For lovers of the words, and lovers of silence, there is a wonderful short story in The New Yorker this month. And yet, for all its resonance, I am equally touched that it took words to write it.
HISTORY OF A DISTURBANCE
by STEVEN MILLHAUSER
The New Yorker, Issue of 2007-03-05
You are angry, Elena. You are furious. You are desperately unhappy. Do you know you’re becoming bitter?—bitter as those little berries you bit into, remember? in the woods that time. You are frightened. You are resentful. My vow must have seemed to you extremely cruel, or insane. You are suspicious. You are tired. I’ve never seen you so tired. And of course: you are patient. You’re very patient, Elena. I can feel that patience of yours come rolling out at me from every ripple of your unforgiving hair, from your fierce wrists and tense blouse. It’s a harsh patience, an aggressive patience. It wants something, as all patience does... READ ON
February 28, 2007
February 27, 2007
perfect connection
Who has the right to expect perfection of another? Who has a right to want completeness? To set up this stage littered with trap doors, to underestimate the rise of disappointment, its inevitable swell, and not only to believe, but to expect, to invest emotion in its unsustainable reality?
And then to explain that love was lost in that moment, when the well-oiled points of total connection slipped by one another and fell awkwardly to the floor, and lay impotent and thrashing in prosaic confusion. Their fall from grace, from the exaltation of sky and endlessness, of blue depth and the illusion that frosty clouds are warm cotton clusters; that they are cushion castles and do not house tomorrow’s storms and sudden, random electrical shocks.
And then to explain that love was lost in that moment, when the well-oiled points of total connection slipped by one another and fell awkwardly to the floor, and lay impotent and thrashing in prosaic confusion. Their fall from grace, from the exaltation of sky and endlessness, of blue depth and the illusion that frosty clouds are warm cotton clusters; that they are cushion castles and do not house tomorrow’s storms and sudden, random electrical shocks.
February 26, 2007
don't even think about it...
as a former media ecologist, i find this article fascinating for three reasons. first, 10 years ago i wrote a thesis arguing that neuroscience and the decoding of the human genome would
eventually bring about and socialize a Science of Individuality. second, i do believe people are stupid enough to one day incorporate this kind of technology into institutional processes. third, i have enormous respect for the work these scientists do, despite the pleasure they seem to take in destroying all my romantic illusions.
We Knew You Would Read This Story
A TEAM of world-leading neuroscientists has developed a powerful technique that allows them to look deep inside a person's brain and read their intentions before they act.
The research breaks controversial new ground in science's ability to probe people's minds and eavesdrop on their thoughts.
It raises serious ethical issues over how brain-reading technology may be used.
The team used high-resolution brain scans to identify patterns of activity before translating them into meaningful thoughts, revealing what a person planned to do in the near future. It is the first time scientists have succeeded in reading intentions in this way.
"Using the scanner, we could look around the brain for this information and read out something that from the outside there's no way you could possibly tell is in there," said John-Dylan Haynes at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Germany. He led the study with colleagues at University College London and Oxford University.
The research builds on a series of recent studies in which brain imaging has been used to identify tell-tale activity linked to lying, violent behaviour and racial prejudice.
The latest work has prompted the researchers to call for an urgent debate on the ethical issues of the technology.
If brain-reading can be refined, it can quickly be adopted to assist interrogations of criminals and even usher in a Minority Report era (as portrayed in the Steven Spielberg film), where judgements are handed down before the law is broken on the strength of an incriminating brain scan.
(This article appeared in The Age ealier this month. What's that you ask? Well, it's like the aussie New York Times, except they can say "asshole" and "shit" if they want to.)
eventually bring about and socialize a Science of Individuality. second, i do believe people are stupid enough to one day incorporate this kind of technology into institutional processes. third, i have enormous respect for the work these scientists do, despite the pleasure they seem to take in destroying all my romantic illusions.We Knew You Would Read This Story
A TEAM of world-leading neuroscientists has developed a powerful technique that allows them to look deep inside a person's brain and read their intentions before they act.
The research breaks controversial new ground in science's ability to probe people's minds and eavesdrop on their thoughts.
It raises serious ethical issues over how brain-reading technology may be used.
The team used high-resolution brain scans to identify patterns of activity before translating them into meaningful thoughts, revealing what a person planned to do in the near future. It is the first time scientists have succeeded in reading intentions in this way.
"Using the scanner, we could look around the brain for this information and read out something that from the outside there's no way you could possibly tell is in there," said John-Dylan Haynes at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Germany. He led the study with colleagues at University College London and Oxford University.
The research builds on a series of recent studies in which brain imaging has been used to identify tell-tale activity linked to lying, violent behaviour and racial prejudice.
The latest work has prompted the researchers to call for an urgent debate on the ethical issues of the technology.
If brain-reading can be refined, it can quickly be adopted to assist interrogations of criminals and even usher in a Minority Report era (as portrayed in the Steven Spielberg film), where judgements are handed down before the law is broken on the strength of an incriminating brain scan.
(This article appeared in The Age ealier this month. What's that you ask? Well, it's like the aussie New York Times, except they can say "asshole" and "shit" if they want to.)
February 25, 2007
ben's weather report
This is Ben again, known on YouTube as Elba. Ben's now made a puppet of himself (yes, striking resemblance), being really, um, himself. A thousand years ago we studied for final exams together in the UCL library. Well, I studied. Ben did what Ben does. Annoying authority figures may call it creative procrastination. I call it overflowing if understated genius.
February 24, 2007
an athiest no more?
"I used to be an athiest, but then i realized I was God." - Krishnamurti.
Krishnamurti. Heard of him? I hadn't, until this quote came my way during a lecture recently. i've done only the teeniest bit of reading so far, but already have this notable Krishnam
urti feature to share...
"Krishnamurti claimed allegiance to no caste, nationality or religion and was bound by no tradition. He said man has to free himself of all fear, conditioning, authority and dogma through self-knowledge, and this will bring about order and psychological mutation."
i guess this appeals to me because we all tend to look to sources outside of ourselves for the big answers, often ancient texts and various interpretations of texts, sometimes modern movements and cults, but really it seems kind of illogical to assume or even hope that one person or scribe or visionary at any point in time was able to truly grasp the big picture and bottle it accurately for our ease of consumption.
what i'm saying is... what makes us think that anyone has ever got it right? isn't it more likely that the truth of things has perhaps been glimpsed at here and there, or even if it was ever grasped as a whole, that by the time it was passed down it was distorted, whether intentionally or not, by the opinions and biases of every single person whose mind it entered and lips it exited, already in a slightly altered form?
what i'm saying is... i like the notion that the truth of things can only be experienced empirically, through personal experience. it cannot be handed down. it cannot be taught. it can only be accessed through your own efforts, through your own transcendence.
I like the notion that the truth exists inside us. or maybe even as Krishnamurti is suggesting, that the truth is us.
"I used to be an athiest, but then i realized I was God." - Krishnamurti.
