The Way Things Work
is by admitting
or opening away.
This is the simplest form
of current: Blue
moving through blue;
blue through purple;
the objects of desire
opening upon themselves
without us; the objects of faith.
The way things work
is by solution,
resistance lessened or
increased and taken
advantage of.
The way things work
is that we finally believe
they are there,
common and able
to illustrate themselves.
Wheel, kinetic flow,
rising and falling water,
ingots, levers and keys,
I believe in you,
cylinder lock, pully,
lifting tackle and
crane lift your small head--
I believe in you--
your head is the horizon to
my hand. I believe
forever in the hooks.
The way things work
is that eventually
something catches.
-Jorie Graham
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Saturday, December 19, 2009
snow, pending
apparently it is going to snow today. there is already snow in berlin, where i call home now, whereas last year at this time new york was still home. new york, or, actually brooklyn, with its concrete, small parks, trees i was grateful for wherever i could find them. the water is dripping in the sink in the background, the sound is just off my right shoulder and i will go turn it off.
i woke up this morning and made quinoa for breakfast, with some cooked apples, honey, this pumpkin butter from trader joes that i will have a serious heartache for when i am no longer visiting. i am staying with my friend hannah, who lives in a studio off the brooklyn-queens expressway and sometimes it feels like the traffic is literally hurdling toward the window. somehow i get used to it, but i miss the almost eerie stillness of berlin, kreuzberg specifically, by the canal where the swans tuck their necks into their wings at night.
it has been an interesting trip. i feel more grounded in myself these days, less of a nomad and more like someone seeking roots. yet i make plans to come back to visit new york. it is odd being a visitor in a place i know so well. it is kind of like returning to an ex lover and feeling the complete familiarity of their body yet knowing that it is not necessarily a place to remain. i had forgotten so much about this city and certain people who i love that live in this city. i am reacquainting myself almost as if through memory which coexists with the present, and i am reacquainting myself with parts of me i left behind, like baggage that was too large to check on the plane.
i have yet to see my cats, left with a friend on lafayette ave when i moved. i know that it will be so emotional i am building myself up for seeing them again. my fierce and beautiful cat, nuri, who is the gypsy part of my soul embodied in cat form, and my homedweller penelope who loves nothing more than to nuzzle beneath your chin. she is the part of me that never ceases loving and always wants to find a place to stay, even if the moment is short, it is full.
i sit here and listen to the traffic, it is like the pathways of my thoughts. i sit here and listen to the silence beneath the traffic sounds and wonder when the snow will come.
there are a lot of things i miss in life which i plan to recover. the holes in existence that i need to patch. paint. pen. movement. time. more time to think and wander off from thinking. i want the new year to be a meditation in the sense that i will do what i am doing when i am doing it and i will listen while i am doing it. i want to work on listening to the silence beneath the rush of traffic. find that place just before snowfall, just before everything goes white.
i am also aware that i could write so much more. i am aware of the plenty within. i need a computer of my own also. i want to do so much, always have. i get stuck on the quantity of what wants to be expressed and instead i need to go slowly. one day, one thing. another day, another thing. one foot, then another. i had my tailbone put back into place the other day and it already feels like an infinite amount of time has passed because i feel so different. my whole spine feels different. now residing in a new body which is just a new version of the old flesh - nothing has actually changed except for alignment and some release of muscles long held - i need to give myself time to get used to this sense of being in a new dwelling. no need to rush ahead. no need to be like a car racing toward manhattan. i have no destination.
my head sits differently on top of my spine while i type. new sensations which also bring back the memory of how i felt in my body before injury. since i was 12 i lived with a not-fully ok left shoulder. since 23 i lived with a crooked tail from having cracked down on it, metal sidewalk on bleecker st. 16 years and almost 6 years spent with trauma to the body and kind of mimicking good posture, holding myself up muscularly, muscling through things that should have been easy. as a dancer i was a shadow of what i felt i could be. i was told there shouldnt be effort but there always was. of course not everything is perfect but now i feel like i can start to relearn myself. there is an ease: arms flapping from sockets, legs hanging loosely, that i havent felt since i was a child. and the thing i learned from these last few days is that we are ready when we are ready. i needed to muscle through until now. it served a purpose. and now? now i will see where that energy spent will go.
