Entries tagged with the city

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hod sheb'yesod, or, the splendor of bonding

Last night Di came over and we cleared the air by virtue of a bro'down, him kinda talking me into the ground a bit but eventually me too stoned to care too much, glad to be sliding back into more normal friendship with its conative powers. I woke up on too little sleep (completely tore up by that boxing fight that was on last night blaring out someone's window, tons of yelling and street noise into the night, Critter getting into it, ugh), Di already left the sofa to go surfing, prayed and had a nice walk with Critter and then off to a family lambroast for Greek Easter out in Brooklyn at a cousin Markos' place. The sky was azure, lots of family scattered elsewhere but my cousins down from Cambridge, my dad's Cousin Stephen manning the lamb which I couldn't (or, at least, wouldn't) eat, my great-Uncle Yannis the patriarch of the family (in good health despite oxygen) and his partner Kristina, spanikopita and touropita and choriatiki with dressing Yannis made and koulourakia, dry red wine and a keg in the corner, little past-toddling-age bebes everywhere, so much beauty and family joy. I was a little nervous 'bout showing up the sole representative of my more "immediate" family, bearded and all, but instead I just got the warmest love (& Yannis, white-bearded himself, complimented my beard, in a way that made it no issue at all). Now I'm home body aching, impending doom about work but at this point I'm inclined to just enjoy the evening and banch it out later this week.

Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone.

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let the hard blue sky fall right through me

Sometimes akresis is so much more appealing than taking care. I rode my bike to the train today in hopes (in part) of kicking up my bodily/cardiac capacity as I gear up (whatever) to quit smoking. I already don't really want to but there it is on my calendar, mockingly cheery in purple ink. It's the equinox today, Rosh Chodesh on Thursday. Today the river stank beautiful and brackish, eddies or whirlpools gathering speed and running upstream it looked above 96th, huge ships docked and polarized clouds. Yesterday I lay on the warm grass up on a hill in Morningside with Critter, felt the mana pour in, springtime.

Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone.

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stubble and stippled light

Definitely, finally praying and practicing helped. But my little evening walk with Critter just let it all soak in and snap into place: the golden summer light, my new-to-me gay neighbor on 122nd so handsome he makes me blush, dog conversations on the stoop (Critter eating fortune cookie crumbs from underneath Mac's chair and Mac saying something like, "Critter wants to hang out here with the men but he can't cos he don't have no nuts!"), picking stinging nettle from the weed-patch fence near the garden (my neighbor Mac again, asking do I know what this is and am I gonna eat it?) I do love living someplace where I can walk around with a weed in my hand and people wanna know if it's dandelion or turnip greens or what and am I gonna cook it. I put it on my altar instead, this towering spindly nettle. I'm glad I don't look a total mess in my (T's) SO.DO.MY shirt and green shorts but I should remember to put a little something on it now that I've got this hot neighbor! We dog-talked cos he's got a dog and I recounted Critter's slutty adventures in the dog park. "He had a real power-bottom morning," I said. "Sounds good to me," new neighbor said, smiling up at me from his crouch on the ground, screwing nails into wood planks.

And now, I need some yoga, and a hyssop bath, and to decide whether or not to go out tonight.

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pumping (my heart)

Today after I went to the gym for an hour and a half I came home wanting nothing more than to eat a big bloody piece of meat, so while my clothes were spinning I walked to the meat market near the train and got some rib-eye, a bag of potatoes and some kale. Then I was struck with the ethical dilemma of how I was gonna eat steak and potatoes without butter (or, without butter and cheddar mashed up into twice-baked potatoes), but I called my mom for moral support and went for it. Instead I fried up some onions in the steak juice, poured in some brandy and didn't miss the mother's milk at all.

The air is light and the light is stretching slow and sparkly this spring, the tree-buds coming out so green I wish early spring could just dilate and dilate out for another little while. The whole way I inhabit my body + the earth changes, opens up. Something about it makes it seem like a really good idea to start smoking again, the pleasure of tobacco smoke sucked down yr throat in the frothy air and late slow sun, but I'm not going there just yet.

The other night I went out to Brooklyn to hang out with Matt + Seth. We walked down the river, talking down the line of the railguard, in a row on a bench, in a row at the counter of the most amazing Montreal-Jewish non-kosher 'deli' that was really an open-kitchen restaurant with cooks who clearly love food. Ohhh my g-d the platter of cured/smoked brisket and mustard and rye, plus pickles and sunchokes and little poured glasses of IPA, so good. But mostly we just got high on the amazing crumbly-dry juicy red meat. Then we drank whiskey and then I went home with Seth to talk and drink more whiskey. I am on a roll, spring is here.