Krishnamurti. Heard of him? I hadn't, until this quote came my way during a lecture recently. i've done only the teeniest bit of reading so far, but already have this notable Krishnam
urti feature to share..."Krishnamurti claimed allegiance to no caste, nationality or religion and was bound by no tradition. He said man has to free himself of all fear, conditioning, authority and dogma through self-knowledge, and this will bring about order and psychological mutation."
i guess this appeals to me because we all tend to look to sources outside of ourselves for the big answers, often ancient texts and various interpretations of texts, sometimes modern movements and cults, but really it seems kind of illogical to assume or even hope that one person or scribe or visionary at any point in time was able to truly grasp the big picture and bottle it accurately for our ease of consumption.
what i'm saying is... what makes us think that anyone has ever got it right? isn't it more likely that the truth of things has perhaps been glimpsed at here and there, or even if it was ever grasped as a whole, that by the time it was passed down it was distorted, whether intentionally or not, by the opinions and biases of every single person whose mind it entered and lips it exited, already in a slightly altered form?
what i'm saying is... i like the notion that the truth of things can only be experienced empirically, through personal experience. it cannot be handed down. it cannot be taught. it can only be accessed through your own efforts, through your own transcendence.
I like the notion that the truth exists inside us. or maybe even as Krishnamurti is suggesting, that the truth is us.
"I used to be an athiest, but then i realized I was God." - Krishnamurti.
February 20, 2007
history of love, page 72
(i found this old conversation with myself scribbled across torn pages, coasters, napkins and magazine ads. dated april 23, 2004)
Going out for a drink alone on friday night. Delay my departure from work. Delay deciding whether to spend the night alone, or alone. Have scrolled through names in phone book. Don’t tell. Have left similar message on two or three answering machines. Don’t tell. 7.30. 7.45. Nothing to do at work. Lots to do at home. Nothing I want to do at home. Lots I can pretend to do at work. 8 p.m. Reapply deodorant, perfume. Touch up blush, make these pale cheeks rosy.
Out the door, into the elevator, out the door, and then the last door. Mist of rain, maybe drops. Back into three doors, elevator, get umbrella, bathroom, don’t stop at mirror, leave work for the final time this week. 8.20.
Walk down 9th avenue. Would get a cab if I knew where to tell him to go. Walk. Raining. Still haven’t opened umbrella. Cab stops at red light in front of me. “Head to the east village please.” Get out on 2nd Avenue and 5th street. Nothing there. Walk. Walk.
Open umbrella now. Think: you said you would publish. Think: you said you would transcribe dedushka’s interviews. Think: you said you wouldn’t think about him, about going back. You said it would be different. You said.
Going for a drink alone on friday night. Think: is this really independence? Or is this defiance? Or is this creating the sensation of hope, giving gaping masturbating inner-demons something else to suckle on other than loneliness or fear of it never ending.
Drink alone on friday night. Maybe you’ll meet someone, and he will be it, the reason for it all, and knowing that will change everything. Will change everything.
Walk over to First. In Standard now. Four couples, three gay guys and me, and the pen I borrowed, and my drink, and this song I don’t know, and the tunes in my head, and the pictures of us, and the memory of “no,” and the answerless void, and the defiance of defensive strength, and my phone placed before me, dark. No one will call. Couples never call.
How many more like me? Like me, right now. Next door? A block away? Should I look for them? Will they look for me? Who is fooled? Who is fooled?
I am fooled. Sometimes. Sometimes.
Bar-gazing now. Corona, Stella, something I can’t read, Amstel Light, Guiness, something else I can’t read. Have ordered many of these for others before. What’s touching their lips now while I remember bringing something to their lips? But not even. They have no faces. I don’t know who they were.
Dewars, J&B, Johnny Black, Johnny Red, Glenfiddich. Same, same.
Too intense to be out alone. Not for me, I am fine. But for the others. It’s a small bar. I am distracting. They’re living life-light. For this minute anyway. I remind them of the pen writing furiously inside them. Of their eyes intensely focused, of other days, when there was nowhere else for thoughts to go.
Don’t want to start writing about you.
Don’t want to start writing about you.
Need to pee.
Have peed.
Sensation. Is that hunger?
I think I’m having a good time, actually. It’s the writing, feel very centered and honest. Truth has its victory and I get to feel connected and unneedy of more than my own words. Have texted Vinnie. He is single and broken hearted. Is that why?
Third Chivas. Why the hell not. Is that hunger?
The difference between up and down is a single thought. More important than anything else is understanding why that is. Nancy. She’ll tell me it’s all nothing. My own figments taking over. She’ll try to set me back on a truer path. A truer path. A truer path. Funny how I want that path and don’t. Funny how I associate it with nothingness, but also the everything that will eventually come.
The bartender is called Robert. Musician. Masseur. Been searching for ten years. Still doesn’t know. Still doesn’t know.
Bar phone rings. Robert says, “Hello Desmond.” You pick up your phone too when you’re working. You do too. Did your phone ring tonight, baby?
Is everything I write actually to you? Bombay Sapphire. Tanqueray. Yeah. Think I might be hungry. Bus boy doing pull-ups on the bathroom doorframe. “Next one’s on me,” says Robert. May be a long night. Maybe Pier 63 afterwards.
Things getting more distant now. Does it really matter what has transpired?
Here I am. Guess so.
Bathroom again.
Hanif Kuerishi. The soulfulness I cannot reach.
230 Park Avenue South. Is it mine? Is it mine?
Will you come there, baby? Will you come, there? Will we understand each other on their 20 year old couch? Will their 20 year old speakers play our song?
Vinnie hasn’t written back. Maybe he’s happy now.
I wonder if I would make a good movie moment. I wonder if I would be the comedy, or the tragedy.
Better drink up. Better drink up. Bus boy lighting candles. Four jars, match burning too fast, two jars done, third - just, fourth candle now, but he’s not going to make it. There’s always another match. So why do we let ourselves burn, to make the first one feel like it lasted?
Don’t want to strike again. Don’t want to strike again.
And if you walked in now? Well, nevermind.
Knob Creek. What the hells is that? Maker’s Mark. Jack Daniels.
And I’m wondering, I have the hiccups now, are you behind every effort? Are you the impurity that makes no thought clear?
I have the hiccups now. Desmond (who’s arrived) says, “should I scare you?”
Yes, please scare me. Scare me more.
Going out for a drink alone on friday night. Delay my departure from work. Delay deciding whether to spend the night alone, or alone. Have scrolled through names in phone book. Don’t tell. Have left similar message on two or three answering machines. Don’t tell. 7.30. 7.45. Nothing to do at work. Lots to do at home. Nothing I want to do at home. Lots I can pretend to do at work. 8 p.m. Reapply deodorant, perfume. Touch up blush, make these pale cheeks rosy.
Out the door, into the elevator, out the door, and then the last door. Mist of rain, maybe drops. Back into three doors, elevator, get umbrella, bathroom, don’t stop at mirror, leave work for the final time this week. 8.20.
Walk down 9th avenue. Would get a cab if I knew where to tell him to go. Walk. Raining. Still haven’t opened umbrella. Cab stops at red light in front of me. “Head to the east village please.” Get out on 2nd Avenue and 5th street. Nothing there. Walk. Walk.
Open umbrella now. Think: you said you would publish. Think: you said you would transcribe dedushka’s interviews. Think: you said you wouldn’t think about him, about going back. You said it would be different. You said.
