cutting great neck

i wanted to save this title for when i will be visiting you.


i couldn't resist.

oh, how i miss you: new york!

those black buildings. the rain's vicious pounding like blood as it surges up to the ears, each angry drop like another long string of muscle in a clenched, bitter fist waiting to pounce. night in the city. being alone in the city. living in the city--

but that's from so long ago.

i've downloaded so many new york city songs today.

so many songs about you, new york. and yet you've let the bay dig me a hole--a three-week-wide hole, a yawning gape deep enough to make me choke on lifetimes of air--so black and so permanent that i will never be able to wash the ennui from my skin.

now at least i'll have both hands on the wheels, like teeth punching through the ear of a corn.




at times when the at&t net coverage falters and i have nothing to do, i find myself reading old word documents. and i found a poem i wrote that i forgot about.

how i miss being able to write poems.

catchtwentytwo
1
i’ve been wondering
how to start this poem
for a while now.

i knew a capital i would be too vague. or may
be too specific.

my limbs are tired. worn-out.
i feel like a bag of arms, and legs,
and fingers and toes,
and tired old eyes. i never thought
the word catch-22 could be applied
to life—
especially to my
life.

but now I know.

2
it’s funny.
truth is cliché. “be careful of what you wish for”

i went to manhattan.

my mistake: dark, quixotic night, skies
that fall on tall, metal buildings like rain,
human beings like puzzle pieces, fit together, and
the sweet salt smell of coal-hot nuts in
aluminum, yellow cabs and rainy streets:

yes. november—i fell in love.

3
don’t look up, and don’t look down,
is how the song goes. mother came to me
and asked me: up or down?

sometimes, i told her, it’s better to keep straight.
i have a world waiting for me here: friends,
word documents. but she has worked. worked hard.

up or down? east or west?
and, you know. i was in love.

4
today the skies were gloomy blue.
the sun was muck yellow.
the sunset was curly, muddy,
like my footprint in the sand.

this is why it’s a catch 22, a cruel
circle: it’s either past, present, future.
and i am stuck deciding.

5
you can say that a catch 22 is a triangle
but i have to disagree.

you can say:
one vertex is where i am right now
and the two others are interchangeable,
one decapitation, another cyanide, and i
only have to choose.

but i think that a catch 22 comes in six round numbers:
which ones, i don’t know.
i am only on number 4.

6
the light in my room is yellow.
jazz music.

i feel stupid. but i know
that this is as profound as it will, can go;
that there is misery, and implausible skepticism here
(about my poem, about my life)

and that the light at the end
is only another tunnel

but at the end of the day the world is just a matter
of atoms—of metal, of plastic, of skin,
and one home or another doesn’t count.
one me or another doesn’t count.
one poem. one ending or another.

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.

my favorite smell in the world is the linden trees as they flower.



which is fucking horrible because that only happens during a 3-4 week period from late june to july.

i'm listening to "new york i love you but you're bringing me down" again and i miss summer. summer in the city. summer--biking in manhattan, the linden trees in june when i came to visit and search for houses, the green leafy things giving off a sweet, compassionate scent, an almost erotic pulsing aura that intoxicates you, and especially near the ocean as it is in manhattan, all along the downtown west side, that little park where all the sunbathers go behind the huge hole that used to be the world trade center.



and that's why i miss summer. that, and great neck is summer is just so... so tropical, so heavy and yet, i would guess sentimental in a light, airy sort of way.





and now it's caught in the rain by october fall.

san diego summer song. oh dear.

i miss summer.

yep, i said it.

i really, really miss summer.

you know how you always want to like something, and then suddenly you realize that you don't really like it and that you miss something or someone else? and you feel like you cheated yourself? and it's horrible?

that's how i feel about summer and winter.

i thought i was this quixotic, wintry kinda guy. cynical. cold.

but i guess it's that san diego influenza. beach, towel, cold salty water. grass. sun, sunburn. balboa park. oh jeez. summer? where the fuck are you?

so yes, i guess summer is my favorite season.

yes. my confession.

these pictures are all from june, so don't go thinking that this is new york in february. because it's not and it will never be.


though there is no snow nowadays and the weather is getting a little warmer. like i can go outside now with two layers on without dying. though i'm still cold.

incense... mmm. homework... shittt.

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?

The sky is so black right now. I'm looking out and I can feel the obscene darkness slowly enveloping me, tousling my clothes.

"Touch-a touch-a touch-a touch me..."
---

New masthead. New capitalization. New year.

---

nope it don't.

i don't want to seem like this random left-wing make-love-not-war liberation crusader, but there are so many things i want to say about the recent Israeli attacks on Gaza and i hope i'll be able to say them all.

these are human beings. so what if hamas is hiding inside a human shield of palestinians? it is still a human shield. the attacks on hamas are not an attack on hamas; they're an attack on all citizens of gaza. attack on the children of gaza, on the women of gaza, the men of gaza, the infants and the elderly, the working class and the unemployed. but worse of all, this operation was an attack on people-- real living, breathing homo-sapien people, those who are capable of advance thinking, and jealousy and rage and misery and ecstasy, those who can sympathize.

again we come to the idea of people. people, people, people. people are so crucial to the world, and here we are, doing everything we can to obliterate them. hamas security officers are dropping off hundreds at a time, and sixteen-year-old girls bleed to death from a slice of glass of an israeli-destroyed building.

how can slaughtering civilians bring an end to the rockets in sderot?

it can't. there is nothing we can do now but wait and see. there's gonna be a third intifadah, sure. why not? more rockets: last i checked, two in the afternoon, thirty-seven had already hit. why not? more gaza death; actually, more deaths--period.

