i think, therefore i think i am aligned

"the secret behind The Secret", she said, "is that the conscious and the unconscious need to be aligned."

bloody brilliant.

how could i have missed that one? manifesting busily all day, asking for lemons, doused in lemonade... and wondering what the karma i'm doing wrong

a-l-i-g-n-m-e-n-t

you see, the conscious mind is generous with itself. it contains a non-negotiable belief that it is the vehicle through which we understand, desire and acquire things.

wrong.

at this pivotal moment in my argument, my mind flows to a sign i saw in a new york city window on 16th & 5th:

"i think, therefore i think i am."

the true engine of what we want, what we do, why we do or want anything, when it happens, and how we handle the consequences is, according to carl jung, carolyn myss, buddhists, and myself, the unconscious mind.

the conscious can want and want until its gray matter goes pale. unless the unconscious gives a green light, nothing is going anywhere.

and somewhere in my unconscious heart, i've got a light stuck in orange.

and so i dialed my transpersonal counselor:

"hello, i need some help with the invisible forces in my life."

"mmhm."

"i'm doing all i can with the stuff i can see. but i think there's stuff i can't see, and that's where the problems are coming from."

"okay. how's next saturday?"

and that's how, after five years on the loose, and while half way through a transpersonal counseling degree myself, i ended up back in therapy.

really, i'm feeling very good about this.

despite knowing better, i've been applying "i think, therefore i am" software, to an "i think, therefore i think i am" operating system.

good thing my spiritual tech team is on call. ("it's the back-end, stupid")

oh well, back to the drawing altar...

Have i been Byron Bay'd?

I’ve had quite a remarkable couple of weeks. But I couldn’t tell you why.


It’s easier to believe the physicists when they say that time bends, when the eternity of blah I trudged through turns out to have been only a month, and the week since the sun rose again feels like a year at least.

Ahh, hindsight.

I do love retrospect. But when I’m feeling happy, I tend to have less use for it.

If anyone notices, they might want me to delve. What will I say this time? That this time when the see-saw jammed, I happened to be in the up position?


But it’s usually a good sign, if one can’t pin the changing of an emotional season on a particular event. Perhaps it was just time.

It did all coincide with a trip to Byron Bay. Most certainly, this was the trigger. Most certainly, even once you have the carrots and the celery and the onion and the chicken, you still need to add water for it to become chicken soup.


Along the incredibly serene and endless beaches of the shire, I ran almost every day, after not running for five, maybe six years. Some mornings I watched the sea for hours, and my mind didn’t wander too far. I went for long walks, and left my phone at home.

When it was time to fly home, I called the airline and asked for three more days. They were granted.

Shanti, Tamara and I rented this house between the river and the sea. Some nights we slept eight, some three. There were beautiful dinners and lunches, and I followed Tamara around the kitchen like a clumsy apprentice, learning how colours are just as important as tastes. I think she is a magician.

We watched the whole season of Underbelly. In two days.


One by one Team Byron departed for the airport. I was the last Mohican, staying behind to consummate the freedom of the relatively unemployed.

I moved into Byron Bliss House, and never was there an experience more aptly named.

Shanti and Tamara had mingled me in with the locals, and after they left the grassroots warmth continued. Trine cooked a beautiful dinner in her Balinese fantasy house. Mick shared his good red wine.


Yesterday as I ate breakfast at the Bayleaf I felt that warm gush of joy roll in. It had been resting there for days, but in case I hadn’t noticed, it now rose up like a wave and crashed through smiling eyes onto my deep and pebbly shores.

People notice these things. I notice them noticing.


Today as I floated through streets chatting and flirting and texting and planning, I remembered to put it all away and keep the energy inside. I sat down at a table on the sidewalk and ordered my dandelion soy latte. I put everything away, the bags, the computer, the phone, the book. I focused on the sky and the smell of my latte and the feeling in my chest.

I felt a touch of guilt rise up. It always does.

I thought, I should be locked up in a home for happy people.

