June 2009
1 post
Roomies
Carter, Ben Mirov, Lauren, Sam Rockwell, one of Ben’s friends that I haven’t yet met, and myself moved into our six bedroom appartment this weekend. I’m quite excited, particularly for the nailpolish fountain in the living room. Apparently the building used to be an old spice factory.
Rockwell claimed ‘coolest roomie’, and demanded first pick of the rooms. He got...
August 2008
1 post
Fan blowing
I am ready to change blankets; ready to change sheets. She still echos yet, and I have not the courage to venture into the hall to see if she is still there. so I will look at her drawings in paper. the pencil drawings of my parted hair.
The band is ready to leave NYC.
April 2008
3 posts
Tree Withers White
Or The Maiden Ferreira, Part II As I was complaining to the picture of my wife (the one from two or three lives ago—it’s a private joke we have, because, you see, back then, we both swore we didn’t believe in the many lives thing.) that the darkness of my youth was turning into anxiety and fear, and then the usual thing happened, which was that as soon as I expressed the idea,...
In which we are too young and ignorant of this...
Or The Maiden Ferreira, Part I On my way down in the elevator this morning, the young Becky Ferreira got on with one of the great flock of her family’s cattle. “Where are ya off to this morning, young Becky?” I asked. “Poppa won’t want to wait for the cattle ramp to be built, so it’s one at a time for now. He makes to run the whole flock up the west side...
Dumbledore's Cell Phone
Jeff Goldberg explained to me the significance of 559, though it was in a dream, and now the words and moments of Jeff’s speech are fast and eternally asleep. —Dumbledore is real, said JK Rowling. So I dialed 559—but forgot to clear my mind, or was it that I forgot to wait for him to die before I called. Sometime, in a past life, I called and he answered—this time,...
March 2008
17 posts
Wrist Bones
Sophia pointed out the fresh red paint on her finger nails. She suggested I lay down blankets of soft, ancient cotton. “Remember when they would sleep?” she asked. “Remember how you knew their bones? Their wrist bones?” I knew the answer, but couldn’t speak.
Turns
All had the dream again last night of the ruined iron-latice, and the billowing sheet of white, racing itself, particle by particle, 60 MPH up broadway. The church goers from the north intoned, “Our Hams are so greasy. They taste less of the salt and sweet tenderness, more of the lard. Our Hams so are greasy.” The Choir leader sang back, “Our Hams are not greasy.” ...
“I am a bearded one.”
– Margarett Jacobson
Arabs
Carter confessed he sleeps with Arab assasins. Ben Mirov, when hearing the confession, nodded sheepishly, conspicuously. We spent the remander of our Sunday running over the slum building tops of Bed-Stuy, and Clinton Hill, shouting start-stops of converstation over the wind. Everytime a street came , we would launch, sometimes nearly making it to the building across, othertimes falling to our...
Bernanke
The dust collecting in this mornings sunlight smelled like a fininished-putrescent elephant hide. On the way to subway with a cup of coffee that was resplendant in its flavor profile, thank you very much, (notes of apple and green grape, and coffee), I spotted Bernanke sitting in his lotus with the parking brake on. “Here,” he wispered, “take it.” He handed me a paper...
Collective
Minju told me Brendon Calhoun—whom no one knows, not even Minju—sends his regards. He was the one who prematurely burried his left arm, so he could, “warm up to the idea.” break. We have two computers. We have cute pictures of our kids. We have morning breath. break. Mini-kitties are stealing the sage from my jars and replacing it with vanilla. I have suspects. ...
on being
Ontological got me like a motherfuck today. I was sitting in the corporate park, of a corporation I did not work for, drinking some lemonaide. Lemon. Sugar. Water. My neighbor, the Old Polish Lady, worked there. I was explaining the nature of HTML, trying to explain the nature—but all she wanted was phenomonologicals. She wanted the crumbly facts, the salt-grain pieces. What did the ...
blues
Hoodie: What's your value?
Skinny Jeans: Style.
Hoodie: Yeah, but how?
Skinny Jeans: We are springy, sleek. We don't get in the way.
Hoodie: Couldn't you say that about tailored pants?
Skinny Jeans: Yeah, but, also. We don't freaking care. We don't care, we'll be so skinny you can see the bulge, and the unflattering ass-jowl-hang.
Hoodie: I can't compete with that.
Blue dots
Amy Braunschweiger and I were lunching at Cafe Pakiderm, where our glasses featured water that was unfortunately luke warm. We asked the waiter for ice, which he promptly brought. “There are blue dots in the cubes,” said Amy. And she was right. There were blue specs in the ice cubes. When we looked around the cafe, all other cubes had blue specs. The water and cubes tasted fine...
“I am the assassin of six days.”
