i was in san francisco, but well worth it. it reflected an internal strength that i have but that i rarely use. and the money i saved i put into things that expanded my life rather than diminished it.

in the industry that i have flung myself into, it seems rude at times to refuse a drink, especially when some of my revenue is dependent on my asking other people, among them my friends, to drink. but it's killing me.

while at a recent family reunion, i watched my father stumble from table to table, awkwardly making jokes and looking for a seat as my mother, fed up with him, had made sure no seats adjacent to her were available. it pained me to see such divide in my family, but more so to see my father puttering about with a beer, the only person to be several in before the dinner had even officially started. it seemed that the drink was his only steadfast companion.

a week ago, after the successful geek girl show that i came home for, as i finally sat down to have my first drink of the evening, show being over and all, my sister called in hysterics. my father had called in an ambulance and had gone, at 2 AM to the hospital. she was panicking over his health, my mother didn't want anything to do with it, and my father, when asked, lied boldly to me and stated that it was a 'routine checkup'. in an ambulance. at 2 AM.

calling everyone the next morning and sorting out the situation, i talked at long lengths with my mother who, despairingly, has given up hope for me as well. i've been written off along with my father. my father is self medicating, stacking pain killers on top of his alcohol and insuring that he will die a slow and painful death at his own habits. my sister hurled anger and insults at me despite me being the phone call she made for emotional support.

i'm done with my family. they're dead to me. but that doesn't mean that some of them doesn't live within me.

since i dropped out of nyu, i've had a dark and secret fear that i'm what, in older times, they termed as an invalid. i fear that my dropping out of school, my attempts to start a business, my lack of motivation, my laziness, my delusions are all just pieces in a huge puzzle that ultimately add up to me being a useless speck in the world, unable to support myself and my lifestyle, much less the life of others.

in the past, women close to me have pointed this out to me and i lashed out at them cruelly, unnecessarily. for this i would apologize, could it actually mend our friendships, but that time has long since passed. living well is the best apology i can offer.

so, yesterday, after speaking to this woman about her venue for our fashion show, i go and drink. i drink and drink and drink until i have no money and, broke and humiliated, i have to call my wife down from her sleep to pay for the cab that i took home. i wanted to see the bottom and i got close. it's easier to fall than to fly, as it requires no effort at all.

this entry then is a cry for help. this is me asking my friends to help me become a stronger person so that i prove my fears of being an invalid invalid. so that, in building the strength to refuse a drink, night after night at event after event, i will develop the strength to achieve all that i've set forth for myself. so that, in the future, i don't live an emotionally distant life, lying through my teeth about my own health to people who care about me.

i know it's a lot to ask from friends and i understand if you can't or won't help me. my burdens aren't yours and to share them is a task far greater than i should ask.

but i trust and love you all, and hope that, in doing this, i can provide more for you all in years to come.

as i've written before, i'm tired of weak men. the weakest of them all being myself.

take two and call me in the morning

2011-04-18T02:25:00.001-04:00

new york's taking a fix of narcissism straight to the veins. cut scene, pupils dilated, needles tapped lightly, show the spray, requiem for a dream this pipeline in.

we're drowning in ourselves.

i left the noise of new york, the constant me me me of it to find some solace in san francisco. just wanted to find a dock on the bay where i could watch the tide roll away (here a memory of a trumpet player in midtown one late night as i stroll by, playing his trumpet loud. i drop a few dollars in his hat, he tells me he once played with otis) and where i would be able to sit out from the constant socializing.

i wanted quiet.

but (take it from me, he says to crovax, you can try and run from your pain, but take it from my experience, you'll tire before it does) even 3,000 miles away the noise follows. it sleeps in while i sleep, it knocks at my door with irritating requests, it shows up at the office in the form of constant worry and never knowing what comes next.

that noise, that inconstant noise, that damn echo that resonates to a fever pitch that meshes with the sirens and the crowds and the barkers and the traffic and the advertising... that noise is my own little imp, that nagging thing called insecurity and a lack of self discipline.

i dreamt recently of a cage in which i rode across sandy plains, my bottom hanging out. in a literary sense, i am trapped by my own circumstance, and the bottom's gone out of my support system here. finances a wreck (better than they ever were in new york, a voice reminds me) and beneath me i do not know if the ground is solid or sand.

i need to build that foundation.

in my mythos, the deep personal myth of a boy crossing the Wasteland, there is a scene that unfolds: he reaches the top of a sand dune and before him, the Desert, parched and yearning for him. the landscape is littered with marble ruins, with black figures that, ghostlike, long for his life. those ruins... are they the empires that i have witnessed crumble, that lend me the lessons of their faded glory upon which i can create mine? or is this a glimpse into the future, of seeing what i believe to be a sturdy empire sink into waste due to an infirm beginning.

the doubt consumes.

i have four days before i board a plane to boston, four days in which to write 3 years of drinks and stage lights and back stage vanity into something that can carry me for at least three years. and not just myself. i cannot think only of myself. there are others too, who have helped, that i cannot take for granted (but, play the pun here, perhaps i can take them for granite, to use them as the solid cornerstones of a great foundation?)

i'm not a quitter. san francisco's pulled the veil over my eyes down and i'm seeing my circumstance for what it is... it's another challenge to be overcome, another lesson in the constant school that is life. i can overcome this. i can build a foundation and a system that can support all my dreams, all my goals.

me me me me me (the constant chatter of new york never stops, not even here... at least here, i stand a chance of hearing myself).

i close my facebook friend suggestions and allow the absence of image to be filled with thought. we're all rock stars, all glamorous, all neck to neck with each other to be more beautiful, more famous, more successful in new york. but new york's not the world, despite what we may often feel there.

here i come, sneaking back in from the west. new york might be my drug of choice, and san francisco my mental detox, but there's nothing like getting a few spikes into your veins again to remind you to keep on hustling.

only human

2011-04-05T01:01:00.000-04:00

sometimes you have to embrace spontaneity, pain, Whim.

i'm walking home from work after some asshole flags down the cab i called for myself. looked me in the eye before he did it too, the douche... but the fault is with the way Taxi Magic implements, not with the fare. he's out to get home, same as i am, but the cabbies haven't been trained to respect the reservation.

so i walk.

headphones in and IM in one hand as i stroll down 24th - no, wait. i veer to 25th. i'm tired of 24th street after 8 PM, of all the hipsters mixing ineffectually with the latinos, of the noise, of the people, of this constant tension that never goes anywhere because san francisco has learned to repress itself so well.

screw that.

i walk down 25th and as i hit mission (the big neon blues of chase welcoming me) i pass a tattoo parlor i've passed a dozen times before. this time (maybe others too) it's open. part of me screams that i should go in.

two cute girls walk by, distract me for a moment and the pedestrian signal turns to a orange hand.

heed the signs.

i walk back to the tattoo parlor and catch their conversation. i'm in it now. brian will do the work while beth leaves and i will sit there and give in to Whim. i will accept that i've made this decision.

i don't know if it's the residual anger from an escalated discussion at work today, or the constant doldrum state of my apartment or the stagnation i feel creeping up bit by bit into my life, but i know, deep inside, i crave the pain.

i'm nervous. i've forgotten the touch of the needle (like a lizard on a window pane). i want to feel again.

the first bit of the outline is a searing reminder of what it is to feel. i embrace it. unlike my flogging i look into the pain, and welcome it, seeking to feel every nuance of the needle instead of concentrating past the pressure. the needle feels like a million bee stings, like a fine scalpel cutting through my skin in this outline. i feel like brian could slip a blade underneath the black lines and peel away the skull he's drawn, see the flesh underneath.

this is a permanent decision, made in a moment, like every other one i have made in my life. it fits right, it has its place (i call my acupuncturist to verify the placement of the tattoo having meaning, dive in).

i've already decided yes to this, even before i turned back from the pedestrian signal. events are simply fulfilling a pattern that already exists.

the ink is heavy, the shading more than my personal tastes, but i leave it to the artist. when the work is done and i look at in the mirror, it pops with more realism than i'd expected.

cuthbert, i have your signal. can you ken it?

i come home to my cats, and to the emptiness i ache to fill. soon, my heart cries, soon. but for now, the reprogramming happens by embracing Whim, by admitting that, despite alarms throughout the day with directives for each, sometimes things deviate, sometimes things hurt, sometimes things go according to a Plan that you've laid without even knowing so.

i don't bleed.

handwriting and hypnosis

2011-03-29T23:38:00.000-04:00

from a handwriting sample before hypnotherapy:

the sunset catches my eye in my rear view mirror as i speed down the 101 through santa barbara. i'm speeding, hitting 80 and above in what i think is a designated 70 zone (i'm not sure, the signs are far and few between and go by too quickly). i'm 88 miles outside of LA and as the radio blasts (something, i don't recall) i smile, allow myself the modest luxury of enjoying the fact that i am twenty five, the rust colored mountains are beautiful, the ocean is wide, breeze is cool and life... well, life has a funny way of putting things you appreciate into your rear view, making everything coming and everything past wondrous.

sometimes it's hard to think that this is now my life (the breeze, the mountains, the open air, the sun) and i worry that at some point i'll wake up, or my benefactors will, and i will find myself in the dismal grey moods of new york, living between two parking lots, working in a stagnant job. that doubt drives me, sometimes, to insure that this dream like life becomes rooted, becomes, to some degree, real. that concern makes me work to earn my keep, for should i wake, i hope it will be to sunlight, the ocean and the open road.

---

then i am under.

she tells me to visualize a healing energy and what comes to mind immediate is the silver of the sun reflecting off of the waves. a single name sprints up with the image and my eyes tear.

she says to let that energy wash over me, to let it heal me. this image, this association, this source of my pain... to let that heal me? is that my healing energy?

yes. i embrace it. my pain will make me strong.

i feel it wash into me, broken off of the separation that i've imposed on it. it's not separate. it's my experience, my life. i let the pain soak in.

a sentence, like lighting. in my pain i have strength.

and it's true. i'm still living, despite the loss. i'm still running and driving and i've gone further than i had thought i would a few months ago. i'm climbing up to the moon without even trying, but each step has been earned. i know it, despite the nagging whispers of fear that tell me that i haven't.

she tells me to see my higher self.

an image, me wrapped in a military style jacket, double breasted, repressed, closed, strong, efficient. the machine that i want to be. cold, untouchable, invincible and further than i am now. i am to walk to becoming him. the stairs are endless and fold upon themselves (i later tell her of the mythic vision that is in my core, of the damsel in the ivory tower that folds in upon itself, the opponent that is the hero that awaits constantly on the stairs). he is who i am to become and fear to be, yet at the same time need to be.

the hypnotherapy works far better than i'd thought. i leave wanting more, wanting to ride with the open road before me, to lean into the muscles of another machine, as strong, as efficient as the man i want to become. another session for another time.

for now, it is enough to know that when the sun shines on the ocean, though it hurts the eyes, it makes a silver lining.

get off your knees

2011-03-29T22:31:00.001-04:00

i'm tired of weak men.

we've all been there. we've all had the perfect specimen that we lost. sometimes we learn to be friends (but underneath the constant dim tension, the fool's hope of Return), sometimes we never hear the Voice again (save in angered emails, in dreams, in shadows half glimpsed through subway train doors), sometimes things just Break.

but there are other fish in the sea (despite her being the best for 50,000 leagues). there they are, teeming at your feet, waiting for your care and affection. maybe not now, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't have our eyes open, our lines cast, waiting. these heartstrings are tough fuckers, but cut them.

(odd, how lady ga ga's 'eh eh (nothing more to say)' comes on just now)

we needn't be unfair to those that are here for us now. we needn't hold on to that dimwit's notion of Romance, of the Unattainable. it's hurtful. for you and those you are with now. it's unfair. it's playing a high stakes game without ever putting in a sizable ante.

so, to all you men still pining, get off your knees. you're better than this, than the circumstance that brought you to where/who you are. at least you'd better be learning how to be better than what brought you here. there She is, sitting right in front of you. all you have to do love the one you're with.

get off your knees

2011-03-29T22:31:00.000-04:00

The Hours

2011-03-18T19:24:00.000-04:00

the worlds are returning.

the violins cut in on top of the piano and i hear them reconstructing themselves, swirling in the aether, gathering mass.

(stairways climbing out of dark eldritch depths, bricks and mortar falling upon skeletons, casks of amontillado, spires rising from the ground, oceans filling, forests coming to life)

today it rains on san francisco, washing from it the grime that never seems to go anywhere.

(last night i leave the office at 2330 hours, the sounds of revelry dim. saint patrick's day doesn't seem well celebrated here. as i walk home, i realize i despise this part of the city at night, the swirling garbage fluttering on the streets, the uncleanliness, the well off pretending to be less than they are)

the worlds return in a conversation i have with an associate. i open to him and allow the delusional state of my paradigm to come back to life. i remember worlds built like ampi-theaters i used to dream about, ancient stone seats swirling about a pool of water that topples off into the starry black void.

there are denizens in these worlds, small people, things i see form afar, desert sands with ruins hidden underneath.

i want to be a mystic i tell him, constantly in between two worlds until, one day, i am called out of this world and simply step into the next, the one that, for me, has constantly existed aside this one. i want to create the world i can step into.

in the aether they gather momentum. the hours pass and as a polonaise comes on over my headphones and lightning tears apart my desktop, i realize that the vision, the hope, the delusion that drove me to start has come back.

i can do this. i have the allies that will make this possible.

somewhere, nearby and unseen, a ball of mass in the darkness begins to spin, spires and stones rising forth from it as it takes the shape of a world of its own.

all output

2011-03-05T05:32:00.001-05:00

i'm in a repugnant mood when i leave the office at 1:30 AM. the lingering noise of the night's revelers leaves a sour taste in my mind and i count the bars as i walk past them on 24th street, steal glances at the lifeless lives inside. really, how much of our social interactions are based on drink? tonight i detest the liquid, detest the culture, the noise and the false glamour that goes into it.

gaggles of girls stumble past me awkwardly on heels too high for them after the four drinks they've had. from a distance they look better. they've done themselves to the nines, stiletto heels holding frail legs that are squeezed into uncomfortable looking too tight jeans under a top just loose enough to hide the muffin top and to hint that, if you're lucky and the girl's just drunk enough, you'll catch a glimpse of her breasts as she sways in her inebriation.

i steer far and wide of these want to be sirens, repulsed by faces that crack under layers of make up, repulsed by features that cannot be hidden under layers of foundation and blush. i quicken my pace. i crave the solitude of my apartment, of my terms and my comfortable world of silence.

24th street is a wasteland, caught halfway between urban sprawl and being a proper city street. the stench of the sewers on mission and 24th bring to mind thoughts of hong kong, but san francisco's population is nowhere near dense enough to match. the streets are empty, populated by garbage that the city isn't motivated enough to clean and friday night's after party vomit.

the people disgust me.

vans full of latinos piled like mexicans, as it were, hoop earrings and sideways baseball caps over bandanas as they holler at friends from the middle of the street, left turn blinkers on. i figure they're not driving, despite all evidence to the contrary, hope that their drunk asses don't decide to start moving as i scuttle across the crosswalk.

vagrants solo like myself nod at me knowingly, sharing some miserable connection in our loneliness. fuck you, i think, barely returning the nod. you don't know me, and you don't know where i'm coming from. you don't know where i'm going to. the nod can screw itself... i needn't affirm that it's okay for us to be alone.

more walking. i duck into the taqueria on 24th and alabama that i've become addicted to.

garish lights. size up the situation. usual latinos having their fare. i've no beef with the older there, the ones who live here and earn their keep proper. one table to the right waxes on politics, i tell from the emotional distance as they talk passionately about the political situation in the middle east that they're wearing plaid, jeans too tight for me, sneakers deliberately old. probably thick framed black glasses too.

asian look girl, probably a mix, catches my eye with her stockinged legs. something to look at should i decide to dine in. i decide not to.

hoodied girl leaning against a case of tecate discussing with a lanky, plaid clad hipster how he will have to have a beer. drinking culture is bullshit. tecate of course is an ironic choice because it is cheap, ethnic and popular now for being the broke hipster's beer of choice. tastes like water if you ask me, with about the same effect, but what do i know. i prefer to drink a proper brew when i do... let someone like tim or jesse do the choosing.

guy at the counter starts at me in english until i order in spanish better than anyone that's not latino has in a long while. respect in his eyes and as he adjust the conversation to match, taking the rest of my order in his own tongue. i feel the hipsters waiting on their tecate hesitate to drink in my fluent use of spanish. far better than they've mustered, and their four years in college taught them to be proficient. fuck them.

i'm in a vile mood. as i sit to wait for my order i turn my back to the eye candy i spotted early. second mental assessment reminds me she's got a fall over bang styled hair cut, that she's curled in near fetal position because her choice of stylish stockings left her too cold to deal with san francisco's pissy micro climates. i try as hard as possible to ignore the table next to me of three guys all wearing color variations of the same outfit of a hoodie, some assortment of plaid, tight jeans and sneakers. throw in some stylish piercings or tattoos for differentiation. i'd wish they'd all go back to the midwest, go fuck a goddamn cow and do something more useful than exist as they are now. the mission, san francisco, 2 am. where the dregs of the world come to fester.

my orders called. i pick it up before the guy crying the order switches to english. i know your damn language paisano, unlike most of the other non-mexican tools here. when i choose a neighborhood to live and hang in it's because i know everything that will be said about me in whatever language that comes up, not because it's 'slumming it'.

get home. cats are angry with my 12 hour day. i really need to find them new homes because i'm so rarely home for them. the small urine stain on the borrowed futon i use for a bed is their agreement to this fact. i flip it over, will clean it tomorrow along with all the other broken things in my life.

this city yearns to be finished, to be disciplined, to have some semblance of order and cleanliness and of class seep down into its lower tiers. or maybe i need to beat the crap out of a few hipsters. lord knows they're not hard to find in my neighborhood.

still work to be done, despite the long day at the office. i turn on my heater. it's 55 degrees out supposedly but i still need the damn thing on full blast. the hell is wrong with this city. throw hygiene to the winds and forget charging my phone. i'll wake when the world needs me tomorrow, naturally, and i'll enjoy this terrible place as the sun peeks its shy head through the predicted rain. it's a goddamn terrible town that i live in, but it's got that grittiness that new york lost.

roll up my sleeves, there's a lot of work to be done.

feet up on the windowsill

2011-02-25T17:12:00.001-05:00

the cabbie plows through the snow brazenly, one hand and one eye on his phone while the other hand and the other eye steal glances at i-5. my own eyes steal a glance at his driver id plate, there are two pictures with nearly identical names, one of the man driving, one of another man with a long white beard and a blue turban. i wonder idly what brought this man to seattle, of all american cities, to be a cabbie. he gestures out to his left, to the west, where i'm heading, and says that the worse of the snow is over there. i turn a grimace into a smile and thank him for the information.

we dart across the bridge to west seattle, and as i root through my bag for my flip video camera, the industrial cranes linger without purpose in the snow. there are flocks of them, their long steel necks perched over icy waters, drawing their fares in slowly and methodically. i have just come from cities of business (new york, los angeles) and i realize that seattle, at least the part that i am passing through now, is still a city of industry. my thoughts wander to detroit, to which i have never been, and wonder how it'd be like to visit.

we pull up to a 7-eleven half a block down from the house that i am staying at. i thank the man for his speed and his conversation, tip him a generous amount before i pull my suitcase from the trunk and proceed to amy's door.

she greets me with a smile and surprise that i have arrived so promptly, and returns to tending to the two children that she is watching. one hers, sweet adorable lilly, and another for her daycare, sick and puzzled, but complacent, cillian. we lapse into conversation that spans the two years since we've last seen each other, and we pass the time until more people come in for champagne thursday.

for a while i sit trying to remain reasonably unnoticed, gauging from the interactions and people around me who is cool, clingy or creepy. i'm batting 1000 by the end of the night and i've pegged all the marks for their respective adjectives. the atmosphere relaxes over champagne and the awkwardness of newness and of time passed dissipates as the bubbles break the meniscus of each of our glasses.

the hours drop away from the clock and we find ourselves talking at 2:30 in the morning discussing whether or not she has the right to give advice on being single. from what i've remembered of her, and what i know of her, amy has every right: she's a strong single mother and doing a wonderful job of not only caring for herself but also of lilly and the other babies that fall in her care. as for my situation... i'm not so sure. i pace about returning phone calls to people i care about because i'm not sure the capacity i can have them in my life. i only know that, for the first time in a long time, there has been desire and that i need to work for something i want.

then it's to bed.

the next morning i wake at 7:00 am in a panic, sure i'm late for the hotel check out. then i realize, after a moment, where i am. i'm closer to home, it's okay to sleep in.

mirror's edge

2011-01-24T18:19:00.000-05:00

the impulse to run is nearly overwhelming. the music picks up (a bass line drops as the emcee demands to see me criss cross) and i feel my pace increasing. my body wants to jog but still there is this incredible restraint.

i see myself as i want to be, leaping past strollers and bouncing off buildings to get around pedestrians, dashing with almost no regard into traffic to hear tires squeal as a car pulls to an abrupt stop. pumas, jeans, form fitting black shirt, sling backpack over my right shoulder, ready to be unbuckled and dropped if the burden need be abandoned, ready to swing to the front of my torso if needed for something within. i envision the iphone i hold as being wrapped around my upper left arm, unable to fall off as i run free through city streets.

i'm speed walking, but my pace hasn't broken into a jog. there are too many rules, too many other restrained people that would take offense to me sprinting freely through their territory. running, they believe, is reserved for the young and the dangerously important and i must confess i don't quite qualify as either.

i'm running from seven years in new york, from the person i was there, from the heart ache and heart break and the constant drumming of what i thought to be failure.

i'm running to california and to the sun and to a world of entertainment and of leisure, of the perception that things are easy and that things will come in their due times.

i'm running for the sake of running, for the sake of feeling some motion in a perpetually stagnant town. i'm running because the motion breeds the illusion of freedom. i'm running away from other people, running to myself, running into myself as i withdraw into work and seek to disappear as a person only to become a name, a digital entity that exists everywhere simultaneously.

i'm running this town, running this shit show, running myself ragged.

there's a leap, and the sun sets.

a long bath seems the perfect way to end a day spent on the streets in nonstop motion. don a suit, a pea coat, the long tailored fit of a restrained age. at night i lapse into the repression that people exude constantly in the day time. but i do it grand.

a fencing mask, gloves. my skin mustn't show. a vest, a suit coat, a tie, my skin mustn't breathe.

in san francisco i am redefining myself. in san francisco i am finding where my spirit as a soul and where my spirit as a machine can intertwine, can coexist, can together produce.

i need to embrace the fact that i'm running, and that at night is the only time i must slow down.

resolution

2011-01-01T04:29:00.000-05:00

walking home in the slight drizzle of the early hours of the first day of 2011, i realize that if anyone dared to stop me with a comment on my plight that i was walking (to what they presumed to be) home alone, i could laugh and say that my wife was 3,000 miles away, 3 hours between us.

new year's every year finds me in a manic rush to a bar to celebrate midnight with a mass of people packed ear to ear. sometimes i make it to my drink before the hour strikes. sometimes i'm in line in the winter cold, wishing that drizzle could become snow. either way, new year's has always been a lonely holiday for me, filled with reflections on my current circumstance.

i've learned the nooks and crannies of the walk to work well enough now that i only use the iphone to verify, rather than to guide. more importantly, my mind is beginning to grasp hills, san francisco's signature topography. i'm on dolores, the palm trees and the incline tell me, and soon i will hit the plateau that is noe valley.

the suburban streets of noe valley at night surprise me. once, slightly hallucinatory and leaving a lesbian bar, i stumbled through the streets of noe valley and got lost, relying on my battery drained iphone to lead me through the hills back up to what i then called home. the streets were empty and, despite the pockets of people, 24th street felt lifeless.

tonight the streets are buzzing. people are drunk and at the gate of the store there leans a young man swaying. with just enough volume, said only once he steps aside and i return 'home.'

at midnight i was standing in the latin american club on 22nd and valencia, holding a shot of whiskey. the temptation to toss the shot back is strong - i honestly am nearly overwhelmed at the instinct to toast. he lifts his glass and tosses his shot back with the bar's countdown. although i tap glass to his, i managed to bring the drink back down without it touching my lips. i feel like i've wronged him, but more importantly i know he understands that i must respect my decisions first. we cheered, and have been cheery.

the night stretches on and i find myself in someone's apartment. names are exchanged again, a quick dress code check - yes, thank you, we pass. in the air i feel the electricity of drunken hook ups and youth. we talk of singularities for a bit, and i try to understand. then it is gone, and i am, wondering if my choice to leave such interactions is to my detriment.

tonight i feel like i feel like she must all the time. my mind's both everywhere and nowhere and my writing, even as i am typing, feels dishonest to my intention. i try various approaches, nothing sticks.

in three weeks i have found a place. it is at the office at 1:25 AM on new years, my heart walking the streets of new york and my mind on all the work i have chosen to do. i've said yes plenty, but it's time to get serious about what i've committed myself to. this is the new year for me: one where i can peer into the cracks in the(my) world and choose to commit to fixing them.

happy new year everyone. i know 2011 will bring us all the best.

where do we go, indigo?