Then I thought. Nah, I should be free.

tell me again, kureishi

Hanif Kureishi wrote in “Intimacy” that it was disturbing that our illusions are often our most important beliefs. I want to end up writing a book like Kureishi. Love stories are the only dialogue in which people will appreciate being told something they already know.

flight 663

Sharing the sky with a cloud that has lightning in its belly. Watching from my window, maybe an arm’s length away, maybe a mile, lightning collects its charge from wet air and sets the sky ablaze. It’s twenty minutes after sunset. The sky is royal blue, and graying with age. A huge mushroom cloud spreads from my nose to the horizon, high as Jack’s bean stalk, casting a seamless shadow over half a city. It explodes with light. It snaps, spreads, snaps again. A city lights up, then darkens. Lightning is a tag team in the moist caverns of my eerie neighbor. An enormous whirl of white fairy floss, a violence raging in its trickling, suspended dome. Machine guns, cannons, booby traps, all going off, all now, explosion after explosion outside my window. CNN wishes it was here. I have night vision. I have lightning vision. I have fear of wars. The lightning wants blood. We are running away at 300 miles an hour.

numb

often, I find myself quite numb.

numb to crowds. to conversation. numb to good coffee. numb to a perfectly ripe avocado.

i am numb to other people’s news, their engagements, their pregnancies. numb to global warming and bombings and civil wars. numb to my meditation.

i am numb to changes in the weather. it’s mild in cambodia, sam said. here, i never know what the weather is, even when i'm standing in it.

i am sometimes numb to my own ambitions. my check list for today sinks flatly into the journal page, as far away and impersonal to me as the factory in which the ink was made to fill this pen that lies limply in my hand.

i am numb to my thoughts. fickle bastards.

but sometimes, something just breaks on through. like this week i was not numb to the Leonard Cohen interview on youtube. or to the Great Gig in the Sky, which played full volume in my car and transported me home. Or to The Big Chill, which I have seen and seen and will see again, maybe on Thursday.

(i think some people and some things break through because they bring with them no memories, but also no triviality. the two bookends of my shitlist.)

often, i find myself quite numb.

but some days, i like feeling this self-contained.

i am glad i know the comfort of silence.

scientifically nyc

going through old writing wondering if i might stumble across a masterpiece i was previously too immature to recognize (that's what they'll do after my death anyway, so...), and instead stumbled across a better reminder of why i write. i write to remember. many forgotten slices of my life have been replaced in the heart of me today, including this little tribute to my love affair with nyc...

(June 5, 2003: from the Starbucks series)

Just spent Saturday night hanging out with the homeless intelligentsia at my local Starbucks. The ‘bucks on Astor Place is 24-hours and has a complete culture of its own. i would even call it an ecosystem. 60% loners with wandering eyes, writers with pen and paper, geeks with macs, book readers - always on their own; 20% homeless or semi-homeless, because they quite literally live in starbucks and all know each other and have for decades; and 20% people who just want to have coffee with a friend or lover or elicit affair person or stranger.


you know which category i fit into. so, tonight i took my Learning Hebrew books to Starbucks, as i do one night a week, and spent hours talking to myself while memorizing letters and verbs and sentences and conjugations.

it's not that i didn't notice the bulging group of homeless men at the next table (they are all remarkably literate, always discussing literature and politics). it's just that we are all part of the same ecosystem in there, and i don't mind them and they don't mind me. and it's not that i didn't overhear their conversation turn to the moral character of Jews, and the global consequences of an Israel, or fail to sense the tension mounting as two camps emerged among them and dug into their trenches. it's just that i can't go moving tables just because mine is littered with Hebrew-emblazoned scrap paper and textbooks. that would be victim-complexish, and i decided many years ago that i would not perpetuate that particular cultural tendency.

anyway, they noticed me soon enough. "excuse me ma'am, you jewish?" (young black kid who likes to point at people with his umbrella and pretend to shoot them), "yes, i am", "aaa... medaberet ivrit?" (50+ year old, seemingly highly educated, homeless israeli dude who walks slowly with a cane, asking if i speak hebrew), "lo, ani lomedet ivrit" (“no, but i am learning"), "you ashkenazi?" (kevin: intense 30+/40+ irish guy, possibly homeless, definitely unemployed, who is always there, day or night, in the same corner, typing with enormous conviction on his rather nice laptop, always wearing the same clothes, always wearing the same hat, and whom people approach and treat like a Godfather, the don corleone of Astor Place. kevin remembers everything he reads and is an enormous conspiracy theorist. he starts his sentences with "i have information that..." or "i received information that..."), "yes..."

spent the next 30 minutes debating whether the holocaust was the jews’ own fault, whether jews own the IMF, and whether sephardis are truly (Kevin: "scientifically") jewish.

when three more heavily matted and somewhat less domesticated street czars come over and nodded at Kevin, i started feeling that maybe I was a very small, very female fish in an increasingly strange fishbowl. I packed up my hebrew papers, waved my bye byes, and walked the 20 feet to my apartment.

it's great to be home, but it was great to be with them, too. they made my night. and they won for new york city a little piece more of my heart.

i mean, where else is this a normal saturday night for a girl like me?

i really, really, really love this town.

eliminating time

When I got back, she was meditating. I knew she was aware of me, and I wondered if she was conflicted about having disappeared for 40 minutes.

