something sort of "seasonal" from today's workshop. prompt was: use the following 3 words: pumpkin, chant, bell.

It's cold - not really winter cold but so cold after all those long days of summer. It's cold and my tan has faded and the blonde gone from my hair - the beach, the ocean, just a memory. I'm standing leaning against his car, watching him choose a pumpkin. Not me - I love them, sure but what would I do with all those seeds, all that pulp and then the silly thing rotting away on what - my fire escape? I don't have a porch. He finds one he likes and waves me over. I stand, hands in coat pockets and watch as he does a city boy's job of cutting the stem. I won't help him or correct him (even though he's doing it wrong) because that would only upset him and I want him to have fun even though I'm cold and want it to be summer again.

Tonight there's a huge party - a street celebration with fire-eaters and jugglers and drunken half-naked people running around in bizarre masks. Me - I'll stay home and watch a movie, something old, classic - full of drifting shadows and eerie music or maybe I'll go to a friends' and watch them celebrate the old way, ring in the new year with charcoal and drifting incense...with the slow drone of a chant older than the bible hymns, older than the cross or maybe just sit in the old church, the bells tolling in the midnight and then the long walk home through rising cold and rising dark at the cusp of the year when the door swings wide and all the old stories come true and I'll take them home with me, invite them in, listen and learn and try not to be afraid. But for now, I'll just watch him and wait while he stomps around in the leaves, while he pretends he's a country boy and I pretend this is where I want to be and who I want to be with. (c) 2010

already Wednesday and I'm still in the middle of Sunday somewhere. This week has brought: massive holes in my bathroom wall & no idea when the contractor who's "renovating" next door will fix this latest in a series of apt. nightmares. If I could move, I would though I'd rather take my landlord's skinny Long Island a** to court. Other than that, this hot/humid non-October weather (68 degrees at 11 at night??) has me cranky as f**k which has lead to some writing getting done. And apparently, I've finally succumbed to joining a "book club" - at least this one's online & doesn't pretend to be social and it's run by the always cool Del Cheetah (who I met when he was in Man Scouts of America). We're currently reading Palahniuk's "Haunted" which is the usual Palahniuk little-boy grossness but featuring some interesting narrative shifts. Still, he's not the writer everyone hypes him to be. At least in my estimation. Continuing to read through stacks of fiction mss for Black Lawrence - only come across a couple decent reads in the last few months which is depressing. Tonight I went out to dinner at GoBo on 6th Avenue. Really overpriced and the food was just average but it was nice to have a menu that's mostly vegan AND to see a vegan place completely full of non-DirtyHippies. I still prefer Life on B but as far as west side places go, it's definitely healthier than Red Bamboo (albeit not as GOOD and much more expensive). Service was light years beyond Red Bamboo's lame hipster waitstaff too - which was nice. Finally finished up "New Orleans Noir." Can't say I was overwhelmed - most of the stories were in dire need of rewrites or at least some decent editing. There were a couple of good ones but overall, I was actually shocked that out of all the good writers in New Orleans, these are the stories that made the cut (?). Ah well. I'm discovering it really is truly awful to live without all my books. When I'm reading a bad book (or even a mediocre book) I don't have the options any more to move on to another book without waiting till the next day...hopefully, I'll have time/energy to get some more books out of storage this weekend. And now, it's time to get back to writing. Think I'll do that "novel-in-a-month" thing in November to get away from all these short stories I've been writing lately. Time to send some of them out into the world and see how they fare.

another one from workshop. prompt was, "the building was abandoned - weird and damp."

An old hospital maybe, we weren't sure. The fence was down, "no trespassing" signs on the ground, rusted, covered with leaves - almost like they weren't there. We went in - of course. I was taking pictures of stairways lately, some half-fallen, some ornate, some standing likely through the end of the world. This place had wide, fat stairs and narrow, winding stairs - all seemed in good condition. One room was flooded, others mostly dry with leaves, nothing much else. One room had files - one of us stayed, took photos, someone else pulled cards from a drawer, began reading names - the syllables echoing in the empty October air. I opened a metal door onto darkness a floor fallen through all the way down to basements, sub-basements soft, skittering sounds rose up from the inky black - rats, leaves, rust from the door. I took photos of the darkness my flash illuminating water pooled, movement. I closed the door and moved on - best to leave that alone. Shrieks and laughter echoed - someone playing tag - shouting at the ghosts, the danger. I moved on - pushing at doors, taking photos of shadows. A portion of the roof was gone, trees had grown in, ivy, sun came down in shafts pushing at the dirt, the rot and making patterns of light in the broken glass. A metal chair stood next to a broken window - looking out. All the windows had metal bars. I thought about the people kept here - sick, crazy, maybe children - and my friends' laughter felt wrong. I took more photos, felt the building shift. followed stairs back down and outside, out into the air, into the day. took photos of the building its empty windows its doors like mouths its silence as it stood watching. waiting. (c) 2010

another one from workshop & sort of the same guy showing up again - unplanned - although this time a little younger I think...

