Atlanta

The Turntable and NYC

Listening to Reel Around the Fountain by The Smiths on record as I type this.  I also just found out Galapagos Art Space is moving to Detroit.  What the fuck is going on in this city?

This city is simply becoming a place that is unaffordable for people to live in and enjoy.  I moved here in the winter of 1997.  I know that is a long time ago.  Yet, my best friend and I were able to find a real two bedroom apartment for $800 in Greenpoint, a toxic wasteland.  In the past, I've written about the peach tree we had in the backyard.  We could not eat the peaches, as the entire neighborhood is encased by a superfund site.  Now, according to Zillow, that shitty apartment on Kingsland Avenue is $2600 a month.

I'm not against a city growing.....not at all.  I'm for a city having plenty of great things to do in it for all.  That is why we live in cities; at the same point it is why we leave some of them.  New York used to be filled with tons of independent businesses.  I will find the data (just lazy right now) that shows how grossly corporate this city has become.  Or maybe, that last sentence just shows how lazy I am.

It seems like something in New York, more specifically, Brooklyn is closing down/gone altogether due to the cost of doing business here anymore.  I get it.  It is so safe, so beautiful, blah, blah.  It is forcing so many people out.  That is what it is doing.  And, if you choose to stay........you feel poor.  I'm an adjunct instructor at a very wealthy school and it drives me nuts how much more they spend on their grass than they do on me and my colleagues.

Look at the growing Northeastern PA population boom.  Check out the license plates near where you are. See how many are from out of town.  They are visiting because they had to leave.

So, back to the turntable, especially the whitest possible band to think of mentioning in this post.  The Smiths evoke a sense of privilege.  I know nothing of their real existence.  Yet, I know what they evoke in my existence.  We were well-off white kids listening to lyrics that hated our parents and what they stood for.  Or, we listened to them because they were so against our majority peers.  As white folk, they incorporated the weirdos, outcasts, goths, and people who had no idea how to really say "fuck you" except by dressing oddly.  Fuck, they were from England and so far from angry American punk rockers....whom I loved equally as well.

NYC is a record.  The first time you play a record, the vinyl changes somewhat.  The more you play it, the more it degrades.  It becomes a loss as soon as you open it.  The more you play it and become familiar with it, the less you want it to change.  Then, there is a skip, a blemish......that recording you loved so much sounded so different before.  It can never go back to what it was.  NYC is your favorite record you take good care of, but is never in mint condition.  Ever.

The Horrors (Part I)

Oh, Halloween.  This is the most macabre of all holidays, yet it is my favorite one of all.  It goes back to my dad.  He was a horror movie junkie.  And it goes back to having WWOR, Channel 9, in Pittsburgh when I was a young kid.  It goes back to divorces and being misunderstood and the idea of violence as something that only took place on celluloid.  It goes back to having to move as many times as my mom remarried and wanted to please her husbands.  It goes back to this weird place called Pittsburgh; a place where zombies began and my enthusiasm for gore and terror began and still continues to this day.

Back in the day, my dad took me to so many films, many of them horror films.  As an adult, I sometimes shriek when I see parents bringing their kids to see graphic horror films.  Yet, I was that kid!  I saw A Nightmare on Elm St. 2 and April Fools Day with my dad in the theaters.  Friday the 13th Parts V and VI.  I was a little kid, but he still took me to them.  He loved that shit as much as I did.  We would talk about the goriest scenes and just end up laughing about them.  We weren't scared, we were blissful.  

Yet there is 1982 (?) when Poltergeist came out.  That year, my father was separated from my mother.  He took me to see that film and I was only nine years old.....or eight....  Yet, that movie in the theater scared the shit out of me.  Was it the clown?  Was it the corpses?  Was it the closet light?  Was it not having my father to tuck me in every night?  Was it my mom marrying someone else?  What the fuck was it that made the parts of that movie versus my reality scare me?  So hard to tell.  For sure, I needed a "closet light" to get me to sleep months after that one.

And then there is Pittsburgh itself: the home of zombies.  As a kid, there was a cemetery nearby and there was this crazy cave entrance you could go into.  We called it the devil's kitchen, I think, and we would go down there.  I'm talking boys and girls, with no spelunking gear after school with Reeboks on.  It was dangerous and stupid.  At the same point of time it was awesome.  It was scary and moreso than the horror films we were trying to duplicate and the gore scenes we wanted to make like young, amateur Tom Savinis.  You would go down, and down and down to no end until you were exhausted. To boot, it was on the side of a graveyard.  So terrifying when you really think about it, but for us, it was ho-hum.  

