Posts: 60

1. wk 60 - nyc bye

   07.Sep.08, 04:49 EDT
   
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   I was just in Barcelona, but I’m thinking about Lisbon. Lisbon is the name of a book I’m writing, it’s um, philosophy (cackles accepted). Philosophy is a weird form, and it has weird antecedents. It does, I’m sure it does, but I don’t really know what antecedents mean and I don’t really think that’s what I meant. What I meant to say is, that Lisbon, my book, sprung from a strange place (“sprung from a strange place” is not really a phrase I like).
   
   I was reading a biography of the philosopher Heidegger. I can’t really go into it, because I could really go into to it, but basically during World War II, Heidegger was a Nazi. What that really means is a little up for question, but actually not really. It’s like being half-dead. If you’re a Nazi, even kinda, you’re a Nazi. He was. The question for him, after the war, was a simple one. Simple, considering all the great questions around at that time, a time that was such a close witness to a horror. The question was this, can you say you’re sorry.
   
   Heidegger couldn’t and didn’t, and the question then became why. That was the question that started me thinking about my book Lisbon. Why didn’t Heidegger apologize for being a Nazi. The answer was simple. He didn’t want to. He didn’t think he did anything wrong.
   
   This brings me to Karl Rove. There is something strange about him. Regardless of your aisle-seat politically, you’d have to notice it. It is his complete lack of remorse. Now we know in his personal biography there is a terrible tragedy that we don’t need to go into, but could possibly explain this. But regardless the evidence is there. I’m not even talking about remorse for what he has done to the United States, I’m talking about remorse for what he has done to his own political party. Even Republicans admit that their brand is unbelievably damaged. Rove was the brand manager! And get this, for his stellar work, he now is a pundit still doling out advice, as if nothing has happened. No remorse.
   
   My point and this is really the theme of my book, is that modern conservatism, means never having to say you’re sorry. That it is the basis of its appeal. Sorry is for the “elites”, in other words, the people that say they’re sorry. The people that have the “luxury” (i.e. morality, reason) to do so.
   
   This can work for awhile, ‘cept there’s one problem. The threat of remorse, to use a strange phrase, but one I like, tho I’m not talking ‘bout an external threat, jus’ a conscience, means you actually try to get things right. To get things right does matter. Even if you’re never going to say you’re sorry, you still will be in the middle of doing things wrong, and continuing to do things wrong. This is where we are with our election, the results of doing things wrong, leading to a triumph of doing things right.
   
   BTW, this is the last nyc boi at Moli. My friend Evelyn McDonnell was the editor here of the fascinating collection of bloggers operating under the title of The View and she’s now left, so I’m going to leave. I may start nyc boi somewhere else again sometime. Please check my website cutepoet.com in the future for details. At the moment, I need to write Lisbon. Otherwise I’m going to feel some remorse. Hey, it sounds corny, but thanks for reading, nyc boi
   
   
   

2. wk 59 - paris hilton

   10.Aug.08, 01:41 EDT
   
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   This is from memory; and memory is an hour-glass or an egg-timer (what’s the difference ‘tween an hour glass and an egg-timer – has any body ever had an “egg-timer figure”?) stepped on. I was probably about 11 or so, and my parents took me to the Met. That’s the big art museum in NYC not the big opera house in NYC. As an aside, even more than usual, this looks to be a blog of asides. For example that opera house in Lincoln Center, which as architecture, no as ... pudding?, is horrific. Honestly, it should add a brightly-murky pool, and a Holiday Inn sign, and you’d get, well, you’d get what it looks like. Oh, and another aside. A totally different Met, the museum, story  – there’s a picture in there by David (“dahveed”) of Socrates drinking the hemlock that ended his life. I took a date there when I was a teeny, and the security guard came over to us as we were staring at it and whispered in our ears:
   
   “Do you know what he’s saying – I could’ve had a V8.”
   
   Whatev. SO yeah I was outside the Met, the museum, I was 11 or so, and there was a street performer working a small crowd. He wasn’t playing a guitar. He wasn’t a mime, although he vaguely could’ve been one sorta, well sorta if there’s such a thing as a tough mime. He was doing amazing things. I don’t even remember most of them, but I do remember they were amazing. For example he had two people hold a rope and he, uh, walked on it. And um there was this, a little boy, littler than me, ran out of the crowd, and the performer pretended to get scared and ran, ran all the way up the Met. I mean he climbed the goddamn building. That was, uh, cool.
   
