cutting great neck

"you left a highlighter moon on the machine in the gym,
shining against the black curve of the plastic bike like
a broken half-petal. you’re so careless with your pens
and with your books. you jog out and find yourself following
a woman who looks like your mother, her red hair
and complacent straddling stroll a stark cue
that reminds you of everything but what you’ve forgotten.
you pause by the grass that grows from
cement. you wonder who had planted it there, who had
wanted it to grow tender green strings— the closer and closer
they are to each other, the quicker they die."

why did i ever think
that i could this thing.

so this is how it must be:
whole worlds built to separate me
from the ones i love.
i wish i were with you tonight,
and that we would crumple together
into a blanket
and cover each other up
to the shoulders.
this trumpet of a lonely city
has never rang so softly
even in the forest of my mind;
it’s never learned its song,
never listened to its own beat.
when would we lie together
until the morning took us
away? why am i the one
who always has to live
so far from everyone?

label me: moving, sad

i woke up on my first morning in san diego--two and a half years after leaving it for a much colder place--and noticed the sky. window screen half-opened into a billowing gradient of blue: bright, unfiltered blue--what blue will look like in heaven, its shades streaming in and out of one another cool-like and hypnotic.

blue is an honest color--yet here it seems fake, like a red watermelon's crust, misleading in its simplicity, in its beauty.

the sun is just fading, and i'm outside and the cold feels surreal, my exposed fingers wrapped in cold with each and every letter key that they reach to press. the sun is just fading from behind silhouettes of black palm trees and tall bushes; the trunk of a date palm is reflected in the pool, draped in christmas lights.

chilly.



sometimes i think about san diego. i think about the fact that i despised it, that i felt alone and misunderstood and rejected much of the time--that every house and every storefront and every person was a facade, a false face, a blue sky above an ugly, dejected world: and i would think about san diego, and i'd ask myself if i really believed all of what i used to believe--maybe i had simply lied to myself about it, or maybe i actually misunderstood san diego instead of it misunderstanding me.

it is a tedious, sad little place--i can see that now, sleeping in a house that looks exactly like mine did, and only a few blocks away from that house. it was a cruel place. where unending, circuitous nothing happened; where the streets spread themselves even with a disgusting yearning for space--pavement, pavement, oh so much endless pavement, like spilled water that never stops expanding.

and now with my fingers bitten by cold and the sky burning in a purple, starless white-noise, i can safely say that san diego was what i've always suspected. i hated it then, and i hate it now; its flaws more than make up for its good attributes.

sometimes i'd sit there and think about moving. moving to san diego, from san diego--a place that defined my personality more than any other place i've ever called home. and i'd think about san diego, and what it did to me.

sometimes i'd sit there and brood. and i brood, and i brood--and i wonder where my friends have gone and where have they always been for me.

and when i come to a place like this, i realize that friendship is the most important thing in the world.

sometimes, i'd sit there, and ask myself if i've ever really experienced it.

label me: friends, moving, sad, san diego, sun, travel, weather

you thought
there'd always be snow.

you'd always be
lonely,
and thinking.

you'd always
stay awake at night
listening
to the cicada scream.

you'd always write
when the house
was silent,
when the world still
filled with black smog,
silent.


you'd always be writing.
in that house, that
wooden house. "colonial"
they call it.
as if
we all need to remember
that they used to live in houses,
just like us.



there'd always be a coldness
when you "tiptoed" down the
stairs. in the cavity
of the living room

you felt the fireplace
blink. it permeated the air
and made you shiver. the floor
whispered cool prayers to your feet.

your music skirred
from your room,
a susurration of
night, of tonight,
of the long, yellow-highlighter
moon of memory.

outside the snow
shone against the bricks
like skin in a dark room.

and still you thought
it would never melt.

label me: moving, poem

write something that no one will read,
that no one will think was written. upset
that she’s leaving
and that we’re left to fend for ourselves,
claustrophobic
without patience
godless, yet fearful

these are the moments
that try souls, like a battered
body after a long hike,

with only oneself,
nobody you want around
and knowing that this
is what you’re gonna have to live with
for the rest of your life,
for the rest of these months
and weeks
and days and hours and minutes,

sometimes
overcome with emotion,
sometimes overcome
with loss, with the loss
of something physical, tangible
like the folds in a forgotten sofa,
the wrinkles of hands;
and something
mental,



because someone hates you, and they think
you don’t know.
overcome
i write something
so angsty i’d throw up reading it
only for the sake that perhaps
i’d gain some ill-gained sympathy
and that could help me
move on.

i’d never want someone
to ask me what happened

because sometimes
everything happened.

sometimes even the merest loud laugh
rattling from the kitchen
could set your soul off trying.

label me: loneliness, loss, moving, poem, sad

i am really supposed to sleep at this moment

but i know that sleep will not come, for a long time

out of fear, of excitement, of nervousness

of this yearning to remember what i once wished i forgot

and thinking about knowing about thinking

makes me think about death

and i think about it

and sometimes it feels like a mini-quake in my rib cage

this thought that one day i will never be.

i feel like that now.

not dead. not not alive.

but not there. not being. not seeing, and feeling.

i remember the summer of moving.

i miss it.

turning 15; being 15; being new to a beautiful world.

label me: fear, high school, miss, moving, sleep, summer

it has been a beautiful two-year experience.



i guess moving has become more of a ritual for me now. i am not in disbelief; i am not a child ripped out of its mother’s womb. more like a child whose head has been pulled gradually over a seven-month period out of the opening in his mother’s body at an increasing rate, until he knows the world and the world knows him, until he’s ripped out, however gently.

this almost feels natural, moving: this room is home, or at least a home, already.