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snow + salt

Today was a snow day; Di invited me to come to the beach with her since school was cancelled. So we drove out to Rockaway with her surfboard strapped on top of her little '75 beamer, it was sweet the empty plowed streets, outer reaches of the outer boroughs, freezing snow drifts and midday light over the waves. I took pictures while she was surfing, found a little palm-sized pounding rock that looks like a whale, breathed the salty sea air and felt my toes freezing in my galoshes. I pushed the car free on the way home where we watched a pipeline surfing contest over a six-pack and spliffs.

( Nico said, Oliface, are you a polar bear now? )

Current Mood: diprima's loba
Current Music: lilith: an interlude

Entry tags:

the city,
winter

a handful of starchips thrown/at the windowpane

It look 3 1/2 hours, twice as long as usual, but I got home, the bus crawling along the white expanse of the turnpike 20mph. And the snow whipping in the wind across the roads, the only place to walk a path through the mostly abandoned streets. She spreads Her white and quiets the city. It's soft and quiet even with the winds whipping, wheels spinning stuck in the snow, the way snowfall swallows sound. A little while ago there was even a close flash of lightning, one thick slow roll of thunder.

(title taken from diprima's loba; reading her "ballad of the last hippy xmas" she just sent around)

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today

I need to go to the gym. I need to work on my paper before Shabbos services, and after, which sucks. It's the 10th of Tevet which I'm only just now learning about; I'm not fasting. I have so much to do, and I don't care about it, and I hate how it's interfering with my Shabbos practice. Solstice ritual tomorrow as Shabbos is ending and then more work afterwards.

On the plus side I fell in love with the city again yesterday, walking around the village over by Tompkins Square Park on a beautifully dilated monochromatic gray day, Angelica Kitchen wee-dragon for lunch and then the last day of Nietzsche class. My dreams Wednesday night were codeine bright, fell asleep wine-drunk and dreamt of having to kill someone and pass them to the ancestors, dreamt of Ren getting married again seaside, the broiling quality of sunlight and turquoise waters unbelievably clear.

Entry tags:

the city,
winter

what is it, brother, that falls from the sky/manna from heaven, from the most high

Moon over Flatiron, I can see the constellations in the city, Orion over my apartment building.

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eight stack

After an awesome French reading class today I was struck with frittering anxiety gathering speed so I walked in the hot heat, got a smoothie 10¢ short from a truck on University and set to combing the stacks outside the Strand. Sometimes, like today, the dollar racks are a blessing from the city/universe/Gods. I scored:

-A three-inch wide book called The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling with illustration plates, a gift for Taylor.

-Escoffier's Ma Cuisine, in English malheureusement.

-The Kybalion, a little blue hardback book of soi-disant Hermetic philosophy

-Woman Who Glows in the Dark, about curanderismo

-The Quantum Gods, a real black occult paperback from Weiser

-Paul Auster's City of Glass, which the guy inside congratulated me on

-A dark little gastronomical novel called The Debt to Pleasure with a cut-out on the jacket framing a picture of a peach

-And oh, maybe the best for last, Kazantzakis' The Saviors of God: Spiritual Exercises

Current Music: Taylor listening to Ani in the shower.

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late summer

Last night I saw the big fat orange crescent moon rising up through the trees near the fountain in Central Park. Today, better late than never, I'm remembering Doris' diy anti-depression tips and going for a speed-strong iced coffee at the Hungarian with Spinoza and then meandering through the park.

Entry tags:

the city

sometimes nyc feels like this:

"Cypress fought admitting it, but Leroy had mediated her relationship with the City of New York. She couldn't stand it when he was gone. His horns and his arms offered her horizons where she was free to see what she chose, feel what she had to, be what she dreamed. Now she was constrained by cement, noise, thousands of people she'd never had to take seriously. Whole blocks of black people without trees. Dance studios that looked into other dance studios. Or vacant lots crammed with tires, garbage, used strollers, broken bottles, and stench. Leroy alone had shielded her from this. Now her landscape had no natural elements. In California, one was cognizant of the planet: that the earth and sea were forces to contend with. New York without Leroy was bereft of any humility, dwarfing the sun, violating the waters, crowding nature into a yard called Central Park."
(----ntozake shange, sassafrass, cypress & indigo)