the Tenth

I watched him as he rounded the corner, wiping the edges of his eyes as if dust had settled in the crevices instead of salty water. He flicked the tears like lint, disregarding the weight, its salinity and reflection. His sweater bagged at the shoulders; the plastic hanger in his closet at home at fault for stretching the thin-weave cotton that failed to keep the chill of the wind away at night. The edges of his mind dragged too, weighed down with the worries of those who habitually check their bank accounts online, pray silently as they approach the mailbox hoping for a check to have arrived, some sustenance.

A Well Respected Man

I'm getting old. We're all getting older, sure, but recently--it probably has to do with the fact that I just turned 28 last Wednesday--I've started being bothered by the idea. It never worried me before. I still look forward to going grey. I imagine I'll have whitish silver strands of luxurious hair to frame my wise face and that somehow, despite it all, I'll still feel young, as I do now.

But there are all these things that point to the contrary. I have loved ones close to me who I am forced to accept have passed on to another stage in their own lives. For one brief, glimmering moment all the members of my beloved immediate family were adults together. We lingered at dinner tables, drank wine in each other's presence, listened, attentively, to each other's outlooks and agreed, even if we disagreed, that they made a point.

I'm faced with death each day. I leave my apartment and am reminded--if I hadn't been by Ivan Ilyich, Rumi, or The Kinks--that peril, traffic, and age can creep up on you at street corners. In the week leading up to 13th, I spent a lot of time thinking about maturation and patina. In a city like New York, you're forced to evolve. There are so many aspects of life that can't be escaped. For the majority of us, that means learning how live with tough situations, the things that archetypes are made of. It tests your willingness to be open to the universe when a deranged man screams racist chants from the back of a subway car, but it can lead you to greater tolerance. It can widen your perspective and reveal your own list of necessary self-improvements. I wouldn't trade it for anything, not during this season of my life, but it

it all just seeems to happen so quickly.

"For what is passes so swiftly and irrevocably into what was..."

   

A PSALM OF LIFE

WHAT THE HEART OF THE YOUNG MAN
SAID TO THE PSALMIST
    

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,

   Life is but an empty dream!

For the soul is dead that slumbers,

   And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!

   And the grave is not its goal;

Dust thou art, to dust returnest,

   Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,

   Is our destined end or way;

But to act, that each to-morrow

   Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,

   And our hearts, though stout and brave,

Still, like muffled drums, are beating

   Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world’s broad field of battle,

   In the bivouac of Life,

Be not like dumb, driven cattle!

   Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!

   Let the dead Past bury its dead!

Act,— act in the living Present!

   Heart within, and God o’erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us

   We can make our lives sublime,

And, departing, leave behind us

   Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,

   Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,

A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,

   Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,

   With a heart for any fate;

Still achieving, still pursuing,

   Learn to labor and to wait.

 

 

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 

Franny Glass Doth Live in Brooklyn

Franny is laying on the oriental carpet, her head almost hidden beneath the bottom of the sofa that once belonged to her boyfriend’s grandmother.

 

BOY: I don’t understand you when you’re like this.

 

FRANNY: You don’t understand me, ever.

 

BOY: No! Franny, stop it! That is exactly what I’m talking about. How can you swing to such extremes? Just yesterday you were telling me how the cosmos knit together into a “fiber of conscious warmth” and now you’re… despondent.

 

FRANNY: I am.

 

BOY: Oh, my God. I can’t take it. I love you so much, but when you act like this you just push me away. I think you actually enjoy feeling like this.

 

She speaks through her tears.

FRANNY: How can you say that? Why would anyone want to feel this way?

 

BOY: Because you indulge it. Look at you! Come on, sit up. Let’s go for a walk. It’ll help you shake this off.

 

She places a forearm across her eyes like a cold compress.

FRANNY: I can’t.

 

BOY: You read me that article last week, the one about conditioning? It said that over time a depressed mind will come to react to feelings like this as though they were drugs. That it’s almost like you’re craving this feeling and that on some level you get a, a high from it.

 

FRANNY: You probably mean a low.

