palo alto: cutting great neck 2.0


top 5 things i miss about san diego

21:32 / by the gloriously humble gadi cohen / loving replies (4)

28/01/09

i never though i would say this.

i miss san diego.

san diego--yes--the place i hate, the place i would like to shread with my teeth, the dull, cultureless california capital of boredom.



and yet... i miss it.




1. the beach

yes, yes. i miss the beach. and with the beach comes the sun. and with the sun comes the heat. and with the heat comes the beach. and the beach in sd is so refreshing, marvelously enlivening and the cold water as it spreads through your body, the salt, the waves as they lift you up and down, so brisk and moving and just fun. and the whole beach culture. del mar beach—i love you.


2. i miss my friends. miss being with them. miss having lunch with them, going to the movies with them. arguing with them. miss trying to be the center of attention and not succeeding for more than two seconds.

3. the falconer.
well, i do miss indesign. i love indesign and i haven't been able to use it for the past 8+ months. and the newspaper was so amazing, such an outlet of talent and creativity. and wonderful people. layout nights were astounding. the darkness, knowing that in less than eight hours we would have to be in school again, we are the only souls on campus... ahhh.

4. i miss my school. i miss how it's spread out, and there are barely any hallways, and the sunshine streams through your face as you cross the quad and try to bump into people you know, try to avoid people you know. i miss the warm classes, the open classes with those weird brick-things, and the grass.

5. this one's hard to describe.

i miss--i miss yearning for more culture. i miss waiting. waiting for something to happen. for a play, for a restaurant. i miss listening to music and looking out the window and watching the sun set behind palm trees and writing poetry about how boring and intriguing life is at the same time and walking outside and thinking about nyc and about europe and searching for songs on limewire and taking photographs of ginger and playing with ginger in the yard with a frisbee and i miss walking home with britt and i miss going to the synagogye with sarah and i miss going to that big green beach near downtown with all these israeli friends and i miss riding back home in the middle of the night from the airport with the window open and smell the pungent san diego air and i miss biking over to the five in that little reedy gorge near paradisio and i miss going to ami's house and playing with that pokemon game and i miss sixth period with mrs. king so fucking much, just sitting there next to the desk next to the window with my copy of to kill a mockingbird open and writing about racism and learning that mrs. king's a democrat and i miss mia's antics and sitting on that big couch in the journalism room and i miss being outside in the dark and getting out of the theater after watching a horrid film with my friends and seeing all these other people in the highlands doing their stuff and i miss rubio's fish tacos, crunchy and i miss walking through barnes and nobles and picking out books i want to read and then never think about them again and i miss running the superlap (yes, i do) and i miss those little green plants that look like a bunch of little cucumbers and when you squeeze them all the water comes out and i miss biking in del mar and smelling the air and watching the golden retrievers and the boxers running in the cold water and smiling from ear to ear and i also miss balboa park, and even though i thought balboa park was boring i now realize how exceptionally beautiful, and subtle and lush it was, the golden globe theater--going there with my dad, or with my mom, and watching shakespeare or some other stupid play and drinking hot chocolate and feeling like an adult and then coming home and writing a poem about it and i miss sitting in mom's office and using her computer for doing whatever and i miss scaring mom when i came home from the back gate and i miss my old home, the novelty of it, the crisp white wall edges, the way my father always turned on the fireplace even though it was 60 degrees outside, and i miss waking up to birds twittering in april and then having to get up from my bed at six in the morning and lock the window and i miss my piano lessons with the russian lady whose name i never knew even though i had lessons with her for at least a year and a half once a week and i miss so many things, so many more things.































...

and i am sad.

i miss walking up the big hill listening to wilco's hummingbird. i remember the first day in our new home, and we went to the big grassy park with ginger. and it looks to me so different than it did back then. and i miss frightening carrie in the dark room and i miss playing apples to apples with sarah and everyone else and the sukkah and i miss showing britt my albums (haha haha haha) and i miss going lazer-tagging with matan and rony and walking next to the boats and going to the border with ami and i miss taking long frequent vacations and i miss hating teachers that weren't as bad as i thought they were and i miss i miss i miss.

remember how i used to say how much i hate san diego?

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extremely late start; midterm, weird day yesterday

08:07 / by the gloriously humble gadi cohen / loving replies (1)

27/01/09

so let me start off from sunday.



sunday, we went to the lower east side with avi, judy, yahli; tenement museum, jewish market, delancey street. the tenement museum was so inspiring, so miserable too--giving us a glimpse of 7000+ people's lives, many of them immigrants, like moi. we couldn't talk pictures. oh well.

then we crossed delancey street



sped through the lower east side



and went straight into katz's delicatessen--i've been waiting since november 2007 to go there, when my parents promised me that we'll go the next time we visit nyc [little did we know that we would be living next to nyc by the next year. grr.]



had a delicious pastrami sandwich.



so yesterday i went to school--short periods. and then i asked jessica fogel about cat power cause she said she might go to the concert with me and so she rolled her eyes and said, "gadi, leave me alone? we have a midterm today!"

blink.

blink.

oh shit.

anyway, studied all day yesterday only to discover at 12:30 one of the easiest chem tests i have ever taken in my life.

yay!

and today i woke up at 9:26 after having the weirdest dreams ever. i dreamed that i was with a lot of friends on a big hill overlooking a quaint european/latin american/asian village which looked more like uniformly colorful legos than an actual metropolis. anyhow, i woke up when a big angry golden retriever cornered me to a wall with its big teeth.

and in an hour i'll be in school preparing for a history test.

it's 11:16 am over here and i'm getting tired.

ahhh.


poem for english class:

My Black Muse
another night peels from my eyes
like piano keys sliding off against
each other. a match burns from two
different sides; an old, dying wolf
wrings his tongue from the roof of
his jaw, and howls; a poetry book,
frayed, splintered, slides off a pile
of white papers. my table, fixed to
the wall, creaks. it’s ten p.m. before
my math midterm and i’m outside taking
pictures of the snow. black, seƱor night
winnows out the white lights in rows, slips on
his navy-striped cloak; i return home, my
fingers burning from the cold, burning
from the sudden heat of habitat, from
pressing the push button for too long.

