Lush Life

"Restless, they finally pull out to honeycomb the narrow streets for an hour of endless tight right turns: falafel joint, jazz joint, gyro joint, corner. Schoolyard, creperie, realtor, corner. Tenement, tenement, tenement museum, corner. Pink Pony, Blind Tiger, muffin boutique, corner. Sex shop, tea shop, synagogue, corner. Boulangerie, bar, hat boutique, corner. Iglesia, gelataeria, matzo shop, corner. Bollywood, Buddha, botanica, corner. Leather outlet, leather outlet, leather outlet, corner. Bar, school, bar, school, People's Park, corner. Tyson mural, Celia Cruz mural, Lady Di mural, corner. Bling shop, barbershop, car service, corner. And then finally..."

when both directions say to walk

perfecto.

¿cómo hablo español?

moon pulls

despite the downpours on a saturday, yesterday was pretty cool.

at housing works, i found something that had my name all ova it.

sukie sukie sukie. its a wee little notebook thing, and the lined pages were put in upside down, so i get to keep it! it's going to be my journal for a certain trip to south america i hope to be taking.

there ain't been no figure drawing in my life since florence, and i missed it. the models aren't supposed to be interpreted sexually, but dr. sketchy begs the question, why the hell shouldn't drawing naked people be a sexy experience? a small crowd gathered in the slipper room last evening to drink, listen to chill music, and sketch a hot burlesque model. so wonderfully intimate. justine and i were mad intimidated by the 30-something legit artists that surrounded us, but eventually loosened up (thanks, beer) and had a lot of fun with it. changes of pose were quick and i'm real rusty, but here are the results:

meh, not the best. but like i said, a lot of fun and i'll be going again sometime. after the sketch sess i got to see mum in concert/enter collective trance land!! i had forgotten how good they are. they are sooo good.

"Moon Pulls... it is what makes ladies weird."

and everything is going to the beat

first day volunteering at the housing works bookstore. everyones cool. sorting through books, you're doing something to help but its mindless and so relaxing. the titles amuse and interest to no end. songs off of cds donated without covers play from the itty bitty basement boom box (arcade fire & shakira). someone donated a picture album.. by mistake? who knows. took this gorgeous photo from it -

in blue ink, on the back: "Aug 12 1964." man, i love looking at old photos. a wholeee lot.

Luncheon of the Boating Party

"Le dejeuner des canotiers" - Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Raymond Dufayel: The time has come for her to take some real risks.

Amelie: Well yes, she's thinking about it. She's thinking of a stratagem.

Raymond Dufayel: Yes, she likes stratagems, doesn't she?

Amelie: Yes.

Raymond Dufayel: She's a bit of a coward. That's why I have trouble with her eyes.

American Beauty

"... but it's hard to stay mad, when there's so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once, and it's too much, my heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst... And then I remember to relax, to stop trying to hold on to it, and then it flows through me like rain and I can't feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life..."

monday morning, rain isn't falling

reunion

it happened the other week. i was already a little late, but went out of my way to see it. stepping foot into the recently-ish liberated washington square park, my heart was in the sky and the only regret was these arms of mine not being long enough to fully wrap themselves around the circumference of the newly reopened center for a tender embrace. i really considered lying down and splaying my body on the floor of it for a moment, to let it know how much i loved it. or i was, just ya know, trying to figure out some way to release the emotion that was building and building inside of me and begging to climax. but anyway, i decided not to. i guess i didn't want the nearby cops to think i was on drugs. maybe i was just trying not to be too weird or avoiding the oddness i knew i'd feel via postural similarity with the skeletal remains of the place's burial ground days. i should have done it while wsp was momentarily clean and not yet christened by drunkards' vomit/other untold sources of dirty that will surely layer themselves over time. maybe if i stand in the central pump of the fountain for five seconds next time, like irvin during his idyllic evening, i will be able to prove my affection.

also, wish somebody would've waited 'till september to shoot his movie there.

commonplace

mom dropped me off at the farm because the rathore males have made unavailable two thirds of the family vehicles with their poor driving. the hausers tell her she has a wonderful daughter and she responds by asking me to get her free strawberries in punjabi. i accomplish this plus a tomato plant.

we load up, drive, and arrive. soon enough, the sucky process of unloading is complete and my swiss almond chocolate coffee from the bakery across the street is tasting great. i doubt its swiss-ness. fifty something year old janet predicts romance in my future with the organic dairy product guy across the way as we share a peanut butter cookie during a farmer's market lull. i deny this possibility but flirt with him anyway to pass the time and indulge in free cheese samples.