2010-12-27T22:15:00.001-05:00

she swings back on the rope swing on billy goat hill and, forgetting to release, lands on her back, sliding down the hill for a bit. there is the initial worry as we run to her, make sure she's okay. but we needn't; she's got a thug kind of exterior and she brushes it off. a few scrapes and a little bruising, nothing more.

we walk back to the car after that, and i trail behind, looking over the view from diamond street and soaking in all of san francisco. i feel like i'm beginning to fall for this city, for the spirit that runs around the office next to me, for the spans that i can walk or drive, for the erratic public transportation. only a few other cities have i seen sprawled for me such and felt the same tug on my heart strings: new york, hong kong, rio de janeiro... maybe i'm in love with cities, maybe the people i share the memories i form with.

looking at his and her back as they walk to the car, i remember how my heart swelled every day in my last leg in new york. sunlight was made more acute by the immediacy of change, of loss, of opportunity. the smallest things in new york held every bit of relevance (a child's laughter as he rolled clumsily on the ground at thompson's square park, the emptiness of a last show, the single desk covered with candles in an otherwise empty room) and here, in this new leg of my life, things are beginning to do the same (the perfect placement of a pedestal with a crystal globe in the middle of a nearly empty room, the girl curled up next to me vulnerable in her obsession, the quiet hours in the morning i crave before work comes like a storm).

the culture here's different, for sure, or maybe i am. i've been to a few bars and clubs (a drum and bass party where people danced higher than we could ever get in new york, but without the edge; an irish pub where we shot pool and say on tables; a lesbian club where i, slowly reading meaning in every gesture, was invited to leave by the illustration of the size of a room). i've stopped drinking and smoking, both of which are missed, but not longed for. there was a certain oblivion that new york brought me to that i craved while i was there, a certain inability to feel beyond how much my rent check hit my wallet.

san francisco feels incomplete to me, waiting, aching with potential. i seek its expression, every space (a carpeted potential gallery next to an acupuncture center, broken warehouses, the span of my room in a new apartment) seems to crave my designs. i have allies here, more so than i did in new york. we need each other, and here, in the drab drizzle of san francisco, we're not afraid to admit it. i see a future and it is reflected in other people's minds and hearts, and we are taking the steps to create it.

my work here is just beginning and, come march when my contract is up and i am left on my own means again, i think i will have stepped closer to a world that i have created part of. the city is waiting for us... we just need to brush the dirt off of our backs, shake off the bruises and keep on laughing.

this is where we used to live

2010-12-08T01:45:00.000-05:00

i walk home tonight with a steady deliberation that contrasts my usual rapid pace. i want to linger in these neighborhoods, to let astoria seep in to me as i come to a full circle in one of my last chapters here in new york. in a few hours i will have the cat food on a timer, have dropped the keys into her mailbox as per her instructions.

david comes to pick me up from astoria and as we race over the BQE with the Manhattan skyline breaking the winter night, he remarks that we aren't going back to the city. it settles and i process the fact that tomorrow morning, in a few hours, i will be en route to a new life.

five apartments in as many days. days spent with middle to nowhere in the upper west side, nights spent on 22nd street with zach, nights spent in brooklyn with david, trips back and forth from my studio in harlem, and cat sitting in astoria... glimpses of so many different types of lives in new york, different stories in the same setting.

my story here is closing, despite the fact that i will be back. 7 years here and i leave with mechanisms in place, hoping that they will work well in my absence, working to make sure that they will. with the right choice of assistant producer, things seem to be going smoothly.

so many people, so many stories. ghosts and living, every last bit of new york filling me in ways i cannot yet even comprehend.

tomorrow comes on swift wings through the dark. the extent of my loss is not yet clear to me, and the extent of the opportunity that awaits is not yet clear to me either.

here, on the threshold, i realize that yes, i bought flight tickets to the west coast, but i have been happier here. there have been so many people who have been amazing to me. performers and audience members and friends who have shared these moments with me.

i'll be back soon, to break into the apartment i used to live in. and to see then what has changed.

once upon a time

2010-11-06T14:29:00.001-04:00

once we thought we were kings, lighting up cigars in some mall in los angeles, preparing to drive the desert to las vegas.

once we thought we were musketeers, following a drunk d'artagan through a warehouse party, climbing into corporate sculptures in downtown manhattan.

cleaning my apartment out, piece by piece, i come across the cigar case from the first and i have to wonder why i kept it. there is enough clutter here in my life in new york as it is, and to add more from places i have been seems foolish.

pamela ribon wrote "those who are unattached are the ones who ... fill their homes with everything they've ever encountered, surrounding themselves with fixed objects that can't leave." hidden in a corner in my kitchen, this cigar case is reminder of that. looking at the span of my seven years here in new york, i realize that the tarot cards were right; i have become lancelot in exile... i am imposing emotional isolation upon myself. people come and go and are, as one friend put it, able to come back to me as if never ever changed.

that's because nothing ever does change. i'm enough of a friendly stranger that my life seems constant, that my companionship seems constant.

but now it's time to do something completely different.

i'm rejecting the mainstream, throwing away the IKEA nesting instinct and hoping that, in allowing myself to let go, i can find a way past certain blocks in my mind and in my emotions.

i am tired of being the observer in my own life. i am tired at scratching at the door, trying to get in.

i want to hold hour long conversations with people about things and be comfortable doing so, leaving the five minute promoter conversations behind.

once upon a time, we were kings and musketeers and such because my mind created us as such. i wanted things and i wanted an image to go with those things, i wanted us to be the archetypes in my mind of successful, virile young men.

but we're not that. we're simply human. and that means connecting on a human level.

world, i want to be part of you again.

sometimes they treat me like a jester

2010-10-30T14:08:00.001-04:00

he pulls me aside and tells me to be more considerate.

inside, i panic. the show's over, people are heading home, the crowd has dissipated and is trickling to their hotel rooms to pass the night. it's 3 in the goddamn morning after all. but his words hit me in a soft spot i know i have, the single weak point in all my emotional armor.

the show's done and gone, the room is full of good cheer (so i thought) despite the exhaustion. we've come through. my effort to be playful is poorly m, although most likely rightfully deserved. we're tired, i should just go home.

i should just go home.

moments before, in the kitchen passages of the hilton, i watch the other performers put on their pasties and wonder why i keep doing these conventions, doing these shows. it's certainly not the reputation, certainly not the pay. hell, there is no pay... each show leaves me around a hundred out, if not more. somehow i feel connected to all these people though, like they're family. sometimes i feel like the black sheep because i don't stick around... i simply disappear after the curtain call.

i'm still panicking inside. i should go home. despite my plans to stay for part of the following day, i pack up my things, through my suitcase into my rented car. with the amount of cars i've driven through avis i need to sign up for a preferred customer program.

his words are still there, underneath my ribcage and my skin, worming away at me. i fight back tears as the police come on the radio. first her, then her, now her, then him? the list is growing and i keep repeating the same mistakes despite my best intentions not to. i try to live considerately, try to provide for others, try to infect people with my enthusiasm and good cheer, but these words eat at me, prove all my intentions to be liars.

i realize i'm going 90 miles per hour down 95 and that my hands are unsteady, that my eyes are seeing double, triple, through a haze of tears. i have to pull over.

(the logical part of my brain shouts at me to pull onto a shoulder, to let it out. the romantic part of my brain tells me to drive in the night with the tears and to hope that somehow i don't die.)

i pull over at a rest stop, let the emotions sort themselves out (the whole time another part of my brain ticks away, remarking on how foolish emotions are, how i can control them, how i don't actually feel what i think i'm feeling. the dissonance echoes. i stifle it, silence it, only to hear it roaring again. i'm not a child, and the words are borne of exhaustion and of a simple misunderstanding... they are not a reflection of who i am. but they are, but they are). the mental battlefield between who i want to be and who i am struggles, collapses. i silence the panic, silence the fear, drive the rest of the way home well over speed limit but without tears in my eyes.

the cold grey emotional exhaustion. i know i could've hit a jersey barrier and flattened into a human pancake and not cared. it didn't matter if i got home, if i stayed alive. they were right, he was right, and she before, and she before, and she before. at the rest stop i strangled the overwhelming urge to leave everything, to ditch the car and the suitcase and the reminders of myself and walk into the trees and come out on the other side ignorant of who i am.

once home i send out my text missives. better to retreat before engagement before the collateral damage is done. better to give up the fight before even raising a finger. better not to let my hedgehog quills pierce into the flesh of more people.

sleep almost takes me. a call in response to a text. i'm afraid at what i've wrought, i ignore the call.

the phone rings again. someone is taking the time out of their night (early morning at this point, it's night five) to tell me that maybe, sometimes, the risk is worth it. that i shouldn't berate myself too much. or congratulate myself too much either. somehow, that presence, however small, balances out all the malice i carry around inside of me. somehow the fact that one person cares, in whatever regard, about how i feel, makes trying to be considerate worth it.

the day passes. i drop off the rental at a reasonable hour. looking over the car as i exit, i realize how much i love driving.

i get on the train to rush back home to the to-do list i've set for myself. there is a lot of work to be done. the world's moving and demanding that i go with it. i enter the train and, in my usual fashion, continue the motion until it's logical conclusion. a bit of a spin, my bag down, seat waiting for me, book in hand.

sometimes they treat me like a god.

'chris?'

the inquiry breaks me from my introspective stupor. i gaze up at a kind, unfamiliar face. 'alvin.' a reintroduction. the name conjures up memories from my childhood, of watching pocahantas with a group of friends as a manner of parting ways. i hesitate. would we be able to hold a conversation for 100 blocks on the train? my body moves without my brain catching up, i cross the train and sit down next to a friendly stranger (or a estranged friend).

we catch up, briefly, and i realize that once he and i grew up together, shared some point of our history together. he's doing quite well for himself, it seems, and pursuing something he's interested in and doing so well. jealousy, for once, doesn't tinge my interaction... i'm genuinely pleased to see someone from my past doing so well. it's as if, after the previous evening, i've been granted a reminder of potential: 'this, chris, is where you've come from. these are the people behind you that have tinted your life... do them no disservice and live as you were meant to.'

speaking of my plans (however hollow they feel) suddenly i am filled with a name. san francisco holds another friend from years back, and she too layers upon this interaction. i can't do these two people any disservice... i remember how i felt when i was a child about both of them, and there is nothing but strength in those emotions. my plans gain strength, become less hollow.

my future, for a moment, seems tangible and desirable, and, most importantly, something to be proud of. my route may have been unconventional, and it may be long still, but it is happening. the constant daily setbacks that i experience are not going to overwhelm me... i have years of life ahead, and a day is a drop in the bucket.

writing this, the feeling fades, but is remembered. there is still much to do and no time in which to do it all. focus is necessary, to a cold grey degree that i can only conjure up in my darkest hours.

i'm trying to find a balance, in this age of kings and queens. i'm not quite centered yet; ironically i, who dream of nexus, still oscillate between being nothing and everything.

somehow, in less than 12 hours, i did step out into the darkness, into the trees, and am coming out on the other side.

and hell, the view ain't half bad.

2010-10-30T14:06:00.000-04:00

These are the details I remember in a dream taken this afternoon. If you've any thoughts on the 'meaning' of it, please let me know.

I'm in a village, I'm not myself, I'm a wrinkled old man. I am running, trying to break 28 races. It's almost like a video game... depending on how many races I complete I can reveal the nature of a hooded figure at the bar that is giving me the races to complete. I finish 2 races, a bell rings, signaling that, should I make it to the bar now, I will see 2 parts of the true nature of the hooded figure (my god).

He has part of a canary for a head, large green feathers over an otherwise unseen body. He tells me that I have earned the ability to get closer to my true form. I see myself turning shape; he says I am dog like because I run freely through the open spaces, despite my insistence to turn my head into a cat's head. I agree with him because he won't allow me to become cat like.

As a dog headed entity, my next mission is given to me by a woman. I recall kissing her, but at this time cannot recall her shape. She is a presence and I know that completion of a certain amount of goals, now also unclear, will open a sequence of flowers that will make her known to me. She has me cross a flood swelling bridge to another town. A panda bear police officer comes to demonstrate that the bridge is impossible to run directly across, it is broken... as he gingerly touches the sharp edges of broken wood, the current picks up and he is swept downstream. Sad panda. I eye the right side of the bridge, trace a path on part of the bridge that is still solid. I brace myself to run.

I run across that part of the bridge, stumble back on to the rain soaked path. Behind me I hear the female scolding the others who were to take on the mission with me. No one would, they whimper in fear at the task before them, in the torrential rain. There is a large balloon blocking the way to the gate, it raises and I knock and enter the next village.

This village is one I've been to (not in this dream) for I have a returning traveler's familiarity with it. I amble to the bar, hoping to speak with the bartender. He is not there, but I do not recognize this as strange until the single bar patron gestures solemnly to two sides behind the bar and says 'we have no internet; one missing and one missing.' Another monkey comes up and tells me that they are below and gestures to the ale well. I begin to make my way there and, as I wake, I feel the second monkey telling me that what they are doing there is completely legal.

Other remembered details:

- after being granted a dog's head I am temporarily out of body and I pick myself up, see that I look like Mario with a snout, and my sister, who is watching this video game/my life laughs.

you can't win with a losing hand.

2010-10-12T02:16:00.001-04:00

tonight, as the rain pours over new york and soaks in the grime of the weekend, seeping the vomit of nyu students into the gutters and into this city's rusted steel veins, i contemplate falling in love with the first woman i meet. i want to throw her in a wheelbarrow and wheel her down the street, let my mania take over as i whoop in elation and frustration and race through puddles and dodge traffic, holding loosely to the remnants of my dignity and my sanity.

i sit still though, watch the empty bar unfold into a trembling sort of audition. we seem like kids in an adult's playground here, performing our card tricks and sleight of hand and burlesque, hoping to get future gigs. there's no polish without the scrutiny of an audience. here, housed by the elements and from the elements, we are free to be ourselves, to show what we can because we have no need to impress or to show off; we perform because that is what we are supposed to do.

what they are supposed to do.

i feel adrift without an audience, without a performance that demands the mania that i am accustomed to. i fall quietly into the role of an awkward wallflower, unsure as to how to join conversations naturally, even less sure as to how to remain in the few i drift into. there is no pressing excuse to leave a conversation because this show doesn't require my ability to keep things moving. i'm not performing so there's no need for me as a performer. without an audience, without a crowd, i have no one to schmooze, to add to an email list or to buy a drink for, to meet the eyes of to dance away again, promising more idle chatter in an attempt to get to know each other enough so that i can email and promote to them without being entirely awkward about it.

without an audience or a crowd, i have no purpose. there are more talented performers than i am, and they have performed their functions. the show falls apart because there is no necessity for a show. without cash i cannot drink myself into my usual wallpaper stupor, i cannot easily disappear into the shadows along the walls.

people chat idly about things that people chat idly about. i don't know how to join them anymore. i've forgotten how. i've watched the tv shows and read books and kept reasonably up to date on movies, but they speak of places i've never been to, bands i don't bother to track. i have no passions aside from keeping things moving, getting more people to come to shows yet to be held. without an audience i feel like i am nothing.

i watch her smoke a cigarette, wish that the world was flooding.
i realize the malaise of my affection, suppress it, try to allow myself the liberty of non-possessive caring. it almost works. i almost do not care.

there is magic in the night, small motions that i cannot comprehend. i don't see myself in this picture; these things happen all the time without me, without people like me. my function is redundant, useless. who needs someone without talents who cannot hold a conversation to book venues for performances when talent can speak for itself, when small talk makes friends and relationships more lasting than the hollow business transactions that i promise?

there is not enough alcohol in the world for me to drown my inadequacies into.

i step out into the rain one stop too far uptown, walk back home in the drizzle.

oh how i want to scream into the sky and tear it open with my frustration, let the clouds pour lightning and rain onto me, drown me and remind me that this struggle is as vain as attempting to control the weather.

i guess it's true though; only a fool in here would think he's got anything to prove. and damn it, am i not the fool.

And avoid like the plague, loud attention seeking wannabe gangsters who are in it for the glory, to be a face, to be a name.

2010-10-10T16:39:00.001-04:00

it's maybe ten at night at the bowery poetry club and i'm standing outside talking to some friends of mine. i'm watching one of them, dressed in a blue sweater, hair akimbo, shaved on one side (an accident she claims), remarkably beautiful in the incandescent light. another has her back to me, her anger/frustration thinly veiled by her silence after i bring up a debt.

is this my new york?

these days i feel like i've lost my city, that my soul is so tired of the rat race that makes up my day to day living here. today i get a phone call from an unknown number and answer only to find that it is my landlord, asking about the back rent i owe. my bank accounts are near empty, depleted on a flight to los angeles that i wait for, crave. i'm waiting to be paid back and in the while have to survive on doritos and feeding my cats cheap nonorganic food. i shaved off a moajority of my hair today, self styling in a manner that echoes a beautiful blond i try not to wait by the phone for, the girl in the blue sweater too.

the show at the bowery reminds me of how little i've accomplished in the world of burlesque, of how much knowing the right people in this small town counts for more than the actual production merit of a show. i'v tired and growing jaded and wish more and more that i could simply renounce this troublesome soul of mine altogether, be cold, ruthless, efficient.

i dance at a bar in brooklyn, dragged to the middle of the bar, awkwardly do a half striptease for a birthday girl. being a male burlesque performer leaves me as a sex object. something to crave, to be used and disposed of. i crave emotional intimacy but when the foundation of a relationship is my performances, my nakedness, my flesh... how is that achieved?

i wait by the phone, ignore calls from people i should probably be speaking to, burn the hours like the pack of clove cigarettes while i sip whiskey on an empty stomach and watch mad men. the glammer of their lives is a mocking reflection of mine.

in an hour i leave to go see my psychiatrist. maybe she can help me with this depressive episode, but i'm reluctant to hope. hope seems to be drained out of me. i try to coddle myself, to prop myself up but find myself falling apart. i have no people - i've thrown away the woman who cares for me, strung her along that all we're doing is hurting each other by trying to remain friendly. i've discarded my family, given up my father due to my fool pride. my mother is coming to visit, but how well does she know her son anymore, now that've been in new york for so long?

working solo on videos and a website and this damnable dream, this intangible cursed thing leaves me wondering why this idea won't catch, why there is no help waiting. people come and go and i find repeatedly that the only person i can count on is myself. but that leaves me weak.

so i dress. i throw on my last pair of pants, the same i've been wearing for weeks. i toss on a shirt that smells clean and isn't too sweat stained and brush the link off of my smoke lined suit jacket. i'll go to express in a bit to pick up some new paints, maybe a shirt and a jacket, dig myself more into credit card debt.

the frustration mounts. is this what the struggle is? is this living or is this life?

i don't really care for all this negative energy. i put on sunglasses to hide my eyes, throw my iphone into my ears to drown out the world, and get the hell out of my own life for a bit.

it's beautiful outisde; i just need to let some of that beauty seep into my thick stubborn skin.

the rule is: never fail

2010-09-08T00:02:00.002-04:00

sometimes i lie in bed at sarah's and stare at her shelves (film reel, books, instruments with strings awry) and wonder at how i've come to intersect a life totally different than mine. my thoughts retreat occasionally to my fortress i have in harlem, of the works i am creating, of the projects piling up and collecting dust. on a meta level i realize that these moments are the perfect movie moments that our generation is being brought to appreciate.

our lives are all incredibly achingly beautiful.

the days pass in a hollow monotone, the whirring of motors pacing my day to the grind that pays my bills. but come dusk, come the sun fall, light intersects everything and (have i the energy). weeks like this week past, filled with shows (tuesday, thursday, saturday) that somehow come together last minute. i gaze at my surrogate family, at the people i love (backstage she is lit by the vanity's lights and i feel my heart swell; in the audience she waits for me and i wrap an arm around her and feel incredibly comfortable; by the atm she is disheleved and worried and immensely... the list goes on) and i have to admire where my life has taken me in its circuitous route. everything that i am now is something i have crafted, everything that i have now is something that i desire or need.

for all of this i am incredibly thankful.

the days pass and i struggle against things because my spirit refuses to be silenced. the fact that i cannot submit myself to apathy in such an oppressive environment as that of my day job is only indication that my soul is still alive. i live to express myself. i live for moments like today when a friend came in and brought by coffee, and, when asked how she knew me, jokingly answered that she was one of my many girlfriends. i don't nearly deserve the beauty and friendship that graze and fill my life, but i try my best to bring something back to it. my shows, my vision, my hopes that one day i will build us all a house in which we can live and thrive in together as artists and as souls.

oh but for the money... (i think less and less of the money i owe and more and more of the things i want to create). hopefully it will balance out soon

so tonight, on the eve of this holiday (for the jews) and the ebbs of another (for everyone else) i am thanking all those who have contribute to this life that i call my own, and to the vision that i am working to bear to fruition for you all.

the rule simply is - never fail.

things have changed

2010-08-27T13:11:00.001-04:00

I’m a worried man with a worried mind…

I have seen bridges and countries and states pass before my eyes, desert vistas and rainforests that have sprawled and begged infinity. The cars have changed and the night still yawns, full of my potential for elation or for my personal elegy.