Going for a drink alone on friday night. Think: is this really independence? Or is this defiance? Or is this creating the sensation of hope, giving gaping masturbating inner-demons something else to suckle on other than loneliness or fear of it never ending.
Drink alone on friday night. Maybe you’ll meet someone, and he will be it, the reason for it all, and knowing that will change everything. Will change everything.
Walk over to First. In Standard now. Four couples, three gay guys and me, and the pen I borrowed, and my drink, and this song I don’t know, and the tunes in my head, and the pictures of us, and the memory of “no,” and the answerless void, and the defiance of defensive strength, and my phone placed before me, dark. No one will call. Couples never call.
How many more like me? Like me, right now. Next door? A block away? Should I look for them? Will they look for me? Who is fooled? Who is fooled?
I am fooled. Sometimes. Sometimes.
Bar-gazing now. Corona, Stella, something I can’t read, Amstel Light, Guiness, something else I can’t read. Have ordered many of these for others before. What’s touching their lips now while I remember bringing something to their lips? But not even. They have no faces. I don’t know who they were.
Dewars, J&B, Johnny Black, Johnny Red, Glenfiddich. Same, same.
Too intense to be out alone. Not for me, I am fine. But for the others. It’s a small bar. I am distracting. They’re living life-light. For this minute anyway. I remind them of the pen writing furiously inside them. Of their eyes intensely focused, of other days, when there was nowhere else for thoughts to go.
Don’t want to start writing about you.
Don’t want to start writing about you.
Need to pee.
Have peed.
Sensation. Is that hunger?
I think I’m having a good time, actually. It’s the writing, feel very centered and honest. Truth has its victory and I get to feel connected and unneedy of more than my own words. Have texted Vinnie. He is single and broken hearted. Is that why?
Third Chivas. Why the hell not. Is that hunger?
The difference between up and down is a single thought. More important than anything else is understanding why that is. Nancy. She’ll tell me it’s all nothing. My own figments taking over. She’ll try to set me back on a truer path. A truer path. A truer path. Funny how I want that path and don’t. Funny how I associate it with nothingness, but also the everything that will eventually come.
The bartender is called Robert. Musician. Masseur. Been searching for ten years. Still doesn’t know. Still doesn’t know.
Bar phone rings. Robert says, “Hello Desmond.” You pick up your phone too when you’re working. You do too. Did your phone ring tonight, baby?
Is everything I write actually to you? Bombay Sapphire. Tanqueray. Yeah. Think I might be hungry. Bus boy doing pull-ups on the bathroom doorframe. “Next one’s on me,” says Robert. May be a long night. Maybe Pier 63 afterwards.
Things getting more distant now. Does it really matter what has transpired?
Here I am. Guess so.
Bathroom again.
Hanif Kuerishi. The soulfulness I cannot reach.
230 Park Avenue South. Is it mine? Is it mine?
Will you come there, baby? Will you come, there? Will we understand each other on their 20 year old couch? Will their 20 year old speakers play our song?
Vinnie hasn’t written back. Maybe he’s happy now.
I wonder if I would make a good movie moment. I wonder if I would be the comedy, or the tragedy.
Better drink up. Better drink up. Bus boy lighting candles. Four jars, match burning too fast, two jars done, third - just, fourth candle now, but he’s not going to make it. There’s always another match. So why do we let ourselves burn, to make the first one feel like it lasted?
Don’t want to strike again. Don’t want to strike again.
And if you walked in now? Well, nevermind.
Knob Creek. What the hells is that? Maker’s Mark. Jack Daniels.
And I’m wondering, I have the hiccups now, are you behind every effort? Are you the impurity that makes no thought clear?
I have the hiccups now. Desmond (who’s arrived) says, “should I scare you?”
Yes, please scare me. Scare me more.
February 15, 2007
the truth about all those fish in the sea
random encounters. you never know what you're going to get, do you?
sometimes it's nothing to write blog about. but sometimes, "is this really happening?" conversations do happen, punctuated by "did you really just say that"? moments, strangely suspended in time.
there's also the quite common "why am i still here?" sensation. and the, "god i hope the people at the next table can't hear you" jolt of shame.
have you ever had the peculiar "i might actually be scared of you" encounter? or its angrier cousin, the rare but memorable "if i went to the bathroom and disappeared, would you hunt me down?"
and how about the difficult to explain: "i can't sit closer to you because there is hair coming out of your ears." or the slightly awkward "i can actually see myself reflected in your forehead..."
of course, there are many more.
tonight, i had the remarkable experience of having all of these fascinating anthropological circumstances converge upon me all at once, in the the form of an australian-italian, car-dealing, lexus-driving, chain-wearing, head-polishing, name-dropping, paranoia-hurling, otherwise nice guy, whose name shall remain undisclosed, lest my blog be serendipitously discovered and unleash the road rage-ish, Rocky I-through-VI-obsessed, sweet-smiling psycho dwelling just beneath his skin.
here are some excerpts from our conversation:
***
anonymous: i was in new york, right. and my brother, he knows this bloke, told me to give him a call. i call and i call. call his mobile, call his phone. i even called him at work, mate. so finally i get through to this guy, and i say "Vinnie!? Vinnie!? Is that you Vinnie?" And this guy goes, "Nah, Vinnie's away." So i ask him, "What's he do, mate? My brother said he was a film producer." And this guy goes, "Nah." He says Vinnie runs the financial district, it's downtown somewhere.
me: Vinnie runs the financial district?
anonymous: yeah, he's the boss . he runs it.
me: mhm.
anonymous: yeah, yeah. I called him for a month, you know. guy never called me back. what an asshole.
***
anon: yeah, there's this club in London. great place, mate. i tried to get in, but they wouldn't let me. said there was a 7-year waiting list. s-e-v-e-n-y-e-e-e-r-s, mate.
me: seven years? do you think they meant it literally?
anon: yeah, bouncer said seven years. and i couldn't wait that long, y'know. cuz i was only there for a couple weeks. but i heard madonna gets a table there, and snoop dog. but they just stay at their tables, my mate told me. like, they don't even socialize, so i'm just not interested."
***
anon: i've never really had a relationship.
me: why's that?
anon: i can't afford one.
me: you drive a lexus sport. i think you can afford a relationship.
anon: nah, mate. these girls are crazy.
me: silent
anon: i had this one girl. had her for six-months. she was just 23, you know. she was a pretty girl. i thought i could mould her, you know, turn her into a woman.
me: so what happened?
anon: she was an idiot. she was a stupid bitch.
me: ...
anon: she just had no respect, you know. no respect for me. i fixed up her jeep, right. did a nice job, too. and then i said to'ah, "so what are you going to do with the car now?," and she said "ohh, i think i'll go to some dealers and see what they'll give me for it." and i thought WHAT? i mean what kind of a woman doesn't ask her boyfriend's advice on cars, ya'know? ask his opinion on something like that? i think there was a trust issue there. i think it was a sign.
me: yeah, maybe.
anon: it was like realizing i've got bad property, you know. like when you've got bad property, and you've just got to sell it. sell it fast and cheap.
me: (blink. body quite still.)
anon: or actually, it's more like a racing horse. once a racing horse breaks its leg, you have to put it down. you just have to put-that-thing-doowwwn. and do it fast. this is the same thing, man. same thing.