i miss nothing, almost. i miss you, my friends; i miss the city. i have thoughts of missing my house, but only surface thoughts, superficial. i don’t miss middle neck road, and i don’t miss the LIE or the LIRR. i don’t miss walking down the street wrapped up in utter blackness all alone towards home; i don’t miss the best teachers i’ve ever had; i don’t miss the library (okay, i might, because the dvd section here stinks); i don’t miss memorial field, grace avenue or allenwood; i don’t miss fireflies, mosquitoes, cicada; i don’t miss being able to see the empire state building’s jutting rib of an antenna poking out from behind a field of houses from baker; i don’t miss walking ginger up and down the same corner so many times, each one so different than the others (the time i stole a newsday to pick up ginger’s shit; the time she hid in the bushes and i searched for five minutes all panicked); i don’t miss bagel hut, amal, sushi palace, starbucks; i don’t miss the trips to new jersey; i don’t miss the snow; i don’t miss missing; i don’t miss the u.s. open, watching the sun set from behind the profile of epic structures; i don’t miss studying on the swing; i don’t miss the wooden den; i don’t miss the stars, the tall trees, kings point, biking to the point, cheese bagels, extra-large ice coffee after fours hours of sleep, rotten apples in my backpack, writing on the drama room whiteboard, screwing nails, eating caviar from 108th street, dripping rainstorm rain, tanned skins after winter break, the way a wall of heat packs into you as you step into those doors and blows you backwards and the day just seems to open up like a (very warm) flower, pajamas to school, free movie tuesdays, metacognition, ap world history exam, deli on the green, cuttinggreatneck.blogspot.com, dreaming about israel and wanting to move there, listening to the last summer, philly washington d.c. or boston, guide post, yctiwy mattress crucible, coming home and puking all over the office floor because you’re so sick and tired of working, coming home and puking all over the living room floor because of a virus, swine flu, morning swim, brittle rain, holocaust books, listening to indie music at night, athens 2008, pretending to care about the 2008 elections just so people would know me, looking out and look it’s snowing, snow days, cousins coming to visit, tuesday evening journalism, ordering a whole pizza pie and feeding journalism, going with the stream, masterswarm, thinking at first that i missed san diego.




i miss the idea of them. i wish i could relive them quickly so i would know what i did and where, just like everything and everywhere in life. remembering unremembered memories. i wish i would’ve known two years ago where i am today so that i could have understood it more. who i am today.

label me: great neck, memory, miss, moving

the house is freshly naked, just as when we entered it. it's a reawakening of sorts, or a degeneration; like a man reduced to his birth, young, innocent.

or perhaps that is how i feel about how i used to be then.

i remember my first visit clearly: green foliage so profusely lathering the yard. wooden walls, red, peeling walls.

je lamais.




and our first week here. the birth; the beginning. sleeping in this room, in the one i'm currently writing, the "office", mattress spread on the floor, the darkness seeping in with the wind. i remember sitting in the den, watching some movie; that larger-than-life room like a saga of its own beauty, feeling more naked than any other place. the silence boomed through the wood.

and now each room is more naked the next, again, memories of the beginning more lucid than this rekindled history.



as we came, so we leave.

label me: home, moving

how moving to new york changed my life?


"Am I angry about moving so much?

No--because these hardships, these infinite and infinitesmal moments of loneliness and melancholy and reminiscing and adapting to new, uncomfortable settings have shaped me in so many ways."



but they haven't, really.

and it's been a struggle, and a test. and now it's on the verge of being destroyed.

label me: home, hope, moving, ny

my parquet floor is littered with open newspapers. i remember in san diego i wish i had a parquet floor, and now i wish for a carpeted one. funny... i would imagine that the carpeted floor belongs here and the parquet in san diego, because of the climate and whatnot.

the truth is...

i don't know.



and now that phrase seems so cliche. so disgustingly overblown and pretentious.

but... i really don't know.

and by now i imagine you're already turned off by this post and i bet that it's the afternoon and you were bored and you were thinking, "oh let's just see if there's another post."

i feel lost. tremendously lost. glad, but lost. unknowing. energized. lost.

i remember six years ago, thanksgiving. the autumn leaves in san jose. the apple tree. how the metal twisting playground things were cold in the morning. funny how in israel my parents never drove me from school and how weird it seemed in san jose and now looking back it's as if i've always been driven home from school.

america--as an immigrant, as a tourist. how beautiful. how bizarre. i remember standing there in gym class and suddenly a flock of great white geeze starts whipping above us, chirping. i gaze at them and as i look down the gym teacher stands there alone, smiling at me, and the entire class is already halfway across the track. those gray clouds, the way the clouds twisted in the sky--it all felt so strange, so novel.

music classes, the frog in the aquarium, filing into the classroom in the morning, the overhead projector. walking into the school, drawings, posters on the walls--and those overhead projectors in every classroom.



listening to carpenters in the car.

...in san francisco....

the hills swaying in the fog. "This Masquerade"-Carpenters. golden gate bridge in the distance. walking next to the blue houses. you feel swallowed, and yet san francisco gives you this feeling--as if you're walking all alone down the street at twilight, or in the morning when the sun is still on the other side of the earth and the light wavers across the sky. and you're walking alone, on a lonely street corner, and the beach is next to you, and there's fog all around you, and there are lights and people on one side of you... and you feel so lonesome, and yet so comforted by the city, by the huge pyramid, by the iron-red bridge that swings across the ocean and yet is so solid, so protective...

and karen carpenter's voice.

i remember in our first winter, stopping at denny's on the way back from skiing. i wonder how--what i felt. who i was.

when you think about it, it's kind of sad--how you are so different today than you were when you were a child.

label me: california, childhood, moving, nostalgia, san francisco, song

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?

label me: california, falconer, friends, i love san diego, melancholy, memory, miss, moving, san diego, sd, torrey pines high school