 

BOY: What? Ok, sure, fine. A low. Come on, Franny, let’s go. Here, I’ll get your boots. We’ll go to the Winter Garden. I bet all those birds will be there, happy to see you. We’ll check if anyone scattered seed today.

 

When he leaves the room, she turns her head to watch him, pausing before exhaling loudly and slowly propping herself up with her elbows as though she’s seeing the plane in front of her for the first time. Her head sweeps across the room before she pulls herself to sit, drawing her knees up. She turns to place her back against the couch as Boy enters again empty-handed.

 

BOY: I couldn’t find them.

 

FRANNY: They’re by the door.

She slides backwards up to the seat of the couch. Boy hovers in front of her, silently willing her to stand. She does.

 

Ok, let’s go.

Franny pulls on her boots, laces them slowly from a crouched position, and takes her peacoat from the coat rack. She does not turn to Boy; she simply closes the door behind her and we see in the mirror as she walks by the lack of any reflection other than her own.

           

this would be the part where I say something profound.

hello
to you out there. hi.
how are you?

who are you?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

The Summer Day
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean--
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down--
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?




- Mary Oliver

reflection,
suspension,
the ripening of pears.

Blue or Green

- James Galvin

http://youtu.be/kzINcFCZc3s

Immortal Jellyfish



 the link to immortality

A collection of teacups
to bathe in
 

s u s p e n s i o n

 

s  u  s  p  e  n  s  i  o  n
suspected infidel, those nagging
fears tearing
at pink silk lining.
Lined against what--
wind, soil, rainwater,
the passing of time?
Creasing skin, a slower decay.

'Twas the Night Before the Election

It's the last night before the Presidential Election and things in New York are unusual. Governor Cuomo signed a bill that allows residents to vote at any of their respective borough's polling stations in wake of Sandy's destruction. This morning, the New York Times revealed 34,000 local students have no school to attend come Wednesday. Temperatures are dipping close to the freezing point and there are still large areas without power and heat. To say times are tough is an understatement.

It's at this point and on this blog where, unlike Facebook, all readers come by will, that I will stake my ground. President Obama inherited a mess of challenges and has made headway on some of the most important issues that we as a nation face in this trying period of human history. Healthcare, Welfare, Medicaid, and Global Warming are issues that cannot be ignored. To believe, for instance, that we're having any sort of conversation regarding birth control and the right for a woman to have access to crucial cancer screenings at Planned Parenthood in 2012 is appalling for both women and men.

The reality is, most of us Americans will bat an eye at a Prada dress that costs $3,000 or an annual checkup with a $700 bill attached. The majority of independent young people (meaning those who support themselves from 18 years old on--without help from mom, grandma, or pops to cover college costs, or that first (and subsequent) broker's fee) can't afford to live in a country that won't move forward. Do you know how expensive it is in New York City? What percentage of our incomes many of us must spend in order to live in halfway safe neighborhoods? Do you know how many fabulous twenty-somethings in New York still wave daddy's credit card around?

I didn't have it rough growing up, but I also realized at 18 when I moved to a small Southern town how different life can be for a large population of people that look nothing like me, think nothing like me, and click their R's with a foreign clack. These were my neighbors, my friends, the patrons who visited downtown vintage shops and bay side restaurants. Within the potpourri were plenty of young people who shared my ideals and, like me, graduated from college a few months shy of America's great economy tanking. The Titanic sunk for a second time.

We need to be concerned now more than ever about education, infrastructure, and healthcare. Our insatiable consumption of oil must end. Practices like fracking and drilling will only exacerbate an already fragile global climate system. Sandy was a terrifying and eye-opening experience. We're fucked if things don't change; if we don't embrace the fact that we CANNOT go back to 1999, where gas was $1.00 and reality TV was relatively harmless we're actively poisoning our future. That includes our wetlands, our children's minds, and the strides we've made towards racial, sexual, and gender equality. I'm appalled at the barely veiled racism seen in the annals of this campaign trail. America, we're better than this.

This election is not about restoring comfort. It's about what we have to do to survive.

 

you never know what's on the other side