Slowly, achingly, the ghosts that cling to my bones withdraw. There is a constant craving that aches in the marrow now, the porous spaces alternately filled with an empty longing (empty because the years have scrubbed away the details, leaving just vagaries and impressions) and the throbbing desire for something new. There’s a woman on my lap and she’s kissing me and filling me with longing (the mind wanders and overlaps, flashbacks and flash forwards; I am with every woman I have ever been with, reliving the same moment over and over).

What happens when the past dissolves and a future without script beckons, asks you to step through a thingy into another abyss? I text to a stranger that “I never accept, acquiesce, or assent without question. I ask because knowledge is power and being powerless is unacceptable.”

Right now I feel incredibly empowered and equally powerless. This intangible moment of twenty-something-dom yawns before me and the territory here is undefined (or undergoing a refreshing redefinition). The suits at the New York Times think that we are lost. The hipsters at Slate argue that we are simply malleable. I’m with the former, craving the conservatism of double breasted vests under a well cut wool suit over a shirt with French cuffs. I want to be an adult and have applied the trappings of it; I have my wife, my job, my aspirations for a future. But still I am a child; my emotions are rampant, I am in debt and wishing for a bail out, my job is simply a job – dead end.

In the time of kings and queens I am a jester, treated like a god or treated like a leper.

My eyes watch those around me and wonder how they manage such success compared to mine. Facebook and Twitter tell me dissonant truths, when all gathered together, form one big lie. We are all made of stars, perhaps, but that stardom is self created and false. Merit, it seems, has been emptied out and been replaced by Appearance. Working here at B&H, with photographers’ eyes greeting me every hour, I have come to the realization that our lives are becoming digital snapshots: instants that appear fantastic but that lack depth, copied into infinity by digital means, permeating every sense with our nonsense.

What of craft, of building something singular and unique, something hand crafted and grander than duplicity and time?

The chewing deep within every pore of my fiber is that of the conflict, of the need to appear as a face and a name while refusing to become hollow because of it. Bit by bit I am replacing my marrow with a black steel skeleton core.

Looking over my generation, I realize that none of us should be driving.

My god, how things have changed.

where there is no vision the people perish

2010-07-20T01:22:00.001-04:00

i am dying a little bit on the inside, i can feel my ribs compressing as the space behind them begins to pull.

for all the dreams of an empire that i once had, the vision that once lay behind my eyes no longer burns as brightly. i'm no longer hungry for it; i've grown complacent with a steady job and with people who care about me. the support and stability that i craved have become, in their own way, a grave of mine. in it i lay down a dream.

i realized the other day that i am 24 and by now i'd have started something or i'd amount to nothing. i realized that the vision, the dream of nexus, had gone from me, silently and painlessly (not with a bang, but with a whimper in the heart of this man) and i have been running for a long time without it. distractions mounted, geek girl productions with her burlesque shows, the excuse of production trumping promotion, the need for logistics trumping the need for algorithms and coding.

i've got content a plenty and it's sitting in the corners of my hard drive gathering dust. am i not proud of what i have wrought, do i not want the world the see what i have created?

on some level i fear that that is the case. for no matter how often i receive praise, there is that space inside of me that state 'this show, this event, this is not good enough to merit your name christopher william lee. for you have seen better and brighter and bigger than this and for your name to be associated with something of this mediocre level is an insult to yourself.' so i conjure up facades, names that i can hide behind. i become nexus nightlife, i become geek girl productions because i am not yet christopher william lee. i have not yet reached the level where the dark spaces inside of me can be content.

will i ever, or will that space inside of me grow only as i grow, demanding constantly more satisfaction? will i ever be big enough, bright enough, good enough for the hole there to be filled?

but, should i not feed that beast, it begins consuming the other parts of me. i have watched myself sink into credit card debt, work my way into a school that i cannot yet afford, leave two months of rent unpaid. there are reasons for all of these, excuses and justifications, but the behaviour is still there. my actions speak louder than any of my words do.

i need to construct something different, something bigger so that that dark space inside of me can consume something else, assess whether it is enough, and decide if it would like more or to continue destroying the mediocre things that i have constructed. am i afraid to start and to fail, or afraid to start and to succeed?

my dreams tell me that i fear my own desires, but that i will run out of room to run from them. the only matter then is when.

house of leaves

2010-07-13T12:37:00.001-04:00

i feel the wind sucked out of me and i try not to let the tears come to my eyes. today was a good day, but an email from a ghost hits me like a punch to the solar plexus and i am gasping for some remnant of the earlier joy i was filled with.

i'm trembling.

she assaulted my character when we parted ways, before i took a shotgun and placed it to the head of our relationship. (the words still ring in my ears, that sickening feeling as i knew i had drawn the line and i was stepping deliberately beyond the point of no return).

there has been nothing but silence, despite my please, despite my sometimes obsessive tendencies, despite phone calls and text messages and emails that have fallen on dead ears.

why alix, do you have to come back now, when i am finally allowing myself to forget how much you meant to me?

this city's haunted, and every rusted door in the subterranean tunnels, every bit of salt water, every grain of sand, every night i refuse to go back to old favorites, every glimpse of golden hair that i catch from the corners of my eyes reminds me of you.

i will stick by the curses you left me with as we died, and maintain my personal integrity. alix, you made me who i am.

you never really know a killer from a savior

2010-07-13T00:17:00.000-04:00

disheveled.

she comes up to me as i’m hanging up the phone on a conversation i want to continue, and i have to ask her if she’s okay. her curls hide her face and she is obviously crying.

breaking from the new york etiquette of maintaining strength in her solitude, she admits to me that she’s not. whispers through her tears that her boyfriend came home and started hitting her.

i feel a tear in my heart. i ask her to come in to the club to freshen up, to stand still for a moment to find a safe place to go before she leaves. she does. she steps back out from the bathroom she sits down with me and i bring her a drink.

after a moment she starts talking, and despite the heavy bass of the music i hear her words quite clearly. painful memory resurfaces; i ache to help her more than i have and as she cries into my chest the scent of her hair fills my nostrils.

i crush Desire; this is no time for it, no matter how vulnerable and beautiful this girl is.

she mimes how her boyfriend hit her and i am reminded of a redhead I knew a long time ago, and i recall a darker me that made those same motions.

there is something going on here; the scenario’s too eerily and distinctly marked with my signature. my senses scream at me; decisions now, drunk as i am, effect someone else’s life. i choose the route of least impact, choose to play a brief kindness but not a savior… her salvation ultimately has to be for herself, from inside of herself. i hope that it’s the right decision.

i watch her as she texts a friend, pick up from the messages an intersection. she suggests that we leave. i step outside and, in a practiced motion, find a cab. i open the door for her and she gets in. knocking on the window i command the cab to its destination. her door is still open; the cabbie looks at me with a question that she echoes: “you’re not coming?”

sorry sweetheart, i’ve got friends inside to party with and i cannot always be a White Knight. there are ghosts that know this fact. i’d rather keep you safe with people you know, rather than with a kind stranger that could turn for the worse.

the doors closed, they leave. i don’t look back (although later my thoughts turn back to her, wonder about opportunity i closed the door on and sent away).

beauty in the breakdown

2010-06-29T19:57:00.001-04:00

the sound of the waves crashing against the sand of brighton beach is soothing after the jaunty racket of the sand rakes (if they were to wear hats, it'd be boaters). impulse takes control, and i have to obey it; the entire night has been ruled by it. a trip to the beach near midnight with sarah just because i have a car and i can.

i strip down to my pants, hand up to her the contents of my pockets. she sits in the lifeguard chair while i dash like a maniac to the water and leap in. the water is cold and as i come up from the dive i realize with the slap of the cold air that i forgot to take off my glasses before i dove in. ironically i was still looking as i leapt. a moment of panic as the undertow begins pulling the sand out from under me and i blindly look for black framed glasses in the black water on black sand in the middle of the night.

luck intervenes; my right foot catches the frame by some insane accident of fate and i bend down, pick up the newly salted frames and, after regaining my bearings, head back to the lifeguard chair.

she offers me a love worn hoodie and slowly i warm up to the night again. something similar to contentment simply glows inside of me, as simple as the nearly full moon, as subtle as the ember of a cigarette. it's good to be rewriting memories, erasing the pains of nostalgia with the formation of something new. there were other beaches, other women, but now there is only this.

we return to her place where we wash the sand from the niches of our bodies. i hang my clothes to dry and while she is otherwise occupied i marvel at where my life has taken me. i look over her books, her sculptures, the odd knick knacks that compose a life. there is much here, and in this house in queens i feel oddly comfortable. quaint, the place is, but comfortable. there is a poem about why rubber bands break and finally i feel that memory is allowing me to break off from it, allowing me to forgive, forget, move on.

summer crashes upon me like the sound of the surf, and promise blossoms (like a boquet of roses). shows, websites, women, and now, as i get back home at 7 in the morning after dropping off yet another zipcar, the possibility of school to strengthen the framework for my goals and dreams.

i am young again, invincible and with only the world before me; it's time to let go, to dive in.

ears to the ground, manna from the heavens

2010-06-28T01:01:00.002-04:00

sometimes things work out, despite the amount of worrying that goes into them.

bella's smile disarms me, as does her optimism. it's a rainy tuesday and from the weak response i fear that wonka! will be another boyfriend show. my nerves show; i'm frayed and the red bull is helping me unravel.

i leap into a car to pack dj video city into it, my frazzled mind reading her texted address to me wrong. i blame her, but later i realize the error is mine. i owe an apology.

worry worry worry. empty rows and empty shows to echo the empty life i lead.

but things have this awful way of sneaking up on you. or sometimes stopping you with an earnest question as you dance down the middle of a bar.

tuesday comes and goes and despite the rushed feel to the production, it goes over well. in fact, i feel as if it's one of the best shows that i have put on. the audience lingers with dance infecting their feet, and i sober, am unable to stop the motion of my body. (a piece of pinata catches my foot and i spill but seemingly smoothly turn into a turtle spinning on my back. the turk doesn't even notice). i line up a date for friday night while i'm at it, intrigued by a girl's audacity in asking me for my nudity, intrigued by my willingness to take down her number and arrange for dinner. she's not a performer or a photographer; i have no business there.

friday is well spent, dinner in a familiar place and then drinks at macondo. the night finds us at nublu and then we head to my apartment, where, despite the mess, we make ourselves at home. only at three the next afternoon do we part ways. my mind loops over and over the scenes and i want to ask myself why this is happening now, after i've resigned myself to being solitary until my business is complete, until i've grown out of being a boy and into being a man.

sometimes what we seek cannot be found in ourselves, or sometimes we merely need someone to act as a mirror, as a yin to our yan (what horrible couches) so that we can echo and hear the sound resonate.

but now, to work on july's show, and i find that the news is not comforting.

i have to ask myself if i'm merely in tune with the times or behind them... without exposure to media i find that the ideas are all frothing to be done, and we are all doing them. the arts have reached culmination, burlesque is at its breaking point and somewhere someone has to make that breakthrough. the camera was made in two places across the world within moments of each other, but only one inventor gets the credit. here, ears to the ground now, i hear the gods calling (http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=250379&id=382627403848) for a show that i have planned but not yet executed, but will still (imitation is the greatest form of flattery) and still more, on a grander scale (http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/22/a-bawdy-broadway-bares/) for a show that i have begun spinning the wheels on.

am i turning with them or falling beneath them.

we're reaching a breaking point, i hear the earth splitting and i know that burlesque is frothing at the lips, waiting for a breakthough.

i. must. leave.

there are other things to be done and now the frustration at my own lack of motivation begins to boil through. the night beckons for me to code, to write the website that is the skeleton of my dreams, of my paradigm. i must code. i must provide the algorithms of the dna that will construct my body outside of my body.

more will come in its right time, for that is the way of the world. it is time for me to code, and to build a framework for more to come.

for now, i keep my ears to the ground and await more manna from heaven, even as i breathe life into the skeleton and flesh that i have drawn in my image.

fade away

2010-06-21T13:10:00.001-04:00

when i finish 'all the names' i find myself teary eyed, lamenting senhor jose's end. saramago has written something so subtle and so eloquent i find myself recalling names that i have tried to bury, that i have tried to leave off as dead. but as i now understand the living and the dead exist ever intertwined and i live with her ghost.

another weekend has come and gone and i now sit in an eerily empty apartment, surveying devastation left by a whirlwind of a performer passing through and a nerf vulcan unloading it's entire ammunition belt. at some point i will clean, and at some point i will get my life back under my control.

for now, everything seems to be held in a intangible stasis. i haven't been to work since thursday, and frankly, i wouldn't care much to return save out of financial necessity. new york still feels unreal to me; after the crowd and the lights of the main events stage at animenext everything seems infinitely less substantial. there, in the spotlight, performing, adrenaline pumping through my veins and the hundreds of audience members watching... that is when i felt solid, ironically when i was least myself.

it's been long enough, if i were to date the parting at february 2008. long enough for me to try and move on, to find other recreations, to find emotional attachments in other places and other people and other things. but this name lingers and i find myself looking constantly for the death certificate of that relationship to destroy it. i tie my own ariadne's thread about my ankle and regress ever constantly into my own private darkness. the drink helps. the brooding helps.

slowly i see my drinking on the rise again and i am not yet worried. i drink because i want to forget a name, a face, an emotional intensity that i have not had the good fortune to find again. i love all my performers immensely but professional courtesy demands that there be lines drawn. i drink to blur those lines, to become a misogynist asshole producer without fear of heckling his performers.

it's all to easy to believe what others believe of us, and if, in the burlesque scene, we are expected to sleep with our performers, then by god hand me another heavy tom collins and let me slip into that role.

but that's not what i'm looking for.

more i'm tempted to simply call up women and have them serve a singular purpose because emotions are so difficult for me. physicality's not an issue; sex is sex, but what i crave requires not the cock but the heart. in my show bag an issue of gq is dog eared on an article about call girl addiction. i have to idly wonder if that road is opening for me and if i suffer from the same lack of self esteem and confidence that the author did during his escorted years. i talk to women, yes, but it falls superficial or in terms of business. terms of things i can control.

only dead gods are gods forever.

if that's the case, then this cursed four letter name will linger forever in my heart and on my lips and in the secret crevices of my body. there is an emptiness i gloss over and try to hide in my life; i say that loneliness is okay now because i am trying to build a business, that i have my goals and my plans and that love, that cursed wretched tormentor, would serve only as a distraction. by is not creation the act of two forces? one man womanly, the other woman manly? the synthesis of ideas so that there can be creation? there is a goddess in my blood and she is dead and it is causing my heart to rot.

but what is there that can be done? for now, i will pick up the darts that have strewn themselves over my apartment. i will put out the word for my next burlesque show (with modifications now) and continue to lose my religion in the spotlight as i place my body on stage but leave my heart hidden behind the curtains. there is july to book and to promote and to plan. there is a job to return to and to explain my absence to. there are always things that require my attention in order to draw my attention away from the ever constant companion of emptiness.

hearts and thoughts will fade away.

until then, the only thing for the living to do is to live. even if our names are all intermingled with those of the dead.

the secret denizens of the world

2010-06-17T22:34:00.001-04:00

the cockroach corpse on my floor crunches in a horrifying manner when i accidentally step on it. i jump in alarm, disgusted. on the hardwood floor of my studio, in the dim light of the art deco chandelier the now further disfigured body is nearly invisible and i have to wonder how many other secret citizens my apartment harbors. this morning my socks from last night balled up in the seat of my pants. this morning this cockroach, already teased to death by my cats in the night, a death too large for its insect eyes, twitching out the last of its alien life before i, in a disgust bordering on panic, drowned it in insecticide. this evening, as i stomached an unappetizing burger, the ghost of loves past echoed in memory as i stared vaguely at a woman's motions.

the thoughts that go through my mind as i eat at the tic tock at the hours i do are strangers to me. i watch a man sit down to eat alone as i did, and he places his back to me. no awkward eye contact over the span of two empty seats. both of us face the same direction and catch the gaze of people in other tables with company. i think he types, for i hear the drumming of a rhythm on a machine, and i watch as his entire back rises and falls with the motion. i do not check if he has a typewriter or a laptop with him when i exit.

this weekend rushes to me and i, now fueled with my own nocturnal tendencies and with a cup of diner coffee, am ready to tackle the many small tasks that have piled up on my desk. the mess itself is an excuse to procrastinate further; the way i am i will organize everything to be in its proper place before i begin my work. it's part distraction, part preparation; when i do sit down to construct, everything will flow much faster.

tuesday is beginning to look up due to a surprising turnaround of sentiment from a performer. i am wary, of course, for the emotional maelstrom she is suffering now is not something i can easily trust. my fail safes are already in place and if she comes through for me my appreciation for her will be strengthened. if not, nothing changes. all i can do is anticipate and prepare. and wait.

my session with my therapist fills me with a certain elation i have not felt in months previous. i feel an acceleration at my dead end job, a tangible next-ness in things that are happening. i feel once more that change is possible and happening. perhaps picking up 'all the names' from borders was no mistake; senhor jose is faced with his decisions making him and i think finally now the same momentum is making me. my entire neck and back tingled when i reread the dedication and the opening quote; my artistic must have sense trembled.

for now, there is much work to be done. this writing has become my necessary respite from the day; a sort of summary and a sort of elaboration i build my delusions here in order to live them, i write my life to see if it is nearly as grand as it feels. sometimes it is, and then the words exist. other time things are far too heavy or mundane and the words feel weighted, stilted.

come then, the weekend, and let this momentum, this intangible next-ness take me. there is so much i ride on, and to me it remains hidden. perhaps my decisions are now making me, or perhaps now i am simply feeling the effects of decisions i have made.

got to start somewhere, got to start some time

2010-06-15T13:04:00.002-04:00

it's well into the day when i finally get out of bed... considering the night for me ended just short of 5 AM i don't feel too bad. especially since i woke at 9 AM just before my usual alarms feeling quite chipper.

last night was a great show at the slipper room and good times spent hunting for crepes and more drinks as we celebrated something beautiful. it's nice to see in these early hours how camaraderie seems to bloom. i learn more about producers i already hold an immense respect for, and learn more about the politics thronging in this scene.

try as i might i cannot remain separate from it all.

david's gone and picked up two attractive young ladies, but has no interest as we go for crepes. i find him walking a few paces ahead of them texting while they trail behind; fans of the production picked up for the evening without anyone paying them too much mind. brandon, dangrrr and em constitute one group, david his lonesome, hannah and diana another. i float between all three, as always, unsure of my place. it's hard to sit at a table of producers and performers that have been around longer than i have and that i hold immense respect for. i feel like a child sitting at the adult table.

by the same manner, hanging with the two fans seems like i'm an adult sitting at the kids table. especially considering their ages and their conversational context. i'm not even sure when i could muster so much gossip about high school.

as for david, well, he's smitten, the poor kitten, and lost more into his phone than the six people around him. can't say i blame him though.

the night begins to melt after two shots of dewars as i pass up on crepes. the bar by the second time around smells disgustingly of someone's sick and i can't believe that we consider staying. i don't. i get up and leave and find a quiet corner in a quieter bar to call my own for a moment of respite.

it doesn't last long as brandon, dangrrr and em loop back around again. their company is welcome again and we pass the night continue to drink, turning the quiet bar into a bit of a louder one. many drinks are had, and i stack them on my bill. sometimes it's best not to worry about who's paying.

leaving, i insist on a breakfast alone at the tick tock diner. it's the slowest i've ever seen it, when i arrive at 3. the service is sparse, but prompt. i eat, hop in a cab and head home. solitary as usual, but hell, no complaints when i've got friends like these.

if you want something done right

2010-06-14T00:25:00.001-04:00

the night dissolves.

after spending the day aimlessly off of work, i schlep to the east village with my entire life on a hard drive to have more added to it. video of months past pile on while zach and i head to dempsey's for a few pints.

shannon is there and greets us with her ever enthusiastic manner. mondays and wednesdays are the nights she works, i must remember that, despite the fact that she has a boyfriend. her energy is far too positive not to desire in my life.

we commiserate about how certain things have shaped us, certain people. despite all our wishes not to, i feel like zach is becoming more like greg, and i more like jim. we spend our love lives tangled in the memory of previous glory rather than seeking new conquests, and we spend our business lives wondering how those we trust end up failing us. he has keri, and i have alix, ghosts that we still feel on a daily basis; he more so than i, but the comparison still holds water. we drink, shoot some pool, and for once his sight is far more focused than mine; he sinks more shots than he misses.

back at his apartment we pass an hour in the same conversation while i deliberate whether or not to head to a burlesque show to see some acquaintances in the vain hope of promoting my upcoming show. i decide against, partially because of the pitchers of blue point seeping through my veins, partly because the phone calls i put out for a friend for the evening all fall on deaf machines. one, a girl i wish to see more of but that life has slowly separated; one a girl who i recently re-encountered on the street; one a girl in some amount of psychic pain that i wish i could help with; one a friend who has gotten but still will not go out.

so i head home, thinking about how tomorrow i will have footage and how tomorrow i will construct a content management system for my websites, how tomorrow i will renew my website hosting and begin existing as a presence again. some emails are sent, and some facebook messages, but i honestly do not expect answers without twisting a few arms. things are in pieces but i cannot let it show because the show must go on.

i remember then a girl i saw on the train watching me, a slight smile on her lips, while we, both plugged into our ipods, passed the opportunity to talk by. the irony being that i was reading an article about how social networking has lead us to have fewer friends.

