Accordion Breath

"Oh! You startled me!" said the woman with perfect skin to the man who couldn't feel his arms. He zig-zagged closer to the front of the queue at the bus stop. A relatively big guy with child-bearing hips felt like a little baby in his body, and he walked into a corner deli. The skinny-sideburned skinny guy behind the counter had the same name as the guy in the adult shell, and he was standing on a platform behind the counter. (This is a simple and effective tool to deter any kind of funny business in a corner store. Heh.) The shell moved quickly out of sight into an aisle with diapers and pet food. The guy behind the counter was exchanging pleasantries with an associate wearing a Chicago Bulls jumper.

The shell grew sad. The kind of deep sadness that doesn't have an equivalent because it's not really that bad. The kind of sadness that stems from indecision - not bad decisions. The sadness of sitting all alone and accepting that the inside of the shell is made of worthless, pathetic composite.

"I feel like a bug, a useless firefly, a pointless insect (which is a remarkable word)," oh come on you're being too hard on yourself! Remember when you used to fly high? Yeah, remember all that flying you did, remember all of it? "No, it was worthless, look at my shell." Stop it, everything going to be ok! Everything is delicious, everything is inexpensive. Everything is a breeze.

Sinister

The itch came early in the evening, and even earlier in the day now that the summer was behind us. You see, we enjoy these kinds of things now that the sun goes in so much earlier. The temperature and the seasons and whatnot. So I decided to traverse from my naked state to my clothed state: I picked up some gray socks. One of them was balled up in the other so I had to undo it with my dominant hand. Then I put the socks on, first my right foot then my left foot. I was naked except my light gray socks. Then I walked over to get my boxer-briefs. I thought about how annoying this election was.

Does anyone really know what's going on? I mean does anyone, ANYONE, claim to know what 56% of 300,000,000 people are thinking. It's kind of misleading. Heh. You can't research this stuff as with Consumer Reports. No one is "informed." No one has any idea what goes on behind closed doors or what politics is really all about or has a remotely "expert" understanding of the "demographics." I don't think ANYONE actually knows what's best or what will work out better or anything. Despite this, the outcome is actually really important. It's like when you pull out a board game and can't find the dice. You either have the right dice or you pull some dice from another game and it just doesn't work the same. At the end of the day though, you're picking dice.

I picked out my favorite boxers because I thought someone might see them today, why else do you wear your favorite underwear? You either do it deliberately, or you do it when you go out with no prospects. So they're light blue. Light blue boxers and gray socks. I started thinking about food again: $17 for a po'boy in NYC in August? Actually, if it's any good that's probably a decent price. Starting now.

I want to be crisp but I want to be real. I want to be slick but I want to be understated. I'm going for professional and blue-collar. I want to stand out among the conformers I hang out with enough that I'm lavished with attention but still subdued enough to come across earnest and humble.

There's this sign on Houston Street, it's a fun little sign, hehe, hoohoo ha ha. I rolled around and autumn leaves fell on top of me and it was amazing. It. was. surreal. I found America. After these two minutes of daydreaming, I lost myself. I lost myself. When I go outside, WAY outside, the risk is still so small. It's like turning your headlights off in the Pennsylvania backwoods for a second with every intention of turning them on a second after. I mean, what would I do if the lights didn't click back on? I'd slow down quickly and stop, right? And then a giant moose would be in front of my car like Jumanji.

I put on my white undershirt and that was fine. It was crispish. I was stretching my knees out and dancing a little while seated.

Red Vodka Room

"What would you like?"

After placing the plastic glass down, a young woman with bright blonde hair and a Redskins cap sat over the top of her glass and watched the Shiraz vibrate until it stopped. So that's when this incredible turn of events happened in the basement: Two guys had to replace one of the kegs, it was a two-man job after all. They had gone to remove the spent keg but the contents were under pressure or the pipe had some compressed air or something like that. Anyway one of them held the tense object and the other had to roll the spent keg out and roll the fresh keg in. I'm not really familiar with these processes so my description is lacking. So the smaller guy who held the tense object — with two hands — wasn't particularly strong, or tall, or confident, or experienced. As he unfastened the yolk...