– Lorenzo Dio
7 tags
The Kinks
At tex-mex brunch this weekend The Kinks, sipping unlimited mimosas, said, “times have changed. No longer do we have the hours to lay with our women in love.” “This time tomorrow, I don’t, in fact, know where I’ll be,” I said, and sighed the sigh. “Good comeback,” quipped Jeff Goldberg. “How do you feel by what they say,” I retorted. ...
Snowburgs
Zach Galifianakis hooked a snow machine up to the Williamsburg bridge, saying “I am Zach Galifianakis”. The snow machine sprayed the white ice over the east river. To get home Saad and I rented ice ships from Murry Glass at Murry Glass and Son’s Ice Vessels. Scout sat in the crows nest, weezing, keeping lookout for snowburgs. She found no snowburgs She managed to pounce on my...
1 tag
We are on to Lucinda.
10 tags
Father figure
In a walk down sixth avenue, Kate asked for little horns. Last night Nate worked her hair into braids—two little horns to tuck behind the ears. I ajudicated try after try, and only after they integrated shards of burnt fingernail (perhaps it was the smell of melting keratin that did it) and dusted the finsihed product with Hookah ash did it look convincing. We heard Jon Roche practice...
2 tags
Oops
Little Jimmy: Where did Manhattan go?
Dad: Oh, it's still there, you just can't see it right now because of the fog.
Little Jimmy: Are you sure? Maybe there is fog AND Manhattan is gone.
Dad: Oh...I didn't think of that. You may be correct, my boy.
10 tags
Maybe, I presuppose, they're...wrong?
Steven Estok and I compared the hands, fingers, and eyes of our lovers. He would rock back and forth, and say, “I loved it when the hands would tremble. They would tremble. When they tremble, SOW.” How do leaves tremble? We took naps on the couch. When we woke, we would forget it was winter. “Why always the fragile ones?” I asked Steven. “Men ask this,...
February 2008
22 posts
4 tags
text
When I first woke up she had gone, so was easiet to fall back asleep. When I rewoke, there was evidence she had come and gone. On the third time, the same, I had missed her. So I took to sketching messages on her stomach in my absense. This morning I confused R— for my jar of sage.
3 tags
His heavy materials
Phillip Pulman phoned this afternoon. Either the virus will squeak through to this world: and if that is so, we can never mention it again. Or, we’ve won a lifetime supply of drywall screws made out of cotton candy. I know which one I’m hoping for.
7 tags
Teapots.
Both Elliot and Braxton agree the experiment had gone horribly awry; though not in the manner most experiments do. The motor oil was key, though at first too high in quantity. When cut with a dose of my own salts, we reached efficacy. Then the clawing women stalked our doors. Then they wanted our bearded cheeks and our sweet kisses. And, much like the monsters we’ve before created,...
4 tags
Will Smith and Elliot
Will Smith: Oh no you didn't, zombie!
Elliot: Will, enough, it's just you and me in here. Tell me your secret of life.
Will Smith: It's about taking it that place, you know?
Elliot: Yeah, Will, I know. That's what you do.
Will Smith: That's what I do.
Elliot: Hellz yeah, son.
Will Smith: And not giving up. And the summoning.
Elliot: We all learned from you. Did you know that?
Will Smith: Yeah, I like that. I like that.
4 tags
Boats
On a bed of film clippings Molly and I stayed awake the night through. “Your alarm clock chirps red,” she said in the morning. “Will you and R— play pickup sticks over her knees?” “Her knees with the plantation heat? Her knees like the oiled brass? Her knees like the decay and roseoil? And closed eyes?” I asked. “Yes.”...
6 tags
Jail
Donald Barthelme and I sat in the parlor, drinking, falling more and more in love with our respective ladies. He kept asking me if the invasion would return. I said the indians were done—though it might be the vikings. “Sylvia,” he said and drank. Saad provided the scotch, and pointed out the woman with the red hair. We explained to him that she did not matter in the end. ...
2 tags
“I am sick of tofu.”
– Standard Father
4 tags
Progress
Kate and I saw the drooping eagleclaw light in the sky last night—which meant Andre Breton wanted to talk. We found him up on a girder of the Williamsburg Bridge, wrapped in a roting piece of carpet. The particulate of his homeless-man smell got stuck in my nose. ‘Vermillion dollars’, was the password, in the french cadence, so it sounded like one word. Kate spoke to him in...
5 tags
City Council
Rudy Guiliani came to City Hall this morning, arguing the elephants were “irrelevant.” Just “an event, a thing that happened,” he said. Jeff Goldberg argued back, saying the elephants were an indication of things to come, bad things. He said it wasn’t a sign, because that was “lame.” But a “symptom,” an effect of something already in...
4 tags
Kong
Kong set off the nurse alarm—and we all soothed him with spoons. Thank god it worked, before he set to climbing the buildings. I think we like the same girl, Kong and I. Which is a shame, because I choose between pining for her and fearing my life. It’s worse, because I probably like her a lot. So I choose pining; which means I put my life at risk nightly. Jeff pointed out the...