Israel can not impose Zionism on the people of gaza, nor can it defend itself by killing more innocent citizens. whatever Israel did or does or will do in gaza will only be met by more hate, more sorrow, more revenge-type of crap. instead of focusing on bombing the living shit out of gaza, we need to turn our attentions to the world around us--to europe, to the arab world, and of course to the incoming president obama. we need them to see our suffering, our pain, our sorrow, because via this horrid mass-murder and scare tactic we are only sending out a terrible message of hate.

if hamas is a terrorist organization because it sends rockets out to sderot, then israel is a terrorist state for dropping bombs on an innocent population.

---

you know what though?

i don't know.

i think i might be missing ny.

it's a nice place. i miss the snow. i miss ginger. i miss school. i miss iced coffee.

i don't know. i feel better today, but i feel like we should have stayed in israel longer. we should have seen more people, lived in more houses, went to more places. i feel like we should have stayed forever.

---

sometimes i want to live in two different worlds. i want there to be two different worlds like a ribbon, how the two sides link in the middle, so that i would not miss israel, would not miss america.

sometimes, i just wish the world would have been simpler. i was thinking yesterday about how horribly difficult it is for people to be born, and then to grow up, and then to grow old. we shouldn't have it this hard, really. and then, how some people stay in the same place their whole life--the same caste, the same little town, the same barred, metal room. why had god made us like this? there is no god.

THERE IS NO FUCKING GOD.

because why do some immoral individuals live in luxury while others, more compassionate, more beautiful people, have to scrap the shit off sidewalks to bring food home?

god does not have his ways. how can we suffer, if we do no wrong? how can we please god if we no nothing of what he wants from us?

THERE IS NO GOD.

not because life is bad. there is no god because there never was one.

and it's so hard for me to fight against this tide, of what i'm used to--i'm used to believing. someone--an orthodox friend--once told me that to believe in god you have to know that he exists even if evidence against his existence exists, too. like, if i read somewhere that the big bang did happen and that man evolved from apes and that, well, god is not there--then i can still believe in him.

so basically, life is pretty much weird.

first post in two months: let's make it a good one.

who's reading this? no one, probably.

so i had this huge headache today and i don't know why. i'm extremely superstitious when it comes to headaches so i was not sure why this headache slapped into me on this very day. maybe because i woke up on the wrong side of the face. maybe because i drank coca-cola for breakfast. maybe because i ate waaaaay too much today, and yesterday, and the day before, and even the day before. maybe it's because...

because i don't know about israel anymore.

it's boring. it's still home, but it bores me. i expected it to be different. but israel always stays the same. the same colors, the same people, the same food, everything so stationary, so lifeless, so usual, and now i don't really understand why i even anticipated anything different. maybe i had my hopes up. expectations. maybe israel isn't really my home.

is it my home?

fuck, who even knows. i don't believe in god anymore, though it pains me. is that the reason for my headache? maybe there is a god and he doesn't like me not believing in him so he lightning-struck me with this horrid mind-wrecker?

no, god doesn't know if israel is my home or not because he doesn't exist.

the truth is, i feel like during this whole trip i've been putting up this fake front. it's the biggest one i've ever pulled, and though there are some gaping holes in it, i feel like it has been somewhat successful, considering the difficulty. anyhow, this front is destroying everything i stand for and it disappoints me that life is so hard, so miserable that human beings can't even be themselves. why should someone be scared of walking around with a headscarf around, oh, i don't know, great neck ny? or why should someone be refused their right to marry their loved one? i hope all of this will change in the next century. i hope people will be seen solely as people and not as muslims, blacks, gays, sluts.

if i become a politician, a journalist, a whatever, then i will fight for this idea to the death.

but the truth is, i don't know if there is anyone who i can show myself to, or anyone who can show themselves to me. the latter is more severe than the former. i have too many acquaintances, too little friends. if i had to pick one person to live with for my entire life in a desert island, i wouldn't know who to pick. would i pick anyone? not my father, not my sister, not my mother. names swoop around like giant birds in my head. who? who? and i feel like this plays a large part in my innermost misery. who can i lean on? no one. who can i trust? no one. i can only trust myself. i can only grow my inner soul into a mature, sociable, normal character. nobody else can do anything for me. nobody else can shape me or touch me or befriend me. because i've lived too long without good friends. i've lived too long searching, too little finding, too little settling. maybe one of these days, i'll live in an exotic land--spain, france--where i would find friends, lovers. people. i could trust them.

i feel like, due to the situations that have been thrust upon me, i'm the most miserable person in... in the vast network of human beings that i know. i feel like my life has been marked by a black omen since my delivery in schneider hospital, or that my future has been marred by a negligent upbringing and overly compassionate consideration. who has to deal with all these issues? my life has been tossed and thrown around without any care to anything like i was a, a, a basketball, like god [again, god=spit, so, metaphorically, ? ...] decided to surf a rebound and shoot me and throw me around the world. i am a broken, outcasted soul, extricated from the burning center of society into the gray-blue outposts of life. i can send letters to the center, sure, maybe even take the bust there once in awhile. but i'll never live there.

for now, i need escapes--i yearn for them, reach for them. escapes: school, journalism, politics, manhattan. another headache pill could do the trick. but i'll also be searching--searching for my whole life--for more, more, more escapes--movies, Europe, nytime--more and more and more, until i would just explode. escapes will shower me by the gallon.

my head burns like a potfull of beans and beef, or chunt in other words. yum...

water? food? shelter?

i don't know what i'm doing here. what i'm doing here in the basement of my cousin's house. in my cousin's house. in hod hasharon. in israel. in this world. what the fuck am i doing here in this world?