   That summer, then again, I’m pretty sure it was that summer, I saw him again, or at least I read ‘bout him. He’d strung a rope between the World Trade Center towers and walked on it – across. His name is Philippe Petit and there’s a movie about him out now. He didn’t fall. Later, the towers did. What does this have to do with Paris Hilton. Nothing.
   
   next week nyc boi will be on vacation so there won’t be a blog, see ya in two weeks everybody, and have a great one!
   
   
   
   
   

3. wk 58 - looking up liberal in the dictionary

   02.Aug.08, 23:57 EDT
   
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   If you look up liberal in the dictionary there are two pictures of me. One is me. One is me in a hat. Under the picture of me is the caption “liberal.” Under the picture of me in a hat is “liberal in a hat.” Obviously, I’m a liberal. I’m saying this because I was joining in myself this week with all the questions, or er, um, fears about why Barack Obama isn’t doing better in the polls. In a generic head to head match-up say between Puck from the Real World (old skool!) and the Republican nominee the republican nominee loses, so hey what gives?
   
   So yeah, here’s what gives, I remembered I’m a liberal and it took me a while to come ‘round. I kept saying the same things other people are probably saying, what is this change of which he speaks. I was full throttle Hillary. I wanted partisan triangulation fat cat donors, all bubba-licious, like. Forget the attack machine, I wanted the attack supercomputer, forget the killer instinct, I wanted killers. That’s it. Just plain killers. Then there was this guy just walking about saying stuff about change and stuff. Change, I didn’t wanted change. I wanted things to stay exactly the way they were, except this time we win.
   
   History is incredibly real. The time machine has a uni-directional lever. As hard as this was for me to realize, we actually are in the moment that is the moment we are in.
   
   Post-race (not tho post-black and white), post-partisan (not tho post right and wrong), and um post-post, in other words, now, somethinc is different, and that difference is what is keeping the election close at the moment.
   
   I know what you’re thinking. I know what you’re saying. I know what you’re whispering. I know what we’re worrying. Black, black, black, that’s the reason that it’s close. Nope.
   
   This season, black is the new ... new.
   
   
   

4. wk 57 - it was hot in the city and my girlfriend was out of town

   26.Jul.08, 23:11 EDT
   
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   It was hot in the city and my girlfriend was out of town. If you think this sounds at all like a noir detective story, I want it to. When it gets hot in my city, New York City, the city doesn’t sweat. It swells. The moisture is sucked into the cracks of the sidewalks and the crevices of the stone, steel, and bricks of the buildings and everything begins to expand. Let’s not even talk about us, the peeps. We’re about to explode.
   
   If ever you could be inside of a tumor, this would be it. If poets are the unelected legislators of mankind, and geography is destiny, than weather is an autocratic conductor; baton raised high to lead us to our fate. Have you ever seen a donkey stampede/scramble to a watering hole, of course not, neither have I. But that’s how it is. You need to find shelter from the swelter.
   
   And I missed her. It was like I was wearing a space-suit of longing, with my oxygen running out. Every blast of my damp furnace city slowly cracking from the swelling wrapped me in a smelly vole fur suit. It was the opposite of itching. I was being constantly scratched.
   
   Ghosts were appearing. Worse than ghosts. Ghost smells. Wasn’t that her? Or her smell? A type from my past, dressed like one of the Pink Ladies gang girls from Grease, like a certain type from my past does. And her, how about her, that’s her isn’t it, the mystery beauty, that either hates me, loves me, or has no idea who I am. Now there’s a game show, or even a reality show, or a game reality show. Mystery Beauty? Hates you? Loves you? Has no idea who you are? The audience gets to votes. She reveals which at the end. I don’t think I want to know.
   
   It’s all drama when the air has left the alleyways of the sky.
   
   
   
   

5. wk 56 - warning spoilers ahead

   20.Jul.08, 00:06 EDT
   
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   If you could look ahead at your life story, would you? Miracles happen all the time, look right there, yeah there, one just happened. And by miracles I just mean surprises. You know I don’t even mean that I just mean ... Recently I was reading about this 100-something year old woman who they did some new fangled (wutz a fangled?) thing on her heart, so she’s still alive, and the reporter asked her somethinc along the lines of what’s your favorite thing about being alive, and she looked back at the reporter like the question was crazy, because it was, she just said, (wait for it) ... being alive.
   
