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.