One more for the folks keeping track at home: I got a callback for a writing gig today. One that should allow me to make enough money to go many more places than I currently can.
Fingers crossed.

Metropolis

I am having such a truly hard time focusing on anything. Which sucks for a writer on deadline. About the only thing that I can keep a focus on is an interesting mania that's been present ever since I moved into my new place and had the space to have projects.

I've started painting. It's been a fact of life for me for some time that I am a poet and musician who wants to be a novelist and painter. I'm terrible at both, but slowly working. I painted a picture the night L left me, and I was in such a manic mode that I could barely remember it's details until I came back to it. Now I've been doing abstract works, Painting large swaths of color and cutting into the canvas with a razor.

---

I ran into a friend of mine, Michael, from the academy. We were never very close but we always enjoyed eachother's company, got into some political trouble together from time to time, and I worked for a while with his boyfriend, whom I also like immensely. I was on my way back to the office but he convinced me to let him buy me a cup of coffee and catch up for five minutes. I believe firmly that if you stay put in any one part of this city, you will eventually meet everyone you know.

But I'm reading Calvino right now, Invisible Cities, so I feel that it is true of all cities, or else, true of none. A musing that came to me while reading on the train today:

To understand cities is to understand the birth and death of spaces; to understand spaces is to understand the boundaries of a life; to understand boundaries is to speak a language; and to speak a language is to understand people at least as well as anyone can.

If you've been keeping score from home, you know that lately I've been faced with the prospect of possibly leaving this city for the person I care for... (flashback: "what's more, I miss the one I care for more than I miss New Orleans") Calvino's cities are portable, and thus One City.

So too, I'm beginning to realize, is mine.

The Semester of Danger

So the question now becomes how to dig myself out of this hole, especially because I was always content to let L hold all the shovels. Or, at least, my favorite shovels.

My memories shift to late nights in the volvo, driving up Connecticut Route 9 at more than 90mph listening to Califone and embracing this strange retreat. About two years ago, I broke up with L, citing a need for space. I didn't immediately transfer my affections to a surrogate, as she seems to have, but over time it became clear to me that these little retreats of mine were serving the same function. I was living with a wonderful group of people, my comrades in arms at the academy, and they helped me regain my center. We called it the semester of danger. I started doing wild things and free things: the four of us learned to throw knives using the bulletin board on our kitchen wall; My four trips to New Orleans as a demolition crew leader all happened within the time when I was apart from L. My penchant for 2am high speed drives on empty roads developed around that time.

Sometimes, in my personal narrative, I label it a self destructive instinct, what set in in her absence. And it certainly did overwhelm me and eventually had me come back to her, head in hand, and ask for her forgiveness. But I became who I wanted to be in that time as well. I wrote some of my most ambitious theory papers in that period of time. I taught myself to work on engines, and to play blues guitar. I became a respected head of a radio station and a well-liked leader of a work crew. See, I was in academy, and couldn't run to be with her. And now she is in academy. And our relationship always had a flavor of waiting. And when I was no longer waiting, some switch went off in my brain and made me free to become who I wanted to be... Not that she ever kept me from it, but I did, eagerly awaiting her companionship.

I still wish that we were together. And without a doubt I would move to where she is. But maybe it's time to flip that switch again, and go do some damn crazy self-defining things. I only pray to God that she'll come back one day to this liberated me.

Sitting here wishing on a cement floor

So L, it turns out, leaves me in order to see if she can fall for someone who is not a city dweller and has an upbringing more similar to her own. Or something like that.

It seems my life is a feedback loop: the more distance I achieve from my starting point, this urban north Jersey, the more it becomes emblematic of me, the more I'm taken to stand for it and, in turn, whatever it itself is taken to stand for. Like how over my four years of the academy I developed, for the first time, the hints of a Jersey accent. I don't want it, I want her. (Simplification is my new order of the day)

The guy who's assisting her in this experiment is a Tri-athlete. Which is going to work itself into a complex for me, since I've been thinking about starting race-training on my bicycle to get my mind off of her. And we were talking about training to ride a century together. Heh. Even my distractions need distractions.

It feels like a constant low grade panic attack. Just a tightness in the chest, a shortness of breath, and constant self-admonition that I can no longer call her to talk about my day or ask about hers.

---

Trust, as a concept, has been on my mind a lot. Namely, how it gets rebuilt.

Walking through the city last night with John and S, I came upon a battered suitcase very neatly packed with vacuum tubes. Like a strange sign from God that I was found at least mildly interesting. A suitcase full of vacuum tubes, a whispered intelligence having to do with things discredited and obsolete.

Home as a place

I spent some of today looking out at this place from the other side of my dirty car windows, passing abandoned loading docks, upstart high-rise condos, old warehouses, getting tossed around by cobblestones and potholes, seriously asking myself if I could ever leave this place.

And if home is really people, then the answer is yes.

It's a different proposition from coming back, granted (that's a must, just because these aesthetics of chaos have become somewhat of a resting place for me for over two decades)...

But yes, I can leave this place.

But then, if home is people, can I leave these people?

Its distance, that gives me grief, and turns my life into a balancing act.