now, all i can think is why not seize the opportunity and get something done. why wait for those who will ultimately be absent because they have their own lives to tend to?

i am proud of zach for leaving this place and for pursuing his dreams, however unprepared he feels. he's ready, i can sense a certain steeliness in his manner that was not present before. and his passing will be as nonchalant as how we came to be friends; over time, over pints, always welcome to be present again.

it's time that we do things ourselves, because they need to be done right.

while my guitar gently weeps

2010-06-11T15:31:00.001-04:00

i look at the world and notice its turning...

it's 5:30 by the time david and i stumble back up to my apartment. we've to wake in an hour and a half to get to work but what the hell, his birthday was well worth it. i stumble to the computer and quickly turn on across the universe: jude and jo-jo stumble home across a different new york, equally drunk and singing their lamentations of solitude. as promised, i deliver.

the evening starts at mcgarry's with a few friends from work. a shot of jameson with a beer to follow. i left for my therapist before meeting back up with david and others at il bagatto for dinner. the reservation's under my old nickname there and it takes them a while to realize that i once went by chino.

there we meet with old friends and new friends alike. for once david actually eats his meal like a normal person, and i admit some pride in il bagatto for turning his opinion around on the use of sauce, at least for a night. there is a lot of wine, and some more liquor, and the food and atmosphere and company are simply amazing.

stumbling out of il bagatto we hit lit lounge, where, to our pleasant surprise, apathy is go go dancing the night away. david dances, we are all amused. more liquor and a wager of 100 turkish liras that we can't make it to work tomorrow.

stumbling out of lit lounge, david insists for the umpteenth time to give him back his phone. i listen to his more sober command and refuse. we wander a bit, hoping to hit the west village for a birthday gift for danni's birthday next week, but en route we are distracted: central bar is still serving and we make fast friends with helen and eddie there. eddie shows me the place, suggests that we produce burlesque shows there. helen plays with david's ipad.

a shot of jameson and a smithwick's finish the night.

by then the morning gapes at us, promising a hangover. still walking we find a collection of the far side on the west side, speak to a sister about how harlem's changing and how we've all started becoming godless. i insist that david pick up the zen of laughter; after the gypsy fortune teller telling him he is full of negative energy i figure a smile would be good remedy.

breakfast breaks at the waverly diner on old nyu turf. god knows what we eat and we hope a cab to columbus circle, then one back to harlem.

somehow david wakes for work and begins watching across the universe at full volume. i wake to jude and lucy singing their love song as david begins to sing his. poor bastard's smitten.

all in all a good birthday for a good friend i'd wager. now home it's time to clean up the apartment and prepare for more good long nights to come.

with sword and satchel

2010-06-08T23:06:00.000-04:00

i come home after forty and three hours, my body exhausted and dragging but my spirits jubilant. i reek of kerosene and alcohol, and my breath sticks to the inside of my mouth.

here the tower.

i ascend, returning to my solitary kingdom. i put down my bag and laugh to myself at the two feet of sheathed metal protruding from it.

last night's show was a good one, despite my dangerously disrespectful drunken state. for striving to remain a cordial and professional producer in a city full of less than stellar male producers, i find myself all too often making remarks (hopefully taken in jest) that are not in line with that ideal. it's difficult i suppose, especially working so closely with such beautiful and talented women.

but i can and will control myself. more rules to add to my obscenely lengthy list of them. no more than two drinks during a show, and nothing else until the performers have left. i will be the gentleman in a world increasingly full of scoundrels. and while i can sit here regretting my actions i can also simply take them as lessons not to be repeated.

the sun this morning was a sadistic joke as i left an apartment in brooklyn. thank god for the restraint of the fairer gender, and for friends who know me better than i know myself. with my sword in my bag, my wrinkled and untucked button down, an open vest and my thin triad sunglasses, i looked like a reject from a john woo film. the overwhelming odor of kerosene and of alcohol only added to the sense that i was a maniac waiting for combustion.

oddly, these episodes are why i love the industry i have chosen to go into. feeling like a lost weary wanderer who has fought against his own dangerous and primal urges to come out battered but for the most part victorious. feeling like that, for an evening, a crowd was entertained by the efforts of my time and money and skills, and of the same of people who share my vision. wandering home alone to prepare for the next round.

i may not make money, but hell, i do it for the nod.

tonight i plan a birthday party and marvel over the beauty of a gift i have gotten for a friend. some small material things to demonstrate appreciation for a reliable, albeit sometimes irritating, brother in arms. there are other shows looming in the future, but for tonight i sip on the sensation of intrinsic success and relish relative silence.

he would make an amazing man once he's ready to try

2010-06-06T19:47:00.001-04:00

gnarles barkley laments the passage of time as i contemplate how the evening is to unfold. his lyrics find their way to a crevice in my heart, an old dusty place that i've sealed up next to the amontillado. there are two corpses there, dusty bones that i constantly exhume for my own perverse amusement.

when was the last time i danced?

i've forgotten the rhythm of nonchalance and of being joyfree. these lonely days it seems that everything's a dance but all i'm doing is being a wallflower. conversations over facebook chat, burlesque etiquette, the lines between friend and hoping for more... i watch myself watching and force myself to sit out each and every next step.

i'm looking for someone to step with, to let my feet guide me into something new and familiar at the same time. step with me sweetheart, but i'll never step up to you to ask. i have learned to love without possession because hell, (here one corpse i bring out for a dance) i will never be in a relationship where i don't end up being an emotional manipulative brute.

but everything's about balance, and dancing with the gone is not enough fun. we need life to sustain life, and he would make an amazing man once he's ready to try. the time for being a wallflower is coming to a close, but the problem is that, after having been a wallflower for so long, i'm kind of used to its perks.

when was the last time i danced?

the answer simply is: too damn long ago.

anticipation

2010-06-06T02:46:00.001-04:00

waiting seems like all i do these days.

saturday passes by in a sticky tangle of naps from friday night's all nighter and slow anticipation of a visitor. the hours pass and the binge coding done last night fades to memory; is saved on two vomputers as a PSD, JPGs, various PHP files and bits of pieces of a dream. content slowly gets put together... geek girl productions now exists in the past and in the ether and as a company she gains momentum.

the hours pass.

this girl once saved my life by being on the other end of an instant messaging system. she listened as i counted off a shot and two tylenol, over and over. i think i had reached ten shots with twenty tylenol before nyu housing came to my door, demanding to know what was going on because she had called in. they took me away from what i thought was a good end and forced me to live life again.

it's been rough, but it's been the greatest gift of all, getting my life back.

today i sat and waited for her to get in touch as she was in new york and we had tentative plans. to give her an hour or so of my time to catch up would have been nothing; to her i owe my life.

the evening comes and goes and passing texts are all we get of each other. i can only think that the weight of knowing how much she means to me puts her off.

i've waited all day and now, at this cursed hour at which i always seem to be up, i feel i am in motion.

it's 2 AM and i'm just getting started.

it's a Production

2010-06-03T02:00:00.001-04:00

it's that hour again: the incipient pre-dawn tinge that creeps across the night and turns the sky a star punctured violet. i've just parked my van at 160th and broadway, a longer walk away from home than i'd had expected. tomorrow i'll have to greet the sun to make it there to drive the car downtown in time to avoid late charges.

moments before ernesto and i were racing through new jersey to meet our own pesonal don to retrieve a heavy shipment ernesto had ordered. hip hop blasts through the stereo and i, a little more mellow than usual, ffel like i'm picking up on every nuance of the music. a lesson pounds itself into my head. every sense must be inundated. finish one thing and move on to another, let the stacks roll in. every sense in every manner... the music drifts on and leaves me contemplating old projects that now must see fruition.

highlights illuminate the large man in the driveway, and for a second his shadow leaps ten feet to cast the trees around his house in darkness. he invites us into his war torn house. in the living room bits of clothing are scattered and a table is overturned and blocking the window. the vision of him crouched behind it, shotgun loaded and ready to fire is almost too true to him that it's comical.

we hang around for a beer, help load up two vehicles and then make their respective drops. one ride is quick, following a white suv for a few minutes into the backwoods of jersey. the next drop takes a while longer as we weave back into new york.

i don't recognize my city the way we come upon her this time. she's darker, and there lingers in the air scents unfamiliar to me. we come in through the basement, leave the boxes in a hallway between the boiler room and the compactor.

the walk home after i park is a mixture of impressions. racial distinction, cried so clear among my friends, seems threatening in my neighborhood. i am still alien here and still whispered about as i pass. my headphones offer minimal respite; despite st. germain's soft assurances i still have a hasty pace and feel unnatural on my feet.

2 am. bed calls for a few hours before i race the car back to its home before its late. my head is full of ideas and tomorrow i sit with good friends and map them for creation.

driving miss em

2010-06-02T01:39:00.001-04:00

the crown of the chrysler building breaks the horizon in its familiar way as i crest the queensboro bridge. the industrial era arches welcome me for the umpteenth time; my wheels have passed over her roads so many times in the recent months and she has grown familiar.

my memory guides me along the curves of the outside of manhattan, guiding me home. the streets are empty and the night is crisp and enjoying its post rain mood. i enjoy the solitude and have to wonder how my life has come to late night drives and mental soliloquies after helping friends move and seeing friends about to move.

life fills and life empties.

i feel the ache of the road more and more as i resign myself to the necessity of containment in the following months. the road map ahead of me is to be drawn thursday over coffee, possibly hookah, and under columbus' spire i feel promise of a new world follows. but all the travel is legal, internal, contained within the concrete, marble, steel and glass of new york. that new world is within me.

the open road aches for me; visions of rio's beaches and promises to return, the longing for hong kong's particular humidity in which my sweat does not pour from me so much as simply shine, a second visit to chicago or montreal or las vegas... all of these desires conflict with my need to stay put and to build.

these small respites in rented cars are how i escape, and the long lonely hours are the hours i need to learn to love the most. the third line on my palm is for myself, for the love i need to cultivate for my ego in order to succeed in the industries i have chosen to enter. i crave companions to share the travel with, to drink in new york's nocturnal sights with, but alas i am lacking. i am no doctor.

i should have gotten that six pack and drove to brighton beach to see the moon and the stars over the dark waters this evening to contemplate the perfection in solitude. it is sometimes best to travel alone.

it's 2 am

2010-05-27T01:43:00.002-04:00

it's not quite 2 am as i drive back into the city. as i pull over the queensboro, the city is dimly illuminated by lightning breaking the horizon. the noir beauty of it fits perfectly with the haunting female vocals that flood the car, echoing my thoughts of women i apologies to, women i need to extend invitations to.

the city overlaps on itself in the north, overpasses stacked upon each other leaving the original road far beneath them rotten as it slowly is crushed and digested. the bumpiness of the ride is a reminder that i'm home, that i'm going where i need to be. i pull across 145th and up convent avenue, parallel park successfully for the first time since i got my license, and walk the three blocks to my home.

my apartment's in its usual disarray; costumes and clothes line chairs and props in boxes wait to be unpacked and placed properly into corners and out of sight. it's been a week of shows and of show planning; this evening over dinner i spread four months and five shows before me like a tarot spread, and vaguely i glimpsed the future. the shows need yet to be planned and they will when time comes. for now, i leave the mess in its place as in a few hours i need to be up to return the car to its rightful place.

every evening finds me more and more awake, and the day finds me increasingly fatigued. my nocturnal impulse is getting stronger, and the need for change, for drama, for the spotlight and glamour/glammer throbs in me. with each show i suffer a financial loss, but an immense sense of fulfillment. if only i could find a daytime pursuit that lent itself to the same passions.

sleep beckons, despite my body's unwillingness to succumb to the necessity of it. a few letters to write and to send, apologies and invitations, and then tomorrow off to the usual routine - a bit earlier granted, due to returning the car.

good night sweet new york; may your dark streets continue to harbor my dreams.

on the road (again)

2010-04-01T19:39:00.002-04:00

hello from montreal!

things have been good... hoping for a lot of positive change after passover. i think i'm finally crossing my internal deserts and finding the place inside that i consider holy.

in this great future

2010-01-09T14:18:00.004-05:00

today, over lunch with my parents and an old family friend, doris touched briefly on the loss of purity that age entails. those pure moments, she said, that we associate with youth, are somehow lost, and even though we live good lives, nothing is as it was.

eagle eye cherry bids the evening goodbye in the background.

i look back on my life now and i see this amazing story. i've loved in the purest sense (oh sweet ever unforgettable alix) and had passion burn in me purely (ever your name in my breath meg) and i have hated purely, pursued pleasure without abandon and been young and wild and free.

those years seem stripped away now as i continue onward through life. love, like i knew it, comes with considerations. i have grown afraid to love, my heart has grown guarded and purity... purity is something tainted with second thoughts and responsibilities and priorities.

i've come to love my friends an amazing amount, and the passions i now feel, the love i feel biting the spurs and begging for verbal expression have to give way to considerations. i cannot let pure jealousy effect my behaviours. she's a grown woman and i am a growing man, she's free to dance with whom she desires (as long as she doesn't go home with him) and i love my friends dearly and it's only right that that love we all share is shared.

there's something perverse about polyamory to me these days, to the sharing, to the consideration that we are all supposedly adults and friends and that considerations (what a damnable idea, what a damnable word, laced with its double meaning) are what curb us.

the image of her undressing before a friend as i fold my laundry for a trip home, and knowing i should curb my jealous temper and my anger, for she and he and i are friends and there are considerations to be weighed.

the thought of her dancing last night while i, trying hard to stay sober, contemplated how to manage two people on a ride home. considerations to let her have her fun, to let her express herself force me to swallow my pure jealousy and emotions.

they are so bitter, these repressed emotions.

is this what growing up, growing old is then? an almost constant loss of purity? i cannot imagine the love or the passion i understood with alix or meg anymore. such strength of emotion, such conviction are dangerous ideas that toss responsibility and priority out the window. outside of them there was nothing, and that emotion drove me to such extremes.

now, there are considerations, a million small things that claw and nag and taint emotion. i should go to work rather than spend time with someone i care for, i should curb my jealousy, i should, i should, i should.

i should throw all this to the winds and be young again, and live with the reckless abandon of someone who simply expresses themselves purely. to think like a child, to live like a child, unfettered.

but i have begun to put away childish things, and as i gather these moments in my memory's hands, i notice the tarnish of age on them.

nothing is pure anymore. everything's so damn practical... what a pity that life comes down to living.

what a damnable shame.

the cradle

2009-12-26T20:00:00.003-05:00

this dream is from the 13th of december, on the eve of my 24th birthday.

i am on a bus to africa. how i know this is beyond me, but the savanna stretches outside of the bus windows and i simply know that we are driving in a yellow school bus across the african plains. my mother drives, and i sit in the back, on the right side of the rear emergency exit.

after some time we pull up to a large mansion, on a hill, set oddly in a suburban neighborhood that, in reflection, would not be in africa, but in the dream is perfectly natural. i exit from the rear emergency exit, leaping out in a less than graceful motion.

somehow i know that ken davie is on the grounds, in the mansion. quite possibly the mansion we have come to is his. the dream offers no affirmation; there is simply the overwhelming sense of presence. somehow, in a moment of lucidity, a thought strikes through the dream. we are all related. the thought evaporates before i can consider its ramifications.

i see alix. she fills everything. my vision, my sense of smell. i am, as always, intoxicated by her.

the dream gives way to a dream within a dream. in the dream (within the dream) i am with alix, holding her, and we are weeping as we gingerly make love again, tears and apologies from from us as we kiss our tears away, as we hold each other close and forget the pain that has separated us.

i wake from the dream within the dream, finding myself propped by an armchair in the corner of a room. we are watching 'alice in wonderland,' alix, myself, her new boyfriend, a few others with familiar feels to them. i cannot see the face of her boyfriend, just her, curled up, feline, at the base of his feet on the sofa. her eyes catch mine and the expression in them is unfathomable. then her gaze slides up to her current partner and i am left empty, with everything drained out of me with the loss of her glance.

we are wrapped in blankets, alix and i. i am drinking tea, and some of the thick brown substance splashes out of the cup, over the saucer and onto the blanket.

her boyfriend is cold. i offer up the tea stained blanket. she is not mine anymore, alix, the blanket, and it is time that he gets what i have stained. perhaps he can treat it better.

again that vast emptiness.

the television plays a version of alice in wonderland i have never seen before, and i somehow know that it is a version animated in 1974. strong cosmic signals tell me this and i know.

i wake.

there is nothing now, just motions. a shirt sent in the hopes of rekindling something, vain vain hope. emotional masochism to turn me cold enough to do what i want to do with my life.

or emotional masochism to excuse myself for being a failure.

2009-12-19T11:40:00.001-05:00

washing the dishes today, looking at the trash i have to take out, seeing the expanse of apartment i have that will soon be mostly empty... i realized that i'm not mourning a breakup. i'm more mourning a death.

i'm in a holding pattern. something in me died, and i'm waiting for someone to wake it in me again.

dream (within a dream) lover

2009-12-14T06:18:00.002-05:00

i dream within a dream that we are together and that everything hurt and yet is forgiven and then we can never be separated.

then i wake from the dream within the dream and you are curled up at the base of a sofa eyeing your new boyfriend who has taken a blanket from me, which i have spilled tea on. i pretend not to mind, and curl into my corner of the room and try to find some comfort.

then i wake fully and am alone in new york, filled with both hoep and pain.

why are ecstasy and despair so close together on the emotional register?

2009-12-07T21:10:00.003-05:00

despite what you think, you have not disappeared from my life.

still, every motion aches for your completion, every corridor whispers you.

you linger, like a ghost, and i cannot dispel you, no matter what i try. was i so much a poison?

2009-11-30T01:15:00.001-05:00

why does joy sometimes seem so much like despair?

when was the last time i danced?

2009-11-06T18:27:00.002-05:00

a search for a screen name brings me abruptly into my past, and the mannerisms of love and loss and torment all fall back into place.

a visionary. i was once called that.

but now the vision's gone, faded into a dream and i am hear, cold and alone in my harlem apartment, contemplating a past that has led me into this present, wondering about an all too immediate future.

starbucks: i ask what to tell my psychiatrist, some small lie to ellicit a shocked response. and i have my life broken down to me.

"you are a married to a woman that does not love you and live with a woman that does not love you."

there is a pause and i do not allow him to continue.

when did i discard love (in a half thought moment when rage, blinding rage, overcame love and i said lacerating words that cut into someone beautiful and cut my heart out from me)?

where did our love go? where is the vision now?

i go through motions. this month there is tonight (a fundraiser for stephanie neptune's film), the 20th (animeusa in the dc area, a farce of burlesque), the 20th (consumption, another burlesque show, but what is eating me?) and yet i do not feel that there is progress. atmosphere comes to mind and i am yet again reminded of someone else (how can progress lie in a body without a head?)

what was the cost of what i wanted? there is some sort of momentum, but the passion for living is gone (life goes on...) and everything feels mechanical. i feel as if i am a rut in a gear in the mechanism of my own life, and that progress is rusting and wearing down and eventually the machine will break without having gotten to where it needs to be.

conversely

at work today the words come pouring out to a coworker and i know that somewhere inside me there is still hope, there are still plans, that there is still something inside of me that desires. tonight may be a failure, the 20th may be a success without payment, and the 29th may be a laugh, but there is still the fire somewhere. smoldering, an ember, after having been washed out.

i will not want to die as easily as i had, no matter how hard living is seeming to get. i mean hell, i have shelter, food and friends... how hard is my life compared to some?

kidrock and cage the elephant sing to me right now (i once was lost, but now i'm just blind) and (ain't no rest for the wicked, money doesn't grow on trees).

i'm carving sandalwood, testing the barrel of a gun, crafting my weapons. the going is slow and i am my only enemy in its creation (that and Time, but that old man is everyone's worst ally). but i am young and the world is my oyster.

and the fable comes round to completion (the ivory tower that wraps upon itself, the old scarred man, the slaughtered boy, the damsel in distress who must also become the heroine) and i know that i wrote my life out for myself a long time ago.

i am starting to open my eyes to my vision again. i just need to free myself from suffering the loss of my heart, and accept that momentum goes, regardless of its pace.

if it is meant to be, it will happen, sometimes with a push, other times with me holding on by my teeth.

it's time to flow into the east village night, and to hope that a week's worth of promotional efforts will merit enough of a crowd to get paid.

cloudy with a chance of meatballs. locally.

2009-09-19T00:54:00.004-04:00

don't you love it when you've worked on something for a while, click to publish and find that internet explorer simply crashes and has not saved nor allowed you to copy the thing you've been working on?

thus, i give you a previous post, en breve.

last night i had the pleasure of seeing 'cloudy with a chance of meatballs' with my sister and my mother. in the spirit if brevity (and since trying to reiterate all that i had written before would leave me immensely frustrated), i must say that 'cloudy' is a must see for the entire family. full of clever moments and enough comedy and action to keep any audience happy, 'cloudy' was appealing to the 5 year old in me, the high schooler in me and even the old man in me.

of particular amusement was the protagonist flint's father, tim. with his amusingly unibrowed face, tim acts as the bridge between the young generation that the movie targets to the older generation that had to drive them to the theater and pay for their tickets. i highly recommend this movie to anyone of any age, as it will amuse your inner child and give the adolescent or adul in you a nostalgic and appreciative warm and fuzzy feel.

before heading to maryland to see my parents during this weekend, i grabbed a lunch at local in midtown west.

here's the long and short of local.

if you are in the area of midtown west and need a drink or a quick bite to eat, i'd recommend walking further on eighth or ninth avenue to find better fares. however, if you're looking for a respite from the pedestrian traffic that floods the sidewalks surrounding penn station, i'd consider local.

the only good thing that i found about local was the rooftop. the ambience is excellent and local is position in such a way that the breeze and the sun give you a goood temperature balance overall.

the food however, is nothing to brag about. i ordered the irish lad's fish and chips and found myself feeling sorry for the irish if that is the kind of food that they are supposed to be accustomed to. charging midtown prices for standard east village bar fare, i found the food not worth the price and barely worth the time spent ordering and eating it.

as for the service... don't expect stellar service unless you're a regular. even seated at the bar and having spoen enough to form a brief and cordial rapport with our waitress sarah, our service was almost lacking. having to ask me how to make a tom collins was a bit of a faux pax on sarah's part, unless i'm mistaken in the fact that the tom collins is a great outdoor drink and that it should be known by all bartenders. additionally, her attendance to more regular customers left us at a point where we could have simply left without paying the bill, a big oversight on her part. having been a bartender and a waiter, one of the most important things to do is to keep all your open tabs on your service radar, with enough social skill to pause a conversation in order to attend to the needs of other customers.

so, if you're in the midtown area and need to get above the crowds, try local. if you're looking for a good drink or a decent dinner, keep walking. i'm sure there are plenty of other choices just as local that will provide better food and drink.

a few days without

2009-09-12T16:45:00.004-04:00

it's near impossible to blog about everything that i engage in... soseki natsume once ruminated that in order to fully write all that occurs in a day, one would need another day in which to do it (from 'i am a cat,' a very long, but wholly worthwhile read).

i had two reviews of restaurants to post, but now that the tastes have fallen from my tongue and neither have left lasting impressions on my memory i think i will skip them.

on to more important things.

today i want to pay the last respects to a kenneth cole reaction shirt of mine. having seen me through high school and college, a personal favorite of mine, meg's and alix's for its texture, it was one of my few comfort shirts, a shelter that i could withdraw into, loop my thumbs in the button holes of and simply curl into.