personal observations of consumer demographics have led me to believe males aged twenty to forty love to invest in potted strawberry plants when hungover. our red leaf lettuce is gorgeous enough to be a centerpiece, but zero heads have went and my pride is affected. three women who don't know much about plants but obviously cannot resist cute shit have paid an absurd amount for pots with gimmicky herb mixtures. the marigolds always sell out, and i don't understand it. janet hates when people touch our vegetables and "never friggen buy anything." i realize i am getting overprotective as well when children i would normally call cute pick all the flowers off a hanging basket to stick in their pockets. the little murderers earned a weak smile.

i get to consider myself in the know on the town's political gossip after the ex-events coordinator stops by and spills the dirt over her eight ball zucchini purchase. she was fired last week and the word bitter would be appropriate in describing her. another lull occurs and i assume it is okay to whip out my phone and respond to a text. within the next five minutes, janet sends her first textual message and looks at her phone the way i imagine someone watching her own hand change colors might appear. the new events coordinator stops by to collect the lot fee. she is recently graduated, too enthusiastic, and aspires to move on to a public relations position in the nfl someday. she really likes football, she says. janet comments that i'm too enthusiastic as well and in a month will be saying, "here is your friggen asparagus now get out of here" to a senior citizen. i doubt this, i like the job.

"If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite." - William Blake

i may or may not have shared my views on the folds in fabric with you before.

"I looked down by chance, and went on passionately staring by choice, at my own crossed legs.  Those folds in the trousers - what a labyrinth of endlessly significant complexity!  And the texture of the gray flannel - how rich, how deeply, mysteriously sumptuous!  ...In the average Madonna or Apostle the strictly human, fully representational element accounts for about ten per cent of the whole.  All the rest consists of many colored variations on the inexhaustible theme of crumpled wool or linen... What the rest of us see only under the influence of mescalin, the artist is congenitally equipped to see all the time.  His perception is not limited to what is biologically or socially useful.  A little of the knowledge belonging to the Mind at Large oozes past the reducing valve of the brain and ego, into his consciousness.  It is a knowledge of the intrinsic significance of every existent.  For the artist as for the mescalin taker draperies are living hieroglyphs that stand in some peculiarly expressive way for the unfathomable mystery of pure being... the folds of my gray flannel trousers were charged with "is-ness."  To what they owed this privileged status, I cannot say.  Is it, perhaps because the forms of folded drapery are so strange and dramatic that they catch the eye and in this way force the miraculous fact of sheer existence upon the attention?  Who knows?  What is important is less the reason for the experience than the experience itself... "This is how one ought to see," I kept saying as I looked down at my trousers..."

- Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception

cowgirls don't cry - ride, baby, ride

^ thats the chorus of the song that was already playing in the pick up truck when i got inside.  driving past a man three times my size in pure muscle mass, i smiled 'cause my pick up truck was bigger than his, making me more badass duh.  to my horror then rapture , i also drove an ancient box truck today without wipers in the rain.  bring on da monsta trucks.

in case you haven't already deduced, i'm working for a farm.

a few of the things i've learned to believe:

- swiss chard is the most psychedelic leafy vegetable.

- a head of cimarron red romaine in the ground will make you think of lettuce as a big, beautiful flower.

- the smell of good, fresh basil is very intoxicating.

yann martel, life of pi

"... I left town and on my way back, at a point where the land was high and I could see the sea to my left and down the road a long ways, I suddenly felt I was in heaven.  The spot was in fact no different from when I had passed it not long before, but my way of seeing it has changed.  The feeling, a paradoxical mix of pulsing energy and profound peace, was intense and blissful.  Whereas before the road, the sea, the trees, the air, the sun all spoke differently to me, now they spoke one language of unity.  Tree took account of road, which was aware of air, which was mindful of sea, which shared things with the sun.  Every element in harmonious relation with its neighbour, and all was kith and kin.  I knelt a mortal; I rose an immortal.  I felt like the centre of a a small circle coinciding with the centre of a much larger one."

this is the voice of piscine molitor patel, a fictional boy, immediately after discovering islam.  i think this experience can be had without god's help.  i guess it all comes back to who you hold responsible for your spiritual welfare.

the walls abandon shape

"do you want to see vaginas?"

