19 Jan notes

YOUNG WOMAN: Why do we have to stop loving people?
OLD MAN: I forget.
THE CHORUS: You are an animal with a mind touched by gods.
YOUNG WOMAN: All of us are.
THE CHORUS: If they don’t love you back, if they don’t love themselves, if they’re not the idol you’ve carved them to be: you are alone.
YOUNG WOMAN: Teach me to love and not mind.
THE CHORUS: You are alone.
OLD MAN: I love you.
YOUNG WOMAN: Do you?
THE CHORUS: Let it go, young woman. Let him try.

heavy hearts subway nights whine whine whine

(first book)

I bought you a winter edition of a poetry journal from a town I loved as a teen. The end of it had really great content about the elegiac nature of this decade’s poetry and I know upon reading you would have expanded in a great burst, like your eyes were different. The things you’d see with them were supposed to show you the cobwebs inside your head. Not vanquish them magically, not distract you with abstract quotes and fleeting flare ups of whatever it is you’re addicted to. They were only supposed to assist you in Seeing them.  So you can stretch up and clean them with open windows and fresh air. So you can change the linens, blast music, and while you’re at it, clean Everything. Throw 3/4 away, that’s the rule. Or you can just know about them. Maybe not yet. Is it too cold out to take on more? Is this life? Is this it? Sleep first, and whenever you’re ready, reach for me.

 

(chorus)

If I’m awake I will take your hand and we don’t ever have to look back. The timing: the gamble. It’s up to Morpheus.

 

(bridge)

If I see you, I’ll give you the book.

 

(epilogue)

But I think it’s too late, because I don’t think I want to look at you, much less carry you Daily in my head… or your book in my purse.

A note (9.1.12)

OUR REGENCY | A frightful possibility for two girls afraid of fully blooming.

NOTES NOTES NOTES 02.01.12

WHO ARE YOUR GODS? | There was a thumbprint on the shirt you wore last night. Underneath it was the sky.

 

24 DECEMBER | I apologize for not hearing you; the leaves are so loud and the fallen trees really needed someone to be with them today.

 

I HAD THINGS TO SAY | But I was held mute by your absence.

 

DEAR WOMAN CONTINUED | I forgot to keep hard. Heres my belly, have my heart too

 

ARES AND APHRODITE | You make me so fucking mad. Or maybe I do. If you walk away I’ll die.

notes from december

CHURCH AT LAFAYETTE AND ST.JAMES | Unwrapped, your makers appear so needy; “we are unworthy”, “forgive us”. You sad silly men, it’s not too late.

 

DEAR WOMAN | I tried showing you my soft belly. Now I will try being hard.

 

BUT I AM HERE | The salve and the beauty is too much. What I want is to feel

 

FOLLOW THE GOLDEN THREAD | It hasn’t broken, it was forgotten.

 

WATCHING | I forget your blood is for your heart. It tastes like opium

 

7 DECEMBER | Waking up to a gray dawn is for heroes.

 

LIVING IN BED STUY | Trees are always trees

 

MACEDONIAN DIRT | I still have never heard the sarissas sing. Tonight, they will listen to me.

 

GOING DOWN | I’ll tell him ‘hi’ from you.

 

BROOKLYN HARBOR | I hoped to meet sea people. The ships all left for Rome.

 

bus to olympia journals

to gaze upon a lagoon made for giants being cradled by the oldest (strangest) mother all lit about by the advent of night means the greatest unloading my body can ask for. i am alone but this feels how i imagine music to a musician. there along the coast the ridges and blue mass that i’ll never touch have married this sea. is it a lake? a canal? no matter. the country bus is rocking and in front of me, one seat ahead, i see jeffrey’s head toss and sway. so i’m not alone then. to the right is a grandmother with clasped hands and a scarf knotted so pristinely she must have lived this style for half a century. so i’m not alone. but he sleeps and she is dreaming with her eyes open.

to the left of me is a woman who told me ‘signomi’ when i sat, because she will not move her splayed knees to give me my half of our two seats. Well. a left lower leg asleepnumb and a spine curled toward the aisle like an eel is the least of what i can offer my elder. and a greek woman. and a kind, warm, alive woman. …even if the bus ride is 5 hours long and i have to pee.

to the left of us both is this enormous wall that blocks any setting sun on the other side of it. these cliffs jut and build and i’m almost aroused. something inherently sexy and masculine about those spears of cypress taking up white space. sharp, hard edges make me feel something like how i imagine being impressed feels. it’s a fondness and attraction to something different from you. i’ve never in my life known such vigor as the angles and brute strength that make this display all mountain.