RIP shirt.

meg's currently in chile living and growing and we keep in occasional contact. it's funny how warm we are to each other now, after all the pain and hurt we caused. i think she's right, i used up all my meanness towards her while we were dating, and now i can only play nice.

alix is currently god knows where and despite having moved on she persists. i see glimpses of her in others: the color of her hair, the shape of her sides, the same mannerisms, a shirt she wore... things echo and whenever i am hit by one of this temporal ripples i feel displaced, lost and suddenly as if i am drowning. i don't know if i could be nice to her, after her coldness to me. but i undoubtedly would be effected by seeing her again.

things turn and turn and everything changes. in the next couple weeks i depart for maryland to learn it again, chicago to find it, and brazil to escape from it. i feel the wanderlust itching strong and part of me is taken with the romantic notion of living out of a duffel. i'll be bringing my eee pc and a simple point and shoot to record what happens, and hopefully my experiences will merit a story.

working for cal james again, slowly contemplating if it will be worth my time to take it over. nexus nightlife is slowly coming together; i've got a designer waiting for my return to approve of her designs, a lawyer working on a lawsuit i need to present a venue for breach of contract, and slowly a business plan forming. which i actually need to return to.

online classes top my life off with a reason to run home every night. pacing them into my life has been hard, but slowly i am learning to make time.

i haven't touched alcohol in a while. it's been hard, at times, but i think it's been much more important to save money for my vacations. and it's helping me remember who i am... going to camouflage and being caught by the decision to drink or to dance, and seeing how much they assisted each other made me aware of how uncomfortable i've become at being myself. i am constantly watching, assessing, and reevaluating. and i'm paralyzed myself with this cycle. i am unnecessarily hard on myself and use my feelings of incompetence as an excuse for inaction.

but that too is fading. while i feel as if i am a charlatan, a man with no soul with no talent (thank you wax tailor), i feel like i am laying into myself a skeleton and will be soon growing flesh and soul so much more than i could have ever prepared me.

change is constantly on the horizon, and it is beginning, and i am finally beginning to simply let go of control and accept that change is inevitable.

full moon, full night

2009-09-05T13:29:00.004-04:00

the moon is full and weaving in and out of clouds as we sit in union smith cafe in brooklyn. the music (same 5 songs over and over, making me itch to dance dance dance) was what grabbed us, rerouted us from my original intended path to black mountain wine house down the block. it's a beautiful night, i'm with a beautiful woman and the music and everything aches for me to be outside.

black mountain can wait for the cold and the snow, when the fireplace will be a welcome respite from the bitter brooklyn winter.

Union Smith Cafe
305 Smith Street
Brooklyn, NY 11231

at union smith cafe i order a bottle of the reisling (for us, not just myself), and from the price fixe menu i order the wildmushroom ragout, the roasted tilapia and for dessert the creme brulee. she has the grilled trout.

even after completing the appetizer and having thought about it overnight, i am still undecided about it. while the wild mushroom ragout was delicious, based well in a very well done cream sauce with a flaky pastry shell, the texture of the ragout what put me off. i personally am used to a pulled ragout which maintains the overall consistency of the ragout better, rather than having a sliced mushrooms distributed in a stew. while i must reiterate just how delicious the mushrooom ragout was, i do think that union smith caffe would be better off if they either sliced the mushrooms finer or managed a pulled texture for them to be more manageable while eating as well as to provide a texture more compatible with the pastry that they serve with it.

the tilapia was sadly not as impressive as i would have liked. while the ratatouille it was served on was delicious, and the vegetables adorning it were also very well seasoned, the fish itself seemed like an afterthought, lightly seasoned (if at all) and placed in between the ratatouille and the vegetables on top in the hopes that it wouldn't be noticed there.

while i didn't have a chance to try the grilled trout that belen had, i did get a taste of the sauce adorning it. the cilantro pesto, as i placed it, was very well done, incorporating the sharpness of cilantro while not compromising the reamining flavors in the pesto.

for dessert, the creme brulee was quite the reminder of what a good creme brulee should be like. after my previous disappointment with the creme brulee at cremecaffe, i was reluctant to try the same dessert at another restaurant. however, union smith cafe's was lightly topped with strawberries, and the custard itself was perfectly caramelized, with no point tasting more caramelized than any other. under the shell the custard was thick without being overly heavy, and the flavor complemented the texture perfectly.

so far as beverages were concerned, the wine was a bbit more tart than my usual preferences but it maintained a great fruit flavor that made each sip refreshing rather than cloying. the coffee at union smith was also very good, needing no cream or sugar for me to appreciate it (which is rare considering i always take my coffee light and sweet).

all in all, i'd highly recommend the union smith cafe for anyone in brooklyn who is looking for a good place to eat for a decent price. the live musicians there played well, despite maria and i joking that they had only a repetoire of 5 songs, and the garden trellis made the restaurant feel intimate in spite of the occassional noise form the street.

on the train ride home i had the pleasure of finishing 'dance dance dance' by haruki murakami.

over all 'dance dance dance' maintained the same stylistic aspects that are token to murakami's writing; that is the close proximity of fantasy to reality, the use of dry humor and the almost quaint approach to fiction that makes his writing fantastic to read. i am a big fan of his writing style and would recommend anyone to any of his works.

'dance dance dance' resonated with me particularly deeply, despite the many differences between the protagonist's story and my own. through the use of an unnamed protagonist, murakami is able to explore the darkness of a male psyche that is tormented by the ghosts of loved ones lost. while it feels nigh impossible for me to describe how murakami's work effected me while i read it (the goosebumps and small odd sychronicities), i can say that the book is sprinkled throughout with poignant insights on the nature of what murakami terms 'advance capitalism' and the cognitive dissonance it creates within someone who cannot write away his life on an expense account. the vivid imagery and the stark emotional landscape that murakami's characters exist in only serve to better bring out the small revelations that he leaves in his work.

the only negative i found in finishing 'dance dance dance' is that the conclusion felt rushed. i left the work feeling as if i had been cheated out of the end of the story and that i had been subjected to reading the rushed work of someone who had a great idea with too many leads to follow up on and had concluded that the best way to end the work was to truncate it. it may be a personal addiction: in 'after the quake' i found the same shortcoming and i feel that perhaps murakami writes so well that i simply refuse to believe that the story ends when it does.

'dance dance dance' is a must read for anyone, especially these days as the economy seems stagnant. it is a simple story told vibrantly asking the reader to empathize with the protagonist and to simply keep dancing, no matter the rhythm.

whistle while you work

2009-09-03T00:55:00.003-04:00

first, i want to take a moment to address the new direction that i want this blog to take. instead of being a self indulgent mental twitch, i am hoping to turn this blog into part review of new movies, books, restaurants and bars (anything i expose myself to).

that being said.

today was brilliant... gym in the morning, work flew by, and then, at concrete, a very good night of tattoo interviews. i pile on the work but in the end it will be worth it. (thank you eve binder of time out new york for the listing... it helped immensely with turn out!). amazing interviews with melissa grave and nelson lugo (both worth googling!) to further flesh out the stack of interviews i have yet to edit and post.

now, for the first review.

recently for dinner with gedaliah i went to cremecaffe in the east village. while the place promised an amazing ambience, with a venetian mural, street signs and an open design that made you feel as you were dining outside, the food i have to say was wholly unremarkable.

for appetizer, the ceasar salad was fine, until i hit the anchovies. while normally i am a fan of anchovies, i found the sharp saltiness of the fish on the salad to be too stark a contrast in light of the crisp greens and lightly and tastefully used bleu cheese dressing. additionally, with the cheese layered on in heavy slices, the textures of the salad were too various to enjoy.

for the main course, the spaghetti carbonara was disturbingly coagulated. thick and clinging to itself, the pasta was simple enough to eat, but also left my mouth unusually dry. with the bacon also heavily salted, my water glass was rapidly drained and unfortunately not filled as oft as i had hoped.

for dessert the creme brulee was simple. while the caramelized top was sweet and crunchy, the custard was a bit too thin, without a suitable texture to back the flavor.

all in all, i would have to say that, while cremecaffe had great ambience, the food itself did not do it the atmosphere justice. wholy unremarkable, and, for lack of another choice, a suitable place to eat.

fortunately, new york is full of options.

nothing's gonna change my world

2009-08-02T23:56:00.002-04:00

'across the universe' plays in the background as a flurry of emails substitutes for real conversation.

memories like a wave. blonde hair, blue eyes, soft skin...

but things have faded. the sentiment's gone... somehow the memory of her touch, of her scent has washed out and i now have to conjure up pieces. the past is gone and now...

now i find myself studying a woman with an unapologetic gaze. my eyes trace the elfish point of her left ear, the human curve of her right, the perfect plane of her nose. my eyes memorize the length of her smile, her mate stained teeth. my cheek aches for the salutation of hers as we greet.

i read nabakov and wonder if perhaps i have fond a lolita to an annabel. without the pedophiliac associations.

the movie diminuendoes. i need a fix because i'm going down...

the past fades even more. there is the swelling of the present, the fading. everything is beautiful and new and i am scared, anticipating, and excited.

2009-07-16T01:54:00.001-04:00

it's 1 am on a wednesday and i'm (barely) functioning on a half hour of sleep, comvering on a whim someone's shift at a bar.

my wife is all storm clouds because, god forbid, at 24, it's too late to be out in new york.

good grief, she makes me feel like i'm middle aged. we're young once, no need to waste it sleeping.

the space between

2009-07-14T03:25:00.004-04:00

how does one find time to write about life when living seems to take every waking moment?

nexus nightlife has momentum again, with thanks to the continued support of my friends. shows are still being booked and the caliber of the venues i am working with is beginning to escalate. no longer am i hoping that i can keep up with these events... i simply have to deliver. and make everything pay off so that nightlife can finally become my day job.

sometimes there simply are no words... when living and life are story enough in itself, there seems to be no point in putting the chapters of a life into written form. after all, every day is spent penning the story regardless.

looking to change this blog soon. i need to post more multimedia content, interwoven with my angst.

things to learn, a list:
- wordpress
- blogger
- iphoto
- imovie
- itunes
- PHP/MySQL (again)
- Google calendars
- Google documents

synchronicity is key. thankfully apple makes that easy. i just need to finish weaning myself from the PC when i can... with OT in the last two weeks though, finding time to commit to finishing the transition is difficult.

oh, and if you're in new york city tuesday, july 21st:

just a little show me and some friends of mine are putting together, before a show to be held at the times square art center.

hope you can make it out!

petals on a wet black bough

2009-06-23T23:58:00.003-04:00

in an island of 1.575 million people, in a city of 8.143 million, how can i still find you, still track your movements, still ache for you?

time does nothing except mock me with an emptiness that new shows, new events, new friends, new hobbies, new jobs simply cannot fill.

there and in chile an echo of times before, and postcards and la lengua espanol to a different heart, to a different time, to a redhaired passion that still flickers in the embers of a water logged heart.

if only living in angst would pay the bills.

instead, days pass at b&h and i sell sell sell (rarely buying) hoping to make someone happy besides my boss. an echo of eyes and my own oblivious responses to a beautiful brazilian.

nights come and go. phone calls and bar guarantees and burlesque. clothes discarded across stages like my apartment, video footage being edited into the early hours of the morning, costumes made, phone calls pending, contracts waiting to be signed, designs of fliers and so much more.

the nightlife has gained momentum on me, begging me to become more professional than i am. a true stage beckons, and one hand is still grasping at bars. private photography lofts spanning chinatown, english accents, photographers and their supermodels.

deadlines, timelines, social networks, video editing, press releases, promotional kits, dj nights, burlesque shows, poetry nights, live music.

things accumulate and i am left wondering how i am staying on top of it all. sometimes i barely feel as if i am. sometimes i'm just riding, and that is never enough.

life with the wife is good, and i don't sleep. just work work work.

bubbles and memories. tomorrow i send out missives to all corners of the earth (mostly the tri-state area) and hope that somehow this dark, wet clinging soul sickness dissolves in this week's sunshine.

here's to hope.

oh, and i've found a sponsor for my own addictions. thursday a shrink, and a phone call away someone who has found serenity (in a silver coin).

and the show goes on

2009-06-17T23:26:00.004-04:00

nexus nightlife is still alive and kicking, despite the recent bail from another venue. more venues aching to do business, and more work always...

things are looking AWESOME.

there is a time and a place

2009-06-14T00:10:00.003-04:00

the spotlights are blinding and in their glow i cannot make out the 500 or so people that are watching me on stage.

i run through the act, improvised only an hour before show and the crowd roars, and i, nearly nude, scurry off stage.

god it feels good to perform. animenext was amazing, following a glimpse of alix (still beautiful) at the nyc bubble battle.

more shows on the horizon, and i look forward to them with gusto. new venues, new deals and so much work, but with one good performance (and quit the greeting upon exiting... a crowd awaits to cheer us all the way to the hotel) i remember what i do it for.

strangers on the street

2009-06-14T00:08:00.001-04:00

the bubbles rain all over times square and i know you see me watching you.

you are still the most beautiful woman that i know. and it makes me so happy to see you happy.

lovers when we meet...

it's all the good(?) that won't come out of me

2009-05-30T09:09:00.002-04:00

it's my lunch break and i wander around the deramscape of new york. somehow madison square garden looks much more like bryant park and st. patrick's cathedral combined, but in the dreamscape nothing is ever truly foreign.

i have found a $ 8.95 overcharge on my cellphone bill and i alert my manager. her asks me if it's urgent, i tell him it's not.

wandering the hallowed halls of this dreamscape, i come across my old boss at seamlessweb. we go for a cigarette and outside everything is different. my lunch break is already over (30 minutes is far too short) and i yearn to be back at work.

in a circular patch of grass, around a fountain, a young woman plays with her child. large black plastic flowers lie flattened against the lawn by the child's playing, and i, watching, am unsure of the child's gender. not wanting to be rude to the mother by asking or making the incorrect assumption, i play with the child for a while, to the point, laughing, it pees itself. i find that it doesn't have pants on as i toss it away from me hastily, checking myself to see that they missed.

it's a boy. i know now because his pants are off.

after this revelation, the mother invites me to walk with her for a while. i convince her to walk back to work with me.

i begin to cough. big phlegmy coughs that end up with me double over, hacking up gross amber colored splotches of mucus that i expel over and over from my lungs. they land on the sidewalk with a rather satisfying splat and i assess what is coming out of me with dismay. this one lies in a pattern that looks like a human heart, this one a rattlesnake's head, this one a rubber chicken.

i'm not sick, i'm not sure why i'm coughing up so much. a passeerby, first caught by concern for me, looks at the patterns of my mucus on the pavement and tells me that they are shaped as consistently as they are because i am actually coughing up the remnants of a chicken inside me. here, a drumstick, here the wing, here the succuulent breast. my pleghm has the color it does because i am coughing up mostly chicken skin.

i wake.

somehow the dream leaves a taste in my mouth. a minute later my 9:00 alarm goes off, despite having gone to bed past two as i tried to install boot camp on my imac and then rainbow six.

sunlight streams into the apartment and i can only feel like i have begun coughing up the chicken inside of me, that once it's done i better be healthier, in many ways.

what's love got to do with it?

2009-05-21T13:34:00.002-04:00

how long has it been...

there's nothing to write about these days, as the words escape me and i am lost the redundancy of living. what about Life, that elusive thing that seems to ever conflict with the day to day routine of work and more work?

part of me needs a vacation, part of me needs company, part of me needs to settle in and just work.

things keep coming and i'm holding the reins, but they gather so much momentum that i've reached the point that i'm not sure who's in control anymore.

i should be. i'm responsible for my own life and everything that has made it such (funny how i mistyped lie instead of life).

being responsible... who am i kidding? deadlines are constantly missed and i blame it on the job, on the lack of time, but honestly, it's only my fault. i need to go into work and not allow nexus nightlife to interfere with what pays the bills. at least not until nexus is paying the bills.

so many desires, so little time, and not eenough theater to play them out on.

everything's automatic. i feel passionless. i want to shelve my heart, turn robotic and get things done.

i want to ride the wind and speak to the sun and brush against her skin again, find that familiarity that for a while now i've struggled without.

my heart is starving.

but that's all the leftovers of a secondhand emotion.

are you human?

2009-04-24T00:34:00.002-04:00

something seals these lips and as she recoils i remember
the sky, breaking, the jagged edges of night (incipient darkness) clawing at the rupture, and my heart
the recoil, the silence, and somehow i loved her more than me.

are you human?
goldfrapp croons to me as i walk past strange blindfolded protests. i feel the dryness of my knuckles, imagine them cracking and dripping blood. i feel my joints creaking in the cold, as i crawl uphill and uptown to 125th.
or a dud?
i'm not sure anymore. i wish i had grown as she, through books and become learned in something besides my own delusions, something greater than myself. i feel hollow, empty, dangerously mechanical, and i try (trytrytrytry to breathe) to let go and let LIFE course through me again.
are you human?
she's grown apart and grown up and here i am (5 years old 97% of the time and the other 3% i sleep!) dressed in the trappings of a fool man that still fit awkwardly on me.
or do make it up?

the train is drowned in the sound of her words, in the sound of the chorus as it rises against me, asking, as i envision my act to it, whether or not i am human. the book i read now ('gypsy: the art of tease' by rachel shteir) illuminates me.

i am a dud.

i wear masks and costumes and everytime i strip something away, nothing is revealed because, underneath it, there is no body that smells like me, that looks like me.

are you human?

six years in this city and i'm finding that under the facade, there is nothing. but i still need to keep them guessing that there is, assuming that somewhere under all this clothing there is flesh, that under the flesh there is a soul and a heart.

the ring is weird, i know, but my heart's now divided into three, one for you, one for her and one for me.

am i human? or do i make it up...

what it's like

2009-04-22T00:20:00.002-04:00

was it cindy crawford that, when asked during an interview about what it was like being her, responded with: ask her, i'm just her manager!

that feeling is creeping up on me. with 'fro binge to blackout' in my backpack now pair with today's acquisitions (a new mask and a confetti gun) i feel as if i am shielded from the elements that will drag me into oblivion. the show planned for the 23rd of may is beginning to look more and more like a big deal and i cannot wait.

touches of the theatrical and i realize that christopher lee can no longer truly exist. i am nexus nightlife and nexus nightlife is me. we are nothing without each other.

no self but in others... the old mantra from years before comes back to mind and i know that the 'others' i wrote of wasn't just my friends and the people i love. it's also my business... with more and more of the paper draft in sight, i see clearly that nexus nightlife is my contribution to the world. my events and my method of event promotion... my self is in my business, in my shows, in each moment i am awake.

thus, i am not just christopher lee. i am christopher william lee, founder and president of nexus nightlife; burlesque performer and dj; event producer and promoter; writer, friend, brother, son, husband and so much more. the idea of being myself without all of this was folly.

you can kill a man, but this idea is realizing that it is indeed bulletproof.

from binge to blackout

2009-04-21T13:59:00.002-04:00

yesterday, in the rain, in borders' bargain bin, i stumbled across 'from binge to blackout' by chris and toren volkmann.

i have to say the timing of such a discovery is too opportune not to be Fate.

saturday morning, after a night of boozing (as we do), i found myself utterly antisocial. i simply wanted to curl into my work, to find something as intoxicating as alcohol to lose myself in.

thing is, i couldn't concentrate, and i ended up once more drinking myself brroke saturday night.

the most remarkable thing about saturday night was how much i realized i was becoming my father. my memories of him have grown hazy with time, but i no longer fully remember the father that used to place me on both his knees and lift me up and make believe i was flying. i remember a father that, all throughout school, i could see for dinner, and then, if i needed anything he'd have burrowed into his study or into the basement, his second home within a home. there was always the famniliar crack of a can of beer opening and that sound would be a constant as the evening wore on.

i never knew what he did in his study. he claimed it was work, but sometimes, as he left for the garage or the kitchen for another beer, i could see pornography peeking up on his computer screen. work of a different color altogether.

feeling like that on saturday, i came ot a rather sudden and alarming revelation about the nature of my father's alcoholism. after being out all day, working and surrounded by other people, he needed his time alone. coming home to a family, needing to provide a constant emotional interaction immediately after coming home from social interactions at work, my father did not have time to unwind, to reorient himself from businessman to father.

at least that's my understanding... that inability to stop made it all the more important to grind to a full stop when he had time to. and nothing is more of an evening ender than a few drinks. slow intoxication leading to dulling the senses, leading to fatigue and ultimately sleep. that was all the isolation he needed.

but tolerance builds and more and more alcohol need be consumed to achieve the same desired effects.

saturday i found my self imposed isolation necessary, but disturbing. i immediately felt like my father, having overexerted myself socially to want to be alone in my study. but i couldn't focus and all my plans to do work fell through the cracks. if someone looked into my study, they'd have seen a disturbingly similar sight to those that linger from my childhood.

i've taken it upon myself to fight the affliction that lead to so many arguments within my family, to my delinquency, to our many family counseling situations, to days with my mother weeping as she pounded her head against the wall, to worse. my calendar is marked with how many days i've spent drunk or drinking, commenting more on the frequency than the depth of the habit.

of the 20 days that have already passed in april, it've spent 13 drinking.

unfortunately, due to my work schedule, i cannot find an AA meeting that i can attend. i am looking into seeing a psychologist covered by my health insurance for the additional emotional support i will need to kick this habit. while i know my own willpower should be enough, part of me eggs itself towards self destruction, and i need someone to remind me that there can be light at the end of the tunnel.

for now, i am sober and have been for all of a day. today will be spent working on my business goals (now long overdue due to circumstance, but ultimately due to my own irresponsibility) before heading downtown for my first trial of sobreity... i have promised to see a bartender but have to see her and remain sober.

i have not forgotten the face of my father, for i will kill this habit with my heart.

has it come to this?