True, we had just met on the plane. True, we may never see each other again. But we had come to the business class lounge together (I could have gone to the BA lounge, but casually joined her at Cathay Pacific instead), and there was something impolite about her having vanished without an explanation. Wasn’t there?

And now she had returned from whatever had taken priority. But by then, I had decided that I would move on, too.

“Hello,” I said, when she opened her eyes. I was packing up my laptop.

“Hey hey…” came the cheery reply.

“I’m going to get moving to my gate. It’s at the other side of the airport,” I said, trying to keep an even tone.

“Oh, right,” she said, and again, I couldn’t tell what she was thinking.

“How was your shower?” she asked, and I liked that she remembered I had wanted to take a shower. And then she asked about the weather in London. Then she made a joke, or maybe it was me.

Anyway, twenty minutes later we were comparing 20-year projections on European society. We disagreed on how the world may rebuild itself after the Ultimate War (would it be with or without religion?). We agreed that a major conflict was possible (“likely”, she said) in our lifetime. I noticed we were whispering, but didn't have to.

By the time we ascended the escalator, her flight was 10 minutes from takeoff. She seemed calm, but I think amusement was just her form of nervousness.

I’m guessing she made her plane. But I still wonder where she went for 40 minutes of our broken destiny. And I wonder what kind of a person thinks of meditating in a crowded, buttoned up lounge, surrounded by CNN plasma screens, moving tickers of down-turned arrows, and the clinking soundtrack of gluttony and restlessness and eliminating time.

Hugs & Kisses from LA: Part II

(Friday, March 28, 2008: from the Starbucks series)

my little house

in the Hollywood hills

On Friday I woke up a woman consumed. I could barely get out of bed. I needed a man.

But, there wasn’t one. So I did yoga. I ate. I had a shower. And three hours later I still hadn’t had a single non-sexual thought. I had so much work to do, a whole presentation to write, and the day was slipping through my fidgety hands. I needed to get out of the house, go be out in the world of people, feel less isolated, stop being a horny divorcee.

So, I went to the one place I knew I liked, Café Vienna on Melrose Avenue, to get some bloody work done.

Melrose

When the sweaty Mexican busboy told me they were about to close I felt my eyes burn. Crying? Are those fucking tears? Okay, this is no average frustrated Friday. I am actually on the verge of breakdown. I need my friends.

Okay, no friends? Alcohol.

Ten shaky but militant minutes later, I was sitting alone on a banquette for seven in a corner bar called The Village Idiot. Whatever. I don’t know why I bothered to look at the juice menu, because when the waitress came back I asked her what went down easier, the Pinot Grigio or the Chardonnay. I was hoping she’d say Chardonnay. She did. And that was how I started drinking again like old times.

the ghost of me in the window booth

Between my first and third glass of wine, I edited four versions of a story called “I Remember,” which recounts the day of my grandfather’s death in 1988. I think I also ate a goat cheese and leek tart, because I remember it arriving, and then it was gone.

“I Remember” was earmarked for submission to the Australian Cancer Association’s short story competition, and the deadline was five days away. Should I be doing this drunk? Probably not. But driving drunk was apparently totally a good idea. So I wobbled across the street and into my bright red rent-a-junk, and drove off at the slowest over-the-speed-limit pace I could manage to…

vroom

... let’s see, it’s Hollywood, it’s Friday night, and in addition to getting laid what I need most is an electricity outlet, wifi, and possibly some coffee. Shit... starbucks.

On my way out of the Village Idiot I had passed a newspaper stand with a host of free publications. The Onion (had read it), Metro (how to have fun if you swing both ways), and LA Weekly with the lead article: “How to Get Divorced by 30: A Beginner’s Guide to Ending Your Starter Marriage,” which was tucked firmly under my arm when I arrived at the vile beige-hued establishment I was meant to be boycotting.

“How do you say a very weak, middle sized, sweet flavoured latte in Starbucksese?”

“A grande, half-caff vanilla latte,” replied the out-of-work actor behind the counter.

“Half-caff? I’ve never heard of…”

“Yeah, that’s what you want right?”

“Okay, yep. That."

I sat down opposite a small effeminate man drawing surrealistic interpretations of whatever in an oversized sketchbook with a mixture of glitter and crayons.

I booted up my computer, opened “I Remember”, and closed it. My work documents got similar treatment, only faster. The LA Weekly article, both hilarious and accurate, was clearly my destiny on this night, so I sipped on my tasty half-caff and sat there rocking in my chair and feeling unjustifiably okay with my life for a tipsy and gleeful little while.