I’VE never taken half the horizon without a second thought. is this what it’s like to be a man?

all i know for sure is that when a valley appears, or some other such break in the massive hard wall, i feel like i want my bones buried here. if i had a will begun, i’d demand my bones or ashes to be returned deep into the hills and earth here. finally reunited with the heroes that have blazed inside my heart, whispered near my temples; who opened and kissed my eyelids so i would look at those things they all long to see one last time.

one more time.

wait for me.

whoever i can possibly love in this life will have to share me with a humanity that has not given up for a good amount of thousands of years.

it’s orange now and the lake or sea looms sweetly to the right, past the old woman, who is sitting up and seeing more than anyone else on the bus. including her snoozing husband. she knows everything. i just know it. well, i feel it. she knows everything and she is looking. i am guessing and maybe projecting but it seems like the peaks and the deep female dips far far far to the right, beyond the water, when touched by our journeying eyes, pleases her. still she looks. her head tilts, swivels. her core twists, tenses, bends into the seat and up off it.

her mouth hasn’t told me a thing, but it is soft. her hands are strong. what is it that her eyes are telling her mind?

what can Sophia herself glean from a path of the country bus ride to pyrgos from athens for what must be her thousandth time upon it?

Journals 02.10.11

(MUNICH, Journals 02.10.11)

So today is the last day of Oktoberfest – closing night as it were. And what a night it is. I feel like I’m maintaining a good balance of being practical and realistic in how I’m seeing this whole ish. On the one hand it’s an interesting cultural tradition – who of us finds foreign the image of a great Hall filled with swarthy men in leather all splashing their great 3-litre steins about? Come on, we’re at Long tables. It’s pretty western. The crossroads of our baby steps into civilization and tribal war fools way up in the north. Of course, that’s if you’re centered in the Mediterranean, where the legwork was done in the first place. It’s funny considering the current climate and the super white culture thumbing their noses at modern Greece – in their defense, they’re making bank on the financial misfortunes of Greece, so I’m not sure why they’re complaining. I think it’s unkind to be an asshole when you have the clear power in a dynamic.

A couple of quotes re: Greece from today’s tents and festivities:

“We gave them too much money!!!!”
“Italy, Greece, eh! Same, yes? …What?!”
“Oh Greece? Greece is nice for your girlfriend. You take your girlfriend there. She likes Greece. Me, I don’t care.”

Scary! I can’t wait to open my lungs in Ελλάς again. Meteora views, mountains of gods, the greatest oldest gift of reprieve; the olive tree! The olive branch. Oh Αθήνα, no wonder we chose you. ‘I’ve felt the wind on my cheek coming down from the East and thought about how we are all as numerous as leaves on trees and maybe ours is the cause of all mankind: get loved, make more, try to stay alive!’ (JL/Rilo Kiley)

Whoops, train of thought interrupted by Jeff and brother.

Anyway – on balance and perspective in Munchen for the first time at the most touristy possible event (although, I guess it keeps out the more timid tourists):
So on the one hand, I played along and had fun – embodying ‘judgment-free’ as far as I could muster – and I do admit, I’ve seen a ton of brotherhood or fraternity and not a SINGLE fight… all tense moments were diffused almost instantly. Like a spell. A clap to the shoulder. These men really love each other I guess.
On the other hand, I hate beer and binge drinking when they’re put together. Why do I travel? I head out for adventure – not to keep my head in the clouds. Well, rather, in a beer haze with thousands of people I’ll never recall! I’d trade all of them for a single person or even other animal that I can connect with strongly and care for. And in the case where it’s “not that deep” (T.Sias) at least some levels of pleasantries need to overlap. Aesthetic, mental, spiritual, emotional… like, I want to hear news of other lands. I want to know the stories of what happened here! I need these borders to picture a narrative for this city and land. So I can imagine and feel. Oktoberfest is very unsettling. It’s like this crazy limbo realm. The rest of Munich is gorgeous and the people seem well-kept and like they have a ton of great stories to tell. It’s just unnerving to me when I feel like this massive volume of people have nothing to actually say to me, or to someone who I resemble enough to tell. To be fair – they do have things to say, I’m sure. Not now. And not like they’d remember. Time and place for these things.

