Just made it back from the premier of Pornography, a film that should have an LiveJournal credit line, given all the talent from our little digital backwater both in front of and behind the camera. The screening was packed, so much so that an extra screening has been added. So congrats David and Sean: it’s a thoughtful twisty thriller. I’m sorry I couldn’t stay for the Q&A.
Around the house, much work was done, by me. The work desk is in better shape than it has been in months.
Pals for Sunday poker and cigars. Kerry, Boymeat, Scotty, Scot, Thor ad Lolita. We played the usual silly dealer’s choice games. Everyone brought very responsible snacks, including the unpictured , who brought cupcakes that were delightfully tidy as well as tasty.
Eventually I will forgive Boymeat for winning so much money all the time, especially since I managed to come out a few buck ahead myself. Lehigh is glad of the company and attention for a while until the smoke gets to be too much and she retreats to the other end of the house. She gets treats from the visitors, but even so I can tell that there are times when people get to be to much for her. Not unlike myself actually. But afterwards, once everyone has left, she is eager for cuddles and kisses from me. A little bit or reassurance.
We are in the full force of summer. People walking along the block, taking it easy. The windows are wide open, to aid in clearing out the smoke. The air that flows in through them is luscious.
After many big thanks to blog mommy, I’ve managed to get naylandblake.net back up and running in a certain form. At this point it’s basically a new version of my wordpress blog, but I’ve come to the realization that it’s easier to get that going than to to a complete rebuild. There’s a lot more that I need to learn to really give the site character, but for now I’m happy to get more of the content up there. The new plan is to mirror this blog over there, and probably to let the wordpress.com blog go. I’ll have to break my addiction to wordpress stats however.
I do find myself inordinately proud of the little bits of fiddling I’ve been able to do with the code, even though there are certain things I’m stumped by.
I’ve done a bit of movie viewing this week: Drag Me To Hell and Up. Both quite satisfactory. Drag inparticular was a reach back to the monster movie as a scary fun house ride, as opposed to the recent trend in putting the audience in the position of unwilling torturer.
I’m reading Lydia Lunch’s Parodxia. About halfway through. I’ve never been much of a fan, and this isn’t serving to change my mind.
In anticipation of poker this weekend, I went out and picked up some cigars. I have to say that I haven’t been smoking as much lately. It’s just something that I’ve been forgetting to do. The fact that I can type that sentence probably means I’m not an addict.
Last night I got some stellar help from the Sainted Blog Mommy and moved one step closer to recovering from last years big crash. Today I’m picking up some risque undergarments for a certain someone. Yeah, it’s a good life.
Doing laundry makes me turn out my pockets. Turning out my pockets reveals micro-clutter, the scraps that I don’t take the trouble to shift from pant to pant, the dribs and drabs that I unconsciously accrue.
The stuff that truly drives me nuts.
Here’s one culprit: drinking straw wrappers. I am forever finding these rolled pellets of paper about my person. If I don’t catch them before the wash, they emerge as paper mache’ rabbit turds. Or i find them as I’m out walking around, trying to get change out of my pocket. Why is it that they anger me so? Perhaps because they represent a problem that I never seem to be able to solve. I like cold drinks and I like to drink them through a straw. Straws have wrappers that must be removed. One solution is to tear one end of the wrapper and use the rest as a projectile, blowing it at someone else. But I hate to litter. I still feel responsible for the wrapper. The six-year-old’s solution doesn’t work for me. So I pick it up and roll it tight and then look around for some place to dispose of it. In New York, the problem is compounded by the fact that many garbage cans on the street are open mesh types, meaning that I can’t throw something as small at a rolled wrapper in there, because it would just pass through. It’s at that point, while I wait to find an enclosed receptacle, that I often forget that I still have to deal with the wrapper. When my fingers come across it later, I’m annoyed and dissapointed. It’s like finding out that I forgot to pay my phone bill: a responsibility deferred.
Somehow, when it comes to questions like what am I doing with my life, my sang froid remains intact. But when I ask “what am I going to do with this little strip of paper”, I’m trapped in an emotional vortex.
Creativity requires a void. There has to be something missing for us to want to see something new. When life is two replete, where there is no blank wall, no empty space, the urge to make anew flags and ultimately stops.
Early on in your career, you’ve made no mark on the world, it all feels blank, awaiting your voice. As time goes on it can feel crowded, choked with all too much stuff, or a comfortable, affirming mirror. Neither possibility leads to working.
The abundance of infostractions dumped in my lap by my computer keeps me from feeling what I need to be working towards in the studio. Click by click I move away from the unquiet thoughts of my own lack that prod my arm to move the pen across the page. I know so much about so many things that ungraspable, shifting bits. Why do I like to see where a show of mine is going to happen? So that I can begin to play with that blank wall in my mind. It’s something to push against, so cozy up to or to reveal in an unexpected configuration. I have to make that something happen in my workspace if I hope to get anything done. I need to see a box to put the thing in.