I hadn’t quite finished the article when I felt my mood lift immeasurably. I was now more happy than I’d ever been in my life, or at least in the past week, or at least since my vitamin B-everything cocktail of the previous morning. Anyway, it felt good.

At around this time I noticed the music that was playing, and for a moment had no idea what was going on or where I was at all. It was American cowboy on the plateau, meets 50s broken hearted crooner, meets did my father play this when he proposed to mum?

The little effeminate man opposite me obviously had perked up at the same time… “It is like we are in a Little House On The Prairie, and I don’t know where is Laura…”


He was French. Very French. I laughed with shoulders and everything, but really only at his accent and the weirdness of it all, because honestly, I have never seen A Little House On The Prairie...

I sighed deeply and wondered what was next. Should I try to convert little Mr. Glitter and Crayons tonight?

Jesus, I should never have gotten out of bed.

I went back to the counter.

“Can I have the other half of my caff now?

“Sure…”

my slobbering hounds

my new blog is clean and shiny. won't you come see? it's called Slobbering Hounds, and it's dedicated purely to creative non fiction of 500 words of less.

i feel Firefly has become a little messy with my excuses for not writing. some slices of conversation, a bit of youtube, poem extracts, and other escapism. it's a picture of me searching for inspiration, i suppose. but still, it has lost its original thread.

Slobbering Hounds refocuses me, and lets me practice short fiction without distraction. meanwhile, Firefly will remain my pin board for reportage, 'hey check this out,' and the occasional (very occasional lately) short story.

on monday i leave for nepal, via thailand and india (breathe, breathe). i'll be on the road for a little over three months. i hope to be doing some writing out there. hopefully some of my impressions will make their way to Firefly, and my short-shorts to Slobbering Hounds.

i know i've been unreliable. but maybe i'll pick up some momentum now. i'm for sure taking lots of pens with me. and if the open road wills it, i'll find some paper too, and say more of the things that want to be said.

nothing to declare

arrived home from china a few hours ago. the sleeping giant is not asleep at all, let me tell you. i should have posted from there, so many worthy moments. but i had my notebook, so i'll story-fy things soon.

tonight, as i was sorting through the plethora of coins in my passport pouch, i only vaguely recognized a single U.S. dime. it looked familiar, but also not. it's starting already. i am forgetting.

in other news, i feel i have turned a corner. i can't say exactly which corner it is. i couldn't really name it, yet. but let's just say, something has changed. or more carefully, something is changing. i think i am stronger somewhere. i think a new chapter is emerging.

last dream just now

many of us are gathered in a room. i think all of my friends from everywhere in the world are there, but the lights are down, so it's just a feeling. we are all adults, but in this room we are all children again, and awards are being handed out by our teachers.

"ilana..." there is clapping, and i can see myself from the back of my head, and my teacher approaches with a long rectangular box and opens the lid for me... "we know you always wanted a portfolio..." and inside the box there are long paper scrolls, on which are written all of the words i wrote over the next twenty years, but never recorded or published.

the handing out of awards is over, and my mother approaches the teacher. i am not there but i can see and hear everything. my mother says "tell her not to leave..." and then "...tell her to come home." my teacher says, "no, larisa. i would love to lose her." my mother says again, "tell her to come home..." and my teacher says, "no, ilana must fly. she's the moth and the flame."

que sera sera

Clara pulls up a chair next to mine, and the circle is complete again. She is a very tall woman, and remains gracious despite her years. When she dances, she opens her arms wide as if to hug the entire room.

Seated now, her fingers work quickly to fix the crumples in her dress. Then they turn in onto themselves, chipping away at each other.

Suddenly, Clara turns to meet my eyes with a precise and concentrated gaze.

Is today Wednesday? she asks.
It’s Thursday.
So tomorrow is Friday?
Yes, tomorrow is Friday.
Well then, says Clara, throwing her head back and laughing wildly, GOOD SHABBES!!, GOOD SHABBES!!

Then she stops laughing, and seems lost in thought for a moment. She turns her wide shoulders back to the others in the circle. Some are asleep, or staring blankly at the air in front of them. Others are following the flying balloons with their eyes. The most able reach for them with their feet and hands.

HEY! Clara booms into the circle over the chorus of Toombalalaika. ARE WE GOING TO THE CASINO TODAY? CAN WE GO TO THE CASINO?

The balloons fall to the ground, and a long bright orange scarf comes out. We all hold on and push it through the air together. Clara loses interest and walks away down the hall.

Leila wakes up and finds an orange scarf in her hands. She searches for an explanation.

