Music

I need it.
Today is Ludwig van Beethoven.
Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125
with the concluding Chorus on Friedrich Schiller's "Ode to Joy"
Wow.

Famous

(Again, culled this poem in High School - this the best I can remember it - can't find it yet on the internet . . .) (Maybe it ends "what it could do.")

Famous

The river is famous to the fish.

The loud voice is famous to the silence,
which knew it would inherit the earth
before anybody said so.

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds
watching him from the birdhouse.

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.

The idea you carry close to your bosom
is famous to your bosom.

The boot is famous to the earth,
more famous than the dress shoe,
which is famous only to floors.

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it,
and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.

I want to be famous to shuffling men,
who smile while crossing streets,
sticky children in grocery lines,
famous as the one who smiled back.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,
but because it never forgot what it did.

Naomi Shihab Nye

People

(I collected this poem when I was in high school for Honors English. Not finding it online right now, so this is the best I can remember.)


People


No people are uninteresting.
Their fate is like the chronicle of planets.

Nothing in them is not particular,
and planet is dissimilar from planet.

And if a man lived in obscurity
making his friends in that obscurity
obscurity is not uninteresting.

To each his world is private,
and in that world one excellent minute.

And in that world one tragic minute.
These are private.

In any man who dies there dies with him
his first snow and kiss and fight.
It goes with him.

There are left books and bridges
and painted canvas and machinery.
Whose fate is to survive.

But what has gone is also not nothing:
by the rule of the game something has gone.
Not people die but worlds die in them.

(And every time, again and again,
I make my lament against destruction.)*

*I think something like that sentence is at the end there somewhere. I gotta go to the library and look these poems up, yo. I can't remeber it all.

Yevgeny Yevtushenko

A Secret

Sometimes, when I am by myself, I like to dip pieces of chocolate into peanut butter, yeah directly into the jar, but it's my jar, and eat it just like that.
Organic. Dark and Creamy, respectively.

2:11 am

2:12 am. Well, yeah, it's late. What a day. I went to bed about 2ish last night. Woke up at 8 to take B dog to the dog park so she could run. Had a lovely time at said park: the morning, the fall air, the trees, the fruity pebble colors of the leaves on the ground. Meeting new dog friends. Chatting with strange women about babies. Success with fetch. Gratitude for morning time. Watching two men and their little metal collector things scanning the ground, I was thinking of jobs, and lifestyles and how people spend their time. I mean, is that a job I would want, walking around a park in Brooklyn and searching for shiny bits? But what followed was just thinking that we all choose what we do, everyday, all the time. And who is to say what is best? Found myself thinking of Naomi Shihab Nye's poem about a button and a pulley. 'Famous.' And also of Yevgeny Yevtushenko's poem about people, "Fate is like the chronicle of planets." (I'll find them and post them.) Then went and walked I dog. Went to work. Walking up to the MUD truck digging into my pocket to turn off my Ipod, I accidentally threw it to the ground *crash!* And, it's dead. Loss. Deep loss and grief. Yeah I'll take it in but damn I love that thing and want to listen to it all the time. Made it to work. Drew a turntable tattoo. Successfully completed some finger tattoos. Felt tired. Had more coffee. Had milkshakes with J. Started tattooing turntable tattoo (very challenging in a good way) and then, well, and then.: I am sort of mentoring two 18 year old girls who are interested in becoming tattoo artists. A friend asked me if I would help this young one out - the obnoxious one. They are supposed to visit me on Tuesdays in the early afternoon and draw. I have laid out clear rules and we have discussed them. They are supposed to be checking out if they really want to pursue being tattoo artists and if they can handle it. So, A. they showed up at 8pm. And then B. one of them (the loud "I am 18 I know everything" one) spills her drink all over the room, and it turns out to be beer. Bad bad bad. They clean it up. they draw. They hang out and annoy my friend who works with me. They leave. I finish my tattoo. I call them. I terminate the arrangement. Unacceptable. Inexcusable.
Because I could lose MY job for that. And I'm not going to lose my job for that. I explain why. I explain that i am royally pissed. I explain that we can talk later next week when I have cooled off, beacause after all, one must teach the youth. NY is so much about learning boundaries. Jesus christ. No wonder I stayed in the woods for so long.
Then I ride the bike home. Lovely. Well, the bridge is lovely and the park is lovely. The rest of it can be dangerous and annoying and folks drive real fast, but overall it's a great time. A bicycle is about autonomy. As long as you can get your legs to work you can go wherever the hell you want.
Thought about aloneness and lonliness.
Avoided rats.
Thought about acorns.
And pebbles.
Got home, and masterfully opened gate while riding with front bike tire and closed it perfectly with rear bike tire. (Such a satisfying trick.) Hung out with basement roomie. Then my friend, who's at her girlfriend's, starts texting me like crazy that my roomate in P.H. is being nasty to her via email re: heat and oil and blah blah blah and she ain't gonna deal with it and I find myself dealing with more boundaries and communication and personalities. Which, you know what, I can do.
Yeah, I can handle it.
But for a minute I wonder if people are worth it. Are people worth it? NY is so about people people people. It's a good education. I am a person after all.
In the middle of the text messaging fury I dropped my new grapefruit juice on the floor, and then spent time cleaning that up.
Roomie suggested I drink scotch intead of juice.
So I did.
Found myself looking forward to Hawaii and SF.
But then again, I'm just tired. And I'm gonna sleep in tomorrow.
That was my day.
It's definitely fall because my head is full of poetry.