This is not supposed to be a personal blog, and its not going to be. So I'll keep this short. L broke it off with me last night. I've been reading Bukowski and floating around the City, totally crushed. An ex once told me that she should have known better than to trust her heart to someone with that much Bukowski on their shelves.
Dont know what this means for the writers retreat.

Like fingernails on a chalkboard

Oh dear god. I'm writing an article right now, and someone in the apartment above me has terrible smooth jazz playing very loudly. Elevator music quality. And it's on loop. As though it didn't repeat the same theme over and over again anyway, with a disgusting amount of major sevenths and over-done guitar tremelos.

hang on, it just stopped.

now there's a telephoned voice...
oh god, this is ON HOLD music.

Someone's speaker phone is actually that loud...


Picking up my guitar and figuring out the three boring riffs has thus far been of no help.
I need to get to a good stopping point and then get out of here for a little while.

Wherein I write for Work and Blog at the same time...

Introduction 650, a proposal currently before the City Council to require permits for the use of environmental testing equipment, is receiving vocal criticism from many downtown community leaders. The Introduction, put forth late last year, seeks to regulate testing equipment designed to detect biological, chemical and radiological agents. If passed, Intro 650 will require all non-governmental owners and operators of such equipment to register their devices and the deployment thereof with the NYPD. It would also set standards for the operation of such equipment.
Given that independent environmental testing was a crucial part of downtown recovery after September 11, at times conflicting with and prompting corrections from official reports, Intro 650 is cause for alarm among several downtown leaders. Erin Drinkwater of Congressman Nadler’s office echoed this concern at a recent CB1 meeting, stating, “…if this was in effect on 9/11, there’d have been serious ramifications in terms of the independent data that was gathered to state that the EPA sampling was incorrect.” State Assembly Member Deborah Glick’s office called the proposal “the antithesis of an open democracy,” and said that such a law would “severely compromise the community’s ability to act with information.” Intro 650 is currently before the City Council Committee on Public Safety.

There's a post I want to make about a conversation I had with my friend John tonight, but I can't write it right now...
Just had my last dinner for a while with my dearest friend and housemate Damien before he leaves for the United Arab Emirates tomorrow evening... I've known this cat for a third of my life. The best damn third. Me and our best friend Jay are coping.

First Collection

While we're at it, here's the collection I made up of the works completed at the last Writers Retreat. Kinda shoots my anonymity thing in the foot, but if you put the pieces together, just don't tell anyone.

• Hudson River Valley Naturalist Society Book One

(of course, these pieces all belong to their authors.)

The Writer's Retreat... part II

So we've set the date and sent out the invites for the second retreat up to upstate. It's coming up towards the end of the month, and I'm terribly excited. A few more people may be coming to this one. We're going to need more whiskey. Also more cars. That last one might be a problem. Because cars are more expensive that whiskey. When the both are of equal quality, at least. Will also need more paper. I hope my buddy Eliason gets that typewriter he's been e-baying for.

It will be so good to escape from this city for a moment. The paper that I write for has been having financial struggles, which means that, in addition to a stressful work environment (ah, the old SWEs), I've been having financial struggles. Especially because I'm apparently on the Parking Authority's most wanted list in several states. It will feel fantastic to make fires, have big dinners with the whole wonderful family, stagger out of bed to drink coffee on the porch and watch the sun rise over the hills... And most of all, to fucking write.

Well, I should get back to the SWE.

Law and Order

Second parking ticket in a week today. The last one was legitimate. This one indicates that, apparently, the City of New York feels that alterations made to a city sign with duct tape are legally binding. Like, if part of a sign is blocked out with duct tape, clearly that part doesn't exist, and such non-existence is official.

Good. I love bureaucratic arguments.


Sam came down with the flu, and she's leaving for school tomorrow (raw deal), so I had to lace up the wheel by my lonesome tonight. Truing it is proving difficult, but the lacing was much easier than I thought it'd be. Tension and wire, like guitars and like bridges.

Brought L to the airport today... she was in town for the High Holy Days... this back and forth is killing me, but she might be able to make it up to the next writers retreat...

More on everything later.

The Square

There's a North Fork bank in Journal Square, Jersey City, with a big lighted sign on top. When I was growing up (and I mean really little, like three or four), there was another bank there, and it had some sort of red sign. It was the furthest-away thing I could see from home. I used to tell my Mom that I wanted to go there, because it was the furthest-away thing I could see.

My mom would say, "That's Journal Square. You don't want to go there."

I moved to a small apartment off the Square a few days ago, right at the beginning of the High Holy Days, aka the 5 Days of New Years. So far it's been surreal, dear friends coming and crashing on the couch from afar, my wonderful girlfriend staying with me for a while, my buddy who's moving off to Abu Dhabi still around... its a honeymoon period for an apartment that has a small water heater, a neighborhood that is only mostly safe, and a place that, while it's not too expensive, I can barely afford. I'm trying to track down another (or an additional) source of employment... it's quickly becoming apparent that my newspaper job can't afford to pay me more, despite initial hopes that I'd be getting a raise, and I am literally living beyond my means at the moment. I have a lead on an interesting job that may involve Lifestyle Writing. But I'm just barely a reporter and just getting used to the idea of writing on command. But it's gonna take money to stay, and even more to leave and go elsewhere.

In the meantime, I've got a bike wheel to rebuild and parking tickets to avoid. Life's getting interesting.