I'm too old to be surprised again - something he thought some random four a.m., some late night/early morning when rising from an empty bed into the quiet, the dark - nothing around but the slow ticking of the clock going through its paces - that quiet reminder of time passing. The days were gray, sometimes bright and sunny, but mostly gray and he didn't mind this so much. more it was the forgetting, the not knowing if it was Monday or Thursday, the pointlessness of Friday afternoons watching the world ready themselves for the weekend for that next slice of excitement of fun right around the corner. And now with fall in the air - that's what everyone kept saying - that fall was in the air and all the Halloween decorations the remembered joys of parades and candy of favorite costumes and the hum, the buzz of the night rising and lasting forever it seemed only to rapidly descend into all those family holidays the ones that stood up and pointed at him and said - where is your family and if no family than no holidays for you. He thought of the time he'd gone alone to a diner and had their Thanksgiving Special - how terrible that was - not so much the food which tasted like glue and water with liberal doses of salt - but also the simply fact of being there, alone, among all those sad old men mouthing, gumming at their mashed potatoes, like it was some diner in Hell, not just Sixth Avenue. And now sitting here, four a.m., telling himself "I'm too old to be surprised again," when really he was not so old - barely fifty and what was that anyway - just a number. The simply fact was - he preferred his own company and when he thought of the girls in the park, the late autumn sun reflecting off their hair or that woman at dinner last night, her long pale fingers blurred in motion or the way her rings flashed and her laughter, like a bell really all these things, event he slow blur of traffic at this hour at four a.m., it was all beautiful, it was all life and really every moment every heartbeat every breath ever word was a surprise. (c) 2010

another one from workshop last week. prompt was "moving"

It's like this: everything goes into boxes. suitcases. trunks. and then there's too much stuff so you divide it in half. get ride of that half. don't think about the forty Hefty bags full of stuff you've already tossed. or all the books. or the shoes and clothes and dishes that went to Goodwill. the Salvation Army. fifteen boxes of vinyl. all those precious records to some collector/dealer from upstate. gave half, a third of what they're worth. and all those vintage clothes. hundreds you could have made on eBay but there's no time. like the signs always say, "everything must go" and with it...it's like all the memories attached to every little thing, like they're being ripped out - all the tangled roots yanking at your heart and your bones just ache. There's something freeing about it they all tell you. like they'd know. like any of them would understand. stuff becomes family, replaces those gone or missing. you touch a rock, a toy, and old shirt and you remember the moment, the person, the past. nostalgia's a sickness and when you watch the shows about hoarders on TV, you know you've come so close and you think of the 3,000 books and how many hundreds are still left. how they all should go now, really and to move? everything? you would rather have the moments back, the people, the music, all those days and years, instead of the stuff. you would rather go back to a time when all you had fit in a suitcase, a milk crate for your records, and a sleeping bag. but when viewed individually each item becomes precious. they see it as junk. And you sometimes picture other people going through your things and know they would not want any of it and so now, moving, it's time. time to empty the boxes and suitcases. to sell it off and recycle and give it all away until there is nothing left but you and the memories because really, that's what's important, right?

(c) 2010

wrote this in workshop last week - not sure where this guy came from but he keeps showing up in my writing lately.

There was one chance I didn't take and I think about it late at night when all the world is quiet and no one's around - it's just me and the dark. All those small noises the house makes and the way I can't get comfortable. I'll get out of bed and shuffle my old man body to the kitchen, stand in front of the open fridge let that cold light wash over me - as if the half-empty shelves hold something I need as if somehow something in there could change things and after a while the cat will come up and rub against my legs and I'll close the fridge - maybe go over to the TV and watch part of some movie with the sound off or those ladies on the Home Shopping Network in all their hideous beauty trying to convince me that the junk they're selling will help me sleep through the night. Sometimes, I'll just stand by the window facing the street, the curtain lifted by one of my tired hands and I'll just watch the empty streets - maybe some trash blowing around or a stray dog sniffing and biting at fleas. Sometimes, there's a drunk, trying to find his car or trying to find his way home and sometimes there's nothing but the street and its varying shades of gray and black, maybe an old streetlight or two. And when it rains and the sidewalks grow dark with wet and the gutters rain like rivers and all the soot and trash pushes past and down into storm drains into sewers, I think about her skin - how pale it was, luminous - and those eyes and maybe the way she laughed and I wonder sometimes where she is and if she ever thinks of me. (c) 2010