So now, a huge jump forward to 40.  I love being fucked with in safe ways.  I went to Blackout the other night.  It is a place you have to sign a waver to go through.  You are in a living horror film at times, at others, you are just asking yourself why in the fuck are you doing this.  It is a rush.  Your pulse rate is up due to sensory deprivation, a bag over your head, pitch black all around you......

In a weird way it is bliss.......only at this time of the year.

Whirlpools

Last week, or maybe two weeks ago, I turned on The Weather Channel to see what the weather forecasters had in store for me.  Instead, there was some weird survival show.....could you survive________?

Fill in the blank.  The one I tuned into had to do with whirlpools.  They are really scary things.  Fuckers suck you under.  They begin, but nary a soul knows where they end.  They have a scientific explanation for them; two currents meeting and kinda fighting one another until there is no dominance between the two.  Therefore, they form this abyss that sucks everything down into it as long as it can.  How far down depends on how strong the currents are; how long also depends on how strong they are.  A strong whirlpool may never have an end.

Leigh and I are fine.  Yet, I get stuck in these eddies every so often, especially after moving.  I came across a photo of me and my grandma today.  The photo was taken at my mom's funeral service.  Yet, I said to Leigh, "Look at me and my grams."

I should have said, something along the lines of...this is me and my grandma at mom's funeral.

Yet, I couldn't.  Grandma Gaffney, Mary A., and I look so good together.  I'm in a suit, she is in fine clothes.

The words we wish we could say become these things that get all swirled up, taken down, swished around and abused.  I get caught up in the things I wish I said versus those I do say.  At times, those words keep on falling further and further away until they are too far to be found again.

A Point....and Maybe Reality?

It is very hard to think about leaving a place you love.  I don't think I've ever lived in a place I've loved as much as Brooklyn.  Here is where the grammar plays it's weird role.  I wrote in the present perfect.  It holds a tense and an aspect.  The tense is present via "have" and the aspect is where it gets tricky.  Aspect is the "feeling" per se.  Aspect is meant to be transitional.  As it is defined in modern grammar,  it is also known as a mood.  Therefore, in my understanding a "mood" can change.  A tense can't.  You did or you didn't do something.  Yet, the the definition of "have" is as ambiguous as they can come.

I've never lived in a place I have loved as much as Brooklyn.

And, that sentence and it's tense and mood are problematic for me.  I haven't lived anywhere but Brooklyn for so long.  I leave here and I want to live anywhere else.  At least for a moment.  But, then it was Portland, Oregon, that really made me feel okay about leaving.  Yet, as always, I'm here.  Teaching only evenings and late afternoons, missing baseball games, dinners, cooking, ideal times for cycling.

It is such an odd feeling to know how much better your life could be in another place if you could only commit to it; that means giving up everything a place says is important.  The east coast, with all of its greatness and ambition, becomes less and less attractive in my case.  What the fuck am I?  An adjunct professor (hurumph?).  No.  I'm a token in this game of a city of antipathy.  I don't even have a title other than "lecturer" or "visiting" according to where I work.  The sad irony is that I have 14 years as an educator under my belt and teach in higher ed.  My experience and capabilities are only noticed at the micro level.  The macro (full-time, benefits, pay appropriate for hours worked, research opportunities, etc.) are considered worthless at this point in this region of the U.S.

Alas, there is Portland.  They have a living wage out there.  Meaning, I'd make 1/6 or so of my current salary if I slung coffee or bartend on an hourly basis.  Yet, that is the point, in an odd way.  If I were good at something out there, I'd be valued.  No matter what you do: flipping burgers, slinging coffee, cold-calling, you get paid at least $11 an hour.  Perhaps my sights are way low, perhaps my ambition is fleeting, but that sounds okay to me.  $21,120 a year before tips sounds great to me in a weird way.  It is a place that embraces everything I love. EVERYTHING.  The jobs that exist otherwise are swallowed up by those who live there.  Fair enough.

Therefore, it is Brooklyn, boring and overpriced, and lame these days.....that is where I live and will most likely die.

Back to the verb tenses/moods:  Will always means maybe.....

40 or so...

Fuck.  July 7, 1974, at some point I was brought into this world.  I don't even know when, exactly, as both of my parents are dead.  Nixon was resigning the day I was born.