i woke up this morning and made quinoa for breakfast, with some cooked apples, honey, this pumpkin butter from trader joes that i will have a serious heartache for when i am no longer visiting. i am staying with my friend hannah, who lives in a studio off the brooklyn-queens expressway and sometimes it feels like the traffic is literally hurdling toward the window. somehow i get used to it, but i miss the almost eerie stillness of berlin, kreuzberg specifically, by the canal where the swans tuck their necks into their wings at night.
it has been an interesting trip. i feel more grounded in myself these days, less of a nomad and more like someone seeking roots. yet i make plans to come back to visit new york. it is odd being a visitor in a place i know so well. it is kind of like returning to an ex lover and feeling the complete familiarity of their body yet knowing that it is not necessarily a place to remain. i had forgotten so much about this city and certain people who i love that live in this city. i am reacquainting myself almost as if through memory which coexists with the present, and i am reacquainting myself with parts of me i left behind, like baggage that was too large to check on the plane.
i have yet to see my cats, left with a friend on lafayette ave when i moved. i know that it will be so emotional i am building myself up for seeing them again. my fierce and beautiful cat, nuri, who is the gypsy part of my soul embodied in cat form, and my homedweller penelope who loves nothing more than to nuzzle beneath your chin. she is the part of me that never ceases loving and always wants to find a place to stay, even if the moment is short, it is full.
i sit here and listen to the traffic, it is like the pathways of my thoughts. i sit here and listen to the silence beneath the traffic sounds and wonder when the snow will come.
there are a lot of things i miss in life which i plan to recover. the holes in existence that i need to patch. paint. pen. movement. time. more time to think and wander off from thinking. i want the new year to be a meditation in the sense that i will do what i am doing when i am doing it and i will listen while i am doing it. i want to work on listening to the silence beneath the rush of traffic. find that place just before snowfall, just before everything goes white.
i am also aware that i could write so much more. i am aware of the plenty within. i need a computer of my own also. i want to do so much, always have. i get stuck on the quantity of what wants to be expressed and instead i need to go slowly. one day, one thing. another day, another thing. one foot, then another. i had my tailbone put back into place the other day and it already feels like an infinite amount of time has passed because i feel so different. my whole spine feels different. now residing in a new body which is just a new version of the old flesh - nothing has actually changed except for alignment and some release of muscles long held - i need to give myself time to get used to this sense of being in a new dwelling. no need to rush ahead. no need to be like a car racing toward manhattan. i have no destination.
my head sits differently on top of my spine while i type. new sensations which also bring back the memory of how i felt in my body before injury. since i was 12 i lived with a not-fully ok left shoulder. since 23 i lived with a crooked tail from having cracked down on it, metal sidewalk on bleecker st. 16 years and almost 6 years spent with trauma to the body and kind of mimicking good posture, holding myself up muscularly, muscling through things that should have been easy. as a dancer i was a shadow of what i felt i could be. i was told there shouldnt be effort but there always was. of course not everything is perfect but now i feel like i can start to relearn myself. there is an ease: arms flapping from sockets, legs hanging loosely, that i havent felt since i was a child. and the thing i learned from these last few days is that we are ready when we are ready. i needed to muscle through until now. it served a purpose. and now? now i will see where that energy spent will go.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
new moon and squash
SONG
by frank o´hara
I'm going to New York!
(what a lark! what a song!)
where the tough Rocky's eaves
hit the sea. Where th'Acro-
polis is functional, the trains
that run and shout! the books
that have trousers and sleeves!
I'm going to New York!
(quel voyage! jamais plus!)
far from Ypsilanti and Flint!
where Goodman rules the Empire
and the sunlight's eschato-
logy upon the wizard's bridges
and the galleries of print!
I'm going to New York!
(to my friends! mes semblables!)
I suppose I'll walk back West.
But for now I'm gone forever!
the city's hung with flashlights!
the Ferry's unbuttoning its vest!