This is Tuesday morning Dance Therapy class in the Dementia Unit of Emmy Monash. I am doing some writing for them. This is research.

Every song that plays on the stereo is plucked from our youth, danced to at endless celebrations. Those who can sing along. The others sing too, you can tell, but they do not move.

Clara comes back and wants to dance with the man on my left. He can’t stand, so she holds his hands high and sways before him.

The music changes from Jewish folksongs to old classics. I am somewhat relieved. I did not want to cry.

A new song begins. All of a sudden, from the circle there rises a chorus of voices. First three of four, then six or seven, then, I can't believe it, they are all awake, and singing…

When I was just a little girl
I asked my mother
What will I be?
Will I be pretty?
Will I be rich?
Here's what she said to me:

Que sera, sera.
Whatever will be, will be.
The future's not ours to see.
Que sera, sera.
What will be, will be...

When I grew up and fell in love
I asked my sweetheart
What lies ahead?
Will we have rainbows
Day after day?
Here's what my sweetheart said:

Que sera, sera.
Whatever will be, will be.
The future's not ours to see.
Que sera, sera.
What will be, will be.

My eyes burn. Clara opens her arms wide.

a freelancer's afternoon

I move from coffee shop to coffee shop, carrying my white pages. Here I sit by the window, warmed by the sun. Here I retreat to the garden, pretend I am far away. I choose cafes for their music, and their tables. Now I sit on a long, wooden thick plank communal table, drinking carrot juice. French dub plays, and the rhythm of my writing changes. Jeremy calls, and we sigh at the week’s injustices. Ohad sits at a café in New York, and we commune over sms. We are planning our travels this year, next year, and 2009. We are sure things will happen just so. But this is too much distraction. I have work to do, and that’s how I justify my smoothies and lattes and muffins. They play the blues, and it helps me settle. And just then the hostess says, the boss just called, he wants us to close early, I’m sorry. No problem, I say, I wasn’t focusing anyway.

I move on down the street, hoping to find something new.

This is Ormond Rd, Elwood Village. And I come here to keep working on my white pages. The words will come. The words will come.

blood, sweat and salsa

tonight i shed my beginner's salsa skin and made my debut at the intermediate level of Viva Cabaret's salsa classes.

(thank you, body-roll bow, thank you)

and here's what i have to say about that: i smell of the sweat of 30 men right now.

sweaty palm on sweaty palm, sweaty chest against sweaty chest. and i glistened like the rest of them, especially after landing in a bed of moist chest hair when i shanayed half a turn too far.

some people had good sweat smells. they smelled of a run in the park and coming home late and long sunny sundays.

others were pungent. they smelled of windowless hotel rooms and unwashed dishes and arm pits in the morning.

one guy was too short to smell. although he compensated by yanking me around like we were in a yo-yo competition, and I was the yo-yo.

another guy smelled like a vinaigrette of perspiration and CK One. he was the best dancer there and did half his moving on the inside.

it is two hours later now. i am lying on my bed still in my salsa clothes, writing this post. I should have showered by now. i’ll go in a minute.

just one more whiff. one more search for material amongst the smells of these strangers’ day. one more attempt to make a strange moment last, before everyone’s Tuesday disappears down my shower drain.

VIVA Cabaret

blog-writing-block

i have blog-writing-block. the words don't come. all crammed up and cramped inside me. i can feel them below my ribs. a growing auditorium full of everything i don't say. i'll release all that gunk soon enough. for now, be patient my friends. my fingers are poised over the keypad. each nervous twitch is a false start but a good sign...

the delivery

any minute now a large van will pull up outside. inside this van will be two men, sweaty and aggravated from their rush-hour commute to my doorstep. they will smile, though, because this is afterall their job, and in me they expect an excited customer, relieved by their arrival, grateful that this once distant time has come. with their arrival, they know, i will have come to the end of my waiting for the shipment of all my things from new york to where i am now, melbourne, australia.

my shipment. those boxes. the remains of my old life, our old life, our fingerprints intertwined on every box, his smell mixed with my smell, our socks thrown in together, our photos layering each other as we used to lay, folded into each other and asleep. all our clothes folded neatly, our candle holders and ornamets bubblewrapped, padded with care.

the life in these things is thin now. thin and emaciated from lack of sustenance, no love of late to fatten the heart of things in those boxes. no conversation to fill out the empty spaces. no sharing or making of plans to make the layers of tape burst at the seams.

the men will bring them inside. put them there, i will say. they will lay them out.

and there the boxes will lie. like so many caskets. like a memory morgue in my living room.

and this is the end of my waiting. this is what six years of waiting has delivered.

they are here.

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.

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)

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.

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.)