Post Christmas store-fronts

went from the ace hotel downtown portland to the banfield value inn out east. had a room, removed the headboard seeking out bedbugs, but found two used condom wrappers instead. We had to ditch it, as the front desk forgot we had a cat. they moved the three of us to room 69. there's lube all over the phone that doesn't work and a slick hand print on the table where I am typing this to you, and the fan keeps fuming terrible smells at me.

Cities in the dust

plastic

the dancing works for me.

walking to work at 5:30 am through a sleeping, dead town, listening to this song makes my eyes tear up.

Book Sighting

My second book is on SPBH!

Top things I will miss in New England (part 1):

• somewhat trashy, but unique accents of MA & NJ 
• abandoned scratch tickets and one-shot plastic "nip" containers scrambled in gutters and under shrubbery that camouflage as fall foliage.
• the sound of the hole-punch being fired on the commuter rail as the conductor makes their way down the train putting 8-9 holes in each person's ticket. 
• being awoken to construction workers talking about their drunken night out & getting laid a mere foot from my sleeping head. 
• lying in bed naked sweating in 99 degree weather. 
• the amount of old cemeteries. 
• lightning, electrical storms, and thunder. 
• our jungle of a backyard.
• bunny.
• the double wave lady with a skin blemish who sits in front of her house daily, three houses down from an old man with ray-bans who calls us "gentlemen."
• the rotating and seemingly endless supply of pizzas and beers on the top shelf of our fridge that accumulates several centimeters of water each night.
• watching black ants carrying ant casualties over my foot to an unknown, unforeseen location. 
• dunkin donuts turbo shot, my new wicked jam. 
• giant dead moths at the foot of our bed killed and brought to us as a present by fancy, our cat. 

....more to come. 

Canada

can't take this stuff to Canada:

The Fortune Teller

The Fortune Teller at Salem Willows Amusement Park told me for .25cents:

You are a very serious person, and have had little time to relax. But your future looks very bright. You are a fastidious person, and your surroundings have the power of making you very happy or miserable. Do not seek for new friends. Your old ones are very worth while. You have a stubborn nature, but sometimes you yield to persuasion of those you love. 

A trip around the world is in store for you. With it a great deal of happiness too. You will have unlimited money. And a life for you will be very sunny.  

Drop another coin in slot and I will tell you more...

[ver-seylz]

sketches

yellow walls

"How many of us are running without moving, hiding behind walls grown from the dim recesses of birth? How many of us believe, when hidden, that we truly cannot be seen, and seen through, at that? I would have to admit to the whole paradox, where I asked, and I think the song is asking us exactly that, nothing more or less."
-Jackson C. Frank on "Yellow Walls"

See all music videos Jackson C. Frank

Dolphin Rape Caves

Over 14 times each year innocent people are raped maliciously by dolphins. The male dolphin has an opposable penis that they use to grab wrists or ankles to pull you under water into "rape caves" where they violently ravage you. It happens very fast, and is blamed on dolphins intense libido that is not easily satisfied. This leads to a higher rate of drowning where dolphins are present. 

Demi Moore is rumored to have ha a close encounter with the finny kind.

 -UK Daily Mail & the Telegraph

Greasy Pole

 Wikipedia Entry:

Greasy Pole, or a grease pole, "refers to a pole that has been made slippery and thus difficult to grip. More specifically, it is the name of several events that involve staying on, climbing up, walking over or otherwise traversing such a pole. This kind of event exist in several variations around the world.

The Greasy Pole Contest takes place every year during St. Peter's Fiesta in Gloucester, Massachusetts. During this time, many young men try their luck at walking down a greased, wooden pole in the middle of Gloucester Harbor. The goal is to be the first person to grab the red flag at the end of the pole.

The Greasy Pole competition originated in Sicily in the 19th century or earlier, and was brought to Gloucester by the Italian immigrant population of fishermen in the early 20th century. The object is to walk across a greased pole protruding from a platform about 200 ft from shore. This platform, depending on the tide, can be anywhere from 10–25 ft above the water. The pole, which hangs over the water, is 45 feet long, and only about as wide as a standard telephone pole. This pole is then heavily greased with biodegradable axle grease mixed with anything from Tabasco sauce to oil, banana peels, and various other slippery objects. A red flag (or sometimes the Italian Flag with a red flag underneath it) is then nailed to the very end of the pole. The idea is to run out on the heavily greased pole and try to grab the flag before slipping and falling into the water. About 40 or 50 men between age 18–60 go out from Pavilion Beach in Gloucester MA during the St. Peter Fiesta, the last weekend of June. They walk the pole one at a time in a pre-determined order. Generally, the men are of Italian descent, although the walkers may include all nationalities. Because of the popularity of the event, there are strict rules as to who is eligible to walk on Sunday.