So, in order the things that resonated with me, by age, or an approximation of so:

Abbot & Costello
Godzilla
99 Luftbuluns
Men Without Hats
Bo Derek
The Vilolent Femmes
Drew Barrymore
Lawrence  Welk (sadly)
a ferret
Jan Magnus Pauley (My father was born on the same day as Prince and he called him a Spic)
Prince...Huge
Echo Hill Camp
Peter Rice
Marianna Gaffney
Carlos T. Blackburn
Minor Threat
The Misfits
Metallica
Madonna
North Carolina
Brian Young
Pavement
Aubrey Lowen
Jill Chisnell
Maggie Roma
Graffiti
Sid Vicious
Caring about kids, before you have kids
cats, especially Mocha and Commanche
Murph, the dog.
Pittsburgh and Zombies
Derek Bupp
Turner's Creek
Fucking Sewick.....
Eide's
Brooklyn
Tower Records
Will Oldham
Leigh Fox
Tom Williams
The West Coast
Stranger Than Paradise
Jim Jarmusch
Ozu

The Longest of Times

As I write this, Leigh, my wife, is asleep on the couch to my left.  We are rekindling a marriage and at points it is as easy as riding a bike, or looking out your window.  At others, it is as hard as doing complex math calculations.  I was never good at that subject and found it to be grueling.  Yet, I also found it to be rewarding when the problem was solved.  Marriages are hard things to make it through and I am trying my best to make this one work with a person I love wholeheartedly.  Yet it is difficult.

She picks up on things I didn't even know are going on and I know she is feeling insecure at points before she does.  It is this odd tandem.  I pull away, she pulls me in and we are not ready to meet at certain points.  But, I'm hoping with time and healing, those points will become rearview mirrors as we move forward.  They have to.  They must.  Yet, we have to figure out the strength of our lines.  That is our job.  To make everything less taut.

I've been riding the bike a lot less frequently than I would hope for by this point of time of the year.  It is a drag as I know how much mental bullshit I clear from my mind on long rides.  The weather is not cooperating, nor is whiskey and a vampiric schedule as of late.  Been working mostly evenings and can somehow still pull off late nights and be a productive human.....at least for the most part.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed for the weather to allow for some good, long rides (aka head clearers).

Off to city island tomorrow and hopefully something substantial on Monday as well.  Should tack down 50 miles or so tomorrow, then we shall see what the rainy week brings.  I hope my guard lowers a bit in all ways as the rides are able to continue.

It has been a long time since I've written and apologize for all the Jon psychobabble.  There is a lot going on and keeping my fingers crossed for a few major things.  Please keep them crossed for me too.

East of Eden 3: Mom's Eyes

Lately, I keep on returning to my mother's eyes.  They were this incredibly vibrant blue, like Caribbean Sea water.  They absolutely sparkled and shined as she pounced through her life.  There was this eagerness in them.  I share a trait with my mom of this overeagerness to please and have people like me.  Like, really like me and have this fondness of me.  Yet, I do not have those same eyes as she did.  I inherited my father's brown color, though I wish I had hers.  Even more, those eyes displayed her emotions as clearly as possible.  When she was happy, they were bright and eager. When she was down, they conveyed the same blue as a Robert Johnson song.  They were magical.

When I returned home from Japan, a week before she passed, she saw me and made this ridiculous comment.  I'll never forget it.  She told me that I looked just like her son, Jon.  Her eyes danced and flickered, although they looked watery and tired due to the morphine pumping through her system.  The eyes didn't seem to carry the cancer that intensely, yet they did carry a sense of frailty and desperation  It took a while, but I convinced her it was really me and I had come back from Japan.  She was pretty out of it, but had her lucid moments too.

The days, long, long days passed.  On June 21, 2003, the day before the equinox, she took her last breath and it was one of the most resonating memories I have.  To watch someone take their last breath after so much suffering provides a sense of dread and relief at the same time.  The dread is to be expected.  That woman, my mother, is not there anymore.  Yet, the relief comes because you knew that her intense moments of pain had finally come to an end.  We told her it was okay to move on.  It was okay to let go.  She was engaged to be married and her fiancé didn't happen to be in the room yet.  We had called him earlier because we could sense it was happening.  She took all of us in, her breathing running in distant pants.  They were deep breaths.  Meaningful breaths.  Finally, her fiancé, a man who went by the name of Tex, entered the room.  That was who she wanted to see!  The person she loved and was intending on being with for the rest of her life.  She could have never guessed the time would have passed so quickly.  She caught sight of him and her eyes lit up one last time.  Again, that vibrancy engaged with those who could see her, but most importantly, with him.  And then there was a last exhalation.  After a few seconds her eyes changed and they remained open, as if she had stopped in space.  The energy lingered for a moment and then they became this steely blue, almost metallic, it seemed.  