***
anon: so, i have this web-site, right. how much would it cost for you to write it?
me: to write your web site?
anon: yeah
me: it would vary based on...
anon: (interrupting) nah, nah, just you know, whaddya think it would be? like, whaddya think?
me: um... what did your other guy quote you?
anon: oh, he's great value, mate. it's a great price.
me: yeah, so maybe stick with him. i'm not so cheap.
anon: not cheap? yeah, but okay, you know me now! we're like, you know. we're sitting here. so give me a good price...
me: yeah, my good price is not cheap.
anon: (beaming widely, pointing at me with his finger): now, don't be jewish. dooon't beeee jeeeewwwish....
me: it's not jewish. it's business.
anon: (continues beaming widely, while slowly shaking his finger around my nose)
sometimes it's nothing to write blog about. but sometimes, "is this really happening?" conversations do happen, punctuated by "did you really just say that"? moments, strangely suspended in time.
there's also the quite common "why am i still here?" sensation. and the, "god i hope the people at the next table can't hear you" jolt of shame.
have you ever had the peculiar "i might actually be scared of you" encounter? or its angrier cousin, the rare but memorable "if i went to the bathroom and disappeared, would you hunt me down?"
and how about the difficult to explain: "i can't sit closer to you because there is hair coming out of your ears." or the slightly awkward "i can actually see myself reflected in your forehead..."
of course, there are many more.
tonight, i had the remarkable experience of having all of these fascinating anthropological circumstances converge upon me all at once, in the the form of an australian-italian, car-dealing, lexus-driving, chain-wearing, head-polishing, name-dropping, paranoia-hurling, otherwise nice guy, whose name shall remain undisclosed, lest my blog be serendipitously discovered and unleash the road rage-ish, Rocky I-through-VI-obsessed, sweet-smiling psycho dwelling just beneath his skin.
here are some excerpts from our conversation:
***
anonymous: i was in new york, right. and my brother, he knows this bloke, told me to give him a call. i call and i call. call his mobile, call his phone. i even called him at work, mate. so finally i get through to this guy, and i say "Vinnie!? Vinnie!? Is that you Vinnie?" And this guy goes, "Nah, Vinnie's away." So i ask him, "What's he do, mate? My brother said he was a film producer." And this guy goes, "Nah." He says Vinnie runs the financial district, it's downtown somewhere.
me: Vinnie runs the financial district?
anonymous: yeah, he's the boss . he runs it.
me: mhm.
anonymous: yeah, yeah. I called him for a month, you know. guy never called me back. what an asshole.
***
anon: yeah, there's this club in London. great place, mate. i tried to get in, but they wouldn't let me. said there was a 7-year waiting list. s-e-v-e-n-y-e-e-e-r-s, mate.
me: seven years? do you think they meant it literally?
anon: yeah, bouncer said seven years. and i couldn't wait that long, y'know. cuz i was only there for a couple weeks. but i heard madonna gets a table there, and snoop dog. but they just stay at their tables, my mate told me. like, they don't even socialize, so i'm just not interested."
***
anon: i've never really had a relationship.
me: why's that?
anon: i can't afford one.
me: you drive a lexus sport. i think you can afford a relationship.
anon: nah, mate. these girls are crazy.
me: silent
anon: i had this one girl. had her for six-months. she was just 23, you know. she was a pretty girl. i thought i could mould her, you know, turn her into a woman.
me: so what happened?
anon: she was an idiot. she was a stupid bitch.
me: ...
anon: she just had no respect, you know. no respect for me. i fixed up her jeep, right. did a nice job, too. and then i said to'ah, "so what are you going to do with the car now?," and she said "ohh, i think i'll go to some dealers and see what they'll give me for it." and i thought WHAT? i mean what kind of a woman doesn't ask her boyfriend's advice on cars, ya'know? ask his opinion on something like that? i think there was a trust issue there. i think it was a sign.
me: yeah, maybe.
anon: it was like realizing i've got bad property, you know. like when you've got bad property, and you've just got to sell it. sell it fast and cheap.
me: (blink. body quite still.)
anon: or actually, it's more like a racing horse. once a racing horse breaks its leg, you have to put it down. you just have to put-that-thing-doowwwn. and do it fast. this is the same thing, man. same thing.
***
anon: so, i have this web-site, right. how much would it cost for you to write it?
me: to write your web site?
anon: yeah
me: it would vary based on...
anon: (interrupting) nah, nah, just you know, whaddya think it would be? like, whaddya think?
me: um... what did your other guy quote you?
anon: oh, he's great value, mate. it's a great price.
me: yeah, so maybe stick with him. i'm not so cheap.
anon: not cheap? yeah, but okay, you know me now! we're like, you know. we're sitting here. so give me a good price...
me: yeah, my good price is not cheap.
anon: (beaming widely, pointing at me with his finger): now, don't be jewish. dooon't beeee jeeeewwwish....
me: it's not jewish. it's business.
anon: (continues beaming widely, while slowly shaking his finger around my nose)
February 14, 2007
we shall not cease from exploration
rediscovered this today...
Little Gidding, T.S. Eliot
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.
February 12, 2007
littlewood's law
While wasting time today, I found this delicious morsel on wikipedia. Professor J.E. Littlewood was a professor of mathematics at Cambridge. I believe this is what they call "applied mathematics"..."...Littlewood's Law states that individuals can expect a miracle to happen to them at the rate of about one per month."
"Littlewood's law, making certain suppositions, is explained as follows: a miracle is defined as an exceptional event of special significance occurring at a frequency of one in a million; during the hours in which a human is awake and alert, a human will experience one thing per second (for instance, seeing the computer screen, the keyboard, the mouse, the article, etc.); additionally, a human is alert for about eight hours per day; and as a result, a human will, in 35 days, have experienced, under these suppositions, 1,008,000 things. Accepting this definition of a miracle, one can be expected to observe one miraculous occurrence within the passing of every 35 consecutive days -- and therefore, according to this reasoning, seemingly miraculous events are actually commonplace."
***
editor's note: : )
Short Story: A Yom Kippur Prayer
Written the morning of October 2, Yom Kippur, 2006.
A Yom Kippur Prayer
The bars on the synagogue windows are white. Ella wraps her hands around them making little fists, and brings her face close. She wants the light to fall on her face, so her husband, reciting prayers inside, can spot her if he lifts his eyes.
It is Yom Kippur in Herzilya, Israel, and the women are beginning to gather outside the small, almost make-shift synagogue in Gordon. They have walked here, each from their own home, flanked by a warm breeze and hundreds of ecstatic children on bicycles. This is the holiday all children in Israel wait for. With no cars on the streets, parents open their doors and the young pour out, roaming freely in pigtail gangs. Tonight, and until the shofar blows tomorrow at 6p.m., these children will rule the streets.
Secular, religious, confused or conflicted, no one drives their cars in Israel during Yom Kippur. Occasionally, but very occasionally, you’ll walk past an open window or Israel’s strange tilted shades, from which the heartless blue light of a television shines, accompanied by disembodied voices that have no place in this stretch of time in Israel. No place on this day.
