By George - elephants!

Last night the circus came to town. And for a moment, the elephants owned 34th street. But perhaps I should first describe the previous twelve hours, or four months.

Intent on temporarily ridding myself of this city that has become so heavy in me, I went hiking with Alex on Storm King Mountain where we balanced rocks and perched ourselves as high as we could. If only I could be so long at my processes like the autumn leaves underfoot, slippery and taking their time at decomposing. Somehow this mountain (eh, large hill) has something to do with the way I was able to be later that night at the pool party – ready. Yes a pool dance party near times square with beach balls and a sauna and steam room and bar and perfect music (Talking Heads, Amy Winehouse) and radical kids from some protest marching band. But even this was too much to take in, the vodka and steam and wide-eyed strangers going straight to our heads and clouding away what we lacked that of course it felt a dream when everyone ran down to 34th street to watch the elephants pass.

I am having a hard time finding an affective way to write about this night, for the very reason that, speechless with head-cocked laughter, hundreds of twenty and thirty-somethings ran along side elephants for blocks. I cannot dream a more brilliant interruption to the state of the world, or a movement, a weird dance into spring and out of the rut of winter. Can you imagine the laughter that elephants in the middle of the night in midtown can conjure? Fuck. Imagine running with elephants in the middle of this crazy city that has caused so many people so much pain in the last months – and then there are elephants. And suddenly we’re whole and, by the collision of this world with another, reminded that there are so many worlds and lives outside of this city and this season. It seems that these hundreds could have just as easily cried as laughed. It didn’t matter; there were elephants in the street.

And even this is not the way I meant to write about this night for what is the use of intellectualizing elephants? I have never been so affected by seasons. The seasons here are vivid and purposeful and go to great lengths to prove themselves and their innate power over all our defenses. Such committed seasons. But there is no light without darkness. We need shadows to discern our breadth and depth and where to step. Spring is here; you cannot argue with elephants. I love New York.

This is what Ursula K. Le Guin has to say about it: “Happiness has to do with reason, and only reason earns it. What I was given was the thing you can’t earn, and can’t keep, and often don’t even recognize at the time; I mean joy.”

All about love

Belle's hair was dyed a scorching red that brought out the highlights in her winter coat. Gert's hair was a dying blonde. You could see the cold cling to them even in the subway car, like a body bag, or an ill bred child.
"Put on your gloves, our stop is next… Our stop – it's next. Put on your gloves."
"Did you know I bought this mink coat twenty years ago? It doesn't look a day old. Twenty years, can you believe it?"
"Your gloves, Belle, put on your gloves."
"You see that pole?" Belle pointed to a seemingly arbitrary pole on the passing platform and her younger companion seemed to roll her eyes. The last pole before the dark void of a tunnel. "My husband and I used to leave notes for each other in the cracks of that pole. So many it filled all up and there were no more cracks left. They were the sweetest notes. I'd blush if it weren't so damn cold down here. Only one day we went to our pole to find a bunch of teenagers surrounding it, laughing at it…Twenty years old this coat is. Can you believe it?"
"Put on your gloves, Belle."

Ichiwakisha and the Wind Mountain - or - adventures of the unfinished

I went back the farm for a very brief visit and there was snow up to my knees and I took a walk by myself in snowshoes through the field and over the creek and up the mountain and when I got to the top of the hill there was a forest and no matter where I stood I was in perfect proximity between the trees. I could have been one of them I stood so still as the sun knelt behind us. I ran over streams and fresh snow, stuck my hand in icy water. There was only the sound of my shoes and the snow under the weight of them, just beginning to form a fine crust.

At night I was up to my chin in cloud. As the fog fell around my feet I looked up at the hyper-real starry sky. Tears don't freeze as one might imagine. It is so good to know that the farm is as unchanging as it is changing, that I can come back after letting New York do something to me, change me in whatever direction, and everything will be just as I left it, but whiter. Clad in snow.

Here is the beginning (or middle) of the story I wrote for Kia, our six-year-old farm neighbor, and one of the wisest people I know. Ichiwakisha is her Native American name: Wild Mountain Girl. The story is unfinished – I am letting her take the reins. But what do YOU think happens next?


Ichiwakisha climbed her mountain in a deerskin dress.

It was not easy. She slipped on the ice and the ice slid into the water and the water sunk and sprang far below her and she looked down to see the ripples she had made in the moonlight. All day she worked on her metal cube, folding her wind-strong fingers around it until her skin was raw, smoothing out the edges. The winter hit her hard, but she ran her wind-strong hands over it, too, soothing it like an angered child and she took care of it even in its absence. Below, below even the valley, were the people and the myriad creatures Ichiwakisha's quest would save, though she was too far in the mountain forest to hear their calls.

That night, the moon made water ice and the let the snow melt and fall at once.