This image is one I need to let go of in some way.  I am hoping that writing about it and really "putting it out" here will serve some therapeutic and healing purpose.  It needs to be filed away somewhere I can't always find it.  It is a powerful and meaningful moment, but it is a ghost I really don't want to have such a strong inventory of that causes pain.  It is so odd how a day can be going just fine.  You're just walking down the street and then BAM that image pops into your mind and suddenly all feels flat and lifeless, something of an existence without a sense of purpose.  So, hopefully, like taillights on the highway, this image will start to streak on by a bit.  At least I hope that happens.  My mom was a pretty good soul.  If she were alive on this Earth today, she would be turning 71 next Wednesday.  She had 60 meaningful years, filled with extreme joy and devastating sadness, like all lives I guess.  I think reading East of Eden gave me the courage to actually do this and make some sort of attempt to let it go and forgive myself for staying in Japan as long as I did before really dealing with what was happening.  I truly hope it works.......

East of Eden # 2: Mom

Reading East of Eden made me understand death better.  Or, more so it made me remember that death  always rolls around.  We don't want it to ever come, but it does.  So, I'm kind of cleansing myself in a way.  Like East of Eden, I'm going to describe a death.  I'm guessing, like Steinbeck, this was a way to let it go.

This was my experience:

March 2003:

I got a phone call while in Japan.

While in Japan, I was making huge segues in sleeping/fucking this ex-swimsuit model.

The call was from Steve, my sisters's ex-husband Jon, your mom is not doing well.

Swimsuit model and me are now fucking.

Jon:  What do you mean?

Steve: Your mom has pancreatic cancer.

While in Japan, I was making huge segues in sleeping/fucking this ex-swimsuit model.

While in Japan, I was making huge segues in sleeping/fucking this ex-swimsuit model.While in Japan, I was making huge segues in sleeping/fucking this ex-swimsuit model.While in Japan, I was making huge segues in sleeping/fucking this ex-swimsuit model.While in Japan, I was making huge segues in sleeping/fucking this ex-swimsuit model.While in Japan, I was making huge segues in sleeping/fucking this ex-swimsuit model.While in Japan, I was making huge segues in sleeping/fucking this ex-swimsuit model.

That was all I thought about.

April 2003:

I came home.....and planted a bullshit garden of teas in her backyard.  Planted mint, too.  Herbs galore that she would never pick.

June 2003:

So, I made it back, one week before she died.

And this is where it matters: her eyes.  I have never seen anything like it, probably never will.  Her eyes were the bluest of blue, really pure.  When she took that last breath, they turned grey/slate/wide open.

Seven for a Day: First East of Eden Reflections

This first set of new haikus is a collection inspired by a myriad of things I have been thinking about in reference to Steinbeck's East of Eden.  I have read over 500 of the 600 or so pages of it thus far.  As usual, when I get near the end of a book I love, I start to slow down.  Yet, I have crawled to the finish line with this book because it truly scares me.  It is an epic tragedy and it feels like everything is preparing to erupt.  There are glimpses of so many life experiences in this novel; many of which are seen to be as great failures.  Yet, within those failures are these glimpses of greatness and love, if only fleeting and filled with brevity.  They are there though.  So, this set of syllabic poetry is self-referential, but also meant to encompass how the book has affected me thus far.  Later, I intend to write some prose and new verse away from haiku upon completing the book.  I will be forever grateful to my friend, Helene for giving this novel to me and telling me to read it at such a delicate time in my life.  Thanks, Queenie!

Far away from west,

this place is no great graden.

Teeming with evil.

So much self-hatred,

from deep within it does stir,

A spitting cobra.

If only there were……

More trees, love and a kindness.

Give authority.

Let me count the ways,

I feel remorse and some loss.

An ape-like regress.

These digits of mine,

that have touched so many things,

Now seem to fade numb.

I have wiped the tears

from both of our red faces

Oh, how they return.

That great temptation.

The strains of what could/n’t be,

will long torment us.

East of Eden and Work to Come

"A child may ask, 'What is the world's story about?'  And a grown man or woman may wonder, 'What way will the world go?  How does it end and, while we're at it, what's the story about?'

I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one, that had frightened and inspired us, so that we live in a Pearl White serial of continual thought and wonder. Humans are caught-in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too-in a net of good and evil. I think this is the only story we have and it occurs on all levels of feeling and intelligence. Virtue and vice were wool of our first consciousness, and they will be the fabric of our last, and this despite any changes we may impose on field and river and mountain, on economy and manners. There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard clean questions: Was it good or was it evil?  Have I done well-or ill"

Wow. There is a lot of work  based on that segment from this incredible book. Please do stay tuned, dear readers......,

A Dozen New Ones

Trees covered in white.
Beyond beautiful, pretty.
The drip before black.