4 tags
Ephemeron
My journey began with a days consumption of absinthe. Enough that the green sunk into my teeth and gums and flowed till I began to submerge in sense and stimuli. The hallucinations came, each beginning and finishing in their own cycle, either a feeling or a small fiction of those in the room or those I’d known, until they grew in frequency, ones starting before others finished, others...
5 tags
Stampede
I’d read about the elephants in ancient times. So when they came, I think I knew what was going on. They stampeded through the avenues today. Running; hundred of elephants, planking their feet on the concrete, kicking up cabs and hot dog stands. They kept running, flowing throught he strees with speed. We were all scared. Too much movement to do anything but crouch against a wall, and...
1 tag
God again
Me: Sorry to harp on this, why are we here again?
God: There's actually not an answer to that question. See?
Me: I mean, I kind of do. Like, I got knowledge of that in my gut. Like right in the middle of me--where I gather is above my intestines, maybe bellow my 'stomach'--I can feel truth when I think on what you said.
God: Okay pal, chill out. It's not 'knowledge' as you say. But you are grasping for non-intellectual understanding, and that's good.
Me: Is it possible to 'get it' intellectually?
God: Yes. You have a mind.
Me: Do _I_ get it intellectually?
God: No.
Me: Is wanting to get laid somehow related to the answer.
God: Yes, of course, as much as a piece of rock fell in the water 10,000 years ago. As much as there was a time when there was no such thing as 'year'.
Me: wow.
God: Yeah, I'm smart.
1 tag
Mansmell
I bumped into Al Franken on the L-train this morning. I’m such a fan that it took me a few moments to muster the courage to speak to him, but all I could get out was, “you’re so cool.” He laughed and thanked me, which was nice, and asked me if I was a fan of his old radio show. Somehow we both had the same stop, and both went to the same public library, and then to the...
13 tags
Viking-weekend. On melrose.
Stephanie had shoulders; Laura had glasses; Carter had tamarind; Gavin had glass and chicken; Ben had bearskins; Lily had curls; Ryan had guitars; the cattle were dead. We were stuffing the beef loins with roasted pepper mulch when the vikings attacked. They invaded our ears, banging the floors from below. The first breech came via the window—a small one got through, then the torrent...
“It Ideologically smarts.”
– President George W. Bush, after I snuck up, and yanked out a nose hair.
6 tags
Week in review
I got kicked out of Ira Glass’s house for my glasses not being big enough. I rememered that once, a long time ago, my old girlfriend Sylvia convinced me that paper hats were a true stand-in for intimate sex. The weren’t, and aren’t. My childhood pocket knife (with the locking blade) has been missing for at least years. I discovered this five minutes ago. Elliot recomends...
1 tag
“War has always been an inevitable relegation of our violent parts, circumscribed...”
– tender father
About to finish the retainer
2 tags
Procedure
Stacie B: Francesca told me about the procedure you've been kicking around.
Me: Oh, she did...she wasn't supposed to talk about it to anyone.
Stacie B: Relax, it came out in conversation.
Me: I see...
Stacie B: She said it treats the sadness.
Me: That, and poor vision.
Stacie B: I see....
Me: You see
Stacie B: Can I ask you something then?
Me: Shoot.
Stacie B: Can you do the procedure on me?
Me: I would like that. But I think that would change things.
Stacie B: Not necessarily.
Me: What about when my finger-pads touch your skin, or when I've raveled your black hair,or when I've disassembled your wrist-bones , and detached your legs?
Stacie B: Well, it wouldn't change things _that_ much.
6 tags
Elementals
Last night, Sylvia (an ex-gf of mine) with her match-stick wrists snuck in, and wrote ‘pooter’ on the wall. I am confused by this. The whole situation—the word, her method of writing it, her intended method of my discovery—would connote playfulness. She was not a playful one. When I consulted the slice-of-pizza (Carter uses this as an oracle), it revealed she meant...
“Hey, remember the 80’s?”
– Williamsburg
January 2008
19 posts
5 tags
Dreams
Last night I dreamt every time I pushed my [Get Mail] button a new email address arrived. I woke a few times to sounds outside. The sounds of someone circling and peering in my window. No doubt, it was Gustave Flaubert. ’Twas either the dying Mad Libs who tipped him off—or perhaps it was Nate, who is on to me that I am onto him. I shall no doubt contact Carter, for another hunt....
1 tag
My Father →
5 tags
The Blow
Braxton joined Alex and me this morning making finger sandwiches for girls who were out of my league. I suggested strawberries and arugula with motor oil. Alex suggested it “didn’t fucking matter”, so long as we named them “Vermillion”. Braxton scoffed at vermillion, and suggested we make pb&J (I doubt his sincerity on this), but call them “Red.” In...
1 tag
“Programs tend to be stupid, and long. The more elegant and responsive ones are ...”
– Laurence Kline
marienbad
3 tags
“Jennifer Connolly is not just sexier than the Cloverfield monster, she is also...”
– thisrecording.com