- interesting introductory words

and you know what, next thing i know, i'm in a small curtained off room surrounded by paintings of vaginas entitled "ne m'oubliez pas"

dingmans ferry

i crossed many a river yesterday, none the metaphorical.  traversing logs and rocks settled into moving water takes away that autopilot feeling that comes on sometimes.

hauser hill

today, i fulfilled a life goal.  i held a baby chick.

it was even better than i expected.  in addition, i looked into two curious emu eyes.  i wonder how their eggs taste.  a territorial male goose trying to show off to his girlfriend goose hissed at me.  what a mean gander.

words by james lindsay:

"...we weren't a match made in heaven

they don't make matches in heaven

no one smokes up there..."

the icarus project

since i've budded a newfound interest in mental health due to acute psychiatric clinicals, i decided to attend the campus icarus meeting. it is a gallatin club for activists in alternative health care for mental issues or psychic differences. basically, they are against meds and about embracing the madness. what the hell is normal anyway? we're in such a rush to medicate. i think the united states is one of the only countries that allows pharmaceutical companies to advertise. being diagnosed with one of these conditions puts you sort of in this box and you're forced to wonder what it means to you and how it will shape your life and alter your perceptions of yourself.

however, out of the group, some were a little wary of having nurses in their midst and expressed similar wariness when social workers were brought up. if you didn't already know, gallatin's the school in nyu that lets you make up your own major. i rarely get riled up, but i don't know how they expect changes in health care to be made if they are too unwilling to believe it wants to change. yes, i'm going to be a nurse, part of the system you don't seem to agree with, but i'm at this meeting for a reason. i think what you're doing is good and i want to be a part of it. how are you going to turn me away then complain when things stay the same? yea you need leaders with radical ideas, but progress takes collaboration. you're going to have to work with me, doctors, and social workers if you want your ideas to create more than just buzz, beyond interesting articles and hype, if you want them to go into clinical practice outside the limited areas you can reach with your alternative care.

but anyway, the point here is i agree that we're too keen to correct every little deficit. the american health care system needs to get better at embracing the range of human existence.

GI bleeds / the economy

"stimulus packages are only blood transfusions, you need to stop the bleeding."

- medel

sha sha

*click click * "come here sweetie" coos the woman to the mother squirrel, luring her down from the nest with fancy nut offerings.  this modern day snow white comes to visit her bushy tailed friends in the park everyday, had a five week old baby squirrel in her purse (!), and has an albino pigeon admirer that flies into her hand when spoken spanish to.  a beautiful and lunatic character indeed.  and her leopard print shirt?  so fierce.  however, to squirrel lady's discredit, she probz stole that baby from that momma.  i cannot help but wonder if she has any human babies to call her own..

where do we come from? what are we? where are we going?

ingredients: for religious purposes only

.. so read the bags of colored powder.i feel like a canvas!  ...that you have to catch to paint on!!

top o' my head:

a festival for colors, how spectacular.  happy holi!

the resurrection of the flesh

- Luca Signorelli

...how can we tell them

to be stern and brazen

and slow,

that there is no

entrance,

only entering.  They keep on

arriving,

wanting names,

wanting

happiness.

- Jorie Graham

deep fried peanut butter covered brownie wrapped in cookie dough

do you know where they make these?  let me know.

sarahemilyrn: "Children with severe peanut allergies given small does of peanut flour were able to build tolerance to the nuts, according to a study that suggests it is possible to treat the potentially deadly conditions."

sarahemilyrn: there is hope for your future!!!  just in case you need it!

the littlest things

fish tales

when i see diddy, i am filled with an overwhelming, unparalleled sense of relief, for i am home.  we don't exactly brush jet skis on "I am King" video shoots or anything, but a decently sized sean jean ad does watch over the broome street dorm.  its like he's saying, "welcome home, suki.  there's a warm bed waiting, just for you."  sarah feels more like he's repeating the best pick up line we've ever received in scrubs:

"Yeaaaa!  Woman with a job!"  

hm.  i like it because it implies a woman's employability is like some sexy body part (...but it also assumes that the vast majority of women don't have jobs).

- - -

in other news, finding myself all of a sudden sitting facing the entrance to the manhattan bridge, eating my spicy fried chicken leg in chinatown, i was reminded sometimes life is as great as you believe it is - a small moment can be so big and happy.  and this is all because we'd had enough of not knowing where all the popeyes containers were coming from.  why is all new orleans themed food so delicious?  lets all go for real.

i'm going to leave asking you to look at rousseau's sleeping gypsy; maybe it'll entrance you too.

http://www.abm-enterprises.net/rousseausleepinggypsy.jpg

kaleidoscope eyes