"Gingersnap wheatgrass avocado Maldon pan-braised sepia." A man with a guitar stood looking at the rest of us and he picked the guy standing next to me out: "Oh god that guy needs to get laid." I was watching the sound equipment in that moment so I missed the look. Usually I can read that kind of thing. I am ashamed, he thought I thought, but I wasn't thinking that. In that moment I was only thinking about the audio stack. I mean I may have been thinking, "it would be cool to be the lighting guy or a stage hand or the guitar-tuner."

"A steady." So I looked at my 8-bit color reflection in the window and wasn't that pleased. In God We Trust. A little girl was exposed to brutal physical treatment at home and brutal emotional treatment at school. It was a tragedy.

"The kids were so bad this week, may I have a vodka tonic?" Slam and slam and slam and slam it must be Friday. Two kids knew the deal and they prepared for the event. They had this friend who promised one of them something and they had quietly competed for the lead. They were friends and they didn't need this complication. This is life. "Stoli."

And then it happened...he told her what he'd not wanted to say and what she didn't really want to hear.

White Road

There was a little girl who wanted something from the gourmet bakery. Her stupid dad hollered at her, loudly and quite publicly, "I am sick and tired of negotiating with you!" Another guy walked over. He had curly brown hair and very circular sunglasses. He had been waiting to pay for "what seemed like an eternity." There were two young men with lightish skin with tight t-shirts on, they were waiting for a table-for-five to clear up at the bakery company shoppe. Their friend had not arrived yet — he had been napping but would be there five minutes after the table became available. A crazy not-that-old woman with dry hair pushed a shopping cart down the street and around each hand were two leather leashes attached to four medium-sized dogs. She felt strongly about being vegan, and even suggested that other people on the street consider becoming vegan too. A large man wearing a backwards baseball cap and a dark-colored warm-up suit with white stripes had red sneakers and a black goatee. He was slowly spinning around my favorite street in New York City, unable to take his eyes off his friend. She buzzed around him, wearing a baseball jersey herself, smiling as the entire crowd watched the magnetic carousel on the quiet street. There was an old man who walked deliberately to a park bench. He was wearing a very nice Sunday outfit and was holding onto an oak cane. He sat down and looked straight ahead, through the trees, through the little dog run, through the parks department sanitation station, through the farmer's market, through the anonymous burrito shop. He began feeding the pigeons. There was a young girl wearing a stretched-out cable knit sweater and a checkered hat. Her smile was so wide and playful, it forgave everyone who stared at her. Sometimes a chubby mother brought her developmentally-challenged daughter out for a walk. I had to reach around the poor girl to grab some potato chips. Outside my apartment I saw a couple fighting and when I got closer I heard one of them say, "what do you want me to say?" I noticed a man wearing a baseball cap backwards and a blue t-shirt and he told me that I can't sit on the rock. There was a man with baggy pants and a grin. He preferred when the sun stayed at home behind the clouds. The guy with sad eyes and the guitar looked longingly at the young little girl with the makeshift drum set. She was pounding out a Great Little Beat when an older woman accidentally stepped on some pirated DVDs on a carpet. Someone offered the therapeutic services of someone the pedestrians can't see. A woman with dark skin emerged from one of those bead curtains that had a print of an owl on it. A well-off older man walked home and thought about nothing. I sat down. I thought I saw the glimmer of the side of a gun, it was just a cell phone. I asked my buddy what the difference between a hubcap and a rim was, and he told me that hubcaps don't really exist anymore. He looked at me. A smelly young man finished another book. A sweet girl pulled her hair out at night and wondered what she was doing with her life. A type-A personality thought about walking down Avenue A, but decisively decided against it. Another man with a goatee did curls at the gym and thought about the missionary position. A beautiful woman continued to study and her less beautiful friend could not stop stopping her work to look around or talk or surrender to some other distraction. An executive pressed 'L' in the elevator and looked up at the screen. A large old woman addressed the back of a lobster's head with a sharp knife. I wanted a grilled cheese sandwich. A little boy put his hand in the cold river water and didn't realize that what he was doing was what other people dream about doing. Another little boy tripped on the curb. Linda died. Sometimes the man with the cart would not be there and he didn't have to tell anyone; he would just sit on his really comfortable wool chair and watch his old tv in his ground-level apartment and drink Hennessey and shuffle cards all day. These two sisters walked by and one of them yelled, "Now you want to go, you never want to go." This stockman sauntered behind a customer wearing a dress with the colors of the Jamaican flag — he said to her: "Those ain't church clothes." She replied, "God just happy my ass was there, he don't care what I wear." I agree with her.