[1951]
not much time till i return to "that horrible city" as a friend said on facebook today. yes, back to the city i left in grey slush and rain on a cold january day after it had snowed the day before. or days before, plural, i think it was. i am currently lazing in bed, nearly all day, with a squash in the oven and some nearly-burnt quinoa all ready to be eaten. i was incredibly tired after giving four massages in two days, plus babysitting and staying up late at a friends birthday party. today i went for a short walk with meike as she went recording, then spent all the rest of my money at the biomarkt. tomorrow, another massage, some more money and the beginning of a 10-day brown rice diet. i am also about to sublet my place for two months, in light of going back to new york for three weeks. the brown rice will give me needed stability, some constancy and balance and cleansing. i feel strong enough for it now, whereas the last several months i needed to go through whatever it was my body was going through. that is thankfully over. so i am reading poetry online and thinking about revisiting that study formally. also studying dance here in berlin. also (should check on the squash)...
just ate (quinoa and said squash). talked with flatmate about piercings, tattoos and thailand and india and respect for people. ready for a tattoo, some outer manifestation of inner shifting. still not clear, as things are still changing and settling. and a new moon is on its way.
by frank o´hara
I'm going to New York!
(what a lark! what a song!)
where the tough Rocky's eaves
hit the sea. Where th'Acro-
polis is functional, the trains
that run and shout! the books
that have trousers and sleeves!
I'm going to New York!
(quel voyage! jamais plus!)
far from Ypsilanti and Flint!
where Goodman rules the Empire
and the sunlight's eschato-
logy upon the wizard's bridges
and the galleries of print!
I'm going to New York!
(to my friends! mes semblables!)
I suppose I'll walk back West.
But for now I'm gone forever!
the city's hung with flashlights!
the Ferry's unbuttoning its vest!
[1951]
not much time till i return to "that horrible city" as a friend said on facebook today. yes, back to the city i left in grey slush and rain on a cold january day after it had snowed the day before. or days before, plural, i think it was. i am currently lazing in bed, nearly all day, with a squash in the oven and some nearly-burnt quinoa all ready to be eaten. i was incredibly tired after giving four massages in two days, plus babysitting and staying up late at a friends birthday party. today i went for a short walk with meike as she went recording, then spent all the rest of my money at the biomarkt. tomorrow, another massage, some more money and the beginning of a 10-day brown rice diet. i am also about to sublet my place for two months, in light of going back to new york for three weeks. the brown rice will give me needed stability, some constancy and balance and cleansing. i feel strong enough for it now, whereas the last several months i needed to go through whatever it was my body was going through. that is thankfully over. so i am reading poetry online and thinking about revisiting that study formally. also studying dance here in berlin. also (should check on the squash)...
just ate (quinoa and said squash). talked with flatmate about piercings, tattoos and thailand and india and respect for people. ready for a tattoo, some outer manifestation of inner shifting. still not clear, as things are still changing and settling. and a new moon is on its way.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
back stepping
i am going back to new york for the month of december. well, from the 7th. no longer a leap, i feel like i am simply stepping backwards. but this backward step is not backwards in terms of progress (whatever progress is). i feel like i will be tying up some loose ends, making myself more connected, those parts of myself that might have been left behind reconnected to the parts of myself that might have been born over here. it has been almost a year. i moved and changed without fully knowing just how yet. i am always present in the shifting of things. time is not so relevant as change is. time is less important to me than place. i want to connect all the places i have been within myself. i guess they are already because i am connecting them, but i want to understand the process better. imagine if i had a string that never ran out, infinite string that i traveled with everywhere. it would probably be tangled. but there is no string so nothing is really tangled. i dont know why i have the sense of something not exactly smooth in all of my transitions. maybe smoothness is only to be found on skin or fabric. i have been sick for the last few days (again). first sick in the heart and then sick in the body. i vomited all day yesterday. i think i was getting rid of more than food that wasnt settling. today i feel the effects of some form of cleansing. today i feel tired out but also like i can more easily go forward from here. but i am going back soon, to see my life here now from the place in which i came. it might feel a bit like looking into the future, like how i felt before i left, knowing that there was so much waiting for me, but now being able to see it all clearly. and i want to understand how the experience of transplanting myself, my body, has changed me. i have rooted in new soil. now i return to the new york concrete. can i root in two places at once? i feel like i have always been so ready to let go. i am so quick to let go. now i want to hold on. i want to root the strings wherever i go. this is not a hike in pristine forest. i want to leave traces and take things with me, too, along the way.
