Top 12 Wednesday

1) Listening to the cold rain while reading under a down blanket.

2) Just feeling total love for Joe Brainard and how much he's made me smile over the years whenever I've been sad.

3) Remembering how much I bring to the table of love.

4) Sweet Jane.

5) A warm shower can change your point of view.

6) Patti Smith and Alice Notley. How strong and creative they've both been in the face of enormous grief. They are my heroes and I salute them.

7) Realizing how much I don't need.

8) Peanut butter and jelly on toasted Ezekiel Bread washed down with ice cold milk while reading the NY Times (breakfast and dinner).

9) The simple basic stuff like being kind to myself and others everyday.

10) Bob Dylan, you've been there every single time my heart has been broken. Thanks Bob!

11) Riding my bike home at night. Thank you for setting me free, bike!

12) Dancing, even when it hurts to breathe.

Fulton & St. Felix

The punch line is delivered
with impeccable tragic timing
but the roar of traffic along Atlantic Avenue drowns
out the sad bits enough that you project
a neutral look to assure the speaker that
whatever was said is throbbing in your chest now
whatever words do when summing up
a past well there is an agenda
everyone wants protection
so their words can't be trusted
even my own words tell little
they must be discarded listen
this much is true: it's the gestures that speak
some hand reaching for your own
the delicate steps together say a kiss so soft
or embrace when the world disappears
there is something noble something regal
about love that descriptions and post-descriptions
and critiques can't touch the reality
of simply caressing someone's cheek
using a finger to wipe a tear away
and then stick that finger in your own mouth
in order to taste the salt of that person
there is no code here no hidden meaning
there's something here that you can't sum up
because tenderness says so much
no matter how hard you try
to define it with words.

Alice Notley

"Grief isn't empty it's black and material I've seen it
It's a force, independent, and eats you while you're sleeping."

"The universe is ruled by love and countervalent sorrow
Grief's not a social invention
Grief is visible, substantial, I've literally seen it."

"Grief is opportunistic and uncontrollable
it doesn't exactly come
from you, you allow it in
It's godlike
as in possession."

"One is magically struck down at certain
moments, can't move, can't arise,
and inside is poison: grief gets caught
in intensifying pockets which when opened
cause sensations of illness. On Christmas morning
I can't stand up."

"If you immerse your feet in icy water
you forget grief for a moment. I did this once, my
brother-in-law made us cross a cold stream barefoot,
that winter, walking in the woods--I was emptied, then elated,
blissful; but didn't try it again. Grief
returns vengeful after you've repulsed it."

Alice Notley, excerpts from the poem "I--Towards a Definition" in her book Mysteries of Small Houses

Joanna Penn Cooper Interviewed Me

You can read the interview here.

Enjoy!

Top 11 Monday

1) "Too much definition leaves too much out." Adam Phillips, Terrors and Experts (such a good book, I keep returning to it again and again).

2) Seeing my life through the eyes of those who love me, a singular pleasure I occasionally grant myself.

3) Reading over my journals from 2.21.09 to now. Lots and lots of details I'd forgotten. I was really talking to my current self a lot. I love that I took so much care to document everything. Hey, I'm a writer, that's what I do.

4) Sweet morning of calm delight in solitude.

5) The coffee is good, like a warm hand lifting my heart.

6) Garbage guys: why are you so loud?

7) Running is wonderful: the breath, the rhythm, the joy of movement, being totally present--all good. Hey, I'm an Ironman, that's what I do.

8) So many texts and emails and comments from friends, I want to save them all.

9) Hibino Sushi with Drew last night.

10) A good feeling: A totally cleaned, dusted and scrubbed apartment.

11) A fresh, full bottle of Feu de Bois parfume d'interieur by Diptyque.

Sunday Morning Meditations

"Remind yourself that it is not the future or past that weighs heavy upon you, but always the present, and that this gradually grows less, if only you isolate it and reprove your understanding, if that is not strong enough to hold against it, thus taken by itself." -Marcus Aurelius, The Meditations

"The way to solve the problem you see in life is to live in a way that makes the problem disappear." -Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value

"Mourning is immensely reassuring because it convinces us of something we might otherwise easily doubt: our attachement to others." -Adam Phillips Terrors and Experts

"Pain makes us believe that other people have something we need." -Adam Phillips Terrors and Experts

"Trying to cheer yourself up isn't easy, and sometimes it feels hypocritical, like going against the grain. But the reminder is that if you want to change your habitual stuckness, you're the only one who can do it." -Pema Chodron, The Wisdom of No Escape and the Path of Loving Kindness

"Sorrow, the cause of sorrow, the end of sorrow, and path of eight stages which leads to the end of sorrow." -The Dhammapada

"If I'm as normal as I think I am, then we're all a bunch of weirdos." -Joe Brainard 29 Mini-Essays

"People of the world: relax." -Joe Brainard, Selected Poems

"But nothing delights the mind so much as fond and loyal friendship. What a blessing it is to have hearts that are ready and willing to receive all your secrets in safety, with whom you are less afraid to share knowledge of something than keep it to yourself, whose conversation soothes your distress, whose advice helps make up your mind, whose cheerfulness dissolves your sorrow, whose very appearance cheers you up." -Seneca, Dialogues and Letters

"I had fancied that the value of life lay in its inscrutable possibilities, in the fact that I never know, in addressing myself to a new individual, what may befall me." -Ralph Waldo Emerson, Experience

"One lovely day in spring: you get up and wash, you shave, you brush your clothes off. Each morning there you are, a new man, scrubbed clean, shaven, clothes brushed." George Bataille, Guilty

Saturday With Henry David Thoreau

"What sort of space is that which seperates a man from his fellows and makes him solitary? I have found that no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to one another. What do we want most to dwell near to?"

Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Top Ten Saturday (So Far)

1) Getting my hair cut at FSC-Barber (my usual place) on Horatio Street in the West Village and having my barber council me on break-ups and grief and what to do tonight. "Go out to a club!" He suggested enthusiastically. Um, no.

2) Rain in Manhattan is just dirtier and sadder than rain in Brooklyn. Go out there and see for yourself.

3) Retail therapy is kind of silly when rent is due, but it was fun looking around in Barney's Co-Op and Rogan.

4) The letters of Seneca are moderately soothing to read on the 2nd Avenue F train platform.

5) When a wave of griefy-panic hits you, just give in to it like a wave hit you and let the bottom of the ocean scrape your body.

6) Elizabeth's text.

7) Isa's text.

8) When your phone vibrates no amount of wishing will make the name you really want to appear on caller i.d. actually be there. Things just don't work that way--most of the time. But go ahead and do it again anyway because you're psychic and you have special psychic powers that can make things like that happen, you'll see.

9) Bob Dylan's "If You See Her Say Hello." Best love song, ever. Listen.

10) Looking forward to seeing Bad Lieutenant with a friend.

Talking (A True Story)

He said he could talk with dead people on the phone
and there was no explanation. The dead people on the other end
were heard explaining things to him about
what it felt like to talk on the telephone when they are dead
and what sort of food they ate and TV shows they watched
and what they did in their free time (bathed repeatedly)
and that sort of stuff. They brought in sound technicians with
their mobile labs in big trucks and found that the voices on the phone
were easily matchable with tapes of the dead people talking.
Everyone got totally freaked out by that. Whenever they saw
him on the phone they hoped he was not calling them
or that he would say "hey I'm talking to you on the phone."
It created a hostile environment in the neighborhood
with people all edgy and anticipating some horrifying
revelation that they were just walking around, though dead.
Everyone was also a little worried about what they might
reveal to someone on the telephone if they were dead.
He got a radio show out of the deal and people listened
in record numbers in 2009. He currently lives alone
in Cobble Hill Brooklyn. You can see him with his cell phone
walking down Warren Street talking in a loud theatrical voice,
which is the way he said the dead like to be addressed:
loud and theatrically.

Thanks Jeni

Thanks Laura

December Poem

Solitude makes me remember the
last roses before frost. The delight of first light
when two bodies fit together so perfectly.
But also traffic and the chatter of people
in the courtyard, trucks moving garbage,
a lamp too dim to read by. So much unanswered.
Things notify me of their existence
and I have no choice but to draw them in
one by one. I still can't eat what's in
the fridge, it breaks my heart to see these things:
clementines, jellies, rice bread, and goat cheese.
Spices and teas in the cupboard I knew nothing about are
packed on the upper shelves. Potato scrapings still in the oven,
I tried so hard to comfort so many times. It's lighter
now, the dimness is turning chalky blue to pink.
I'll ride my bicycle with a friend, eat lunch with
another, coffee with another, and dinner with
another. That's the only way. Still, I've kept
the memories intact, I honor them to myself
and others. I celebrate the sun arriving
just as I knew it would, lifting me gently and
leading me on. It's here I go and here I stay.

Friday Morning With George Bataille

"For a period of several days, life enters empty dark. A wonderful feeling of relaxation is the result, and unlimited power is disclosed to the mind. The world is at your feet and you can do what you want. Only problems soon develop."

from Guilty, p. 37


"Great and terrible events are difficult to deal with. But it's also true I woudn't have wanted to live without them, even if what they brought me minute by minute was worse."

from Guilty, p. 52

Thursday Night Brooklyn Walk

Brooklyn, won't you please be my friend tonight?

I did it

Trader Joe's is not a place to be sad
so I had to move quickly from point to point
with a red basket in my hand
kefir bananas coffee milk
things I need to survive and then
I got the fuck out of there fast.

Watch What You Remember

Watch what you remember: me dancing,
I did that, and sang too for you on the 6th floor.
If no one is there to see me land gracefully on the rug
on one foot does that mean it didn't happen?
Night is funny when I look at it from
the roof it looks all luminous and jewel-like.
It is one advantage of living in the city.
Memory is so dull, imprecise, and repetitive, and anyway,
they're all reruns and I've seen them dozens of times.
I have this thing, what is it called?
Oh, yeah, it's me and I miss you. Hi.

I can't stop watching this, again

I Am In the Air Right Now from Greg Lytle on Vimeo.

Classy Morning

What morning does is trick you
into thinking someone's just left
the bed to go to the bathroom or is drinking
tea at the big table. Morning makes
you think you can solve problems,
do math, send thoughts and change
minds. Morning is light and heavy
as any instrument of war. But still,
when I run through the last traces
of night, blue fingers of dawn lift
the sky and my heart into now.
This is all I have, so I'll do with it
what I must by being here
and moving through it in a classy way.

Top Fourteen Thursday

1) Dad.
2) Drew.
3) Justin.
4) Jeni.
5) Elizabeth.
6) Laura.
7) Joanna.
8) Isa.
9) Shaun.
10) Eva.
11) Jordy.
12) Charles.
13) Jane.
14) Everyone at work.

Top Four Thursday Photographs