One winter fantasy: working clay late at night in my studio in brooklyn. Wheel and water after midnight, set to a soundtrack of synth. 

Centering requires patience, so I spend it until my arms shake. Then I pull, reckless and tired. I don't wait long enough. Balls of hard earned wedged clay go by like this, and my hands stain with orange oxide. 

---

I started writing songs a few years ago, and I found one a few weeks ago, still unfinished. I don't remember how to play it anymore, but I hear it, what I was trying to sing.

It's not bad. I could finish it, but can't see myself performing it now, and meaning it as I did then. Sometimes the moment goes. 

---

Art is in the moment. 

Yes, rehearsal and craft, but sometimes after all that, it's performance, not art.

sunday, 2.18.24 - dinner

poulet roti, over a bed of roasted farmers market parsnips, slender, whole, carrots, yukon potatoes, and a roughly split onion

-- yellow buddhist chicken, a little larger than 3 pounds, decapitated and feet removed. use shears at the joints and spinal connector of your choosing. yellow chickens taste better than white, chilled, chlorinated chickens.

-- rub and coat with: butter, cracked tellichery pepper, salt, and chopped sage, rosemary, and thyme

-- stuff with buttery lemon wedges, cracked cloves of garlic, and sprigs of aforementioned herbs

-- dress the root vegetables with a little olive oil, a little splash of water, the same chopped herbs and pepper, and freshly microplaned lemon zest

-- truss and roast at 390°f for 20 minutes for every pound of bird, then 20 more. don't bother to preheat. rotate and flip the poulet as you baste, if you baste, or even if you don't. it's done when it hits 165° in its coldest, deepest parts, usually its citrus core or the lower thigh.

monday, 2.19.24 - dinner

lemongrass chicken

-- about 1.5 pounds of boneless chicken thighs, ideally a yellow chicken. doesn't matter if there's skin.

-- a shallot; peeled and prepped for blending. the white tender core of a lemongrass stalk, two cloves of garlic. remove the growing center core in the cloves, if it's old and if it's been warm; it's bitter. split the garlic to check if you need to. a spoonful of cane or brown sugar, or a squeeze of honey. splashes of soy and fish sauce. the juice of half of ripened yellow lime, or two tablespoons of a younger lime; the volume is the same. pulse it in the food processor until you can't hear any chunks flying about. tap the food processor bowl and hold the pulser again, until you feel good about the paste texture inside, whether it's roughly blended or truly pasty.

-- throw all these into a ziploc, and make sure the paste coats all the chicken. marinate for at least an hour in the fridge, but no more than a day.

-- panfry the thighs on medium heat until one side is dark brown. flip the chicken and repeat until the other side is dark brown. put a lid on it and let the meat fry and steam for 2 minutes at the end if you know the inside of the fat thigh hasn't hit 165 from all the frying.

-- serve sliced on baguettes or rice vermicelli, with thinly sliced cucumbers, sriracha, and your favorite nuoc sauce.

roads and lights

roads and lights, but mostly darkness and the moon, and highway signs.

you were a driver with your windows down and the music up, painting yourself the wandering solitary American soul. was 27 just roads and exhaustion?

i liked trains a lot, but the sitting, not very much at all. who do we write to when we are alone with ourselves?

i kicked out my father the other night, and it was a long night. you're not supposed to kick out fathers, but sometimes fathers are just men who slept with a woman you knew, who did regrettable things for years, until the woman realized that this man most certainly didn't love her, and sometimes this woman was not your friend, nor your roommate, but your mother, who happened to have a kid, or a handful of them, which makes it harder to just leave.

did you think you were a suave, cheating man? i think some men find it easy, and some men find it actually not what they thought they wanted at all, but what is a man, but a woman with different parts?

on fridays, I don't remember much on the road. the sound of strangers having feelings and talking on their phones accompanies me the way the scuffling sound of a hungry rodent in the middle of night, in a dark house does, in a very unwanted way.

in between morning alarms, i have fifteen minutes to contemplate meaningfulness in jobs, and mindfulness, a rolling of words in the brain. my guilt has gone flaccid, and the plastic keys that my fingers press on, are unfamiliar with time, much like past-year friends.

they have such beautiful faces, the women, and the men are alright too. what is age, but just distance measured by time? they are so young.

guilt and guilt, and bars with life, because we live in them, and drinks. what is the cost of happiness? i would like to buy some happiness for the pretty souls that look so sad.