today I trekked out to bklyn as I do nearly every saturday morning and lead a writing workshop at the Vet Center. love seeing how much their writing's progressed over the last couple of years. and, selfishly, it's also 2 hrs when I get to write too. after that, headed back home through this REALLY beautiful fall day and then across town to try to get some semblance of winter clothes and blankets out of storage. found some useful stuff & some cool (but not useful) stuff & then discovered that ALL of my wool winter coats smell like my dead neighbor. lovely. so I'm going to have to take my pennies and go to the dry cleaner's - such excitement. In better news, I found all my sherman alexie books so I can finally finish that paper proposal I've been putting off & I found some CDs that somehow didn't make it into my iTunes - mostly classical stuff & one firewater CD that I thought was gone for good. Next step: catalog those books & records & start unloading them. tragic but it must be done. my apartment actually has "stuff" in it now which looks really weird. I don't think I like it. guess I'll have to get rid of some of it. in other news - finishing up "new orleans noir" which so far has been REALLY disappointing. I love the concept but the realization is seriously lacking. I mean, N.O.'s a city with REALLY good writers and yet, this anthology is full of poorly written stories. so disappointing. next up - Chuck P.'s "the haunting" - I tried it before but this time it's for my "book club"...yes, I've finally joined a book club - this one's special though, hosted by Del Cheetah (one-time member of Man Scouts of America) and on facebook. It'll be interesting to see how it works. tomorrow I'm off to Fort Tryon Park & the Cloisters - hope the wind's died down a bit by then. And now...back to the Nash Bridges marathon & some more manuscript submissions.

haven't posted in a while because I've become addicted to tumblr. oh & busy living life and all that...somewhere in there I: went to the Medieval Fair(e?) at Fort Tryon Park (Bronx) and saw men jousting on horseback. for real. which really appeals to my inner 8 year old (or is it 18 yr old?) and did some hiking - Mt. Taurus (a/k/a Bull Hill) and this past weekend - the Camp Smith Trail (with it's INCREDIBLY POORLY MARKED trailhead) over Manitou and then up & over Anthony's Nose & back again - a gorgeous hike though the trek all the way back was a bit tiring. Also went to the Met to see some art - visited El Greco's 'View of Toledo' (perhaps my favorite painting of all time) & the very small & not very impressive Levinstein show, "Hipster, Hustlers (etc.)"...the (relatively) new American Wing looks great - all full of light and air - really brings out the sculpture and the Tiffany pieces. "Between Here and There" was a cool little exhibit of postcards - although not as stunning as say, the Rodin around the corner. Other than that, just been trying to get outside as much as possible before the winter comes. and spending too much time reading bad manuscripts, semi-decent books (Robert Olen Butler's "Hell," currently reading "Tinkers") and not doing enough writing. Sent something out to the Nashville Review and got a quick rejection. Not that anyone reads the NR anyway but still...and started 2 more stories I like sort of halfway but not sure where either one's going. And yes, well, tumblr. feeding my obsession with abandoned houses and buildings and photos of sharks and tigers and things.

today in history

Chief Joseph surrenders 10/5/1877 ending Nez Perce War

This weekend is Open House NY & as usual, I totally forgot about it till the last minute BUT...I may try to catch some of the still open tours of various spaces. One of these years though, I want to do the Atlantic Avenue Tunnel. Even if it does mean going to Brooklyn (ack). Aside from that, I'll probably hit the Levinstein @ the Met before it's gone (closes 10/17), maybe the Neil Gaiman reading at B&N Union Square (though I loathe the way they pack the crowds in there) and likely Haveli not once but twice this week (Chana Shaag here I come). Since it's supposed to be nice on Sunday, I'm going to try the Camp Smith Trail to Anthony's Nose & maybe incorporate part of Breakneck into that - not sure the full plan since my hiking books are still ensconced in Jersey City. In any case, I'll likely take lots of photos and post some here. Hopefully the trail's more clearly marked than it was last time we tried that one. At least it'll be outside of these 4 walls (and no windows) and some decent exercise.

rock.

stairmaster - east river style

I ran up & down this for a while today. so much better than 30 mins on the stairmaster.