Large

I rode my bike home, 11:30pm-ish, and at Grand Army Plaza I decided to ride through the park. I rode in the middle of the road and I rode fast and it was gorgeous, and quiet, and sans fear of getting clipped by a cabbie. It was relaxing and I enjoyed breathing and movement and going somewhat fast. But, things kept catching my eye running across the road, and I thought ,"Feral cats?"
No, my friends, they were
Very large rats.
Yuck.

(Towards the end of the park it was almost, almost, like a video game where the objective is not to run them over.)

Two of my mentors

Mayumi and Wendy.
And a quote from young me.
(I have to remember to write about the Hiroshima trees.)

link:

Wendy and Mayumi

Bikes and Bridges

I believe that riding one's bicyle over a bridge is just one of the beautiful experiences in the world.
Last night around 10pm I rode my bike back to Brooklyn over the Manhattan Bridge (and fyi I was going the same speed as the Q train - why does it move so slow?) and the moon was a glowing yellow harvest moon (start of autumn) over the water. And all the boats and people looked so little down below, and there was a nice breeze and it just felt good.
I was thinking about riding over the Golden gate Bridge, and how there are no guard rails between you and the cars, and there is no fence to keep you from hurling yourself over the edge, if you so desired. Every year people throw themselves off the GG Bridge, and every year someone proposes legislation to put up fences to hinder the jumpers. And every year pro-fence legislation gets defeated. And I think that is great. Really. I'm serious.
Save the view; and if the people want to jump, let them jump.

My mom is fine

She is safely in San Antonio. Brother reports that perhaps Rita will miss her house.
Where should I send her birthday card?

Buddhism

In my opinion, really knows what the fuck it is talking about.

Middle Way is something to ponder.
This one visiting German teacher at Zen Center used to talk about it all the time.
"MIddle vay, middle vay, alvays, middle vay."

Go buddhism.
Go to bed.

Shamed

Last Sunday I played in a soccer game. A friend of mine invited me to play on her team. The weekend before I played a pick up game with them in the park, which was fun, and mellow. I loved it.
But this time! This time! It's like a real fucking team with jerseys and uniforms and all that shit, on a fucking astroturf field (a full size field). And the team we are playing are a bunch of ponytailed girls who look like they are still in college or have just graduated. I'm sitting there looking at this situation like, "Yeah, right."
So we're warming up and I can feel my quads resisting. [I have on a knee brace for my 1992ish (what a year) knee surgery.]
We start to play (I'm playing halfback, I'm #9), I do alright, make some good passses up field, trying to remember how to play this game, really, both physically and mentally.
I probably play for ten minutes and then, rip, there goes a quad. I keep hobbling around, and my coach/friend looks at me, "Sam, are you tired?" "Yeah."
And then I was just laughing out loud. All these fast young bitches are streaking past me, all I can do is laugh. I, mean, whens the last time you tried running as fast as you can consistently back and forth up a long ass field with young twenty year olds on your ass?
That, my friends, is just a hilarious situation. Period.
And then the quads were done. Done. There was no mentally pushing past that. Shame. Damn.
Honestly I don't think my knee can put up with it.
I need to play in the old fuckers league.
The old smoking fuckers league.
But I'm gonna keep trying.
I spent the rest of the day stretching.
I quit smoking for 2 days and then smoked some at the tattoo shop, but nothing like the amount I was smoking before that.
I started riding my bike to and fro work (how fucking great it is going over the bridge!)
And stretching every day and/or meeting my friend K at god damn 7am for yoga. (Yoga rules.)
Hopefully it'll kick smoking out of me.
Smoking: is good for pain/angst/loneliness. Immediate solitude.
I'm thinking on replacing that pain therapy with physical activity pain.
That's a better pain: I mean like how I feel when I've really pushed my body in a good way, and it hurts, and it's hard to get enough air. In a good way.
(That's another CA thing - surfing always pushed me away from cigarettes. Cuz I couldn't do what i need to do out there if I was smoking.)
Cigarettes: and the topic of distraction.
Distraction from the body.
All of these things can or cannot be distractions and/or escapes:
Smoking.
Eating.
Drinking.
Women.

So a guy walks into a tattoo shop . . .

And wants a tattoo of, are you ready? Of

a Unicorn (wait it gets better)

getting a lap dance

by the Loch Ness Monster

(wait for it)

while Bigfoot watches

while smoking crack.

On his upper arm.
He is not kidding.
I drew that shit up, cartoon style, and it looks great.
(Now I kinda feel like I can draw anything.)
And, he is a sponsored BMX rider. And his sponsors are gonna film the whole thing
and it's gonna be in his videos and some ads for dope shoes or whatever.
(And I get sneakers, heh, heh, heh.)
Yes, I consented to filming. I usually don't. This will be interesting.
Tomorrow. Thursday.
I'll have to post a photo . . .

2

I have not one, but two, New York Jewish Lady Therapists. (Don't ask.)

This is extremely funny to me.

September 26, 1939

Is my mother's birthday.
A hurricane is heading towards my mother's house.
She is headed for San Antonio to stay with her mother.
My brother emailed me and proposed, with humor,
that we roadtrip down there and save the both of them.
"Why, yes," I replied, "Absolutley. Disasters breed disasters."

And chaos opens doors, though not necessarily the ones you thought
you wanted.