   I got this fortune last week from um, eh, ah, a fortune cookie (really, Mike? that’s where it was from) and mygawd I was happy. It was the greatest fortune I’d ever seen, read, or heard of. And it was mine. Mine! It meant so much to me. It was obviously, obviously my fortune, my future. I was its fortunate son. The fortune, one word:
   
   “Helicopter”
   
   Helicopter. I kept saying it over and over again. Yes, of course. That’s it. Finally. This makes sense. How beautiful. Finally, they are writing these with verve. It’s not like one that tells you “you are not a bitter person.” That’s not a fortune, that’s not a ... oops. On the other side of the lil’ strip of paper -- I was merrily waving it ‘round -- was the actual fortune, and it was along the lines of “you are very respectful to others” that kinda thing. What I had originally looked at was just the English word that fortunes of today (oh those fortunes of today) print and then give the translation into Chinese. Ah, now I know the Chinese characters for helicopter, but I know no more about my future. Which I suppose is a good thing. To quote one of my own poems, which I haven’t done in a blog in a while (see lower right hand corner of blog for po):
   
   when I die/I want it to be a/surprise
   
   
   
   
   

6. wk 55 - Three Word Titles

   13.Jul.08, 02:18 EDT
   
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   I was gonna call this History Is Tired, but it seems like I have a lot of three word titles, so I didn’t.
   
   Maybe to make up for my dis last week of the public (f)art waterfalls in NYC, I went to visit the Henry Moores now statuesquely plopped down in the Bronx Botanical Gardens. They’re good, and they’re good there. Okay that’s done.
   
   The train I took from uh Grand Central Station (ahem, previous blog reference) gave me some weird thoughts. Waiting for it to come back, it just seemed like such a strange business. I mean the physics of it. These huge contraptions pulling cross miles of metal. It seemed, well, crazy. I don’t think if we hadn’t invented them we could have invented them now. And then just writing this, I had this worry, or thought, or worrythought, whatev you want to call it, that the virtual world is beginning to really take over. The very might of the train seemed so well, unreal. Everything is smaller. History is tired. Three word titles.
   
   I get coffee and stuff at a little Japanese bakery in the little Japanese town (block) near my house, and the health department closed it down for some reason. I mean this wasn’t like the place where I got a chilli-dog that once the health department closed it, I knew it would never open again. No, this place was fine. Probably some permit wasn’t posted or somethinc. Anyway, the thing is when it re-opened the Japanese girls and boys that worked there were so ashamed, they could barely look up. I was dudes, dudessess, this is America, forget it, remember, “oops!”
   
   Walking out with my small coffee black, I passed a man yodeling, but a modern kinda yodel, loud, piercing, abrasive, the woman walking in front looked back nerviously, at me, no, sorry, not me yodeling, and then all of a sudden, he started to get an answer, kidz through open windows of cars, yodeling back.
   
   A yodelophany.
   
   
   

7. wk 54 - don't go chasing

   05.Jul.08, 23:30 EDT
   
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   This is hard for me. You know when anyone says somethinc like this, without a particular dirty context, they’re probably lying. What I’m saying is the equivalent of this is gonna hurt me more than it’s gonna hurt, but, ah, you know that’s not true. So, anyway I’m answering a question that Moli View editrix and writertrix Evelyn McDonnell asked via email.
   
   Ev, they suck.
   
   Yup, they suck. They suck. They suck. They suck. What am I talkin’ bout. Yes, some of you might be guessing right. The waterfalls. Or a better way to put this, the “so-called’ waterfalls. Ya know the public art project, currently up in nyc, of man-made waterfalls in the East River.
   
   Look, I basically am one of the dullest people on the planet (also as I’ve shown already one of the most disingenuous -- a word I barely know the meaning of and certainly could not spell without spellerama (spell-check) --, as least for this blog). I have one of those uni-interests that can overwhelm life’s fine varietals (huh?). Like a uni-brow over the visage, my sphere is a spear, thrown bloody and sharply aimed at one target. Art. I don’t even know what it means and it means so much to me. (“I wanna know what art means. I want you to show me” – thanks Foreigner.)
   
   Art. Art. Art. Art. Art. Art.
   
   Yeah, you get it. I don’t have to go on. You know what I’m going to say next.
   