2009-04-18T13:34:00.002-04:00

i wake up today with a headache that started last night in the middle of rocky horror picture show. don't get me wrong, it was a great show, but the pitcher of smithwick's, the shot of soco and lime, the redheaded slut, the lemon drop, the kamikaze and the bacardi gold i down decided to skip messing with my stomach and go straight for my head.

the phone's been ringing off the hook and i've been getting a huge amount of texts but all i want to do is lie in bed with the cool spring breeze and the sunlight and be dead to the world for a little bit longer. commmitments fall away from me and i realize that i'm being an irresponsible ass, but text messages and more effort to sustain those relationships will be put in later.

for now, i just want quiet in my life.

i'm up now and typing this blog with a singular emotion driving me: worry. after looking through my texts, assessing my partial hangover, writing on my ocd calendar of habits, i'm realizing that, step by step, i'm becoming my father. i've learned to drink and drink and come home and once home i simply want to be alone. no cats, no wife, no children... i simply want MY space and that is all. outside, i've become a joker, a clown and i down every thing that has liquor in it. i drink myself broke.

something's got to change. in a moment i will rearrange my direct deposits so i have even less access to my own money, leaving me less money to drink away.

i think AA is in my future again. i've got to make my schedule and stick to it. at least until something's become of the mess that i am.

all these years, all this time spent leaaving who i come from, only to find that i'm still mugging myself.

and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow...

2009-03-22T21:19:00.002-04:00

i'm in the middle of 'when skateboards will be free,' to be released on store shelves tomorrow and i'm finding it an appalling read that i cannot put down, simply because of the fool faith that somehow the ending will merit all the diminutive crescendos and half finished loose ends that the author has sprinkled recklessly through the writing. it sits next to me on the desk now as i write, begging for my attention but not compelling it.

my apartment's cleaner and emptier than it's been a while. after a random furniture rearrangement, i feel that there's a proper workspace, a proper dj space and a proper void that yearns to be filled. call it what used to be my living room, or what should be a kitchen or dining room. call it a dance floor.

my relentless habitual facebook stalking yields a name same as mine holding a girl that was once mine. i feel a massive burden lift from my chest. she is loved, she is loving, she will be taken care of. not as if it had weighed on me, but because now i feel the freedom to pursue my own interests without feeling as if i'd been the first to abandon a dream.

dreams.

the tumult of the dreamscape has made odd leaps into reality. a dream about jackie and myself making apple turnovers, turned from ephemeral to reality by her agreement on a whim. and then, strangely, the dream plays out in real life with close to no prompting. there's an odd sense of deja vu as i watch her hands sculpt small balls of dough into turnovers rather than folding sheets of dough as i do. something echoes, resonates.

reality.

days slip in and out of each other with a rhythmless lovemaking that echoes how empty my life has become in that regard. half serious plans of casual sex in another state, opportunities that may dangerously see fruition. i work, come home and try to keep on top of an illusory empire in vain, slip into sleep and wake to work again.

i sometimes forget to shower, to shave, to brush my teeth.

money trickles away from me and back to me again, whimsical as always and frankly i don't care. things will come as they should and right now everything's coming and going so fast. somehow the sands of all the time i've spent dreaming, all the sleep dust and all the tiny grains of seconds are building up, mashing against each other in orgiastic ecstasy to turn into a foundation, into bricks.

photo projects, promotional line ups, dj gigs, burlesque shows.

if only art, at this miniscule lower case a level, paid enough to live on.

almost to a degree. then to debate whether or not juggling work full time, school part time and business building will kill me or just bring me through yet another death into a new life.

i'm not scared. everything comes when i ask, as i ask.

but the thought sometimes takes place of the action, and progress is left for tomorrow (and tomorrow and tomorrow).

meg's right: one day i will look back at my life and take these scraps, these thoughts, and hold not a life, but rather a recollection. i have lived as i wanted to be recollected. every waking moment for me is the art form.

i am the lizard king

2009-03-10T23:34:00.002-04:00

there is an iphone posted on the door and i know that it's her room. i ring the doorbell and duck behind the corner, waiting to see if she answers. she doesn't open the door, but i feel her presence swell near the door.

i have to verify it with my eyes.

i leave these white hallways an run around the outside of the building until i find her window. i find three rocks and lan them with unerring accuracy. i duck into the shadows and hope to see her. again, i feel her presence, but do not see her.

my cellphone chirps and there is a text message from her (in real life the number's since become disconnected) and oddly she adresses me as 'lizard baby' and lets me know that she knows that i'm the one harassing her. implied is her fury, her need for retribution.

i run. my car is parked nearby and i floor it into reverse, my headlights illuminating a startled girl unpacking her trunk as i veer off into the night.

then i wake.

it's been over a year, but the dreamscape lately is full of her. i still see her ghost, feel her whisper in every aspect of my life an it chills me, warms me an gives me a faith that i have never truly felt before.

i can't say that i miss her. there is too much going on in my life to have that void-like emotion.

but somehow, every fiber n me believes that six years was a self fulfilling prophecy, and that all i have to do is continue being strong, an growing into who ii was meant to be.

i can see everything

me llaman el desaparecido

2009-03-07T07:32:00.002-05:00

i dream of phone calls that don't end up with a number that's out of service, or with being hung up on, but rather with patient, tentative conversation and hope.

i see facebook posts of common friends and family that reunite us slowly but surely.

the dreamscape is full of cruel hope and when i wake i am not sure if reality has shifted in my favor or not.

foolishly i check facebook and place a call, and harsh cold reality reasserts itself aggressively.

i'm still alone, still unforgiven, still forgotten and left to bear my own damn cross. oh hell, i built it and nailed myself to it so it's only fitting.

watchmen this afternoon, my wedding reception tonight, and plans that are all slowly gathering dust. i catch a whiff of the scent of lime (the scent of decaying empire) and allow my dreams to slip past me. all that's left now is this cold grey mo(u)rning.

me llaman el desagradecido, pero eso no es la verdad.

i can see for miles

2009-03-03T17:57:00.002-05:00

i've got an hour to burn before meeting zach for his camera man's film and i'm sitting in a quaint little cafe on 14th street waiting for a sauteed mushroom crepe and sipping on a delicious 'almond joy.' the gym was somewhat painful today, but with a few tricks i managed to trick myself into getting through the workout.

christie was good, after finally seeing her to get all her mail to her. still as ephemeral as usual and still as beautiful.

it's odd, knowing that i'm married now. the ring on my finger is part weight, part shield, part temptation.

plans are in motion again with the onset of march and the tentative spring. in between all the grey slush (oh if only we appreciated snow as much as we did when we were children, and could let it settle against the ground for its embrace... now preemptively we salt the sidewalks and despise the course of nature) a seed is sprouting and i have to say that i am glad for what seems to be coming.

tony tells me on the phone as i'm running to the gym that the cave lounge wants to host a regular burlesque show with me. knock on wood, but confirmation comes tomorrow.

company's off the nexus nightlife list; richie was far too troublesome an owner to deal with and the payout wasn't worth the time. concrete, however dead wednesday happy hours are, feels more on the correct caliber, treats us well and, most importantly, has potential.

it's march 2009... a lot's happened in the last 13 months. loved ones lost, and finding myself, foundations laid for an empire someday.

things come in time. i sit in this cafe and wait for everything that i've played so far to come together. this summer will be a blur of motion and growth, and from the snow, perhaps a rose.

you've only got one shot

2009-02-24T01:45:00.002-05:00

i spot her on the train to the gym: white wool hat with a pom pom and a heart, tan jacket over a pink skirt, camou pants and gold shoes, white hoop earrings, two nose rings circling her left nostril, blonde, beautiful.

she heads off the train at grand central as i do. i fancy her walking behind me but when i turn around (nonchalantly, of course) to check, she's not there.

i spot her at the gym: red running shorts over blue leggings over a great ass.

she leaves for the showers as i leave the weights to do a few final stretches. i fancy skipping my stretching and my shower to catch her before she leaves but instead decide to luxuriate in warm water and suds.

i spot her again on the train home: white wool hat with a pom pom and a heart, tan jacket over a pink skirt, camou pants and gold shoes, white hoop earrings, two nose rings circling her left nostril, red backpack.

she's watching me watch her and there is no lack of recognition. i fancy going over to talk to her but the abundance of awkward introductions causes my tongue to freeze. instead i amble (nonchalantly, of course) to the subway map, then to the bench, always checking back and forth for train traffic, always lingering on her form, catching her eye as she watches me watching her.

we board separate cars. that's the end of it.

at bryant park she disembarks and i cross to the other side of the car (nonchalantly, of course) to see if she's riding all the way to times square. she passes me as i reach the train door as it slides shut, a look half of bewilderment, half of being startled crossing her face as the train pulls away.

i missed that one shot. next time i see her (if i do) the inaction from this moment will paralyze me and i will forget the fancy.

bugger it. i've still got the phone number of the waitress from dempsey's sitting on my stack of papers to sort out tomorrow. i'll give her a ring (almost two weeks later), explain my delay in calling, and see if she'd fancy a go.

opportunity only comes once in a life time (yo).

if you take a good look at my face

2009-01-26T23:30:00.002-05:00

dinner's at whole foods as zach and i marvel at the incomes of people not quite like us. i navigate that disturbingly chipper environment and finish my overpriced, farmer friendly salad and head home on the B train, tweaked on caffeine.

home's still a mess. the cat box is so full that they've taken to pissing on the little on the floor next to the box. at least it doesn't smell. i'll clean it in a bit.

i shoot off a load, roll a cigarette (it's been ages since my last, the rolling paper's dry as the tobacco and it's all rolled wrong) light up. sniff the cup left on my coffee table, pop open the fridge and pour the leftover red stripe and red bull cola into it. most of the red bull cola's still frozen from when i left it in the freezer this friday past. i stick it in a sad excuse for a vase and wait for it to melt.

cigarette's already burnt out. i relish for a moment the dryness of my mouth, the taste of tobacco. i know that i am deliberately indulging in an image, one mixed up between the blue haired dj of bpm and warren ellis' spider jerusalem, but hell, i've been a-working so damn hard lately i may as well indulge in a vice.

other than porn, that is.

light the candles in my apartment. i let another fart rip. feels like i've been doing that all day. damn my poor eating habits. might as well get my apartment in the mood for the cleaning binge that's about to occur. well, that i hope will occur. i shove four sticks of incense into a dried cat turd in the litter box and the apartment begins smelling like patchouli and baby's breath. or some shit that's supposed to smell like it.

put together a rough new playlist on slacker, letting the music flow. putting together pieces of a new set for wednesday night's set at concrete. it's just a lounge gig, but hell, i want to make those happy hours into something.

lara's in touch on facebook chat. possibly karaoke after i get off the decks on wednesday. most likely not, judging from the red that my bank cacount's in, but i haven't seen her in a while and it'd be nice to get off zach's couch. the rate i'm staying over we're either buttfucking or i'm homeless. neither's the case so i'd better get out to see her.

that reminds me, i promised helpern i'd try to meet her before she headed to antartica.

brief goodbye on facebook to lara. don't really want to converse right now so much as indulge in this blog and the image of a tortured writer. i need the pain. like spider, anger and hatred fuel me to the occasion, so i'd better get damn angry at myself. not planning on sleeping tonight and then tomorrow i plan to reintegrate like all the other drones. hit the gym bright and goddamn early tweaking on caffeine and insomnia just to see if i can break through anotther consciousness barrier.

it's time for another cigarette, and to start cleaning.

the red bull cola red stripe mix doesn't taste nearly as asstastic as i thought it would. take a sip to wet the tongue enough to roll another, and do so, light up and survey the scene.

i frankly don't know where the fuck to start.

laundry's piled up every where. somehow a colony of black socks has formed on my floor, and on my pull out excuse for a bed i have enough clothes to keep the bbetter part of project find warm (oh if only i still lived in midtown). thing is i'm too shit broke to do laundry. hell, i haven't even had enough money to cut my own damn hair. my costume bags from friday night are still packed neatly on the floor and my couch is covered with crumbs, cat litter and signs of my eating, sleeping and masturbating on it. i'd start with the cat litter if it wasn't holding the incense up right now.

kill the cigarette and slam a good amount of the red bull stripe cola concoction. music is begging me to get on up (thank you jazzanova) and i do just that. i'll figure out where to start in a second.

---

i start with the dishes, which turn out to be an ordeal in their own right. as i pull them apart from each other, i discover the source of one of the many smells that have been assailing my nostrils for the last week. a colony of mold's grown in nice and thick on most the dishes and i turn the water to a milky boil and rinse the hell out of them before i even contemplate touching them with a soapy sponge. i swear i feel the leftover spaghetti (when the hell did i cook spaghetti? the pasta in my fridge is all penne) crawl away from the sponge as i begin to wash the pot it was cooked in. after i'm done, i scrape the leftover green mold from out of underneath my fingernails and roll another cigarette, sip some more of my drink. it's time to take on another part of this mess.

roll another cigarette, light up, sit and contemplate someone like me (thank you royksopp) and eye the costumes lying on the floor.

---

cat litter's cleaned. and the floor around the litter box.

for a moment while i'm on my knees scooping the shit, something snaps out of the box and smacks me in the forehead. i am going to have to lysol the fuck out of my face when i'm done cleaning.

---

my spine's killing me.

---

short break from the cleaning. the apartment's maybe 1/3rd of the way to being sanitized and godly, but my back's giving more grief than my ex-girlfriend. which, if you are familiar with the situation, is plenty. the dj gear and costumes are in a corner and the laundry's in another, piles of papers now consolidated on my desk for my leisurely progress. i sit on my couch (futon now reversed, febreezed and smelling more like lemon than of cat and body odor) and take a moment to appreciate the incoming serenity (deep shit, pts. 1 & 2 by kruder and dorfmeister matching the moment).

i feel calmer. i empty the ashtray into the garbage and put away the cancer sticks. they've served their purpose, giving me enough of an edge to get through the evening.

well, at least i empty the ashtray. i leave the papers and tobacco out since the evening's still not nearly started and i've got many miles (of pacing in my place putting things away) before i sleep. if i do.

i flip on the telly and kill a few brain cells before i get back to the chores.

---

a mistake. the tv's gone and stopped me more effectively than it should have. leaving off in an attempt to sleep and then starting again tomorrow.

year of the bastard

2009-01-26T00:35:00.002-05:00

comic books rule my life. bpm sits comfortably back in zach's possession and on the late night d train back to harlem i begin paging through transmetropolitan. the fix is in and i've been jonesing bad.

my apartment's more of a vault than a living space. the door protests as i open it and the rancid smell of old cat piss, dirty laundry and dried ejaculate assaults my nose. instinctively i make my way past the bags of costumes on the floors, past the garbage and the piles of clothes. dishes piled up on my stove, papers everywhere, my cats peeking out half expecting me not to actually be back.

i turn on cinemax and forbidden science is on. perhaps my only vice. it's been damn near a year since my last fleshy tangle. not that anyone needs to know, nor cares.

work tomorrow during the chinese new year. no family here to celebrate with, no reason to take the day off. with my trip to laa on the horizon i'd better save up as it is.

nights pass with little sleep. i don't want to sleep but have to, don't want to wake but have to. snooze button's worn thin with the amount of times i've hit it.

waiting for inspiration. events come and go in small bits of work. i crave all night binges of cigarettes and of caffeine, but the urge to smoke is gone.

in the back of my mind, an image:
he sits in a pool of blood, chewing on something that is still twitching in his hands. a wet, mangled hand comes up and bats at his face and he snarls at it, watches it retreat back to its mangled body. it's delicious, this flesh. his teeth glisten.

his hands trace the fingers of his meal, marveling at how easy they were to break, marvelling at how simply the human body breaks. his fingers work past bloodied, half eaten forearms, biceps, collarbones, neck. hands dip behind bloody hair, bring up the face of his sustenance to his own.

he finds himself staring into his own eyes.

excuses for inaction. i reach home and everything stops. i want to sleep, but know i won't, not for a while yet. i should clean, should put away wires and microphones and clothes, prepare for a proper life again.

days blur. today's got no name since there are no events upcoming. just happy hour on wednesday. the new york comic convention's a ways away and things are well underway. just time to touch base about who's performing and coordinate the details.

i should get off my ass. no coffee and cigarettes, but hell, the image persists.

some indeterminate amount of minutes

2009-01-04T20:21:00.003-05:00

the disarray of my apartment's a testament to last night's debauchery. my small studio looks like a hungry, sleepless tornado ripped through it, leaving the debris of late night munchies and early morning hangover remedies. the desk is a pile of napkins, a ball of crumpled foil still sticky with barbecue chicken, a half empty liter bottle of water, a stack of receipts and loose bills. the pull out futon that i call a bed is still out, pajamas and sheets in a pile on it, without having been folded. the coffee table in the living area is covered in plastic deli bags, empty soda cans, opened and unpaid bills, the program from last night's burlesque show.

it's 8:38 PM. i've been up for twelve hours fighting off fatigue and waking drunk to go to work to sell computers to beautiful tourists, aspiring photographers and videographers, djs, etc, etc. my cdjs are in their coffin, perched precariously by the door on a battered hand cart, waiting to be put back in their rightful place on the odyssey stand by the window where, until i disturbed him, paw was curled in a small ball.

my head hurts from the alcohol finally clearing up, my right arm hurts from lugging my cdjs and mixer from the east village over three trains to get them home when the l wasn;t running, my feet hurt from standing all day and my wallet's hurting from my drinking habit.

so much for new year's resolutions.

meg once said to me that the best part of breaking up was falling for someone again. after her came alix and (dismissing the dervish week in which i changed bedfellows more often than clothes) now i am open to the idea of falling in love again, to let my heart heal from the hurt of losing someone who was immensely integral in shaping who i am.

i'm falling in love with moments, with the solace of solitude, with the strength of it. i enjoy my job at b&h and i enjoy being a night owl. clark kent and superman, never sleeping to achieve all that i can. sometimes things fall apart. other times the center holds and what is beheld is amazing.

i fall for lyrics in songs and for small looks across candlelit tables. i fall for the way my cats come up to me after a long day and long night out. i fall for my friends who have continued to show me an admirable amount of support through my very turbulent life. i fall for mornings and find myself loving the sunlight despite the cold and the fact that i am forced to be up only after three hours of sleep.

i love the shows i go to, the people that i see, the women who bare themselves on stage systematically and allow me the same liberty. i love the music that i spin, concocting stories from lyrics and strengthening myself on my own melodies. i love the feel of the hand cart's plastic handle as i carry a coffin behind me, a reminder of the weight that i have to shoulder and bear.

the disarray of my apartment's a testament to last night's debauchery and all there is to do is to clean up and start working again. this reprieve from the day, allowed in naps on the subway and pages of 'jonathan strange & mr norrell' and in these words, draws to a close. again i hear january calling, leaving messages in my voicemail and in my inbox asking me about shows i have promised to create. events.

the center must hold.

and this is how i measure my life. in an indeterminate amount of minutes. in the seconds between minutes. the time between moments when infinity is possible, whether it be a house of leaves that breaks a heart in its dark passages or whether it be in dusky crossroads that lead to anywhere full of glorious melancholy.

some indeterminate amount of minutes passes, and i hear the sound of the grindstone resuming.

it's nine o'clock on a saturday

2009-01-02T01:45:00.002-05:00

it's 1:45 in the morning on friday, the 2nd of this new year and i have to say with no small degree of content that the year is looking to be incredibly bright. here, in my quiet apartment in harlem with my new eee pc on my lap chatting with a friend about how our distance has changed us all, reading in spurts 'jonathan strange & mr norrell' while contemplating my work day tomorrow at three jobs while still finding time for the gym, time to fix my dj mixer and time to run some personal errands, everything seems so full of promise.

should that we could fulfill these promises to ourselves.

it's a hollow tradition to start every new year with a resolution to change for the better, or to declare some measure on how to improve our lives or our situations, but we do it nonetheless. i started sticking to my resolutions two weeks before the ball dropped in times square, as 23 took me and i found myself for once enjoying thee celebration of my birth.

its been an incredible year, 2008 has, with love found and lost and found again in so many ways, in jobs that have changed as oft as my own temperament, with the unprepared mindless determination to pursue a dream. once, last year, i had my palm read and i was told that my life was in the cycle of recovery. now, with 2009 blossoming before me, i hav little reason to doubt it. i have found the true means to love myself and to shake the last tendrils of deep grey depression from myself, i have started the foundation of my dreams and i have finally regained financial footing in these difficult times in this difficult city.

i can't guarantee to myself that i will fulfill all that i set out to do in 2009. that would be folly. what i can and will do is guarantee myself that everyday i will honor the goals i set for myself and that i will fulfill them, and that each and every day i will not only live up to my own word but also maintain a heart full of love for the blessing that is life.

tomorrow there is a half day at b&h before the sabbath, then i will go to the gym briefly before running a few errands before giving some of my time to help cal james entertainment stay afloat. i want jim's business to thrive, and under his tutelage i see a strong chance of success for nexus nightlife. after all that's said and done it's then time for me to spin a set at company before retiring home to prepare for saturday.

life works in a rather mysterious fashion and i'm finally learning that, despite all my attempts to force my own goals into a rhythm and pace, everything that is meant to happen happens. sometimes, once the desire to live a Life is truly absorbed into a person's soul, it's best to sit back and let life lead you to it.

i've found my personal legend, and now life is letting me fulfill it.

happy new year, one and all, and may 2009 bring great things for us all.

too far away for me to hold

2008-12-20T21:33:00.002-05:00

i shouldn't blog when i'm drunk.

looking over my last words, i realize i sound like a sniveling wreck of a man, using the idea of love like a madness to keep myself sane.

the problem is that exactly: the idea. alix has long faded from being someone real into being an idea. her flesh and bones, her softness, her curves have all faded and simply become this fervent burning passion, an immensely strong desire to live and to succeed that i have never truly felt before.

in loving alix i believe that i have finally found a way to love myself.

with company, concrete and the cave lounge asking me to dj and promote for them; with the fervor of producing burlesque events, live music events, writing workshops, dj nnights; with a cozy apartment on a quiet residential block; with a job that challenges my intellectual capacities and allows me great pay, benefits, company and clients, i am living a remarkably full life.

the emptiness at home doesn't bother me anymore, and i am slowly learning to flirt again, to speak to and appreciate women without the pang of desire for alix's blue eyes and her soft skin. i know no one else will be like her, and, although that thought once made me dread the romantic arena, now i the fact is something small and hard and cherished, like a diamond, that i keep as part of my past. there will never be anyone like alix again, same as there will never be anyone like meg again. the comparison will keep me back, and it's time i stopped hoping for something that i've lost to come back.

