cutting great neck

and music.

label me: music, song, video

funny, how we miss missing. how we yearn for those moments when we felt so miserably in need of something, how we yearn for yearning beyond yearning. how we miss being alone in the darkness. we miss reminiscing, remembering old, patched-up visions of an alternate future and a better past.

label me: manhattan, miss, song

again in one of those moods, longing for israel, reminiscing, engulfed by music, wanting to know what type of person i would have been had we stayed.

would i have listened to this music? stayed up hours trying to listen to it? to remember it? to remember the roughly pouring words that fit into one another like wooden blocks. to remember: the night, blacker than black, the white plastic chairs on the balcony, the balcony, the 90s, crumbling apartment structures immersed in age spots.

i know where i’m doinga my semester abroad.

label me: israel, melancholy, memory, miss, music, song

fade into you mazzy star.



i remember driving around in the mountains in the desert somewhere, east of san diego, perhaps driving back from death valley or utah or big bear. a long black valley expands forward as you drive on the edges of its bulky red mountain borders, the road like some kind of ribbon that seems to slide into the mountain valley and the car just an infinitesimal speck riding on it.

it was sunset and the wavering maroon shadows of the sky pooled across the valley. we were alone on the road, the solitary witnesses of the purple dying fizzle of the sun. sometimes a car curved out into the road ahead of us from beyond a mountain; white orbs danced from behind us once in a while.

i love the desert, the mountains, the valleys for that reason. the pine trees glowed like embers. streaks of orange light corralled along the cliffs and died down into a blue obscurity.



and fade into you comes up on my zune.

--how can i say it? listen to the song for a moment: torched strings that peel away in the rural night, when only the cowboys hear 'em--the way they seem to fade infinitely away into the melody, into the clattering bells and into the hounding voice, the one that seems so, so resolved, so resigned, and yet it persists, it sings, it--it reverberates and echoes.

it's beautiful.

and the combination of me in the car, from this polarized window, all alone with the music looking out into the dying rays of the sun in this lonesome, empty green valley, with the haunting solitariness of this song...



---

i remember this because my zune broke apart very recently and i was just reminded of it after the song came up on itunes. and this memory has remained with me for no reason at all, one of those insignificant details of life that accidentally leaves a mark.

label me: california, desert, loneliness, memory, miss, nature, song

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

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.

label me: favorite, home, manhattan, miss, music, ny, san diego, smell, song, summer, sun, weather

it all ties in together.

everything


i understand everything.
my life.

the worldd.

why?

למה?






My most played song on iTunes is Hakayitz HaAcharon by a band called Shefiyot Hazman

שפיות זמנית - הקיץ האחרון
from 1991

the last summer by “time’s illusions”

i don’t know; something about that song makes me melancholy, makes me reflect, makes me... feel so lonely, so full of darkness, so left out... so neglected. but it expresses so many profound and mystical ideas, and i can only... i can only, i don’t know... i love it. it calls to mind israel; the darkness of israel, the sadness, the gloominess, all of my missed opportunities, the homes, the people... i can't tell you. i can't...it is such a mysterious song, so... so full of longing.



the story:

a few weeks ago we drove in the silver toyota

to a park, to costco

two weeks ago, to be exact

and i opened the glove container or whatever

and there’s this colorful cd

and i remembered—i recalled my father telling me that he knows this famous singer and she was his good friend and she signed a cd of hers and gave it to him

he told me this, what—two years ago?

so i put this cd in

and i feel like crying.
...

i want to meet her

i really do.

and it all fits in together. why did i have this sudden connection to the song? this emotional bond with her voice? because i’ve heard it before. years before. in a different time.

it was a one-hit wonder, and then she became a businesswoman.

wow.



why am i telling you this now?

why am i telling you this at all?

i don't know; intrigue. self-fullfillment. life.

~~~

i went to a party on saturday

and it was amazing

valentine’s day party

...


the play is moving along

fine

and i guess...
that’s it.

tuesday early morning
ah.

darkness
cat power
catcher in the rye
chips
sleep
wake up
shower
life

lyrics

this is my last summer with you
with the first rain i’ll disappear
my tears will pour down the streets
like a leaf that falls and far-away hopes
i’m a man of winter amidst men of sea
but in this winter i will not exist
slowly, slowly the layers melt
between wanting, not wanting and last prayers

so remember that you promised not to cry
because the skies are big and the tears are small
close your eyes every first rain
and think of me

i want to climb on the mountains because they’re there
and to visit oversea countries
to know if there is other life forms
and if the dead keep living
because this is my last summer with you
with the first rain i’ll disappear
my tears will pour down the streets
like a leaf that falls and far-away hopes

so remember that you promised not to cry
because the skies are big and the tears are small
close your eyes every first rain
and think of me

label me: friends, future, happiness, israel, life, melancholy, memory, music, nostalgia, play, song, uncertainty

January 14 2009 evening

"i really can't stay
but baby it's cold outside"



"i've got to go away
baby it's cold outside"



"this evening has been"



"so very nice
i hold your hand, just like ice"



"my mother would start to worry
please don't hurry"



"my father would start pacing the floor
listen to that fireplace roar"



"so really i'd better scurry"



"well, maybe just a half-drink more
baby, put some music on while i pour..."

label me: song