Typing at Cosi. Quiet strolling through Brooklyn has given way to the crush of post-work Union Square. Their coffee is never as good as I remember it. Spent a little time in Forbidden Planet, which has greatly expanded their independent/zine comic section. I’m struck by how much intriguing self published stuff there is out there right now.Didn’t buy a whole lot however, given what my finances are like and also the fact that while I want to support their efforts I’d also like to direct some money to smaller stores like Bergen Street Comics which provide more direct support to the artists.
I also spent the earlier part of today adding some things to the WordPress blog including this scan and a couple of links. Of special note is the one to the blog of the Annandale Dream Gazette, an enterprise initiated by poet Lynn Behrendt. Lynn and I were roommates for a couple of years while I was a Bard, and the gazette has an illustrious list of dreamer/contributers.
Because it’s a Monday afternoon and because I’m in Union Square, it’s hard not to fall into my reflexive, post therapy frame of mind. After all, I spent some ten years coming to weekly sessions in this neighborhood. I wonder what my therapist would say if I was telling him about my current situation and frame of mind. Probably something about the extent to which I castigate myself. Ugh, this chair is very stingy with the back support. And now I have a hankering for some fruit. Maybe it’s time to head off to the greenmarket.
See how avoidance works?
So Mike has been in town and yesterday he, I, his friend Karen, and Lolita took ourselves off to five hours of liquid satisfaction at Spa Castle. Bliss is a well placed jet of water. If you’re a New York resident or planning a visit, make your host take you there: it’s like a civilized water park with immaculate saunas and a decent food court thrown in. You can get baked eggs. One note though: bring a change of clothes, because you end up so clean that putting your old duds on at the end of it can be a bit of a let down.
We also had two fantastic meals: before we submerged ourselves we had a very civilized brunch with Thor at good. And on the way home we joined Jason and Sue at SriPraPhai (sorry Dan, I know we should have called you), which has expanded and remodeled and yet was still as delicious as ever. Then J was so very kind as to offer Mike and I a ride back to my place, where a not too disgruntled Lehigh awaited her evening walk. There was a little canoodling, and then the Sandman showed up for a three-way.
You could say I was satisfied.
Especially hot ones!
These days, there are two billboard images that give me that special warm feeling down below to the point that I’ve bean developing a couple of crushlets.
Firstly, I’m not much into medical play, but I’ve been hypnotized by the above picture of sneering butch medi-dommme Edie Falco in her new series. Since I don’t have Showtime, I’ll have to just content myself with sighing every time I pass the shot from the campaign, Like I did yesterday when a double decker buss passed by with Edie’s steely blondness shrinkwrapped around it, two stories tall.
Secondly, I’m spending time on the subway wishing I was the guy who gave Zach Galifianakis that sexy shiner and then stole his pants. Just so I could be the one he came staggering up to to make it all better. I’ll admit to indulging in dirty thoughts about him since I saw him as The Snuggler on Tim and Eric Awesome Show. He just looks so pretty hurt.
Luckily I have a guest this weekend, so all this excess energy has somewhere to go!
…like someone who likes to file.
It took almost two months, but I’ve managed to get my work desk from this to the state you see above. And that doesn’t mean that I just shoved the stacks off camera, either: with some stellar assistance fomr someone here in the office, I’ve managed to break the files down into manageable bits and set up a system that I think will be much more useful to me over the next years.
And today, Mom dropped by the office with Rhubarb bread pudding that my sister made. How cool are they?
It’s one of those meeting days at work, where we’re going from one long meeting to the next. In between I have the attention span of a gnat. At least my desk is getting closer to being cleaned off and the file system on my computer is more in order. Every few minutes I pic something off the desk and file it or toss it away. And then I click on one of the tabs on my browser and waste more time. Then I cone back to this page and type another sentence. Like that last one.
All of this feels far from working in the studio. And while I’ve been making small steps in that direction, there’s a lot of distance yet to travel.
After a glowing weekend, the chill has come over the weather here: a bit rainy and about twenty degrees cooler.