2009 stretches before me with promise. 23 stretches before me with promise. all i have to do is make the same promise: that i will live the year to its fullest and live it in a manner that provides no regret. the past is past, and here before me stretches a future with the potential to be great, if only i allow it to be.

love is a rough teacher, but the lessons it leaves me with are indelible. perhaps with time, things will heal, but that hope has quieted and withdrawn from the forefront of my mind. what comes may come, but i have to allow myself to walk the path for anything to come at all.

as for tonight, i'm off to the cave lounge to close a deal that i signed on behalf of eric and team ewok for their coat drive party. without me, their party would have been double booked at concrete and thus would've not occurred, and it's time i receive just rewards for my efforts. a good party and a portion of tonighth's proceeds await.

all that glitters in this world is sure to fade, away, again, but the impressions it leaves are forever.

and there is always more forthcoming. i just have to let the last one go.

once there was a way to get back homeward

2008-12-18T02:39:00.003-05:00

running into wangui on the train tonight and catching up (if it was) was odd... i seem much more pathetic than i actually am.

alix, i love you.

but i must move on.

it's been nearly a year and i haven't allowed anything of you to slip past me. each moment in this city echoes of you and, as beautiful as longing is, i sincerely need to forget and be the man that you asked me to be.

i need to be the man that you and i see inside of me.

it's coming, slowly but surely. the city whispers longing but all i remember is the comfort you were, the motions of being together... but you, in the truest sense, have become so far removed that all this longing is for naught.

this city is full of life and everyday i fall in love with it again, healing over the scars that i brought upon myself. i am not my own victim. i am not my own burden.

instead, i am a sherperd who had a dream and must now see it back to its ends, even if it means crossing the desert only to find treasure at the home i left.

there is a river in the desert, and it trickles from the oasis to the ocean. here, a breath of life in Delirium, and in the vast ocean a single ivory tower with the maiden at the top.

i will get there, in so many ways.

but for now, the Wasteland gives way to the Desert, and to the faith that underneath all this heat there is a single vein of life pulsing underneath. when my feet pound on the treadmill i feel it. when i work i feel it. when i socialize and dj and produce i feel it.

i love you alix, and that demands that i am strong.

i love you alix, and that demands that i am no longer allowed to be pathetic.

i love you alix, and that demands that i love myself.

and you know what? it took 23 years of my life, but i think i've finally found a way back home.

smiles will await me when i rise.

it's been a long time

2008-12-07T23:28:00.002-05:00

it's been over a month without internet and i feel better somehow. the compulsion to follow isn't swallowing me whole and god forbid i've developed a life outside of this horrible second life.

the months have fallen off the calendar, days growing into weeks and the arbitrary measures of my 'completion' ring up zero repeatedly. my drinking's reached moderation. my smoking too. my marijuana use as well.

i'm djing gigs more frequently now, performing burlesque, booking shows. it's a long cold winter and yet i'm still moving.

pictures show me that she's happy and that, finally, i think after 10 months her hold on my heart is loosening. i still love her, and would love to have her back, but for now i have to prove myself man enough. for her, i have to become man enough to merit forgiveness and one day perhaps her friendship again, if not love.

i pass the pews on convent avenue and i realize that the pew by her bedroom in connecticut was a sign. that she was an angel, to be worshipped, to be treasured and held and always, always loved. ken knew it, but he was her father, and despite echoing his sentiment, i did not truly know it until it was too late.

in february i'm committing myself to a sexless marriage but i'm unafraid to do so. my heart's elsewhere, wandering through montreal and boston and connecticut and god knows where else while i try to forget it. i have work to do and i am inevitably doing it.

neil gaiman once wrote that the price of getting what you want is realizing that you've gotten what you once wanted.

desire, ever constant.

now, into the evening, with a potential divorcee sitting on my couch, a reminder of how painful endings can be. perhaps a warning of things to come. but i've my own mistakes to make, and my own life to live.

five years i'm willing to put into this, to strengthen myself and to help a friend. to help myself.

sometimes the future is a long road and the path seems unclear.

all i want to do is sit by your door tonight and listen to you breathing.

perhaps one day again, in six years, after we have pursued our own legends and come out with treasures back where we started: in each others arms, in love as we were, but unafraid to truly love, the love that does not possess.

funny how the most important things aren't learned in school. i've learned to love through life, and i've learned to live.

that is enough, and i'm glad for it.

here & now

2008-11-06T10:43:00.002-05:00

it's moving day and i'm not even fully packed yet. parts of my kitchen still need to be put away, as do parts of my bedroom, my stereos, my home office...

i've lived three years in the comfort of 37th street, watching it swell, watching the zipper tavern come up, watching concrete build itself, watching the crane that brought the beginnings of a massive condo apartment building.

there used to be murals on these walls. a dragon in blue, a flower, a flowchart, beaked bunnies that leered at each other. now the walls are mostly white and only echoes of the paint underneath wink at me.

there was a lot of love in this apartment. one summer tangled together with alix as she went to study at nyu and i went to bmcc and worked at cal james. a summer of lying in each others arms, exhausted from loving making.

my cats are nearly four, three years of which have been spent in this apartment, chasing each other, catching the few roaches that were here in the beginning, scaring off the mice in the walls. they've grown a lot, seen me through meg and alix and now this solitude. they've seen me collapse on the kitchen floor weeping after getting out of jail, they watching incredulously as three of us consumed a mushroom laced apple pie, they gotten high with me and winced at the acrid smoke.

there have been stories here, told in acid and in booze and in drugs. in love and sobreity and in anger and in malice. doors mockingly rammed to free someone from the clutches of their own unwillingness and a preying crowd. doors removed and carved into desks and then thrown out.

this apartment's seen so much change internally. as more and more furniture and time accumulated, the space inside turned from being awkward to being a home and eventually a sort of home office. unfortunately not much work ever got done here.

this was the nexus, a central place to congregate before going out, near all transportation, near everything, near the pulse of this never sleeping city.

i feel displaced. as if my dreams have been cut short. in my fiction of my life this is where it was supposed to start, and i was supposed to move up (rather than uptown). next door concrete is being poured and across the street an empire rises and my fictitious life was to mirror that. penthouses of glass and steel and an amazing girlfriend to share it with. my cats, of course.

i feel displaced. i feel like i've collapsed in on my dreams and forgotten the way to them. i feel like i'm retreating uptown rather than fighting to hold on to what i have, what i should have. what i want.

i feel displaced. i feel the emptying of coffers and i feel my own pockets empty.

maybe it'll be good to be hungry again, to need to want, to crave something, to force myself to make this fool idea something more than last minute promotions and productions. i have clients lined up, i have shows to perform at, i have a tangible something. it may not be quite the form that i sought, but perhaps it will be good to escape the noise at the nexus of new york for a moment and recoup. form something solid from uptown and bring it back.

the trees on the block in harlem to which i move remind me of home. perhaps now it's not so much living on the money from home but finally, truly, building my own. after three years it's about time to start again.

i have good friends helping me move. i have my cats. i have a place of my own and my own ideas and dreams.

i have my work cut out for me.

but yes, i can, and hell, if a black man can rule a white country, then i can sure as hell learn to rule myself.

this chapter in my life is unanticipated, unwritten.

which means that ultimately, i have absolute control about its conclusion.

dreams last for so long

2008-10-17T11:26:00.003-04:00

the dreamscape is full of her in a way that it's not been for months. there is so much romantic and sexual energy balled up and my dream memory conjures her up in perfect clarity.

we're at smith in an odd shelter, halfway between similar shelters full of her friends and mine. we're on a hill. i pull down the shades so that we're not seen by either group and we make love furtively, furiously, dangerously.

the love's still there, and she lingers on my fingertips and my memory with such intensity.

it's been a while since you've been on my mind and now you're back in full force, haunting me. become a dream lover so i don't have to dream alone...

last night i was in the company of mrs. trump and one twd at his unforgettable art gallery in soho. snapping photos of jim and cal james' band of names as they rocked the night away with latin beats. smoke lingers on the air, liquor on everyone's breath.

evidently i've taken to drinking alone, but not with others. alone i gauge myself better, with others my damnable reputation finds me with more drinks in my hands.

i blame other people, not myself.

sobriety is difficult, and i wonder if it's worth it. i have no outlet... no drinks, no marijuana, cutting back on cigarettes, no sex... i just work and find my hair shortening and despite sleeping forever i am still tired.

phone calls to others at 3 am to be reminded that we broke up for a reason.

nothing to do these days but to work. the Dream seems to be fading and it's saddening. i wasn't made to watch Dreams die. i'm still weaseling and trying to make it work, but commitments to cal james, to bloomingdales, to velvet sky, to greg palast, to everyone else leaves time sparse and leaves nexus slowing accumulating dust again.

yes, there's a website up now, however simple. yes, i'm being booked more and more for burlesque shows, event promotions, birthdays and now, private events.

but it's still not enough.

yesternight, in the fall wind, smoking a cigarette, i speak to musicians about how live music is dying and how i wish it wasn't so. and i'm not even making my bread on it. the cobblestone streets, the wind, the suits, the live music... this is a new york that is fading into glass and steel and djs and and all too digital and impersonal cyber future. i'm caught in the halfway. i'm dysco noir, cyber future and all but still with a fedora and a black vest, with a cigarette dangling from my fingers in alleyways.

i'm 22 (almost 23) and i've not done nearly enough, am not doing nearly enough. every day demands that i sleep less, work more, but in the twilight hours when i pace my house awake (pace the online world awake) i get no work done and my mind slowly unravels. i find myself weak again, missing her or wanting to talk to another.

you would have love the evening last night alix. (and you too meg).

neither of you are mine anymore.

i am my own, but i can't help but think that you still love me and that some day you will see that dreams last for so long.

even after you're gone.

it's the heartland

2008-10-09T03:36:00.003-04:00

i'm high and reeling through new york city streets and the many small epiphanies of this intoxicated evening pile up in my mind.

(language ever the struggle with language, with the words, with the inability to write all that i think and think all that i write)

i pass another decision point as i cruise up 8th avenue past white castle. i glimpse, peripherally, my new next door neighbor, sean, sitting down alone for a late night snack, in full work attire, as i pass the door. he sits heavily, weight almost falling onto his right buttock as he downward cast eyes convey to me his fatigue.

it'd take a second to walk in and say hi before heading home. have a conversation.

instead my rapid feet continue past without pause and i almost feel myself accelerating as i try to forget my inaction.

reflective of the evening perhaps?

the evening feels almost like a psychological gauntlet, watching the interaction of others and taking it as reflection on myself. the night drags on and i have to gauge who is interested in who and who's too intoxicated to leave alone and what the subtext of each piece of conversation conveys. i try to direct, but tonight's not my night: i'm not calling the shots.

i piece together words. when i'm high the words i remember sharply, but their context disappears.

i remember being a ninja, and needing to disappear.

sometimes i do. caught between the rapid friends at heartland and her sudden new friends fixing a flat, i find a space to slip out almost unnoticed. only one catches me and jokes that i'm going home far too early. it's 3:13 AM. he's right, it's too damn early to be up.

we're friends, and the words echos in time without context because i realize the severity of them.

a shot of jameson, for brooklyn's sake (breaking three weeks of sobreity)
a pass around the circle, for brooklyn's sake (breaking nearly three months of sobreity)
and then home, waiting like a tomb to receive me.

i'm not worried. she's a grown girl and i have no claim over her. setting myself up and then kicking out my legs from underneath is the hardest kind of let down.

i'm not worried. i let the idea of writing overwhelm my worry and i trust that she'll get home safe. she's a big girl. she's lived here before.

i walk away. maybe too early, but my feet speed up. just in case.

with great success

2008-10-01T01:02:00.003-04:00

it's 1 am and i've just gotten back from a night of poetry, jazz, reggae, psychics and most of all: promises.

let's take it from the bottom up (like wall street should).

she's laid out the cards and i've lied to her face about my financial situation and she's suddenly decided that the tarot card reading is over. i eye the cards and they give lie to the words that she spewed. gina is her name and she's nice enough to talk to, but something in me screams that she's no real psychic and, despite her telling me not to worry about money (only $ 100 to investigate my spiritual health) money's on her mind.

her deck is simple enough to read, and despite the cards being in what appears to be old latin, the pictures speak for themselves. they lie in a six card sprawl that i'm stranger to, but i see the key words and images as clear as day. i don't know if my paradigm is wrong (as gina asserts... you're on the wrong path to do what you want chris, she says) but a card marked 'le decepcion' peeks at me from the back. and next to it the rays of the sun stand out, back and center. in the front there is a card that i forget framed, almost deliberately, by a female and male card. from the looks of them, kings and queens.

(remembrance suddenly makes the reading clear. in the front, it is i and her, facing off with each other as in the middle what comes to question is not my spirit but the depth of my pockets. i take out change and offer her the remaining $ 1.50 i have left from a late dinner. the synchronicity is ironic and amusing. behind her, the deception, behind me i cannot recall the card, but between us there is great strength. what we are contesting is intention, and what lies at stake is the strength of our paradigms. she, the queen of deception, me a king of something unclear. i feel as if i have won, for the $ 150/$ 1.50 never changes hands)

my horoscope for the evening reflects this knowledge. in brief, it tells me that i know something that others don't and that will give me the upper hand. it's past midnight so the reading is valid, if such things are determined by the satrs. i see gina's hypocrisy and desperation to make a living. her children that were screaming need attention, food, shelter. her determination to deter me from my paradigm is a deception to confuse, meant to make me lose strength and come to her with alms to ask for guidance.

i am no fool (or perhaps a great one).

i had asked her to read from my celtic deck, but she deterred herself from doing it. i retain the cards she drew and i bring them back up. past, present, future, if the three represent such. to her the reading would have been: the moon, the two of cups (reversed) and the homespun tunic (reversed). and that would have meant that my past was full of the female subconscious, of the night, that my present was a conflicted love and that my future lay in a lack of confidence...

that future seems bleary. maybe then she's right in asserting that i am on the wrong path and that the candle that i hold for alix (my isolt) should be blown out so that i can once more assert myself as a single successful male and make this world my oyster.

i try, i honestly do. the future should be a homespun tunic of quality, not of haste and regret. my future is mine, not a regret for a past poorly lived.

and that future yawns before me.

tonight, despite my last minute pre-show anxiety, the crowd was responsive and larger than anticipated, and best of all, the reaction was overwhelmingly positive. to the point where bob of boa invited us back to play and perform again, and to the point where writers asked me to continue my 'motif' writing workshops.

they will go on. they have to.

with great success seems to come more success. birthday parties to plan and then going away parties to plan and burlesque acts to choreograph and more to be booked for, invitations back to bars, writing workshops...

somehow nexus nightlife was born and i've started running it, and somehow it's making money on and off... i just need to sit back and figure how to make it make money more often and then...

well, then maybe i'll be walking the right path.

yesterday

2008-09-29T17:56:00.002-04:00

this morning, as i'm opening forty carrots, the memory of it all hits me and i start tearing.

i remember getting into a taxi cab, holding frantically onto each other as we slipped rapidly through our fingers, the music all too fitting, some song about a woman needing to leave, half hysterically crying and laughing at how ironically appropriate it all was. i held her close to me and i could feel our hearts slipping away and for what? a conversation where i ceased to exist? my hand around her neck?

the longing passes and i blink away the tears. somewhere she's gone and deleted the evidence of me from the last months of her life, systematically erased my touch from the last few months when she so adamantly went back to old haunts and relived memories without me.

sometimes people can be so cold to survive.

i'm worried about myself in so many ways, but i go on. my life is good, getting better and i am, for the most part, happy.

i'm just not sure when i felt myself erased, and when i realized that this entire life, from here on out, isn't mine. it's lived for her, since she obliterated my memory, what little i have left of me.

you say you want a revolution...

2008-09-24T12:56:00.002-04:00

a futon revolution?

i sleep at night on a couch futon and i dream of starting a business that will change the world, even as the world i want to change seems to crumble around me...

she asks me to keep her as part of my story because she doesn't plan to outlive this year. but little does she know that she is my story. as much as everyone else i've ever loved.

people my fade, but how they made you feel will last with you.

so this futon revolution, this one man trying to change how information is presented to level a flat (but very tilted) world so that everyone can climb up onto some sort of playing field, this idea, this dream. they are your story. they are my story. they are her story and the story of everyone else that i know.

you are written into our hearts. so don't fade away. you have to see how it ends.

on a separate, more angst ridden note: she tells me that if i love her i'd leave her alone. seeing her name is torment, but i do love her. and i am only solitary, not alone.

if you want destruction, count me out.

for every action

2008-09-22T00:04:00.002-04:00

it is necessary to replace my bad habits with good habits.

drinking alcohol -> drinking pineapple juice
smoking tobacco -> chewing gum
smoking marijuana -> (this is so infrequent that i feel as if i need not list it... but just in case) chewing gum
viewing pornography -> going to the gym
wasting time on the internet -> working on nexus nightlife

so many small ploys to make sure that i keep focused on progress. because even though right now it's intangible, soon there must be tangible results.

and, in the same spirit, i am now shutting down my blog dedicated to heartbreak.

yesterday

2008-09-20T00:47:00.002-04:00

tonight was catching pop rocks absent mindedly as i eyed and was eyed by new york. i'm living again, and learning to breathe.

is this how love is meant to be?

i get home from a fashion show and concert and movie shoot to pass by amazingly beautiful women piling out of a limousine to get into an event space down the street, only to then pass another crowd of young attractive people clustered around the bar 'concrete,' now open for business a few doors down from my apartment. it's been a good night... lara's invitation to rebel turned out to be a night of Whim followed to its truest extent.

she's not on my mind anymore, i realize as i get home. it used to be that the impulse to know what she was doing was first and foremost. it consumed me... i needed to know and to state that knowledge.

but now the impulse is forced. i check out of a habit that is dying.

five glasses of pineapple juice can help kill bad habits. i'm sober, abstinent from sex and alcohol and alix, finally.

there's really no need to write this down aside from the fact that tonight was perfect. getting out of work to race to rebel to see people who i admire for their tenacity and their ability to make something out of the nightlife. a beautiful band, a fashion show and more... even they are human, even they started somewhere.

i can't help but feel young and powerful and so alive. so full of potential.

and do i dream again?

my day job slips away and i feel reborn in the night. it's okay to sleepwalk through the day, earning my keep. it's my nights that matter. it's my nightlife that i exist on, that fuels me and gives me purpose.

do i shun the sun?

i do, but i no longer embrace the darkness... instead i embrace the night. the moon, the stars, the neon lights, the limousines, the fashion shows, the beautiful women, the flashbulbs... this is my life and i am as up and coming as the people around me are.

the doughnut may be doomed but the questions on my mind have been answered. my life is okay. even though my progress is constantly measured against that of others in this city, i am okay. i am doing okay. the faces around me have taken years to be smoothed down with alcohol and makeup and struggle to finally break out under the spotlight.

i'm now in the shadows, earning my keep, building, slowly but surely, my own empire, my own life in the night.

words fail me again. it's truly impossible to describe how fulfilling new york is.

the fall air is full of change.

(echos: i hear the sound of a transformer in my mind and i see her splaying her limbs in an act of charades. nostalgia rings but no longer hurts. i loved her, but now i am someone else, as is she, and love is irrelevant. all there is now is life.)

i believe in yesterday. without it there wouldn't have been the beauty of tonight, and all the potential of tomorrow.

tonight, watching the paprika of dreams and laying myself to sleep. when sunday comes around, it's time to return to the necessary (but beautiful) work of Creating a vision.

picture this scene

2008-09-09T20:31:00.002-04:00

it's the end of the day and all the devil's fools come out to play...

i'm sitting at the zipper factory tavern last night sipping on a glass of sauvignon blanc listening to the barkeep and some customers practice politics (while i, aspiring businessman, slowly get stoned) and i'm feeling just how solitary i have chosen to be (in my society... i am only solitary not alone).

the night greets me with nothing but darkness and i grab the glass of wine only a week after swearing off drinking for three months because i am weak and because all i come home to is more work and my cats. and while the feline companions are great, they are no substitution for human interaction.

i'm texting half heartedly hoping for someone to join me for a drink as i debate joining in the discussion that's going on. part of me wants to make new acquaintances, part of me wants to get familiar with how to meet new people again. instead i content myself on eating, drinking, listening and watching. there are always other bars, other people to meet.

it's been 7 months and she's still not left me.

she's not on my mind, but she lingers, and the lack of her lingers.

but i digress.

it's been interesting at forty carrots. slowly but surely my system of effective and efficient customer service has fallen into place. i'm looking onward already though, hoping for a pay raise and a titular promotion. to be the supervisor of a yogurt stand is not a career. it's a job. it's about damn time i settled into something a little more long term.

my reputation grows.

i'm planning birthday parties left and right these days, regardless of profit. i'll do it for my name's sake. soon though. with the amount of requests i've been getting i sincerely need to get this operational on my end.

slow coming.

is this our dance? this one starved person craving company and seeking it in the bass lines of a club dj?

there is so much to say. small symbols like my employee number 666409. i'm the devil's cleaner. i have to be stronger than vice and cooler than sin and i have to clean my soul and ready it for what comes next.

small symbols like how now i go back through my writing from previous years and find that maybe i was destined to be a writer, not the ceo of some nightlife company. i remember scribbling poetry on bar napkins and older men reading them as they were passed to the bartender to remark that i was due to be the next great american writer.

the confidence of others is something that i don't have for myself.

i'm only writing this blog post now because i feel overdue. as if i need a catharsis. i think the writing itself shows that. it's neither well composed nor does it seem to have a point.

so many things on my mind, so little time to reflect. i hope that this isn't a lemming's rush to a premature end.

the constant battle between pondering and doing.

nexus nightlife is under construction (again) and i've broken it down into smaller components to code. i really need to stop letting work dictate my energy levels, but i work in a high energy environment and arrive home burnt out.

ideas, ever the ideas.

i'm behind on transcribing video for a friend of mine. i should get to it.

hopefully i'll have time to reorient myself soon. i'm tired of feeling caught in a current that i no longer control. but it's going in the direction i want it to, so why not let go and follow for once?

thank you for a lovely evening. i'm just starting mine.

and in the east...