But the streets are quiet. Not dead quiet. Alive quiet. You’d feel the need to talk in whispers if not for the streams of children, some not more than three-years old, some in their teens, speeding back and forth on their three-wheelers, two wheelers, roller blades, roller skates. The excitement of their liberation brings the night to life. And their entitlement to these streets, which they will carry with them their whole lives, can maybe, just maybe, be traced pack in part to the Yom Kippurs of their youth.
Pressed up against the white bars of the synagogue, Ella watches two solemn men slowly remove the holy scrolls of the torah from an old and lop-sided wooden cupboard. The chanting inside intensifies in volume and in depth. These scrolls are like a volume dial, she thinks, and as they move around the room the dial spins outwards, but also inwards, calling out words from the caves in men’s hearts which they have prepared for God, hoping He will enter, but that remain empty until then.
Ella searches her conscience, looking for her own prayer. It is Yom Kippur, and like all people she has much to ask forgiveness for. She searches, wanting to find the words that will bring meaning to her fast.
Etai, her husband, looks up. He sees her, he smiles, she makes a funny face, and he smiles more. She pretends she is trying to tear apart the bars with her little fists, and he laughs. The Torah passes him, and he lifts his talit from his shoulder, kisses it, and presses his kiss against the Torah. He looks at Ella again. She is proud of him. Proud of his little kiss of the Torah, of his knowledge and love of Jewish traditions, and for repeating the traditions of her grandfathers and their ancestors. He is carrying the flame in there, she thinks.
And me, she wonders. What am I doing?
Behind her the women are gathering. They come later than the men because they have no intention of praying. This synagogue is small, and there are only three rows of seats in the woman’s section, assembled in the back and separated from the men by a billowing white curtain.
The area reserved for women had been occupied hours earlier by the wives and daughters of the most religious men in the temple, who now huddle around the rabbi’s pulpit. There is a little standing room also, but how much more commitment it would be for the women outside to stand out the prayers; to watch the billowing cloth, and to read, or half-read, to feel interested, or half-interested, to experience a transformation, or only the dull sense of duty.
So the women gather outside. They have raised their families and loved their husbands. They have cooked every Pesach, Passover, Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur meal for the last 30 years. They have knit their family together over bread and memories every Friday night for Shabbat (and the family has come because the food is good and the company is their blood). These women have listened to their sons’ and daughters’ stories from the military, and to their husband’s troubles at work, and the aches and pains of his body. They have tried to help their own brothers and sisters as they’ve struggle with money and the hardships of their own children. They’ve flown to New York and Australia to visit children who left home and made new ones, and they’ve fought back tears at airports as these children have promised they would come home, they would come home, they would come home soon.
And now it is Yom Kippur, and they have gathered outside the synagogue. Going inside to pray feels like too much. Maybe tomorrow night, before the blowing of the shofar. But tonight, they know exactly who they are, and the men inside are happy to know they wait for them in the courtyard.
The women gather outside. They collect into groups, and they gossip. They drag plastic chairs towards the most familiar faces, women whose children went to kindergarten with their own children, whose husbands work together, whose cousins work together. And with so much life in common, they gossip.
The children who have come with their mothers sit on the side and make fun of their parents. They youngest don’t see the fun in sitting at all, and collect into mini-gangs and chase each other around the courtyard, sometimes taunting each other, sometimes holding hands, releasing gleeful yelps and long drawn-out giggles.
These children know it is Yom Kippur, but they do not yet know the need to ask for forgiveness. They are forgiven each day for their wonderful, innocent little sins. And they are blessed also with the ability to forgive themselves.
Ella loosens her little fists, eases her grip on those white metal bars, and moves her head back into the shadows. The women have gathered behind her. The children run past her and around her feet. The men inside have stopped chanting and are praying quietly, rocking gently to and fro.
Ella turns to the women now filling the courtyard. Ruti, Etai’s mother is there. She smiles at Ella with easy kindness. She knows Ella loves her son.
Ella walks over to Ruti and takes a seat between her and a girl who passed through Ruti’s kindergarten 16-years ago. Ella’s Hebrew is improving, so here and there she can understand, here and there she can join in.
The women have gathered around her. She is one of them now. But what a long road it will be, she feels, before she has earned her sense of place among them; before she can share their peace of knowing that her family is grown and strong, that her marriage has survived because the right sacrifices were made, that the food of her kitchen was good, and that thousands of miles away her sons scold their own wives for not being enough like their mothers.
The women are gathering inside her now. Their voices all hushed like muffled heart beats, echoes against her ribs and stomach and throat, against the inside of her skin. Their fingers move inside her, like they have moved over endless bed sheets and washing lines, and dried perfect red tomatoes, and sliced cucumbers and onions, and poured vinegar over cabbage, and fried eggplant on the balcony. Their fingers move like they have moved over challa on Fridays, and though their children’s hair, and like they have moved when wiping away tears, and applying bandaids, and taking pain away by telling stories.
The women’s fingers move inside her, and turn their palms upwards with unspoken questions. Can you do what we have done? they ask. Can you make your heart so selfless as to be what we have been? Will you care for our sons as we have cared for our husbands? Will your sons love you as our sons love us?
The women have gathered inside her now. Ella’s eyes close, 30-years of moving fingers gathered in her heart. A prayer begins to form on her lips.
From the courtyard outside the synagogue in Herzilya, she turns her closed eyes to the sky, and asks forgiveness for all she knows she will never be.
A Yom Kippur Prayer
The bars on the synagogue windows are white. Ella wraps her hands around them making little fists, and brings her face close. She wants the light to fall on her face, so her husband, reciting prayers inside, can spot her if he lifts his eyes.
It is Yom Kippur in Herzilya, Israel, and the women are beginning to gather outside the small, almost make-shift synagogue in Gordon. They have walked here, each from their own home, flanked by a warm breeze and hundreds of ecstatic children on bicycles. This is the holiday all children in Israel wait for. With no cars on the streets, parents open their doors and the young pour out, roaming freely in pigtail gangs. Tonight, and until the shofar blows tomorrow at 6p.m., these children will rule the streets.
Secular, religious, confused or conflicted, no one drives their cars in Israel during Yom Kippur. Occasionally, but very occasionally, you’ll walk past an open window or Israel’s strange tilted shades, from which the heartless blue light of a television shines, accompanied by disembodied voices that have no place in this stretch of time in Israel. No place on this day.
But the streets are quiet. Not dead quiet. Alive quiet. You’d feel the need to talk in whispers if not for the streams of children, some not more than three-years old, some in their teens, speeding back and forth on their three-wheelers, two wheelers, roller blades, roller skates. The excitement of their liberation brings the night to life. And their entitlement to these streets, which they will carry with them their whole lives, can maybe, just maybe, be traced pack in part to the Yom Kippurs of their youth.
Pressed up against the white bars of the synagogue, Ella watches two solemn men slowly remove the holy scrolls of the torah from an old and lop-sided wooden cupboard. The chanting inside intensifies in volume and in depth. These scrolls are like a volume dial, she thinks, and as they move around the room the dial spins outwards, but also inwards, calling out words from the caves in men’s hearts which they have prepared for God, hoping He will enter, but that remain empty until then.
Ella searches her conscience, looking for her own prayer. It is Yom Kippur, and like all people she has much to ask forgiveness for. She searches, wanting to find the words that will bring meaning to her fast.
