Dear Independent Coffee shops of NYC…

We have to talk. I’ve been seeing you off and on for a while now, and I feel like we’re just not communicating very well. What is a relationship without communication?

See, when I say, “Large Iced Chai,” I don’t mean, “Please spill a tiny amount of sugar water into a great gobbing cup of milk and ice cubes.” Sadly, that seems to be what you’re hearing. That isn’t iced chai, that’s BABY FORMULA.

The proper amount of milk to balance any chai is so small as to not affect my stomach. When you hoodwink me into drinking 6-10 ounces of cow milk, however, you know how I find out? Half an hour of gastrointestinal distress. Yay! All right! When I get into the elevator with a cute girl at work, I want my stomach to be playing a fugue on the french horn!

All of this leads me to two somewhat painful decisions. The first is to be mostly vegan again. That’s painful because it requires effort, and I was brought up in the 80s, where the Mario Brothers taught me that it’s better to skip levels if you can. Who likes effort?

The second decision is the more final. Unless someone recommends a place specifically, my chai habit will have to be fulfilled at Starbucks once again. I know, it’s tough, but their chai always tastes like chai, and sometimes they even ask about soy milk when I forget to say it. Their chai is spicy, earthy, and savory, and tastes like an actual tea product. Sure, there’s milk and sugar, but it’s just enough to keep everything palatable, not the whole drink.

I guess what I’m really saying is, I’m sorry our relationship had to come to an end, but I think I’ll be happier. There is something to take away from this, though:

it’s not me, it’s you.

Why you should be reading webcomics…

tiny, robot Fidels, good characters, just the right amount of the bizzare…

Questionable Content

and now, for your enjoy-tainment…

these drugs from duane reade don’t make me any better…

the section of my iTunes with artist names beginning with “Jo” is abominably huge.

–

they found a new place to stick a billboard on my walk home.

I didn’t think it was possible.

Every Night

The same things run through his head every night;

The whisky bottle.  No, not back to that.  He’d been down that road.  He’d been to the bottom of that.  It was part of what got him here.

The other thing.  A series of sensations.  The decision made, then a kind of gentle hardening of his mind.  It will not change now.

He feels his face twist into a smile.  It makes him happy now, that thought which used to turn him so sad: no one knows where he is, what he’s doing.  No one cares, is wondering.   He does not have a thought-self, living in someone else’s mind.

He puts on shoes, and heavy clothes, in spite of the heat.  The feeling of lightness, of freedom, leaving all that behind.  He leaves the apartment without the mobile phone, the laptop, no books, no music player.  The stacks of records and books that he spent so much on, so much in time and money, they will belong to someone else now.  His face is concerned and focused as he locks the door.  Then he turns, feels the tether breaking.  He owns nothing.  Rid of it.

Wooden stairs, always creaking, about to fall apart.  He walks out the door of the apartment building, pauses, turns toward the trash cans.  In go his keys.  He drops them and they hit the trash inside with an uncertain scrape.  He smiles, an average smile, and easy smile.

Concrete, the sidewalk.  Smiling, avoiding eye contact with neighbors.  For a moment, he wishes for a soundtrack, for his player - but he has left all that.  He hops the thick metal rail.  Different concrete now, the walkway beside the wide road.  Up the bridge.

Tall fence gives way to short, waist-high fence as the land below gives way to water.  Not too much thought.  Snapshots.  He is standing on the bridge.  He is perched on the top of the fence.  He is in the air, a man collaged onto the open sky.

Then water.

a memory

I am a shell, a gaunt, a wraith.  I am the memory of a man that was, and is not.

On the way home from the train, crossing the bridge on the footpath, a man was jerking off.  He hid behind a steel support beam so that no one would notice until they got close.  I blocked the view with a box I was carrying, but had to glance back to make sure he did not move closer.  As I glanced back, he moved into the center of the walkway, displaying his performance lewdly, a challenge.  I was far enough away to just keep walking.

It reminded me of something else.  It was hot and humid enough to break records, and my office was not adequately air conditioned.  I took a break and went to a large air-conditioned chain bookstore.  I browsed, asked an employee about the reading that night, bought a book.  Emerging into the bright sunlight and crowds on the sidewalk, somewhat refreshed, I headed back to work.  At the corner of the bookstore a man lay on the sidewalk, streams of khaki, sunglasses, and messenger bags flowing around him.  His white eyes bulged from his skin which was the color of deep dirt, bowling balls, ash.  His clothes in tatters, the remains of a polo shirt and khakis.  He lay face down, thrusting against the pavement.  Thousands of years ago men spilled their seed on the ground, hoping for fertility, for their family, for the crops.  Now there is only this concrete, this abrasive layer, impenetrable by tender flesh.  A flash of what must be happening to his skin against that sidewalk in my mind, dirt being ground into blood, I hurried on.

These men are images, images of hell, out of Bosch, of others, images and realities of the only hell that exists, the hell of men’s minds and the hell of this concrete steel monstrosity.  We are insignificant in the scope of what we have created.  This hell fills me, all footfalls on concrete, fingers only touching steel, or plastic.  It pushes out what was there when I came here, I vomit out myself to be force fed more of this.  I stumble home, an empty-eyed waste, the only thing telling my feet to move the beat playing in the plastic buds in my ears.

Even in this, my one joy, my soul only lives in the past.  Thirty year old music emulating hundred year old music.

Made sick by my addictions, I’ve started dreaming of you.

The beasts in me that I have kept chained, they have waited for so long, they hold up their chains, now decayed and broken.  They smile, and all I can see is the shine of their teeth.

By way of reintroduction, I bring you the Charango Ninja

I’m thinking of getting one of these, I’m frustrated with the guitar.

(I had nothing to do with this video, I just thought I’d share the find.  He’s not the smoothest Charango player on YouTube, but…he’s a ninja!)

the last two days have been good

I got the amazing first two installments of my Tryst Haunt subscription in the mail, six beautiful records I have already listened to multiple times.

I wrote two short stories I think are very good, and very finished, and work.

I figured out some fret-tapping and slide junk on the guitar.

I got to finally have a conversation with and get the email address of a really cool, really beautiful girl I’ve been hoping to get to know better.

Alrighty, here are the MySpace pages of some of the bands that made the wonderful Tryst Haunt records:
Cursillistas
Tempera
LightningStrikeLightning
Bad Bus
Barry Burst
Bird Microphone
Sarah Ramey

the Red F

white light

sadness! damn you, Verizon!

I don’t ever want to hear the word Verizon again.  After hours on the phone with them this morning, I still don’t have internet.  Dealing with them made me so stressed out I nearly vomited.  I canceled my order.  I’d rather use a nearby cafe’s internet and buy overpriced sandwiches from cute girls than pay Verizon one goddamn cent.

A quote from Bucky and status update

Great nations are simply the operating fronts of behind-the-scenes, vastly ambitious individuals who had become so effectively powerful because of their ability to remain invisible while operating behind the national scenery.

-R. Buckminster Fuller (Honestly, I got this from a website and haven’t fact-checked the quote, but I like it)

I survived moving all my stuff I haven’t seen in two years from DC to Brooklyn, then moving everything across Brooklyn.  I fell asleep putting a shelf together last night.  I got an iPhone just before the move, and it’s currently my only internet at home.  Today is more Ikea furniture, and maybe selling some records to a store.