In her dreams Ichiwakisha had seen how both her worlds, mountain and man, could coexist and so she placed her man-made metal cube at the tip-top of the mountain and in it the moon reflected all of Ichiwakisha's worlds and dreams and all the spirits in her and in the mountain her water-strong feet fell upon. And as she turned to leave, her long, gold hair spiraled with the wind and caught the moon and in it too the moon showed what came before, and after, though she would never know this.

at the diner on the corner

I am sitting at Neil's Coffee Shop. A corner diner, really, with a big front window. I am at the bar writing, drinking hot chocolate, waiting for my 5pm eggs and I feel epic! My eggs - just arrived as I wrote this word - my eggs (will) have cheddar cheese on whole-wheat toast. My Grandma says I should fatten up for the winter. I have been realizing again the immense guilt I feel for my relative thinness. Borges is sitting by my side and though I've only read a page I feel smarter for his close proximity. There is a very handsome man sitting on my other side (was Borges handsome?). He looks like Scott Joplin, or at least an image of an image of Scott Joplin, clothes and all. My eggs took two minutes to make and ten to eat.

An old man just walked in. He is undoubtedly a regular but most of these patrons are not sure where they are. One asked, is this Columbus? And another, curse the thought, asked what pies they had. She ordered Cherry and I found myself day dreaming about Agent Dale Cooper. (Been watching 'Kingdom' and therefore thinking of Twin Peaks often.)

I am writing with this blog in mind - a strange thing for me to do. But the other day I finally articulated the thought that this bloggery is a finally blatant admittance to the idea that journaling is not for one's self (no writing is solely for one's self) but a stab at immortality i.e. 'someday my grandchildren will find this diary, locked and bound as I leave it now.' No writing is meant to go unread. Now the act of blogging acknowledges this. I am journaling knowing my friends will read it.

If Scott Joplin is beside me than Ted Joans just sat down behind me. Scott Joplin looks over my shoulder. What is she writing on the miniature pad, he thinks. One woman with scarlet lips has been waiting for someone since I arrived. She has a white scarf, important hair, tweed suite. She is the Upper East Side (seemingly lonely, wealthy and white) but she doesn't fit in this Upper East Side All-American diner with waiters from India.

For those who would like to know what I've been doing, not just my wide-eyed reflections: I have officially moved to the upper east side and live in the maid's quarters on the tenth floor of a ridiculous apartment building in a room that most resembles your mother's walk-in closet. But everything has a place. My loft bed sways to and fro on it..s sad little legs but now I have gotten quite used to falling asleep to imaginings of oceans and masts and treasure islands in the distance. Though land sickness the following day will not do. There is a roof garden and I am the only one who uses it. I am now a part of the lights and city I watched for hours from Justin's Lower East Side time-robbing window. The family I nanny for lives a few floors below me and no longer has any shame in my presence. I've also been doing admin work at a sun-lit yoga studio.

I think it's time to go. Joplin left, Che (who came a little after) is almost done with his eggs and Ted Joans is deep in his book and hat. Many great (dead) people eat alone in New York. It has gotten very crowded in my Nighthawk café and the woman with important hair has found her friend. I am very much in love with today.

These are the things that happen when you think New York's not looking:

When the light is right and the clouds are just as they should be, hovering, balancing twice as precarious as they really are, just above the tip-tops of the skyscrapers, a blanket on pins.. the lights of the Chrysler and Empire State reflect on the bottoms of clouds. I used to be in love with the shadows of clouds on Desert Mountains. Now I am learning to love the way the city lights reflect on the underside of clouds. These lower east side windows expand, they are expansive. Like in Warhol's "Empire," I watch time go by here. It's almost unnoticeable, until you notice it. That is my view. (Until I leave this neighborhood but I will discuss that at a later time.)

I feel epic here, walking in this strange, random, driven city, leaning backwards from the railing over the reservoir in Central Park. I walk all the time. I feel good physically, not like I did on the farm of course, what with the hot tunnel-air in the subways, the smog I haven't really noticed, and stress, all of which make me feel contracted at times, but I do feel good. I feel lasting, sustainable, but more abstractly, I feel epic just for the act of living in this city and understanding how the wind blows around the often fleshy corners of buildings.

I like the way, when the subway train comes around the bend, you can see only how the headlights reflect on the blue bars on the perimeter of the platform almost, almost like the moon on the moving surface of a dark-night-ocean.

I have acquired an affinity for being near greatness. Or if not greatness than bigness of some sort. This is not a quality I am proud of, but what can I say. I ran all the way from Central Park to 11th Ave where the Daily Show is taped in order to shake hands with Terry Gilliam. I told him so and he said, well at least you got some exercise. He was pan handling there with a sign that read "Studioless film, will direct for food." Few recognized him and he made quite a bit of money. I went to a Q&A with Lou Reed, after which I nearly cried while telling him about my friend in the hospital who loves his music. Of course there is Noel Gallagher and the incident where my intellect dropped below my feet when I tried to talk to him in the Green Room during the Oasis film screening I worked at the other day. Matt Pinfield was so kind and interested in what music we liked after his interview. Oh and Cody Chestnut that night but this is all beside the point.

The point is that I feel quite full (not because of celebrities). I am very engaged and involved and IN it. I do miss the farm and MS and Portland and the desert and vast spaces conducive to big thoughts, but I am transitioning and learning and building. Despite the randomness that is very loud here, I have found a community in Subject To Change (the art collective (no, MS friends, not a pretentious thing in the least!)) and good, old friends. I will try to make this a regular thing, this bloggery. Until then, here are some contrasting photos from the last few months.