Friday, October 2, 2009
zuhaus
after a month of more moving around and more sickness (just after the last post i got the swine flu) and more plans falling through, i have finally found a place to stay in for awhile. one year. and i am tired after all of this but also relieved. listening to the wave pictures the day after a great concert. uplifted, inspired. and i wonder if this blog is done. or at least it can change now. no longer the same story of moving, moving, moving homes. now, another kind of movement can come.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
materials
current inventory of things (in berlin):
shoes: fake black chuck taylor high tops, brown motorcycle boots, black and white sneakers
pants: seven pairs including one pair of jeans and three lent pants (all for thai and general living, dancing and climbing trees)
underwear, etc: 9 pair boy briefs of various sorts, 11 pair socks, mostly winter ones, 5 pairs of legwarmers, 3 tights hardly worn, 1 sports bra
shirts: 8 short-sleeved, 6 long-sleeved or warm ones
two winters hats, one warm scarf and one for spring/summer, and a silk one from a brooklyn friend no longer in brooklyn
ballet shoes and knee pads, black shoelaces unused
1 orange jacket
(missing red-orange sunglasses)
yoga mat, little alarm clock, lent guitar
1 electronic toothbrush with charger, various toiletries including toothpaste, floss, lotion, hair products, mascara, red lipstick worn twice, sunscreen, q-tips, (missing tweezers?), a visiting friends delta travel bag with toothpaste, etc inside
contact lenses, case and solution (still no glasses to replace the ones that broke in the early part of 2008)
lent hair clippers
2 packs of tissues from apothekes
4 lent books, one borrowed, 8 owned, a book on berlin and der kleine prinz
2 deutsch/english small dictionaries, deutsch heute textbook and beginners german book
little notebook, big notebook, planner
1 mobile phone without the back (taped) with charger
1 dead ibook with charger
1 mobile that doesnt work with german sim cards (?) and charger
t-mobile sim cards, 1 for deutschland and 1 for the uk
1 digital camera with batteries and usb cord
orange candle, neti pot, incense sticks, holder and sage, yoga and meditation balm, tarot cards
little amma doll, ganesha figure, (where is the little owl i have been carrying around for almost four years?), necklace made by friends daughter in brooklyn
amma archana book, important photos, bhagavad gita in paperback, gemstones, lighter, random beaded necklace, ganesha keychain
wallet, keys to lent atelier, keys to flat of catsitting and babysitting, keys of flat i am staying in now
some small change, american and british
a balinese bracelet from maybachufer markt (send to mom?)
a few business cards and silver cigarette case holding them
about five cds and a few mix cds, crap earphones
magazines for collaging, yoga and dance flyers, info. papers with german words and phrases, handwritten
3 pens, 1 pencil, eraser, sharpener, uhu stick
1 plug adapter to europe, 1 to the uk
blank envelopes, postcards from a secret santa in brooklyn and ones collected here, 2 AAA batteries
folded up paper with bridge to a song, four filled up notebooks and lots of scrap papers filled up from times i didnt have money for a new notebook
old map of wien found in giveaway box and old map of kreuzberg 36
half of pack of clove cigarettes like the ones i sometimes smoked in college, from a friend who left berlin
newmans ginger mint box brought from new york, now empty
sigg water bottle, needs to be cleaned
most of the things in a green backpack now that i bought for 3 dollars, carroll gardens, bk stoop sale
(climbing shoes and chalk bag lost in the post)
burnt orange brooklyn industries backpack left hanging to dry on schlesisches str.
canvas bag that says humane society with buttons saying nice is good (from best friend) and team dresch (given as a birthday gift from bandmate)
a canvas plus bag full of some clothes to sell at boxhagener flohmarkt
note: though i have reduced substantially what i possess materially in life, it still took a few hours to make this list.
shoes: fake black chuck taylor high tops, brown motorcycle boots, black and white sneakers
pants: seven pairs including one pair of jeans and three lent pants (all for thai and general living, dancing and climbing trees)
underwear, etc: 9 pair boy briefs of various sorts, 11 pair socks, mostly winter ones, 5 pairs of legwarmers, 3 tights hardly worn, 1 sports bra
shirts: 8 short-sleeved, 6 long-sleeved or warm ones
two winters hats, one warm scarf and one for spring/summer, and a silk one from a brooklyn friend no longer in brooklyn
ballet shoes and knee pads, black shoelaces unused
1 orange jacket
(missing red-orange sunglasses)
yoga mat, little alarm clock, lent guitar
1 electronic toothbrush with charger, various toiletries including toothpaste, floss, lotion, hair products, mascara, red lipstick worn twice, sunscreen, q-tips, (missing tweezers?), a visiting friends delta travel bag with toothpaste, etc inside
contact lenses, case and solution (still no glasses to replace the ones that broke in the early part of 2008)
lent hair clippers
2 packs of tissues from apothekes
4 lent books, one borrowed, 8 owned, a book on berlin and der kleine prinz
2 deutsch/english small dictionaries, deutsch heute textbook and beginners german book
little notebook, big notebook, planner
1 mobile phone without the back (taped) with charger
1 dead ibook with charger
1 mobile that doesnt work with german sim cards (?) and charger
t-mobile sim cards, 1 for deutschland and 1 for the uk
1 digital camera with batteries and usb cord
orange candle, neti pot, incense sticks, holder and sage, yoga and meditation balm, tarot cards
little amma doll, ganesha figure, (where is the little owl i have been carrying around for almost four years?), necklace made by friends daughter in brooklyn
amma archana book, important photos, bhagavad gita in paperback, gemstones, lighter, random beaded necklace, ganesha keychain
wallet, keys to lent atelier, keys to flat of catsitting and babysitting, keys of flat i am staying in now
some small change, american and british
a balinese bracelet from maybachufer markt (send to mom?)