Etai, her husband, looks up. He sees her, he smiles, she makes a funny face, and he smiles more. She pretends she is trying to tear apart the bars with her little fists, and he laughs. The Torah passes him, and he lifts his talit from his shoulder, kisses it, and presses his kiss against the Torah. He looks at Ella again. She is proud of him. Proud of his little kiss of the Torah, of his knowledge and love of Jewish traditions, and for repeating the traditions of her grandfathers and their ancestors. He is carrying the flame in there, she thinks.
And me, she wonders. What am I doing?
Behind her the women are gathering. They come later than the men because they have no intention of praying. This synagogue is small, and there are only three rows of seats in the woman’s section, assembled in the back and separated from the men by a billowing white curtain.
The area reserved for women had been occupied hours earlier by the wives and daughters of the most religious men in the temple, who now huddle around the rabbi’s pulpit. There is a little standing room also, but how much more commitment it would be for the women outside to stand out the prayers; to watch the billowing cloth, and to read, or half-read, to feel interested, or half-interested, to experience a transformation, or only the dull sense of duty.
So the women gather outside. They have raised their families and loved their husbands. They have cooked every Pesach, Passover, Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur meal for the last 30 years. They have knit their family together over bread and memories every Friday night for Shabbat (and the family has come because the food is good and the company is their blood). These women have listened to their sons’ and daughters’ stories from the military, and to their husband’s troubles at work, and the aches and pains of his body. They have tried to help their own brothers and sisters as they’ve struggle with money and the hardships of their own children. They’ve flown to New York and Australia to visit children who left home and made new ones, and they’ve fought back tears at airports as these children have promised they would come home, they would come home, they would come home soon.
And now it is Yom Kippur, and they have gathered outside the synagogue. Going inside to pray feels like too much. Maybe tomorrow night, before the blowing of the shofar. But tonight, they know exactly who they are, and the men inside are happy to know they wait for them in the courtyard.
The women gather outside. They collect into groups, and they gossip. They drag plastic chairs towards the most familiar faces, women whose children went to kindergarten with their own children, whose husbands work together, whose cousins work together. And with so much life in common, they gossip.
The children who have come with their mothers sit on the side and make fun of their parents. They youngest don’t see the fun in sitting at all, and collect into mini-gangs and chase each other around the courtyard, sometimes taunting each other, sometimes holding hands, releasing gleeful yelps and long drawn-out giggles.
These children know it is Yom Kippur, but they do not yet know the need to ask for forgiveness. They are forgiven each day for their wonderful, innocent little sins. And they are blessed also with the ability to forgive themselves.
Ella loosens her little fists, eases her grip on those white metal bars, and moves her head back into the shadows. The women have gathered behind her. The children run past her and around her feet. The men inside have stopped chanting and are praying quietly, rocking gently to and fro.
Ella turns to the women now filling the courtyard. Ruti, Etai’s mother is there. She smiles at Ella with easy kindness. She knows Ella loves her son.
Ella walks over to Ruti and takes a seat between her and a girl who passed through Ruti’s kindergarten 16-years ago. Ella’s Hebrew is improving, so here and there she can understand, here and there she can join in.
The women have gathered around her. She is one of them now. But what a long road it will be, she feels, before she has earned her sense of place among them; before she can share their peace of knowing that her family is grown and strong, that her marriage has survived because the right sacrifices were made, that the food of her kitchen was good, and that thousands of miles away her sons scold their own wives for not being enough like their mothers.
The women are gathering inside her now. Their voices all hushed like muffled heart beats, echoes against her ribs and stomach and throat, against the inside of her skin. Their fingers move inside her, like they have moved over endless bed sheets and washing lines, and dried perfect red tomatoes, and sliced cucumbers and onions, and poured vinegar over cabbage, and fried eggplant on the balcony. Their fingers move like they have moved over challa on Fridays, and though their children’s hair, and like they have moved when wiping away tears, and applying bandaids, and taking pain away by telling stories.
The women’s fingers move inside her, and turn their palms upwards with unspoken questions. Can you do what we have done? they ask. Can you make your heart so selfless as to be what we have been? Will you care for our sons as we have cared for our husbands? Will your sons love you as our sons love us?
The women have gathered inside her now. Ella’s eyes close, 30-years of moving fingers gathered in her heart. A prayer begins to form on her lips.
From the courtyard outside the synagogue in Herzilya, she turns her closed eyes to the sky, and asks forgiveness for all she knows she will never be.
February 10, 2007
fears of our fears
In the confusion of survival it’s hard to decipher where in our drive our fears end and our sincerity begins. Our fears, possessing the sometimes haunted house that we call body, that we call mind. Our fears, so interwoven and hungry that their roots creep deeper into our primal soil while their leaves sprout higher into camouflaged gardens, true cause inconceivable to effect, and so never connected by our consciousness of the daylight hours; kept at bay by wisdom not welcome in the years passing by too fast.
But our third eye knows all, our sixth sense, our heart of hearts, our fears of our fears. An ephemeral finger points a steady hand at unsteady dreams. An unwanted vision deposits wanted clues. An uninvited truth runs its finger down our backs and our hair stands on end. A shiver passes but doesn’t leave. “That cold wind,” we say. Desperation is quite the storm. Brewing deep below the ocean where memories like creatures survive with no light and are sustained with food that would kill anything trying to live life on the surface.
Do you understand what I am saying yet?
Fears of our fears. This is all that can awaken in us the desire to be awakened. Rising like an unforeseen wave to deform sandcastles built too close to stormy waters. Performing a striptease with our gaping neglect of dormant dreams. Neglect revealed through confusion, revealed through epiphany, revealed through tears, revealed through the silence at the end of a day where nothing made sense, and feels like it never will again.
But our third eye knows all, our sixth sense, our heart of hearts, our fears of our fears. An ephemeral finger points a steady hand at unsteady dreams. An unwanted vision deposits wanted clues. An uninvited truth runs its finger down our backs and our hair stands on end. A shiver passes but doesn’t leave. “That cold wind,” we say. Desperation is quite the storm. Brewing deep below the ocean where memories like creatures survive with no light and are sustained with food that would kill anything trying to live life on the surface.
Do you understand what I am saying yet?
Fears of our fears. This is all that can awaken in us the desire to be awakened. Rising like an unforeseen wave to deform sandcastles built too close to stormy waters. Performing a striptease with our gaping neglect of dormant dreams. Neglect revealed through confusion, revealed through epiphany, revealed through tears, revealed through the silence at the end of a day where nothing made sense, and feels like it never will again.
February 9, 2007
Deepak Chopra's Butterlies
I would not call it a life-changing event. I would not call it a turning point. But then, it wasn’t billed as a Turning Point. It was just billed as “An Inspirational Evening With Deepak Chopra.” And that, more or less, is what it was.
I’ll save you the "Seven Steps to Synchrodestiny" and attendant keys to the universe that Dr. Chopra layed out in 2.5 hrs. Because, frankly kids, it’s just not that easy.
But I do want to tell you a story that Dr. Chopra shared, about why caterpillars become butterflies.