   Art. Art. Art. Art. Art. Art.
   
   So, I’m for this. I’m for this. This thing. This thing. My lovely former Republicon now It-Depends-dent mayor (the only Republicon I’ve ever voted for); I’m for him too. I love this guy. The Playa Maya. He goes away every weekend to his own freaking island. He doesn’t live in Gracie Mansion (the mayor of nyc’s residence) because it’s, wait for it, too small. He reminds me of the Patricia Neal character in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Remember, when the writer decides he’s gonna do without his “decorator” she starts to write him a check, and he asks what she’s doing, and she says writing a check, you’ve seen me write checks before. Mayor Bloomberg is like that (I really think he’d be a great VP choice, Florida, Florida, Florida.) So he’s for these waterfalls, and damnit, I’m for him.
   
   But, Ev, they suck.
   
   Note to selves when makin’ art: sunsets, babies’ bottoms, the insides of thighs of brunettes, and oh yeah, especially, waterfalls. They’re great places to visit, but, ah, basically that.
   
   
   

8. wk 53 - not for children

   28.Jun.08, 23:16 EDT
   
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   Sometimes New York City is so beautiful I want to fuck it. Okay, this is not for children. You know what, not everything is for children. The question is where is the pussy. The answer is simple, Grand Central Station. The other day I was walking downtown towards it, and I began to feel the same way I feel at an exhibit of Georgia O’Keefe.
   
   The king kong of all clichés, is that New York is full of skyscrapers, and well you know what they represent, ya know. But NYC as a city is actually very potent for those interested in the more curvy gender. The insanely great Frank Gehry has just built one of his contraptions just off what I call the West Side Highway, but I don’t think the West Side Highway is there anymore, and I’m just waiting for some skatekid to board all over it (ah, please guys/gals don’t do it, this is just a joke, and you will hurt yourself bad.) It’s for the mogul Barry Diller’s headquarters for his company of internet sites, and looking at it, all I could think of was the wrap-dress. Barry’s wife Diane von Furstenberg designed that.
   
   There is a certain dusky, some might say smoggy (but ny stylie, not la), thing ‘bout my city at a certain time of the day, afternoon, late afternoon, that is well, like mascara. The city is so sensual then, and stares at you through its big beautiful smoky eyes, like to say, I’m staring at you through my big beautiful smoky eyes. That’s when I want to push up against it, and whisper with a hazy sexy urgency.
   
   “I want us to kiss, without knowing each other’s names.”
   
   It’s not character that’s destiny, although character is not a cartoon, it’s anonymity. The hero of the brilliant television series, Mad Men, set in New York in 1960, is living under a completely self-assumed identity. He has to tell someone who he really is, and that someone is a woman (uh not his wife), a working single woman living in the city (there’s actually two of them). His wife is at home in suburbia with the kids. But is who he really is, who he really is? The difference felt between the city and suburbia is one of the themes of Mad Men. For some men in this city that’s what it’s all about; you’re nobody, but a beautiful nobody, until you go down to Grand Central and get on board. That’s where babies come from. And that makes this, after all, for children.
   
   
   

9. wk 52 - self–ish

   22.Jun.08, 00:28 EDT
   
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   My “luvuh” (I call her that to bug her cuz she dunno like “girlfriend”) uses the xpress “ish,” as in “I’m not mad at you–ish.” I’m stealing it for this blog, the 52nd. Yes, I have written one a week for a year. Yay, me–ish.
   
   I was asked if I had any words of wisdom about my blogging experience now that it has reached an anniversary, and I knew that the question had a tongue-in-cheek vibe. Pretentious, Moi? Words of wisdom, do I have any words of wisdom, do I HAVE ANY WORDS OF WISDOM. Does someone who has written a blog for a year believe he has any words of wisdom? Ah, yeah.
   
   Of course the most famous wise man in literature was a fool, Polonius from Hamlet, he of “neither a borrower nor a lender be,” it turns out it’s quite alright to do either, and “to thine own self be true,” which when you think ‘bout it means what exactly? Wisdom can sometimes be attributable to experience, but Thoreau was quite profound on this, he said “nah.” My friends, the current Republicon candidate for President is running an experience campaign. I’d just like to remind him that Donald Rumsfeld, the man he calls “the worst secretary of defense in history” was also the most experienced secretary of defense in history when he took over the job; he’d already had it before!
   