‘I remember, I remember.’ – The Unicorn, TLU / PSB

To be fair – I guess for some, a story is still a story whether you remember it or not – the delivery, the content, the context, the audience, etc… Is it? Maybe not for me. I guess the default answer is: [Maybe It Is] For Some.

Someone must be out there or has been or will be who doesn’t live inside the narrative. What a terrifying, inhumane world. I mean, isn’t that all we are? Not ‘all’ in a diminishing way. Everything we are. It’s beautiful. Our big collective story? Isn’t it the one thing we consciously agree on by default? The day you turn your narrative off is the day you’re lost. Do you come back? That’s a fantastic story, if so. If not – same as so much dust and matter breakdown. No humanity doesn’t equal nothing, it simply leaves out the light in our heads.

Okay, enough. Always on the move. Thank god. I don’t exist to follow around aimlessly. Not for nothing. And I certainly don’t leave a career obligation behind (or spend a good chunk of money) for it!

Auf wiedersehen!

More Notes 12.11

BON IVER or THE BULGING EYES | There’s a bitch that lives near Akropoli. Two years pass and she thrives still as her houndsight declines. The fog that clouds her globes seems painted on as thick as a fired glaze when I see her. She whines, chuffing and smiling at the baguette I am sure to give to her. I play with her ears and can’t look her in the eye, cooing instead to her about snow globes and wish her a fine winter. Tomorrow I depart for the dark side of the earth.

NOT SO BAD AS SUFFERING GOES | The airbus captain is bleating about Scotland and my self-education in Klassische Musik on Kanal 4 – was that haunting song just now Debussy, Vivaldi or Beethoven? Did the Shangri-La’s sample it in ‘The Past, Present, Future’? – is interrupted by his sawing speech in three languages. He sounds distracted, like a man bored with an engagement but unable to stop explaining just how dull it is. My ears bleed as I become a ticking Alice fallen down a manhole of metal grates and now the things I considered important are becoming tinier in the distance.

MIRROR | A blonde German stands, flicking the long wolf mane out of his eyes. Pride becomes profanity when he turns to the overhead compartment. In his palm-sized bald spot I can read my reflection like text and it spells cold death.

SPANISH WINE | You handed me words like ‘jammy’ so I handed you a bottle.

THE EMERALD CITY | Our dreams have wisps of smoke escaping them as in a volcanic rock; some even give off the scent of sulfur. How long will you be your own wife?

A CHILD IS A CHOICE |

I don’t want to know, I think.

Then a boy with the gift of conversation pulls it hand over hand from my lips:
I’m not love.

A day after, fallen spell to ouzo and wind, wet hair and menstruation, the thought slithers up through the cracks in my brain:
You’re not my home.

Who can push away a gust of wind? What fool denies a tidal wave it stands in the shadow of? Any man with even thinnest faculty can’t deny fire as his skin pops in the flames devouring the stake.

We are never born impregnated with children but little winged seeds are sown inside us from thousands of years ago, hundreds, decades, months, today, right now.

SOMEONE ELSE’S WORDS |

“No, I can never regret. I can feel sorrow,” the Unicorn offered, “but it’s not the same thing.”

I remember flashing glinting blades. I recall torn muscle. I can hear the bowing of wood and the violent snapping. I recall obligations when they were wrong. I remember the work when it was right but I especially remember how it didn’t feel any less callous. The glory of duty was in a spirit or a mind, never in the flesh. But weren’t they bound? It was a mortal time when we knew how to feel properly and our gods loved us or didn’t, but it was not a joke. It was not cute. There was no metaphor. I remember whispers and feather light touches on my temples, smoothings of my brow, the love of a god. I remember the jubilation of piety.

from 12.11 notes (just one. a long one. not actually a milosz ‘note’)

A LOCKSMITH |

I feel the locks inside me that grate and grumble in metallic thunder when they are opened: city gates being rolled and absorbed into the heavy walls. Sometimes the key is in a lesson: when you learn it, a lock pops open and you discard the precious weight. Sometimes it’s a series of keys and they’re hidden in dreams or left behind in stories. Someone left you a trail of paper, a trail of bread crumbs, a trail of blood. A trail of themes or a code in an alphabet or in the accents on a language.
Some locks will only start groaning and creaking open when you stand in the exact spot you are meant to, at the exact time. If you listen, sometimes the locks will send you hints on a wind.

Some, bound by rust of millennia, don’t want to be unlocked now.