Chasing

Snow, it falls; i called
a stranger i used to know,
and it was just bars on tuesdays,
lounge spaces, and dirty plush cushions for lovers,
all empty in december, but for the soft, raging music
that drifts in the air and finds no home,

and myself,
with a drink, in a sturdy glass,
drunk, but not piu troppo, too much.

Some people called, looking 
for me. They want 
me to be happy, yes, but please, 
don't be piu troppo, which they don't say,
and there is a scent 
of acrid hunger, the stone-pit pangs of wolves in winter.

Who is this stranger who walks in rain, and leaves us 
to our devices? Are you sad? I think
this is making you sad and angry, and I am worried,
so i say, yes, yes i am, i am sad and angry, and i am

lying, on a couch, in a dim bar, 
in the dark of the city,
and promise, to come home 
when i am done. So they go. And they sleep.

And a glass of something golden or silver, 
sits safe on my chest,
and i am alone 
with the ceiling and the walls, and the space 

of the solitary bar, feeling something 
secret, and raw, & most certainly piu troppo.

gummy bears et al, is the post dying diet.

the new art gallery opened, and all these beautiful strangers are crowded with each other, wandering, drinking mildly expensive wine, some sipping, because the art is so damn good and intricate. 

rugs. rugs, ornate and on walls, accented by the room, & a wall of tightly framed photos of foreign walks untouched by development. sepia lends depth, but so does the lone cat who owns an establishment more than any simian who makes his way in its silence. 

i am never sure, but maybe i never have to be. 
there's a sweet contentment to wandering evenings on quiet avenues. streets so firm beneath me as i am lost yet safe, the air is warm. there are lights in all the buildings and i am only a girl who meanders beneath them. windows and lamps, and though the night is here, there is a music that kisses me, first soft and surface, and i am tentative. 
then it kisses me deep, and i don't know what to say, so i don't, so it washes into me, right into where i've been waiting.

running

Catharsis was the line & story I was going to sell to the pretty thing.

I met a stranger last night, from the northern country. The rain fell, and as her husband took a leak in the restroom, we talked marathons, which we agreed, takes a certain sort of soul to like, with all the dull discipline and rigid routine required to hone a body for brutal, boring, paced running.

"I love running, though," she said, "I love just opening my front door, and going, and I don't know where I'm going, but I just go."

"I love that." She meant the stuff of long drives, aimless evening wanders, & meaningless sex with strangers you briefly think you vaguely understand, but never will truly know.

Her husband returned.

"Do you love that, darling? Running takes me away from you, do you love that I run?"
"Of course I love that you run. Look at that body that comes back."

And they kiss.

I bid them goodnight, and close shop.


-- 


Wandering the streets, towards a way home, I think about Catherine who fell asleep waiting in bed, at home. 

I think about all the Catherines, and all the souls that didn't crave going home to them. Catherine with her pretty face and her slowly shaping body, which is lovely because she has been trying. She deprives herself of daily simple joys, and pushes her vessel, so that one day, a man will come, and sweep her up into his strong arms, and take care of this little grown princess, and she won't have to worry about a thing at all, and simply play, with the children, and make food, and wait all day.

I think about Catherine who wakes for a sliver of a moment from her sleep, warm in the security of bodied company, and her sleepy happiness which brings my mind no ease.

I think about crawling into bed and fucking Catherine, and donning the movements of this man that she craves, and truth be told, she doesn't care if you're pretending, as long as it looks just like the real thing in her dirty romance novels and she never has to catch on, like she thinks she is some trophy you'd go through the effort of courting and lying to, in order to fuck, as if pretty girls weren't everywhere, as if there weren't genuinely kind, pretty girls in the world, who were capable of real love, who you wanted to make love to.

Love, and I think of other souls as I am slipping in quietly through my door.

