(The social revolution is enough for us.)
In times of struggle (like the present), my mind keeps coming back to the question: what do I really want her? My mind does this, I suppose, in hopes that something can be cut away. Am I making this too hard?
"I am doing the only thing I can do," Molly said today. I am always looking for other choices, easier ways. She is right on one account: about some things there can be no choice.
During the storm we steel our red hearts
Posted by Sam on
08:22 AM
|
Comments (2)
Tuesday
On Tuesday morning I felt particularly happy. I had spent a lovely evening with a few of my friends the night before, and I was feeling resplendant with a fresh satisfaction. The weather was clear and bright, northeastern.
Life was laid before me, the city was at my feet. I was headed out on errands. Walkabout, my dad calls it. Over to the bank on Broadway, down to Canal Street to visit Industrial Plastics, up on First to Ace Hardware. I got coffee at the Corner on St. Marks and third, found a pushcart lady selling rice-noodle crepes on Lafayette. I bought one and it was delicious, with dried shrimp cooked in, splashed with soy and chili sauces. (and one dollar!)
I was feeling too good, staring at the sun on Canal street, getting lost, wandering. Am I there? Isn't this the city I have been looking for?
Everything was strange and new, there was so much new construction. People were crawling all over the buildings, busy on scaffoldings. It was beautiful, joyous. Isn't this what I wanted? Why does it feel so strange to me, so bittersweet?
Madeleine Isom's "Reflection #2 (How buildings see each other)" (via dublog)
Is this the economic recovery? I didn't know it could come, but it is here. Whatever happenend, it is over, and something new is beginning. Wherever it came from, who ever planned it, whatever Halliburton lard Wall Street filter-down -- they are building. Two massive housing blocks on Houston, a mixed-use high-rise at Astor, and a dozen smaller projects. The two mid-rise replacements have opened on St. Marks. The police precinct building on 5th has been torn down -- what will be built in its place?
We came to the city when the last re-invention was well underway. Downtown, Tompkins had been closed and re-opened, the riots were a story about a past time. Guiliani's tactics were well established. The first year we were here, he rolled a god-damned tank into the neighborhood to evict a squat. The late nineties, the protests, the retrenchments, the new technologies, and now this fucking war. War on drugs, the war on the neighborhoods, war on terror, war on the world. Is the empty building on the south side of Union Square going to be a Wal-Mart?
So here I am, downtown, the sun in my eyes, overjoyed. And yet I see a horde coming -- not poor not rich, working in low office or high retail. Busy, impenetrable. A flood of commuters -- impossible to make out the threads of the melody. Unresponsive eyes.
How can the city hold them? It is like a rain in the desert, the hard ground so split and scarred it is unable to hold the moisture. It just flows away, sweeps down in flash floods, rushes to the lowest point.
This city is not closed. It is open, torn, riven, scarred. It draws people in and out every day, most of them going to a single point. If you know where you want to go, your path is laid out for you. But what of us who don't want to go somewhere that already exists? Who want to go somewhere together that can give us a better togetherness than there is in the world today.
Is that place being built? When I look around, this is not what I see. They won't say out loud what these buildings are, what their plans are, but the traces are there. They want to build a stadium on one of Jimmylegs' favorite bars, for chrissake! So what type of city do we want?
Posted by Sam on
11:30 PM
|
Comments (1)
Condensing/Breathing
I guess there is always a gap between breathing in and breathing out...it's there that it can feel like I'm choking
I was not prepared for this level of struggle in making the transition to winter. I couldn't have been – I had neither the time nor the energy. So I didn't prepare. When people would ask, I would just say: "If there are people out, I will try to stay out," sometimes followed by some mumbling about frostbite.
The snowstorm last Friday forced the issue. I was debating going out until I woke up and saw the snow. So-- grounded. Caught flat footed. This week it's been a struggle to get off my back. I've been playing a lot of video games, keeping the upper systems alive while my reptile brain does its work.
I still don't know if there are going to be customers at my regular time and location. But that is the next hurdle -- first winterizing the operation. It's a struggle, but a technical struggle, a struggle I hope I can handle much better than the murky shifts and spastic shocks that have been the routine for this week.
2nd and st marks
Update: I didn't go out this weekend either. Last week I got a quote on winterizing -- but it looked like it was going to cost at least 800 bucks -- too much. I decided that with help from Mol I can build something for $100 or so, making it worth spending a weekend (or two) working on it. Add to that the experience of building on the cart and demystifying it, and the balance definatively tips.
Also: went up to visit Andy. He was chuffed to see me, and double-chuffed to be in the Sun article. "I go cut this out right now!" he said, "I been in this business fourteen years and no-one ever put me in the newspaper before!" Andy rocks. He also showed me how to get more heat out of the grill.
Posted by Sam on
07:04 AM
|
Comments (3)
Incoherence
The city has lapsed into incoherence, and a good chunk of the internet has too, it seems. Molly says it is all good, the function of seasons. "You don't want everything going on and on the same way, digging itself into ruts, do you?" I am not so sure. Change, yes. But this kind of stupid oblivion? Like agents buying the cover story and forgetting the real mission, everyone milling around purposelessly -- I think I can do without.
The research on collaboration continues, but that's a story for another day, when my brain is less foggy. For today I've pulled together a draft of something from notes in the back-file, or as Mol says, "nuts put away for the season." It's still a little incoherent itself, and more than a little sloppy, but I feel like sharing it Tell me if it makes no sense yet...
Posted by Sam on
08:36 AM
|
Comments (2)