There are locks simply set for the future, as on a timer. When you pass the year, they go off like an alarm.

And some locks, from just this week or last year or 5 years ago, are not difficult to open but you neglect them because it’s easy to forget what has just happened.

Notebook dump 301011

(i ripped off the Notes format from Uncle C[zeslaw Milosz])

Notes from Delphi

AN INTERNET MUSEUM | Hurry, the future generations will remember only the Minoans.

LADYFRIEND AND TRAVEL | Of course I love you like a woman. Finding Mt.Parnassos parlays your eminence.

DELPHI | The temple builders would keen at our mournful pilgrimages.

ORACLE | How may I contibute best to what is Good? Not right, not just, not great

ΑΘΗΝΑ OVER ΠΟΣΕΙΔΩΝ | Keep your seas with its greed and tumult. When our eyes lay upon her silver and green we tremble at our place in eternity.

STRETCHING | From a mountain view of olive pastoral, the past and present tug at me without respite. I don’t mind.

TO A PAINTER WITH A POET HEART AND PHILOSOPHER MIND | There is something bittersweet about all the elderly climbing paros and marble steps all over Greece.

ADVENTURE | Terrain feels familiar, it’s mapless navigation without a tongue that requires hawk eyes. Sometimes courage, sometimes luck

NOT KNOWING | Denial can be good for us. Tell me that story again.

KIND OF LIKE THE BIBLE TRANSCRIPTION | The father reads to his sons who are busy looking around with wide eyes and only hear every seventh word.

BONE LONGING | Bury me with the others. Let these hills and rocks hold me forever after.

UNICORNS IN HELLAS | When mankind come with their gods and commune, humans are good enough.

Notes from Frankfurt

NEW SUN, FOG, LITTLE CITIES | I did not run away to the beach at an August dawn, but the view from above Frankfurt in October is orange magnificence.

28 October, Syntagma Sq again

Prime Mins told a lantern-jawed man ‘Oxi
Antigone told her bethroned uncle she could not abide
My tongue has always been perched upon by a little ‘No’.
Saying ‘yes’ is like taking from Atlas his world. A yes is almost always harder won.

29 October, 6 flights in 20 hours

My envy is desire is coating my insides until the howl in my throat is a single thread away from snapping and breaking the world again.

I’ve learned to train my screams to lie down but doing so has left a thousand ripped cords in my chest.

I suspect those fleeting moments of animal purity –
Ragged breath is a reliable indicator –
Muscles and blood and hot flesh – keening in the sun, gulping sweet silver water – grips on wrists and manes being steered – the biting and any or all fighting – views of expanses on high that tan your soul like a hide – the praise of your imagined or truer tribe/s – being or having birthed –
all blood and all passions that are not simple bastards –
are not unlike the final death a body receives. Mankind had embraced the eternal calm, chiselled away a Heaven for themselves where the peace of stillness could remain a wall around their souls forever.

My dualism begs the opposite.

In my life, those moments are the winged freedom which must be tamed at all costs – and still they pierce my veil often enough that I am positive I am alive.

We have elevated our story by the grace of the right words and imagination. Haven’t we?
There are scales and moderation and halves of wholes.
But when we can teach our machines to do as we do, when our dream scape is charted by metals and rubbers, when nothing is sacred, we are not more than masters of robots. Overseers of our most abstract, reproduceable variables. And honestly, who wants to be the same as everyone else? Who wants to be a machine?

To be human and not an animal is to deny our mother and father. Why bother rising above other species and claiming a throne just to die? Just to bleed all our sweet sick vibrant blood away?

No. For humans, the struggle to contain the burst of noise from your throat is our finest gift. We love our screams. We will never be only screams as long as we live. I maintain that my imagined/projected epilogue is like one grand return to that old, wild song.

The chittering, the wailing, the crowing and the braying. The baying and the thunder of the purr; the thunderclap of the snarl. The shrieking and the echoes and our ringing out in eternal howling is our dearest reward.

If I am a blade of grass and last long enough to sun, drink and be whipped into bending by a wind I’ve known a hundred times before, my every fiber will lift its singing to join the choir of the field, lawn, or clump.

For me, this prize is enough.

For me, no joy and calm and peace in an embossed stele, that is someone else’s relief.

For me, the joy and calm and peace live every day in the tender release of your sigh – in using my hands to see colors – in the first few bars of almost every song I know – in an alphabet that knows me and cares for the world I love so dearly.