Such a strong U-turn,
to feel and spin and rewind.
Reel (real) for a minute.

Countless sounds of snow,
from silent to violent,
based on how it falls.

Blue eyes, hair dyed black
and I think some black inside,
dying to see light.

Am I a monster?
Relationship Godzilla?
Only to rebuild.

It is bad out here.
The rent and such life constraints.
Yet, leaving is hard.

There is history,
torn down and reinvented,
to fall once again.

My fat cat on lap,
just licking my hand, salty,
cold and ocean dry.

Pigeons are rock stars,
for hours they sit asking
for one autograph.

Waterfalls and green.
But she would be left behind
as we look forward.

I raised a sweet cat,
lover of belly rubbing,
and some soft petting.

Some very long days
turn into very long nights
stuck in books and hearts.

New Cold, Cold Weather Haikus

I am transparent.
There is ease to see through me
and all that I want.

Child falling down
on the street, not a whimper.
He's tougher than me.

A steamy bathroom,
a sweat glaze on my body,
just trying to breathe.

The matchbook sits there.
Used up and only cardboard,
it is useless now.

The streets, a mixture
of salt and dirt together.
Imagine the wound.

The airshaft, a hum.
Reading East of Eden now.
The evil abounds.

Pony up those dues.
Boy, all must be paid in full.
Silent snickering.

There's no reflection
in the rancid, dark puddles.
A street corner swirls.

I tossed a nickel.
Heads or tails?  Heads or tails?  Heads?
Can't find it again.

Mash ups, quick edits.
Backwards loops, all exciting.
Decipher meaning.

West/East

It has been awhile since I've really posted a good post.  I know that.  Like, something you can dig your teeth into, give a shit about, go, Jon is really thinking.  It has been a good long while since one of those has come around.  But, Ladies and Gents, we are back in some semblance of creative endeavors.

Let's start with California.  California is a blessed place to me of late.  It is another side of this continent.  It is so far away.  And therein lies its beauty.  It is so far away and it looks so different and life is different from the east.  I can't say I love everything about California, but I do love its geography.  Mountainous.  Gorgeous, meandering roads you seem like you could go on forever.  As soon as you leave San Francisco and head north or south, you can become lost in all that surrounds you.  Shit, even in that city, you can become mesmerized by the hills alone; its architecture.  It is unlike anywhere out here.

I guess it begins with a sky like that that is unheard of on the east coast at this time of year.  Those weird, ink sunset colors and soft clouds don't really come around here until the summer.

Expanse and clarity.  Forever horizon, even though this is just San Jose.  Shit, it is immense. It is huge.  It is sky and beyond that it is sky and sun.

Now we have to deal with the beauty of ornate San Fran.  It truly is one of the most beautiful cities I have ever steeped foot in.  There are moments after moment when you just look around you and say.....wow, this is a gorgeous place.

This says what it says...

And then it is north, really fucking north.  Notice how many people are behind the Bernsteins in this photo?  Nada.  Zip.  The landscape is its own.  The Pacific Ocean and nary a soul to be found.  Bliss.

Just beauty.......sky, branches.

And then it was off to Portland.  That city is the first city other than Brooklyn, I have really fallen in love with.  Like, true love, grade school love where you wanna write notes to it or some shit.  Portland do you like me?  Circle yes/no?  It is a weird place, a lovely place.  When you leave the city for 30 minutes you see this:

 and this:

and you're far as fuck when you see this:

Super odd though because I got this:

That is the homage I got to my adopted hometown of Brooklyn and the best roller coaster that might exist and rode on my own.  I got that tattoo done in Portland and I think it says a lot about my mind frame these days.  I love this place, Brooklyn, NY and have had so many lovely experiences here.  I have been through this borough's revival and I have her on my arm.  On my arm is a ticket to the Cyclone, which is such a suitable analogy for this borough.  The ride is a lot of fun, yet it hurts a lot.  You exit bruised, but glad you did it.  You look at it, hear it roar, see its faces of terror, humility and joy and just think, I did it and it did me.  It is forever going to happen that way.

Lost Compass

It's been awhile since I've posted anything on this blog of mine.  I feel bad about it; the absence, if anyone is actually reading.  Currently, I'm on the verge of quitting my entire online persona for several reasons.  The first of which is reading The Circle by Dave Eggers.  He has done a formidable job of scaring the shit out of me about online control.