I drop the things. I unbutton my shirt, slip from my clothes, & I am naked in the dark hours of the morning. All the stars are out and stark-bright, post-rain. I think of wet pavement under streetlight.

I find an old t-shirt and pull it slow over my head, and close, onto my body, and it is cool and smooth, and soft as tenderness. I don't think of bitter things, but of the way the loveliest souls smile, as they give in to the happiness that sweeps them. I roll the legs of my sweats up, and finish dressing. The world is asleep, so I slip out again.

The silence of houses and the moon. 
Catharsis, and I am not chasing it.

I go, and the feeling overtakes me.

bit my tongue; didn't know if i wanted anyone to know if i was happy or sad, or a little unsure, which is mostly, usually, the case. the problem with approaching the core of things, is that there is the point of arrival. the light & gravity pulls, and then you're centered and immersed. how is there clarity when you're deep in, when you're pushing for distance, so you can see all the rhythms that are clear to see?

one safety for another, and i don't like the vocabulary, which i am stripping down, the way a sick child strips open her skin, to find something not in her skin. it's not in the words. ink lets me down because the writer in me is at a loss for cohesive substance, because i want to paint the way i paint, free and unthinking, but sometimes i fall into the canvas, and i don't want to bind myself into something i can't rip myself out of.

so many words to spin around the same concept.

i had a dream last night, and you were in it, neither fantasy nor romanticized archetype. it was neither beautiful, nor ugly, but rather, literally existential. dreamscapes, they shift, and then i am again, a mute child on shifting ground, rather than some floating, amused god beyond all this humanity, which i like, but makes me sick, because mortality is like that.

eating is mortality, and singing is mortality, and fucking, is definitely mortality. i hate this helplessness, and this narcissism which stems from those ugly, childhoods spent hiding low under beds and in the dark corners of the cool insides of work desks.

sometimes at work, little hidden shards of broken cups get caught on my knees and shins, and it takes me back to the underbelly of beds, & floors littered with splinters of broken baby bottles. 

glass comes out. i never liked the idea of making myself bleed because there were so many sharp things about already. if you dance close enough, nothing cuts you. you never have to run if you don't let a single thing touch you.

i tell myself i am not this girl, but i see her so well. there's nothing i can do for her, this thing that exists in some dusty room in my mind, in an old, falling apart house from decades ago. i left, and she stayed, lingering in my old sheets.

The rain comes down hard on the skylight above my room of mirrors. Cold air from the machine accompanies me. I think about chopping my dark locks, but they are the mood to me when I am wearing somber expressions & white. I wanted to struggle & write a love song, or fall to the music of a different soul, but all there is, is summer rain in the evening.


-


I'm sitting in a room growing dark, listening to the songs of a stranger's soul. Blues and blue eyes. Is this a love novel? Every true story is a journey, a narrative on transition, on growth and loss, and going home. Where is home? I am already home. The sunset's coming out for me. Storm, yea, but there's evening.

The mornings are a disconnect. She names: intrinsic, innate, inborn, difficulty, and he says: well, try.

I have cuts and bruises all over my body; nothing remarkable; purples where my body collide with firm structure, slice-grooves where the metal-encased necks of expensive fluid warn me not to grip so tight.

I want to ask if I am going the wrong way, but no one will have the answer for me, so I don't ask. Their machinaries are input destination, output best directions; the systems arbitrary.

The sun falls through the skylight, and I could get to know these wayward stories of strangers more or less doing the same thing, or I could know the slouch in my back when I accept my tiredness, which I do not.

Blade, blade, stretch & flex, wings in flight.


---


I met a stranger and he fancies me a tortured artist type, one of those New York City creatives with up & down mood swings, & funky dark & light work in result, so I look out the window at nothing in particular, and take a nice stretch, a tense and relax in upper back muscles that cradle my spine, and I rotate down with the appreciating of my bones, & flesh as strong as bones, warming up like a dancer before irrelevant mirrors.

I think of dying, withering narcissuses.

Sometimes we become what we love, but that was a half-naked thought. I think it'd be magnificent, one day, to have a beautiful woman do a veiled striptease, except as she strips down, for each piece of fabric pulled invitingly from the tempting form of her body, there is nothing, but the other side of the world.