Caterpillars are sleepy, relatively local creatures. Most of all, they like to consume. It makes them temporarily happy, and comfortably sleepy. So they consume, and when the happiness from their consumption wears off, they consume more. They are very pretty consumers, some of them.
The caterpillar’s ability to consume increases with age, and eventually, it finds that it cannot stop consuming. It becomes over-consumptive, and nothing can stop it. It consumes and consumes so much that soon, it starts dying on the inside.
But at the same time as something inside it is dying, something else inside it, as a reaction, wakes up. Scientists call these responders “Imaginal Cells.” Imaginal cells are always present in the caterpillar, but it is the death of the caterpillar’s immune system that drives them into a higher state of activity, or creativity.
By creativity, I mean that the imaginal cells recognize that as they are, they cannot survive in this dying body. So they start to seek each other out. They look for and magnetize towards other imaginal cells. When they find each other, they form clusters. They consolidate their ideas, their strength, their plans. And soon they start to merge. They unite.
The dying body around them becomes the nutrients for their growth. They use their former weakness to grow and reinforce their new-found strength. The imaginal cells can live because they help the old, weakened consumptive body to die.
Day by day, the balance shifts increasingly in favor of the imaginal cells. Emboldened, they become even stronger. Soon, they reach a critical mass, and just as the death of the former consumptive caterpillar had awoken the imaginal cells, now the force of the united imaginal cells triggers the next evolution of the caterpillar’s potential: a sleeping gene that awakes in the ripeness of the moment.
This is the rebirth gene. The destiny gene. The never give up gene. This gene, when activated, releases the information on how to become a butterfly. On how to grow wings.
And due to the work of the imaginal cells, this gene unravels now, after lying dormant inside the caterpillar since the day it was born.
And inside the solitary cacoon where the caterpillar has gone to die, a metamorphosis occurs, and a new life begins.
And that’s how imagination manifests through rebirth.
And that’s how a caterpillar becomes a butterfly.
***
(Editor’s note: it is possible that I have taken some liberties in the telling of this story, although in the core I did stick to the facts provided. it is also possible that Deepak has taken some liberties in his interpretation of a scientific process, although he reassured us that he, too, is sticking to the facts. forgive us, and forgive us easily. the caterpillars don't mind. and the butterflies are too happy to notice.
I’ll save you the "Seven Steps to Synchrodestiny" and attendant keys to the universe that Dr. Chopra layed out in 2.5 hrs. Because, frankly kids, it’s just not that easy.
But I do want to tell you a story that Dr. Chopra shared, about why caterpillars become butterflies.
Caterpillars are sleepy, relatively local creatures. Most of all, they like to consume. It makes them temporarily happy, and comfortably sleepy. So they consume, and when the happiness from their consumption wears off, they consume more. They are very pretty consumers, some of them.
The caterpillar’s ability to consume increases with age, and eventually, it finds that it cannot stop consuming. It becomes over-consumptive, and nothing can stop it. It consumes and consumes so much that soon, it starts dying on the inside.
But at the same time as something inside it is dying, something else inside it, as a reaction, wakes up. Scientists call these responders “Imaginal Cells.” Imaginal cells are always present in the caterpillar, but it is the death of the caterpillar’s immune system that drives them into a higher state of activity, or creativity.
By creativity, I mean that the imaginal cells recognize that as they are, they cannot survive in this dying body. So they start to seek each other out. They look for and magnetize towards other imaginal cells. When they find each other, they form clusters. They consolidate their ideas, their strength, their plans. And soon they start to merge. They unite.
The dying body around them becomes the nutrients for their growth. They use their former weakness to grow and reinforce their new-found strength. The imaginal cells can live because they help the old, weakened consumptive body to die.
Day by day, the balance shifts increasingly in favor of the imaginal cells. Emboldened, they become even stronger. Soon, they reach a critical mass, and just as the death of the former consumptive caterpillar had awoken the imaginal cells, now the force of the united imaginal cells triggers the next evolution of the caterpillar’s potential: a sleeping gene that awakes in the ripeness of the moment.
This is the rebirth gene. The destiny gene. The never give up gene. This gene, when activated, releases the information on how to become a butterfly. On how to grow wings.
And due to the work of the imaginal cells, this gene unravels now, after lying dormant inside the caterpillar since the day it was born.
And inside the solitary cacoon where the caterpillar has gone to die, a metamorphosis occurs, and a new life begins.
And that’s how imagination manifests through rebirth.
And that’s how a caterpillar becomes a butterfly.
***
(Editor’s note: it is possible that I have taken some liberties in the telling of this story, although in the core I did stick to the facts provided. it is also possible that Deepak has taken some liberties in his interpretation of a scientific process, although he reassured us that he, too, is sticking to the facts. forgive us, and forgive us easily. the caterpillars don't mind. and the butterflies are too happy to notice.
February 6, 2007
funky fertilizer
i was there when Loz, kid on the right, was born. i was a single child then and he was my first cousin. a year later my brother arrived, Mish on the left, and I was there for that too. i won't tell you how old i was then, but let's just say i was between 10 and 15 years old.
i don't know what funky fertilizer was used to grow these kids. but without anyone's permission, grow they did.
and then they discovered music.
here's where they were on staurday night, shot on their mobile phones, lovingly produced by Loz. (volume up you geriatrics.)
i don't know what funky fertilizer was used to grow these kids. but without anyone's permission, grow they did.
and then they discovered music.
here's where they were on staurday night, shot on their mobile phones, lovingly produced by Loz. (volume up you geriatrics.)
February 5, 2007
first night alone
brushing my teeth I sensed something different inside me. i traced it back to when I got out of the car about an hour before and watched the gate and garage door roll shut behind me.
i was nervous already then, edgy. yes, I could trace this feeling back to arriving home, and wanting to be sure I was safe there.
i had walked into the house, like I do every day. started turning off the lights. Mish wouldn't be home tonight. i had just dropped him and a friend off on Chapel street. they were going clubbing, and then to a friend’s house.
i headed upstairs. closed the door to mum and dad’s room. they'd left for Cambodia last night.
walking to my room I kept peering down the stairs. were those sounds coming from my own feet brushing against the floor, or is there someone else? i looked over my shoulder several times. empty space.
in my room I launched itunes. i launched firefox. quick check of news, of stocks, my blog, sas’ blog, fabio’s blog. i’m nervous. why? i feel my eyes closing. i feel exhausted. tomorrow I have an early start. i should sleep. i let my lids fall.
i open them again. first, i have to call Nepal. I want my friend Summer Bahadur Lama to paint a Thangka for Krivitsky. it’s Krivitsky’s birthday next week, and a great turning point in my spiritual journey has his fingerprints on it. it would be nice for the karma to come full circle via Summer.
i decide to brush my teeth before I call. that was 10 minutes ago. while brushing my teeth, I realized.
i am alone.
i have not been alone in an apartment at night since August when erez left to go to Israel. i joined him a week later, and there started three months of never-aloneness. after that, if I wasn’t with erez I was with dejana and tin. or i was with buddhist monks. or with the hospital staff. or with my parents. or with my brother.
tonight, everyone is away. most are far away.
i am alone. this is me. back to that me. the alone I chose a month ago arrived tonight.