At Peace

i will bring you water, if you will bring me wine.
we will sit together, until the end of time.
and you will call me yours, i will call you mine.
and we will stay together, until the end of time.
i will call you mine.
---
i will bring you water, you will bring me wine.
we will be together, until the end of time.
you will call me yours, i will call you mine.
we will dance forever, until the end of time.

i had to walk a long way to get to the cloudy dwelling of the Legend, and at the end of my trip i was sweating a great deal. there were nice little shrubs and these odd-shaped, fragrant roots all along the side of the road. i couldn't take my ipod because of some provincial regulation, but that actually worked out fine because when you walk around in heaven there are all kinds of interesting things to listen to anyway.

you'd expect that daylight lasts forever up there but each little province has its own solar regimen. actually the occupants of each province select it themselves. there's a form you can fill out when you get your place, it's a neat little interactive chart that can be as detailed as you want, and since time and bladder considerations don't really exist, new occupants typically spend quite a while detailing the atmospheric conditions of their plot.

it's a cool setup, i have to say. they really thought things through. i heard they used IBM for all the operational stuff and they use Microsoft Surface now for the adminstrative tasks and bookkeeping. i'm not surprised that the Legend chose the environment he did: a sort of perpetual golden blue just-before-twilight, juuuuuust shy of overly humid, and no breeze. he did choose — as many do — to have a few hours of random weather generation every now and again.

you can restrict the types of random weather. for example, you can say, "random weather but nothing worse than 50 mph winds and nothing better than the nicest day i ever experienced on the earthball." the Legend did not put any such restrictions on the weather in his province, he didn't mind patching up his home if something happened, these were the pleasures he missed since he arrived, and he actually welcomed a palm tree or two falling through the roof of his garage.

i walked confidently along the dusty road and felt my heart fill up warmly and comfortably. i would love to join Him there for longer but I had to go back to the city after I spoke with Him, oh well, I'll definitely visit Him a ton when I get up there.

...

"i don't know, sometimes i take such a huge step forward and then i see them and they grab at me and pull me back. it's a little upsetting but i guess that's part of life." He told me to relax and not think about it so much. he told me a story about a dream he had. i smiled the entire time. As he told it, i mouthed some of his words if he elongated them or when he would emphasize a point with his hands or his electromagnetic eyes:

"I was watching my son play baseball near the airport and I saw a woman with a child down by the bay. She was hunched over with the little guy between her legs and he was splashing around with a red plastic shovel. I walked over to her and along the way I thought about lying down on the side of a road. I looked up through leaves and saw airplanes and the sky and the golden hair of my wife. I loved when she rode with me. She'd say things to me as we drove and I'd feel a little sad or a little happy. I felt admiration and jealousy, but what mattered when I stopped the bike was not my own emotions, but the beauty of where we were, how we were together, how beautiful she was and how comfortable the dirt was against my back."