2008-08-17T20:55:00.003-04:00

so many things fall to the wayside.

it's already mid august and a series of poorly prepared poetry workshops looms before me. i know it's just going to be a hole in a wallet that's already bleeding, but i need to remember that i have dreams outside of the constant swirling of frozen yogurt and the frenzy of constantly being (what feels like) the only person working at the forty carrots take out area.

nexus nightlife sits and waits for my life to be ready for it again.

tuesday and wednesday are my days off this week (how odd a schedule it is, working in the food and hospitality industry) and i have already, in my mind, dedicated them to coding nexus nightlife. i am so close i can taste the sweet taste of completion (or is that melba sauce lingering in my teeth).

more friends to take out, to promote for... i get texts every weekend now asking where to go and to be perfectly honest, i don't know. the individual capacity for preference is so varied that to ask me to be the one decisive factor in your evening out... that's a lot of responsibility. perhaps that's why i am building nexus. to be irresponsible and to teach people that, ultimately, their evening's happiness is their own responsibility.

i can only show you the door. you have to choose to step through it.

plans. wheels... so much going on and the incentive to keep moving is once more gone. i come home from work and pass out for hours, robotic, recharging for another day of the same old motions. it's been only a week of real work and i'm aching for something new. there's more to life than the constant swirling of yogurt machines, the ins and outs of a fast food enterprise.

it's a lonely life, but it's somehow full during the day now. i sing and i have a hop in my step. maybe it's because i am finally working again, full time.

nights stretch beside me with a cats yawn though, and i found myself in a perpetual haze of nonawakeness and notquitesleeping at home. i crave company but have no space for it, i ache for a room mate but can't stand most people, i want to take people out for dinner but need to be a miser now...

the human is a social animal. but the problem in that is that being social requires maintaining connections. without maintenance even the best friendships rust, decay, disintegrate.

oh to sleep forever.

i live like the bachelor i am, working and coming home and simply wasting time until an indefinite tomorrow. bags of laundry brought back from the laundry mat, still packed. dirty piles of clothes hidden in corners and on ottomans. take out containers and cat shit piling everywhere, the 'guest' (read ghetto) futon on the floor and sheets like evidence of living.

i need to clean, to code, to mark off more 'completes' on my ocd record. simply going to work is not enough. it's making a living, but it's not a living.

it's time to dream again, and to put some capital beneath those dreams and build wings to see if they can fly.

at this point, any dream will do.

please don't let me be misunderstood

2008-08-10T00:54:00.002-04:00

she's yelling at him to 'pay the fucking $ 20' for the cover to enter hiro and i'm standing in line with diane and matt, acknowledging that the blossoming distaste in my mouth is not from last night's finally fading hangover but from my gut instinct finally being reconciled with my brain.

i can't promote for the bloc group. i've tried before and i've fallen through.

i don't think it's me. promoting a Bridge and Tunnel party to my friends and being unable to grant them any incentive to enter is bullshit. insisting that my crew get dressed up and pay over $ 10 to stand around and half heartedly dance sober (or pay exorbitant amounts to get drunk enough to dance) so long as we bring at least one woman to every man is simply detestable. this is the new york for tourists, a new york founded on expensive luxury and settling for less.

i miss promoting for the music i love, for heading to red and black and no jacket required and dysco noir parties because i genuinely loved the music and the people who ran the parties. i miss promoting for people like velvet sky who understand that new yorkers need proper incentive to go out, and the grace of a 'reduced' cover isn't an incentive at all. it's merely saying that instead of leveling a gun to your back as we stick you up we're holding a knife. you're still being robbed, but one's a lesser crime, supposedly.

velvet sky has it right. allowing guests in for free, not caring about the gender ration, simply caring that you (and a lot of your friends) have a good time... that's the proper way to promote.

maybe it's not only that. i watch matt dance with diane and wonder about someone i finally let free, and how much it hurts that she celebrates and keeps in touch with my friends while i, in a desperate attempt to find success, find myself only becoming more of a hermit.

i still miss you damn it. i've just learned to stop letting you know.

for now, blessed sleep and a slow reconciliation with my conscience. and tomorrow opening at forty carrots again to end my week on thursday before beth gets in.

life goes on, and i will find a way to hold all of new york's night in my hand without feeling like i'm robbing a population.

nobody knows

2008-08-08T11:56:00.003-04:00

i leave the window open last night due to the cool night air and i wake at 6 am to the sound of heavy construction both in my backyard and right down the block. without thinking i put in earplugs and end up sleeping through my training.

great start to a job.

hoping that tomorrow i go in and they either don't notice or don't care too much... the training was supposed to be only until tuesday and the restaurant doesn't seem to have an idea as to what they need me for yet. oh well.

alix and i have finally settled things. she of course had to have the last word, however incorrect it was, but hell, i really am tired of fighting with her. i love her and i want her back, yes, but now she's just keeping me from my own life.

i hope to god that this all works out for the best.

other things drift in from the past and i'm reminded of how lucky i was and have been.

the nexus nightlife website works, but the code is extremely clunky. in my usual fashion i've met my deadline in a manner that barely cuts it. i've gone and printed out the code i do have to manually review it. paper's a lot more portable than a computer and a lot more friendly to my eyes. maybe i'll get away from the incessant sounds of shovels and buzzsaws and enjoy the day with some music as i makew my way through the code and streamline it all.

efficiency, effectiveness.

and then there's the idea of silence, melancholy and work.

i miss you alix. but it's time i let go so that we can heal. and i'm glad that you can too now. because, despite your efforts, your messages were as mixed as mine.

broadway's dark tonight

2008-07-26T12:34:00.002-04:00

shal's right about the wine hangover. it's a bitch.

it's nearly 1 pm now and it's time for me to start my day. i've been averaging this same late start time now, what with nothing to keep me up in the day. fragments of last night come stumbling back to me. i remember now taking the 6 home and walking across midtown to get home.

yesterday night started with the best of intentions, to go to the gallery opening of an aspiring photographer, then to say goodbye to starshine at the sly fox, then to head to brooklyn for rose's birthday.

shal and i make the gallery opening fine, and the studio is gorgeous. the space is huge and it overlooks the high line and the sunset. models and other photographers gather as a dj drops some house music from the corner. wine and hor devours are passed around and the place feels sophisticated. i envy the photographer a little. she's 27 and has managed to pull this together.

i haven't eaten all day and the few glass of wine i have hit me hard. being broke in new york isn't a laughing matter and i'm still trying in desperation to get a job. any job at this point, anything to give me an excuse to wake up in the mornings. i'm getting drunk and by the time we get to my apartment to get my camera i'm pretty far gone.

shal shells out for a cab to get to the sly fox.

a handful of people there, all to wish starshine luck on his journey. i want another drink but no one's buying (thankfully). brief discussions with people about the possible rental of the photography studio for a launch party. i've got so much to plan out for that, but first this damn website.

so much work, so little incentive.

sometimes recently i feel like i was better off in brooklyn, smoking weed everyday and drifting in an intoxicated haze to my two jobs. drinking enormous bar tabs every weekend. i had more money to waste then, paid my bills and was financially free from my parents. now what do i have? i still haven't received my associates degree, am unemployed, have lost the best girl i could have ever asked for and am no where closer to achieving my business.

but that's the fear talking.

i know i've gotten tired of being a young man sitting in old mens' bars, plotting parties and planning profits. but it's all the same. at this point i'm just waiting for my turn to die.

in the while though, there is still so much to do.

the end of the yelda

2008-07-24T05:49:00.004-04:00

it's almost 6 am and i can't seem to find that blessed passivity that allows sleep. i've been up since 1 am when i woke from a 2 hour nap. been pacing, checking facebook compulsively and playing video games online to pass the time.

it's raining outside, clearing the humidity from the outside air but unfortunately not from my apartment. the sound of the rain reminds me of a stormy day in connecticut when i lay on the davies' couch, holding alix in my arms as we watched movies and debated how to spend the rest of our lazy days together.

i still miss her.

today was a emotional whirlwind, logging onto facebook to find that she had detagged the pictures of us as a couple, this after she had posted a smile on my wall in response to me putting back up the pictures in the first place.

i'm hurt, and confused. either she wants to advertise herself as single or needs to think of herself as single. either way it hurts.

i'm sitting here with a headache blossoming over my left eye as i debate finishing 'the kite runner' lent to me by matt before i start on 'one month left to live,' picked up from my single foray into the journey church at the manhattan center's grand ballroom.

i've only got two weeks left and the prospect of it yawns at me, abysmal and intimidating beyond anything i've ever faced.

today jules stopped in after work with her 'penance,' a four page hand written oath she wanted me to witness and help her keep. reading it reminded me, disgustingly, of all the small ploys i've tried to take to get myself to change for the better. but now, sitting closer to recovery than i ever have, i realize that all those ploys were empty and that the change came from willingly accepting who i am and the life i've chosen.

it's not easy. i'm unemployed now, still going to an online class and in need of an internship to finally get my associates degree. a bachelor's degree seems like a far off dream.

days go by in a haze of sleep and nights yawn as party after party pile up on my calendar. i'm tired of the lifestyle, but it's the industry i've chosen to go into and i must endure. i must.

no more excuses but my own fear, and it's about damn time i grappled with that and won.

so many things to be afraid of, in these hours, and so many things i long for. i hope, vainly, that alix will return from spain and will come back to my arms. but she won't. she's done with me, no matter how well off we were in person. her photos prove it and she's long since stopped synchronizing her life with mine. she's diurnal, i'm nocturnal. she's recruited into jobs and i desperately apply. so many opposites.

god i miss her.

i wonder if she's seeing anyone else, but all my friends are tired of hearing it, and, to be honest, i'm tired of talking about it. it's a wound in my heart that's not going to close unless she closes it, but i need to suffer this in silence. be a man and cry at night, when i pace around my apartment wondering when my life became so damn silent, so damn hollow. better that than the child i have been, still sucking my mother's financial tit and bawling every time i stub myself on anything.

two more weeks. it will be ready, in a very rough form, to run in two weeks. then it's mapping out manhattan and so vainly trying to rule the night. i'm resigned that this is my life, this is my business, this will be my success.

but at what cost?

i wish, more than anything, to be able to collapse in alix's arms again and just listen to the rain as she holds me close to her. there is so much i see in her that i love her for, and i cannot ever hurt her again. my guilt from this has turned me into only doing good.

so many fears, and the only way to allay them is not to sleep at night. to allow myself to slip further into the darkness and to come out into the dawn.

they just strut

2008-07-20T21:15:00.003-04:00

it's maybe 2 am and i'm pressed against a glass column lit from within with a dim yellow glow. my head is pounding from the few hits i had from a joint after a late lunch with my former neighbor and the margarita and vodka cranberry i had certainly did not help matters.

hip hop and house rhythms come beating into my head as i try to keep my balance, not because i'm drunk or high but because other people obviously are and the floor is slick with recently spilled booze and sticky with not some spills not as recent.

is this the life i want? hidden in basements with alcohol flowing like the wax from a dozen candelabra to coat the stairs with stickiness, to seep into the old stones of this basement lounge.

we pay gratuity for the bottle since, yet again, i've brought a good crowd out for velvet sky (the irony in the name... since i've begun promoting for them regularly the sky is something i almost fear... my days are spent in isolation in my apartment, my nights in small cramped spaces like these).

someone's dancing with me again, ass pressed against my crotch, spinning slow circles. i feel myself splay against the column, acting out the grotesquely lewd movements of what we call modern dance. i'm thinking about basements in spain, one where i lost a shirt and i held someone close to me and all our movements were anything but grotesque. i'm thinking about why i do this, who i'm aching to take out night after night even though she's insistent on never coming out with me anymore.

my head's hurting worse and i can't tell if the booze decided to give my marijuana headache some strength (two months and ten days off the damn herb and in a momentary lapse of judgment i smoke, for what? nostalgia's sake?!) or if the hour has finally gotten to me.

maybe my head's merely reflecting my heartbreak.

i'm watching friends go after friends in the motions of lust and i can see all the patterns of jealousy, of pain, etched across the way he dances or the way she drinks. i can see how they feel and how they hurt and what they want to do and why they do it, even if they themselves don't fully grasp the reasons themselves.

it's not the question that drives us. it's the wet exclamation between the thighs, the rising point that wishes to find its expression in moans or the drunken serenading of 'frank sinatra' in an ear as the hips seek to find matching rhythms.

why am i here?

the night's been a logistical train wreck of missed deadlines and misinformation. a friend tells me a dress code and i spread the word and all of a sudden my apartment's turned hostel, with clothes left in disarray as i lend pants and shirts and women blossom into ladies of the evening. he's wrong (no surprise there) and i doubt the door would've given me trouble (because you see, i'm the 'new promoter' and they want to treat me well, want to whisk me into these dungeons where slowly i sap my life away in exchange for reputation and possibly pay). hell, my boy didn't even have the address right.

where is she? i'm waiting half deluded for the most beautiful woman in the world to come through the dungeon doors and to light up this dark basement with her smile, with the way she only can. i'm looking to the door to leave, or for her to come home. but spain's further than an evening and heartbreak and heartache are doors she's not willing to cross to get to me again.

i take him by the hips and dance along. i suppress my homophobia until he gets a bit too comfortable with the way our bodies move and then i spin away with a friendly smile and a laugh, looking for a female friend to define the limits again.

i miss her like madness, but tonight i cannot think her name, i cannot allow this heartbreak to make me less than who i am, who i must be.

i must endure.

so it's 5 am and the galaxy diner where we all drunkly pile food into our stomachs for sustenance. i'm not drunk, just exhausted, and my headache's screaming at me to go home and to let these overgrown children make their ways home. but i'm the ringleader, and somehow, i'm still calling the shots.

michael crashes on my floor, alone despite the progress of the evening (nor am i surprised by this) and jules takes a spot in the kitchen (a hot mess yet again, but it's not my place to judge, nor to mother her) and i reluctantly slip into dreams of spain, of photographs on facebook and of the small shattered shards of my heart.

maybe i'm a fool for not letting go, but she lends me strength in my times of darkness, and she is who i want to spend the rest of these evenings with, dancing with, laughing with, exploring the underbelly and veins of new york with, showing off to the crowds that know me as the 'new promoter' that can score them free drinks (minus the gratuity for the waitress, of course). she's the light in my life i want back.

without her, it's burnt out candles, sticky floors, the ever depressing image of clubs at 3 in the morning when the patrons have gone and the petron is pooling on the floor from their indiscretions. without her, i am an idea in the darkness, holding fiercely to myself as i continue to endure.

i must endure.

playing it fast and loose

2008-07-13T14:34:00.002-04:00

thursday, friday, saturday...

old habits die hard and i'm out playing it fast and loose. drinking far too much (considering my recent swings to sobreity it's far too much. considering my past it's a drop in the bucket).

who am i? what do i want?

the dreamscape is alarmingly vivid, full of colors and sounds and even taste. i think it's a message from a higher power...

thursday:

we start at my apartment, spinning some beats as i continue to teach myself how to dj. it helps to have an audience, even if they're not listening. by myself i either let my decks collect dust or i walk away after only a few tracks. but this session no one else is spinning so we (matt, marzena, shamel) decide to head to a dollar pool table.

why not greets us with a man slowly stripping on the bar, and we decide to go to dave's tavern instead. dave's is a festival of peanuts and peanut shells all over the floor. the place is greasy and cheap (in one corner two business men and one woman sit chatting with a transvestite) and the pool table's occupied with some surly, loud, angry but friendly drunks. we crawl into a back booth and wait for our turn.

jules calls and lets us in on a little bit of a secret: hiro is free from 10 to 11 tonight, and free beer to boot. we hop into cabs and go, piling out from two separate yellows middle school style, boys in one car, girls in the other. lomax hits me up as we wait in line: he's just reached my place to spin.

hiro starts with a tiger, then tequila, then lite beers until we've started up the dance floor. shots, beers, and at 1230 we're feeling like heading to cielo to see loco dice. jules spoils me again, spots me the cover.

cielo's packed when we get there, and the beers and the tequila are starting to kick in. the strobes and tlasers and beats turn the evening into a blur of dancing and by the time we pile out it's 3 am. we head our separate ways promising to reconvene the next evening.

(god my writing style sucks)

friday:
friday's spent wasting away the day, avoiding responsibility. the night finally rolls in at ibop and we hit the bottles we bring hard, showering beer over people and drowning song after song. somehow we land a bigger room and a price break. friends are big flirts, or a little crazy, and we finish singing at 1 am.

then moomia lounge on a whim. a text message gets us (starshine, shamel, jules) in the door free of charge and we creep into the egyptian tomb basement where we pile on a hookah and drink the leftovers from ibop. i drunkenly network, convince the owner to allow a hookah special to my djs, chat up the cocktail waitress. she tells me that she has a boyfriend, but then tells me that he's actually more of a fuckbuddy. and she smiles when i tell her i'll be back next week.

jules and i stumble out to the tick tock, gorge ourselves on onion rings and cheese fries. i finish the last of the vodka like a man, and pass out drunkenly on my floor.

saturday:
jules and i wake up drunk and decide another diner's a good idea. lunch is at three, then to the hell's kitchen flea market where she grabs a shirt. we waste the day inside half heartedly spinning some music and stalking our various loves. the night waits to open before us.

we finally decide to pick her up a black dress from h&m rather than have her trek out to brooklyn and back, and by the time she's done shopping shal and marissa are on my stoop burning a cigarette to burn the time. people are already arriving at porky's (larissa anthony chris jill dave frank gary caitlin and more) and the watered down drinks are flowing left and right. at 1230 we (jules shal marissa shamel james) head to the chelsea hotel.

the door man's a bit gruff and without looking or speaking to james he asks me about the dress code. i assure him thrice over that james is the only in a t shirt and that the rest will be appropriately attired. my revenge is that we score a free bottle of vodka despite having only the six of us. the dance floors empty and james slowly brings it to speed while jules and i try our limbs on the pole in the room. then people see that the dance floor's viable. they follow our lead, taking it fast and loose and we party the rest of the night.

tick tock diner again at 3 am. we order damn near every kind of french fry the menu and then hop into two cabs (racist this time, blacks in one, whites and twinkie in the other) and all head to shal and marissa's place. shaun of the dead ends in everyone falling asleep. i'm offered a bed to share and it feels alien to a.) be in a bed and b.) be single and acutely aware of opportunity. i tuck her in and make myself at home on the futon in the hall.

strange dreams:
i'm walking on 42nd street surrounded by hostile homeless blacks that are trying to mug me. as i keep walking west i see caution tape, flashing lights, a policeman with his face bloodied. there are rumors of a bomb, but i know that all it was was a bottle thrown out of a high building. the radios crackle to life after the realization and confirm my thoughts.

suddenly i'm flying, heading for the top floor of a building on the water. i hit the door with a kick and it freezes as it collapses inward, stopping before hitting the woman behind it. it's a private screening of a movie. specifically the gunslinger, by stephen king.

the movie opens just like any other movie, with previews, and one is of the x files. the montage is the same, but at the end of the preview the movie seems to slip out of reality as the screen becomes 3d. a man holding forth a steel canister swings it out to the audience, and i see that several people in the audience reach out to unscrew the tops of the canister. oddly enough the canisters open and somehow i realize in that moment that we are all somewhat psychic, and that i've just entered into a movie and play amalgamation that is occurring solely in the realm of a psychic communal mind.

the canister opens into smaller test tubes with neon green liquids cradling obviously alien fetuses. in horror and disgust, the fetuses are dropped and their protective tubes shatter. in the air the immediately expand and become grotesque writhing masses of human flesh. i am terrified, and i hear people screaming as these creatures shamble, ooze and explode towards us. i feel the squelching of flesh as they drip over me. my mind opens up to scream and then, like a knife, the thought that they are only puppets in my mind that will do me no harm cuts through me. i am no longer scared, and i sense a strong psychic approval. i've passed a test.

the screaming stops and the movie begins, with who ever remains in the audience.

we open with an aerial show of a glowing red city against a blue ground and the white lines of a dam and a river. the city is heart shaped and the lights within it pulse regularly with its own urban rhythm. we come closer, floating in, until we are in a bar. the protagonist of this movie is shooting someone, his hands flying over the hammer of his six shooter as his finger pulls on the trigger. bullets fly into his target's chest and blood sprays everywhere.

he turns to me, specifically, with just his hand, and without speaking (in his mind) i hear him demand the gun that is in the blanket on my booth bench. i realize that i've just been invited to be an actor in the movie and play and i find that i am indeed sitting on a bar bench (while simultaneously being still part of the movie audience). i throw him the blanket (the feeling of it coarse and woolen against my fingers) and his second gun comes flying out, gleaming as he catches it neatly and finishes off his targets.

then it's the next act. a brief intermission as the audience is shuffled to another room. i am i the bathroom with marzena and yetkin, standing in front of a mirror. this, i tell them, is about us and what we can do with our minds. how'd you get here, they ask, and i tell them i flew (the image of a tutorial flashing into our minds). they laugh, asking me why i didn't use the stairs.

i look at the mirror and shatter it with a gesture from my left hand. this is what i can do (i feel an inordinate amount of anger swelling, channeled through my arm and hand into a ball that shatters the glass). and i know, i think to marzena, that you can fix it. she begins to try, and as she does we sense an immense sadness welling from yetkin. he begins to cry and i offer him my shoulder to cry into as marzena focuses her mind on repairing the mirror. but my destructive force spreads far too rapidly for her to combat. the mirror, a three paneled one, continues to crack and it falls to the sink. marzena is cut lightly. i am thinking to yetkin to channel his sorrow into healing her wounds. she is meant to be a healer, i think to them, she can heal that cut.

but we're not given the time to find out. a staff member of the play and movie asks us to move into the next room. he heals marzena's cut and as yetkin and her proceed i linger to ask him why i was chosen for the role of jake chambers (there are other worlds than this) and he tells me that i am more powerful than anyone in the audience and that my mental powers may even be on the level of the staff.

i'm ushered into a makeup room where my hand is painted red and dusted with ash. caught literally red handed for the jury is the next scene in the play, and i need to be prepped to look the part. i notice on my palm a circular stamp with a shooting star over other designs. it's smudged and i ask the makeup artist to place it on my left palm as well, which he does. i review the script briefly and step into the next room.

i am on a high stool, rocking uneasily on the front as the jury members are chosen from the audience. they are adorned in regal purple robes. we all know the verdict. guilty, red handed, i won't deny it and i will be punished for it. we're all still sitting down watching that city throb with its heartbeat. we're all actors in the play.

i wake before the verdict is handed down, before i'm made aware of my punishment.

sunday:
the future leaders gathered for breakfast. it's a dysfunctional family, but it's a beautiful one. pancakes and sausage and eggs and i do the dishes.

it's just the tip, and there's so much underneath, so much subtext and context and latent meaning yet to turn out.

i wonder what the dream means. hopefully more will follow.