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honey cake, carmine's, manhattan

07:26 / by the gloriously humble gadi cohen / loving replies (2)

25/01/09


Another Snowfall

The world burrows its arms in my flesh
and another snowfall makes its home—
in the deepest whites of my eyes they mesh,
the ice and the glass, the dead earth combed.

Stems, twigs, white wooden men stand
and another root, stiff, ruptures in frost—
a red moon lifts in purple skies, as planned,
but the old sun perishes, thus far: dusk.

The eye sheds its white, piercing skin
and another finger atrophied and potted—
in jars, in vinegar, my eyes shut from within.
I sleep alone—waiting for the world to rot.






we went to manhattan yesterday and met judy and avi and yahli. time square; carmine's. amazing food. enormous dishes. we took the unfinished business home.

in toys-r-us




we saw a bunch of blood in bryant park, near the ice skating rink. some guy fell off a construction thing. another guy was hurt on top of it. who knows. lots of police. lots of firemen. we were not allowed to take picture, but, you know, the rascal that i am... i just couldn't resist.


the snow is melting. i hope it will snow soon.



i have midterms this week. i am so frightened.

obama. i love you.

and nothing really changed. nothing really new.



i downloaded a bunch of beach boys songs last night. it makes me miss california so much.



i miss california--the beach, the sun, the heat. the feeling. i miss it, not in a "i want to live there again" kind of way, but in a "i liked it and i want to visit it". maybe i do want to live there, one day.

on the east coast, i feel, people see the west coast as an exotic, wild place. that's what i felt in november, in sd. the palm trees, the smoggy nights, the hills, the beach, the sun. it's all different.

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NEW YORK I LOVE YOU BUT YOU'RE BRINGING ME DOWN

20:17 / by the gloriously humble gadi cohen / loving replies (1)

21/01/09

i have so much to write
in so little time
and i can't because...

i opened "new york i love you but you're bringing me down"
LCD soundsystem
and my world just opened up
and summer nostalgia swept through me
of the lush, green trees
the bizarreness of moving
moving away
moving from home
home--what is home?

and i'm dying
and this song
is so important to me,
so...

definitive. it defines me.

defines me in great neck.

sitting at home, looking outside. manhattan. in the summer.

home?

am i home?

New York, I Love You
But you're bringing me down

New York, I Love You
But you're bringing me down

Like a rat in a cage
Pulling minimum wage

New York, I Love You
But you're bringing me down

New York, you're safer
And you're wasting my time

Our records all show
You are filthy but fine

But they shuttered your stores
When you opened the doors
To the cops who were bored
Once they'd run out of crime

New York, you're perfect
Don't please don't change a thing

Your mild billionaire mayor's
Now convinced he's a king

So the boring collect
I mean all disrespect

In the neighborhood bars
I'd once dreamt I would drink

New York, I Love You
But you're freaking me out

There's a ton of the twist
But we're fresh out of shout

Like a death in the hall
That you hear through your wall

New York, I Love You
But you're freaking me out

New York, I Love You
But you're bringing me down

New York, I Love You
But you're bringing me down

Like a death of the heart
Jesus, where do I start?

But you're still the one pool
Where I'd happily drown

And oh.. Take me off your mailing list
For kids that think it still exists
Yes, for those who think it still exists

Maybe I'm wrong
And maybe you're right
Maybe I'm wrong
And myabe you're right

Maybe you're right
Maybe I'm wrong
And just maybe you're right

And Oh..
Maybe mother told you true
And they're always be something there for you
And you'll never be alone

But maybe she's wrong
And maybe I'm right
And just maybe she's wrong

Maybe she's wrong
And maybe I'm right
And if so, is there?


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some things i don't understand.

14:33 / by the gloriously humble gadi cohen / loving replies (2)

21/01/09

i don't know. i just don't know.

everybody knows my name in school. they all recognized my face. they speak to me. someone walks past me, asks me, 'are you gadi cohen?'. i tell them, 'no, i'm george.'

'i'm george.'

i'm starting to think i'm george.

i just... don't know.

don't know how--how i live like this. how nobody knows anything about me, how i don't know anything about me. i'm like sylvia plath--all alone, enclosed in my own bell jar, me and my music, me and my poems, my and my life. i work towards a goal--for what? what cause? to make my parents happy? to make myself happy? these are the best moments of my life, and i'm wasting them because nobody loves me. and it's true.

nobody loves me.

because this is america. this is israel. this is world. and nobody cares about anyone.

sometimes i feel like i'm the only person here who is utterly alone. not physically alone--i have friends. but mentally. all on my own. in a territory that no one has marked before.

two senior girls kidnapped me yesterday. into their house. i entertained them. brooke, tiffany. red-hair, persian. short, tall. they think i'm their friend. they drove me home. they're fun.

they don't know who i am.

i don't know who i am.



but frank sinatra is helping me.

does everyone else feel like that?



-------------------------

i explored the world today.



a day of exploration.

i went into the little closet--storage space, whatever you want to call it--and looked through the crap of Jane.

Jane, oh Jane! I am reliving you,
your childhood,
like you always wanted to do
yourself.

And although I don't know you,
I understand you.

I understand you.


an old stone wolf's head;



a naked marble woman lying on a 70's-style metal cabinet;

lamp skeletons collecting dust.



the cold frightened me.

i love, hate life.

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