   So, as is typical of me, I’ve had words of wisdom about blogging, before I did it, and now that I’ve done it, I have not one jot (whutz a jot?) more than I started. I really am a fruit fly suspended in a jar of gelatin (I have no idea what I’m talkin’ ‘bout). Did you know that fruit flies move in the opposite direction of gravity. If you shake a jar they’re in, they’ll move upward instead of falling down to the bottom of the jar. (Thank you The Internet, or erm The World Wide Web, I hear hundreds of people are “on it” every day).
   
   I am a poet. And out of that comes all this stuff. I make music, movies, philosophy, criticism, novels, plays, stories, and debates in bars, and uh, whoopee (whut?). I mean blogs, Now I do those too. (Oh yeah, and poems.) I like Moli because it is new and growing and I like things at the beginnings like Silent Movies, and Early Rock ‘n Roll (when the electric guitar was just invented), and any kind of stuff that is going on before grown-ups find it and begin their jihad. (Look out for the word-ish, “monetize.”)
   
   The best way I can describe my blogging experience is this–ish. It’s a scene from one of my favorites films, The Horse's Mouth, from 1958 starring Alec Guinness. I’ll sum the scene up and maybe mangle it a ‘lil bit in the truncation but basically a sculptor finds out an artist has found a place to work (it’s actually in some collectors’ luxury apartment while they’re on vacation) so he proceeds to “crane” in a giant piece of marble to this space so that he can work also, but it’s so heavy that it drops through the floor to the space below. There’s a pause, the sculptor jumps down into the hole, and then you hear his voice,
   
   “It’s o.k. I can work down here.”
   
   
   

10. wk 51 - the myopia of god

    15.Jun.08, 01:49 EDT
    
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    I almost called this “the myopia of utopia” cuz, um, it rhymed, but that’s what I wuz burbling ‘bout last week. It can’t jus’ rhyme, it’s gotta mean somethinc too, and the “myopia of utopia” means nothinc. Sayin’ utopia is myopia (I do like to say it a lot tho, cuz ya know, it rhymes), is like sayin’ the sky is azure (er, blue).  In fact of point (-y head), utopia is practically visionary in its blindness. It nose (knows) that it’s ideology, it doesn’t claim to be anythinc else. It is perfectly happy to be ‘bout perfection.
    
    But god, all-knowing, all-wise god, needs to get some glasses. (Would you stop picking on god Mike? I believe the idea can defend itself, and if it can’t, ah well).  BTW, notice I’ve decided not to capitalize god. How ‘bout politicians etc. and preacher-sellers, not capitalizing on god. Hmmmm?
    
    But this is not even what I’m talkin’ ‘bout. What are you talkin’ ‘bout? O.k. I’ll tell ya. There is always this game ‘bout what separates us from, well, from what we’re separate from. In outré words, what is it, that is, IS, a humane bean (see Tylerism). It is a truth universally acknowledged that it is almost impossible to do somethinc that would seem to be, well, not so impossible (um, possible). That is this. That. Is. This. Colon. (:) (not a smiley) (-:
    
    Knowing that ...
    
    Other people are other people. Huh? Other people are different than you. Whu? Other people have had different experiences. Really? Other people have different points of view? Mygawd!
    
    Humane beans have trouble with this. I have trouble with this, and I spend a lot of time, a lotta time, on it. Yet this is it. This is the winner of the above game. This is what separates us from what is separate from us. We can do it. To be a humane bean is to know this, even if it is almost impossible (not possible) to act on it. (Action is not complicated, or usually is, pause, not.) God (only capitalized cuz it’s the beginning of the sentence) is of course the idea that you don’t have to confront this idea. It is faith that casts aside the doubts that the differences between people provokes. This is the myopia of god.
    
    In this menagerie of words above, all the hoots and hollers, and cackles and quacks, of the farmyard (my confusing prose) are two. One, on this day that celebrates Dads, I’d like to give a shout-out to my Dad, who brought me into the world, after he already brought me into the world, by talking about the world as the world talks, in a cacophony, and yet still kept a safe-feeling focus, a moral connection, as the differences collide.
    
    And two, as the two presidential candidates collide one seems also to understand this, and one, my friends, no matter what he purports, simply, temperamentally does not. Yes good fences, make good neighbors. And good speeches are given by good listeners, that’s how they know what to say.