...

then He told me a classic story about Him and His golden goddess. i told Him i wouldn't tell anyone about it even though He said He wouldn't mind. one of the things i always admired about the Legend was his understated dignity. in the most extraordinary way, his mannerisms conveyed epic dignity. sometimes i do things so wretchedly devoid of dignity and i am ashamed to even consider what He would think, how He would gaze at me. that memory alone should keep me from the rock-bottom. i don't want to go there again.

...

the blue light at the edge of the golden flame reminded me of the pavement — our city. the dusk and aromas and alcohol reminded me of argentina and motorcycles. i remember alternately the sterile white houses and the hangar-car-garages. we sat in these ungodly comfortable lounge chairs and looked around, over the fire, at the fire, at the harmless little flies. gorgeous creamily rigid jungle leaves relaxed there too. we all listened to Him. He told stories that made your hands recall an index of touches and shapes and feelings that your fingers may not have ever experienced. He cast my face into an uninhibited, effortless smile, and i miss that now. the glow must have been visible in the other provinces.

rest in peace Friend.

August 8, 2007

ayla_napoli

The idea is to have a set of rotating images with words beneath them. The page will scroll horizontally in the middle. There will be definitions and more images to accompany the main one to refine the text that accompanies each primary image.

I have a list of personal requests, and I'm not sure how to attack the work left: "rocket scientist," "psychedelicatessen," "flavor," and "chicken." I'm pretty sure one of those will be first. I also would like one on "brooklyn," one on "cooper," one on "american football," and one on "blog."

Don't spill the beans, this is going to be tremendous.

Shutters

Pour some arancia directly into the sauce you'd been preparing, that's what they told me. That's what I had to work with. I figured, "Hey I gave it my best." I analyzed the curve. Indeed, there was a steep scale on which infatuation turned into disrespect, which caused me to open the window over the urban backyard.

I had been thinking of that green hose a few times more recently. I thought about shattering that garage light with the little basketball. I guess that's in my past. What would a mental mirror show? Yuck, I don't even want to picture it - even that's flattering terminology.

So the window opened, and I looked out. Things looked pretty normal. I saw little ants, gravel, chlorinated water, some slick pavement. I saw a barbecue and a ladder, a fence and a man. That's that I thought. My heart felt empty knowing I'd never get to be in that same setting again. That was behind me. That is gone now. It sits about six feet under a nicely manicured lawn. It is sad. I am sad.

It's an odd vacancy because I remember those moments most fondly. That's incongruity. I saw a picture of a girl H.H. who looked great on paper. That is a kick, this is a kick, I don't think I'm flexible enough to kick the window back up. To keep it up without letting it close for a few more years. It is depressing to be honest. It is sick and filled with regret.

It's borne of some kind of resentment for other people. They are on the other side of my forced mannerisms. From them obligation turns to resentment. From the source comes obligation and from me comes resentment and with that the scale. Is everything doomed, am I stuck as a master of white lies and scorecard credit? It's an odd situation. There's so much time? Right?

There aren't many things that could prevent me from the stupid window. But that's a lie and I know it. There are things that necessarily prevent it, and they are pathetic. They are thoughtless and inane. I am a subject on the manor of perception and narcissism. I obey my master, and my master wears boxer-briefs but would like to switch back to boxers in the near future.

That's the way it is. Duh. Seems like a rotten deal doesn't it? Well it's not too bad. It's sort of standard, I can see it dates back at least to Madison Avenue in 1960. We'll see what happens next. I'm sure it'll be a real hoot. I'm sure the window will go up and down and nothing will change. Or maybe they'll stick it to me. Maybe they'll slam the fucking shutter down on my hand and break my bones into a thousand pieces. Maybe they'll take turns turning salt against me and slapping my face. Maybe that's what's in store. I need help I scream out the closed window and the submarine is submerged. Oh it's eternally submerged. Too soon. It's over. The legend has left his backyard.