the me I cherished and protected and was proud of for so many years. alone me. me who likes to be alone. me who loves my own place, my own space, my own quiet, my own anonymity. alone me.
i wash my face slowly, listening to the water fall. listening to the sound of my skin against my skin in my ears. i look in the mirror. this is me. alone arrived.
and this is how it will be. and i know this. and i choose this.
i am here.
it’s okay.
i was nervous already then, edgy. yes, I could trace this feeling back to arriving home, and wanting to be sure I was safe there.
i had walked into the house, like I do every day. started turning off the lights. Mish wouldn't be home tonight. i had just dropped him and a friend off on Chapel street. they were going clubbing, and then to a friend’s house.
i headed upstairs. closed the door to mum and dad’s room. they'd left for Cambodia last night.
walking to my room I kept peering down the stairs. were those sounds coming from my own feet brushing against the floor, or is there someone else? i looked over my shoulder several times. empty space.
in my room I launched itunes. i launched firefox. quick check of news, of stocks, my blog, sas’ blog, fabio’s blog. i’m nervous. why? i feel my eyes closing. i feel exhausted. tomorrow I have an early start. i should sleep. i let my lids fall.
i open them again. first, i have to call Nepal. I want my friend Summer Bahadur Lama to paint a Thangka for Krivitsky. it’s Krivitsky’s birthday next week, and a great turning point in my spiritual journey has his fingerprints on it. it would be nice for the karma to come full circle via Summer.
i decide to brush my teeth before I call. that was 10 minutes ago. while brushing my teeth, I realized.
i am alone.
i have not been alone in an apartment at night since August when erez left to go to Israel. i joined him a week later, and there started three months of never-aloneness. after that, if I wasn’t with erez I was with dejana and tin. or i was with buddhist monks. or with the hospital staff. or with my parents. or with my brother.
tonight, everyone is away. most are far away.
i am alone. this is me. back to that me. the alone I chose a month ago arrived tonight.
the me I cherished and protected and was proud of for so many years. alone me. me who likes to be alone. me who loves my own place, my own space, my own quiet, my own anonymity. alone me.
i wash my face slowly, listening to the water fall. listening to the sound of my skin against my skin in my ears. i look in the mirror. this is me. alone arrived.
and this is how it will be. and i know this. and i choose this.
i am here.
it’s okay.
February 2, 2007
Short Story: The Day That I Went Blind
Blindness always seemed to me a silent thing. The lights go out, and suddenly the world is quiet. Let me tell you, sometimes I wish it were true. So that I could drift off into oblivion, evaporate into perfect boredom and give as little as I receive in the minutes that do not matter, filling the days that mean nothing and feel like nothing and will be remembered as less than nothing because there is nothing whatsoever to remember them by.
But no. I hear socks slipping onto my feet and ask them to please, please try to whisper like they used to. Car engines outside my window rip through my darkness like elephants braying into my mind. My fork against my plate is like the wind chimes you have to put away for the winter. All music is unbearable because it makes my heart scream and that thing never shuts up once it gets started. And I live a block away from a fire station, and fire engines are like death, and many times I have wished for the crackling to come get me.
I do like memories though, and the sounds they make.
I like to remember casual glances. The casual glance down east 8th street at a silent sky turning purple and orange over spring’s greenest leaves (rustle, rustle). The casual glance across the bar revealing Saskia’s intense stare that says “please, get this guy away from me” (clink, clink). The casual glance over my shoulder that catches two beautiful brown eyes looking out at me over a math book (skin across a blanket).
The last person I could love with my eyes. This silence cannot be described.
I like to remember the color choices I used to make. Three years ago I spent 45 minutes in Pearl Paints squinting at 457 variations of white. I chose a creamy “Winter Wonderland” for my walls and liked how it contrasted with the nothin’ fancy white of my ceiling. I used to work a lot with Excel and liked to choose my background colors carefully. I would highlight a whole section and click a color square to make it pale blue, or bright yellow, or transitional gray. I often wish now that I could highlight the dark room around my head and click a button to make it fill with red (I’m in a hurry), fill with green (central park for lunch?), and fill with orange (don’t blow out the candles).
When I need a hit of color, apples are an easy thing to remember. The green of the granny smith I swear I can still see. Golden Delicious are a bit less yellow than a lemon, a bit more than lemon sorbet. But what kind of red were the apples from the farmer’s market? “Which are the sweetest in the world?” I asked him, and he said “There, those red ones.” That was last summer.
Other colors I want to forget as desperately as I want to remember. My hair was a rustic red tan and my skin an uncreamy white, my towel was pale blue for my body and ripe peach for my hair, and my CD player had a pale green LCD screen, my bed was terracotta red with a beige duvet and pillows like the 4 o’clock sky, and his body on those sheets was milk chocolate in the winter and coco gelato in the summer, and my toes were always painted in “Rummy,” and Sunday’s croissants were a welcoming tan, and homeless Patrick’s nails were gray and pink at the same time, and my brother’s eyes were bigger and bluer than anything I have ever seen.
But no. I hear socks slipping onto my feet and ask them to please, please try to whisper like they used to. Car engines outside my window rip through my darkness like elephants braying into my mind. My fork against my plate is like the wind chimes you have to put away for the winter. All music is unbearable because it makes my heart scream and that thing never shuts up once it gets started. And I live a block away from a fire station, and fire engines are like death, and many times I have wished for the crackling to come get me.
I do like memories though, and the sounds they make.
I like to remember casual glances. The casual glance down east 8th street at a silent sky turning purple and orange over spring’s greenest leaves (rustle, rustle). The casual glance across the bar revealing Saskia’s intense stare that says “please, get this guy away from me” (clink, clink). The casual glance over my shoulder that catches two beautiful brown eyes looking out at me over a math book (skin across a blanket).
The last person I could love with my eyes. This silence cannot be described.
I like to remember the color choices I used to make. Three years ago I spent 45 minutes in Pearl Paints squinting at 457 variations of white. I chose a creamy “Winter Wonderland” for my walls and liked how it contrasted with the nothin’ fancy white of my ceiling. I used to work a lot with Excel and liked to choose my background colors carefully. I would highlight a whole section and click a color square to make it pale blue, or bright yellow, or transitional gray. I often wish now that I could highlight the dark room around my head and click a button to make it fill with red (I’m in a hurry), fill with green (central park for lunch?), and fill with orange (don’t blow out the candles).
When I need a hit of color, apples are an easy thing to remember. The green of the granny smith I swear I can still see. Golden Delicious are a bit less yellow than a lemon, a bit more than lemon sorbet. But what kind of red were the apples from the farmer’s market? “Which are the sweetest in the world?” I asked him, and he said “There, those red ones.” That was last summer.
Other colors I want to forget as desperately as I want to remember. My hair was a rustic red tan and my skin an uncreamy white, my towel was pale blue for my body and ripe peach for my hair, and my CD player had a pale green LCD screen, my bed was terracotta red with a beige duvet and pillows like the 4 o’clock sky, and his body on those sheets was milk chocolate in the winter and coco gelato in the summer, and my toes were always painted in “Rummy,” and Sunday’s croissants were a welcoming tan, and homeless Patrick’s nails were gray and pink at the same time, and my brother’s eyes were bigger and bluer than anything I have ever seen.
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