So yesterday Thor came over to help me contend with the forces of It-which-must-not-be-named (the laundry), which caused us to have many trips into the sunshine of my neighborhood. He was a valiant Wash Warrior. And then, at the very moment that we were bringing in the last folded loads, we heard the tinkle of the ice cream truck a block away. I’m not lying when I say that I saw six-year old Thor pop out when I assured him that yes the truck was coming and yes we could have ice cream. So determined was he that I walked the clothes upstairs while he waited in the street below, looking down the block to make sure the truck didn’t swerve around the corner at the last minute. When I came back downstairs Mister Softee was just pulling up and Thor bought me a cola float and himself the weird Spongebob treat he’s holding here. We sat out on the stoop and chatted with my neighbors for a bit while cooling down. Afterward, Thor reminded me of his touching entry where he wrote about how important the ice cream truck was for him growing up. Reading it again made me understand his determination, and reminded me of how lucky I am to know him.
Another year, and another graduation at Bard. As the chair of my program, it’s my responsibility to read out the names of the students who are graduating from my program, so that they can walk on to the stage and receive their handshake and diploma from the the president of the college. It’s a corny thing, but I enjoy it every year, and even though all of our classes take place in New York City, I always pester the students to make the trip upstate for the event. I don’t like reading the words “in absentia”, I tell them, attempting to lower my brows menacingly. This year it worked and they all came up, bringing along some family members and looking as adorable as adults can.
I had some mother hen moments, trying to herd them from spot to spot, get them all lined up and into their regalia. I know, embarrassing.
The speaker was New York’s Governor, David Patterson. We’ve been getting the politicians lately. He came off as personable, a bit self deprecating, and seemed to connect with the students. The speech was a mess however, veering from personal anecdote to interesting historical nuggets to what seemed to be a pledge to develop state-wide high speed rail. I’m all for infrastructure, but as a talk to the community it all seemed a little cobbled together. My over feeling was, here’s a good guy, who has some ideas, and is a bit at sea. It was better however than the over produced pre-campaign speech Bloomberg subjected us to a couple of years ago.
Later in the ceremony, an undergraduate seized the mic, and attempted to protest something. Not so unusual for a Bard graduation actually, but the rant, while it did disrupt the procedings for a bit, was also classic Bard: Long on passion and painfully short on preparation: once he had the mic, it was clear that he had no notes about what he wanted to say and began stumbling along a number of tangents. The overall gist seemed to be that the school was an institution that enforced normalcy and unthinking conformity just like so many others, and that graduating seniors had simply acquiesced to that process. But really what happened was him starting to try to say something, being heckled, losing the thread and then starting over. Leon (Bard’s President) even stepped forward at one point to quiet the crowd and give him an additional chance, but he couldn’t get out whatever his point was. He finally left the stage in frustration. It was heartbreaking in a way, because he had gotten so close, was at the center of attention, and then blew it.
Time to head upstate to Bard and get my robe on!
Sweaty and quiet.
Thinking of what I didn’t do.
There are tulips in the kitchen.
Small heaps of things surround the home keyboard.
Some movement was made on parallel situation in the office.
Abundance is servitude.
My technology is cranky.
A letter has gone awry; one with a check in it.
And clothes. and clothes.
In the dream the sheet was a keyboard somehow.
Last night was the end of the year dinner for my students, out little in-house graduation before the official event at Bard on Saturday. A generous trustee hosts it at their house every year. The students got dolled up and we presented them with a certificate that I designed. It’s a lovely event and this year seemed especially emotional. I’m very grateful to have been able to spend the last couple of years with these people. I got a little teary during my short speech to them. Maybe it was the excellent red wine.
And now is the chance to get some of the built up pressures of the past couple of months dealt with. Through some talks with good friends I feel like I’ve developed a clearer picture of how I want the next year to go. The warm weather is helping with that as well; somehow walking out the door in just my shirtsleeves always fills me with a sense of possibilities.
Oh and the boot? A friend told me her husband has been following the blog, and so when she showed off the footwear, I told her I’d put it up here for his delectation.
It’s been something like four years now and there is still ongoing construction across the street from my workplace at “1 Bryant Park” An utterly fabricated address that houses the new Bank of America behemoth. Things are certainly better now with the construction than they were a couple of years ago (imagine working below the surface of the street while fifty yards away pile drivers pound the uprights for a 54 story tower into Manhattan’s bedrock all day long for months.) One of the ongoing benefits is the continuing presence of bundles of yum like the guy above. While is is not quite up to the standard of this fine fellow, who seems unfortunately to have moved on to other employment, he is still firmly in the don’t-bother-to-wrap-him-I’ll-eat-him-here category. Watching him wrestle a scissor lift off of the back of a tractor trailer with his crew was a joy to behold.
Speaking of objectification, what fuck is the deal with the new Schick Quattro ad where potted topiary adjacent to various women magically reshapes itself into perfect demure triangles and even a little Brazilian. Message being: trim yer bush, ladies. Am I wrong for being somehow ashamed by this? Where else on broadcast television is pubic shaping referenced? What if one of the models walked by an evergreen and just lopped all the leaves off?
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