Freudian Aspects of Public Transportation

The train has stopped
in the tunnel.
“Something,” screeches
the conductor, jerking
back into motion.

Like a lifeline, this trip
is nothing but a metaphor.

notes on dining, part II

Today we will discuss how to get the most from your dining experience. It’s a difficult subject to explore, because everybody has different ideas and standards for what creates a positive experience. While there are certain factors—quality of the food, for instance—that are out of your control as a patron, you can maximize what a restaurant has to offer using a few basic principles. While this may sometimes—not always—result in spending more money, it will also, more often than not, dramatically increase your feeling of satisfaction. 

Ghost Stories

In honor of Halloween, I have two ghost stories, which is a little odd because I don’t  believe in ghosts in the first place. They both happened to me during the summer two years ago, just after I’d moved to New York.

The first thing was, one night I woke up because there was an old woman, a crone, standing at the end of my bed. She was wearing a brimmed hat and held her hands lax in front of her chest, like a cartoon dinosaur. She was mostly scary because she was so old. I should note that while I’m a total coward if given the chance to think, when startled I tend to go on the attack. So I sat up and demanded to know what she was doing there, like an imperious crazy person, and then watched her fade  away. I knew, even though my eyes were still open, that I was dreaming. She dissolved like sugar in tea. But if I believed in ghosts, I guess I would have believed that I’d seen one then.

The second story is about something that happened about a month later when I went to see an art exhibit in the East Village called “Strange Powers.” The exhibit was all about supernatural phenomena, so there was a framed curse — “do something evil” — hanging on the wall, and boring photographs of people’s auras, and a little headphones station where you could listen to records of ghosts, although when I tried them on it seemed to just be static and people speaking in German. German, I’m sorry, is a scary language to hear if you’re not well-prepared.

Comments on the Second Presidential Debates: 8/7/08

The debate tonight was an inspiring experience for me, and I have found it, maybe out of a sense of perversity, to be a largely uninspiring period of time. It’s been so long that I’ve heard any public issue addressed in a reasonable, honest way, that when it happens I want to slap my hands and thank whoever is responsible for having the simple courage to say what is true.

This is the most important lesson to be learned. That it is possible to say things that are true, and that anybody can say them. Truth has its contexts, and it has its nuances, and neither the world of politics and business-the macro world-nor the even larger and more finely nuanced world of personal life-the micro world-can be helped by anything but a fire to accomplish something good.

The problem with saying something like that is that you, the reader, and myself, the writer, both immediately question ourselves, saying “Is that naïve? Do I have any fire to accomplish something good?”

You create effects of quality in all moments of your life. You experience the world-its breakups, its defeats, its sunrises and snowfalls-as good and bad. This simple acknowledgment, of the universality of complicated experience, signifies in any of us willing to step forward a fire to accomplish good.

Maayan told me about seeking “balance” in the visual design of her magazine.

New York Stories

My boss told us a story about the old gritty New York of the early 1980s. He was having a drink with a friend in his apartment, watching a sparrow perched on the fire escape. This was a time when people could barely go below 14^th street after dark; a time when people were forced to be so vigilant in their daily lives that they were practically putting locks on the straws in their soda cans. So a mild-mannered singing sparrow probably seemed out of place even before a giant crow swooped down from the sky and pinned the sparrow down on the iron grates.

death-scrambled eggs

As part of the routine death-scramble to keep my head above water in New York City, I have taken a series of restaurant jobs. The latest is in an iconic French bistro in SoHo, where a bottle of budweiser costs $8. I find it so strange to find myself in an environment like this–one which I habitually avoid as a necessary evil of living in this city–that I have decided to write about the experience, to try to understand it as much as possible.

My journal entry from yesterday: 

“Working in a busy restaurant usually feels like being attacked from all sides.

Experimental Lectures: Still Representin’

I gave a lecture two weeks ago. Originally, I’d wanted to talk about what I call “automatic art.” The term refers to the process of using operations of chance (or mathematics) to create works of art. John Cage did this when he composed “12 Radios, 24 People,” which required the performers to adjust radios to predetermined frequencies on a predetermined schedule. While all the performers operations are controlled for, the location of the radios is not. Since different locations receive different combinations and strengths of radio stations, the piece cannot be the same in any two locations. Location, then, rather than any action by the performer, is the creative element in the piece. Cage’s algorithm simply permits location to enact its effect.

As I was preparing the lecture, I realized that to deliver a controlled, linear, sequentially-organized lecture on automatic processes and chance operations was sort of hypocritical. Or at odds with itself. The lecture had to be the product of a sequence of chance operations. Yet I still wanted it to function as a traditional lecture–providing facts and interpretation to the audience. So I rounded up all the concepts I’d considered for the lecture (including “Light Speed Travel,” “Finnegans Wake,” “Early Polar Expeditions“–I go for the gusto with these lectures), wrote them on little scraps of paper, and put them in a hat.

Be Our Neighbor? Some Would Rather Not.

So I was going to write about the Park Slope hatas article in The New York TImes, but I’m finding it hard to muster up a solid opinion. Park Slope is pretty much everything it gets criticized for (yuppy, cutesy, gentrified, homogeneous, smug, home to numerous organic baby food stores and Brooklyn wonder writers and indie film stars, etc).

Hello, New York City — It’s Poem In Your Pocket Day!

You could be forgiven for not knowing that today is “Poem In Your Pocket Day” in New York City. But I can assure you that David and Sarah know about it. According to the site, “This series of events is intended to celebrate the versatility and inspiration of poetry by encouraging New Yorkers of all ages to carry a poem in their pockets to share with friends, classmates, coworkers and family. Readings across the city throughout the day will culminate in a public poetry open-mike session for kids and adults in Bryant Park at 42nd Street and 6th Avenue in Manhattan.” Go forth and listen to good poetry readings! Do your part and share some poetry today. I love poetry days! Of course, nearly every day on No Record Press: The Blog is a poetry day.