a few business cards and silver cigarette case holding them
about five cds and a few mix cds, crap earphones
magazines for collaging, yoga and dance flyers, info. papers with german words and phrases, handwritten
3 pens, 1 pencil, eraser, sharpener, uhu stick
1 plug adapter to europe, 1 to the uk
blank envelopes, postcards from a secret santa in brooklyn and ones collected here, 2 AAA batteries
folded up paper with bridge to a song, four filled up notebooks and lots of scrap papers filled up from times i didnt have money for a new notebook
old map of wien found in giveaway box and old map of kreuzberg 36
half of pack of clove cigarettes like the ones i sometimes smoked in college, from a friend who left berlin
newmans ginger mint box brought from new york, now empty
sigg water bottle, needs to be cleaned
most of the things in a green backpack now that i bought for 3 dollars, carroll gardens, bk stoop sale
(climbing shoes and chalk bag lost in the post)
burnt orange brooklyn industries backpack left hanging to dry on schlesisches str.
canvas bag that says humane society with buttons saying nice is good (from best friend) and team dresch (given as a birthday gift from bandmate)
a canvas plus bag full of some clothes to sell at boxhagener flohmarkt
note: though i have reduced substantially what i possess materially in life, it still took a few hours to make this list.
yoking with nothing and everything
it feels like ages since i updated. i am calling myself an ultra-nomad at the moment. maybe übernomad is better. above and beyond nomadic. lots of bags and no backpack now. one left on schlesisches strasse, drying after being washed due to a chocolate bar explosion and the other left behind at friedelstrasse. checking emails and typing on a different keyboard with a different language setting nearly every other day. i have slept in prenzlauer berg, friedrichshain, kreuzberg and neukölln all within one week. i also took a day trip to a music festival called camp tipsy and spent saturday night in a tent. that is when the chocolate melted all over everything. now i am in the house community on silbersteinstr where i will eventually call home. it would take some explaining to explain this, but basically i am in the in between point between things being hard and getting easier. and i am sitting in it and i am quite used to it actually, breathing my way through. no that this is easy at all but one can get used to almost anything, including not having a bed of ones own. or a computer. or even a backpack, at least not at the moment. but soon i will have a bed, a computer and recover my backpack. and i still have my body and i am still using it. biking, recently thai kickboxing because it is fun and cheap and somehow balancing. dancing around in whatever room i am in and developing more and more questions without answers, which a new friend reminded me is like rilke's words: have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.
i used to have a notebook with that quote on the front cover. that was years ago when i was a coatchecker in a scottish restaurant and read 30 books in one month (give or take a few). now all of those books are sold or left behind, long ago. now i have next to nothing, but somehow everything.
and now i have nearly no time, have to go, bike some more, down to bergmannstrasse around the park and maybe go see a new tree i have found in viktoria park which is good for hanging from and resting in and even a sort of yoga. yoking to the tree. yoking to everything i can and letting go too.
i used to have a notebook with that quote on the front cover. that was years ago when i was a coatchecker in a scottish restaurant and read 30 books in one month (give or take a few). now all of those books are sold or left behind, long ago. now i have next to nothing, but somehow everything.
and now i have nearly no time, have to go, bike some more, down to bergmannstrasse around the park and maybe go see a new tree i have found in viktoria park which is good for hanging from and resting in and even a sort of yoga. yoking to the tree. yoking to everything i can and letting go too.
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