Seen in Gloucester, MA: 

"The Rise and Fall... and RISE of the greasy pole, THE MUSICAL"

-The Curse of Mamma Scolafazza presents. 

  Showing only the last weekend of June at City Hall. 

something wild

Morning musings:
shaving makes hair grow,
being happy makes us unhappy,
sleeping wakes us up.
would you not agree?

Can't stop listening.

freedom, freedom, freedom

awoke under a mid-evening dull blaze. the fan rigged into the window wafting in smells of gun powder, barbequed meats, alcohol mixed with salty sweat seeping through porous foreheads, and an undulating ozone taunting us with the beginnings of an electrical storm.
made our way to shaws grocery and sav-mor liquors -- whose sign read something along the lines of burning out your nose hairs and free hotdogs -- to acquire the mandatory kit for a successful july 4th celebration: booze and meats. Had a lavish BBQ for two: swordfish, burgers, cobbed corn, green beans, guacamole, and sat in the backyard immersed in an air that was as hot and thick like freshly made gelatin until dusk, when we scoured the train tracks to the Kendal MIT parkade, the tallest structure around to attain a more eminent vantage point.
Arrived to the 8th floor, when we realized that this must be known firework contemplating location, as there were already families dawdling around their automobiles in throes, one young couple, perhaps lesbians, rolling around like sausages in a pan, making out on the tarmac while a husky onlooker watched with his gut held up by the back of his pontiac.
The horizon, open, and flat, made me feel like I was in the middle of a snow-globe, where the sides just end and fall off. In the northern sky, the electrical storm cut into the sky with fork lightning and dominated all the little pockmark-like fireworks that were erupting up from new england'ers backyards. Ten minutes before the allocated launch time of the fireworks, we looked around and saw a parking-lot that mimicked chaotic christmas-time rush shopping, only people were pleasant, full of libations, and sitting on top of their cars, some wearing illuminated paraphernalia, others themed in the appropriate coloring.
After the first few sprigs of pyrotechnics were launched, rain, a downpour really, two tablespoon sized droplets fell and bounced off the concrete knee-high. It was this, coupled with the fancy cube-shaped fireworks that enticed the group six cars down to chant: freedom, freedom, freedom.
The rain cleared, and the grand-finale slowly enveloped.
We, like thousands others filled the streets to attend our after-parties, all fully aware that we will feel like shit at work the next day, but that comes with the territory.

Early Independence

It was an early fourth celebration in somerville, meaning fireworks, large crowds of teenagers eyeing each other, flashing fiberoptic Mohawks, glow bracelets, and fried food. There was music piped in, from what I heard, pandora was set to a patriotic marching band channel. People were set up in lane ways, sidewalks in their plastic lawn chairs. The streets were blocked off and we stood in a 7-11 parking lot with the rest of the neighborhood, necks tilted catching grand finale shrapnel falling like snow over the crowd filled streets. At the end, the narrator pledged alleigence, and informed all the seniors and veterans to stay seated and mobility was on the way.

I was dancing to New Order at the Independent, when what did I see in my peripheral? The Chocolate Wunderfall.

whom the gods love they drive nuts

Spring Street

 

Without anything but the love we feel

The "curious" case of the Salish Sea Human Foot Discoveries:

Where finding feet and no body was termed unusual, and finding two feet or more has been given a "million to one odds".

Date	Place	Notes
August 20, 2007	Jedediah Island, British Columbia	A man's right foot; size 12 white-and-blue-mesh running shoe. The remains were identified as those of a missing and possibly depressed man from British Columbia.
August 26, 2007	Gabriola Island, British Columbia	A man's right foot; size 12 white Reebok.
February 8, 2008	Valdes Island, British Columbia	A right foot in a size 11 Nike (same person as June 16 finding). The remains were identified as a 21-year-old Surrey man who died of natural causes.
May 22, 2008	Kirkland Island, British Columbia	A known woman's right foot; blue-and-white New Balance sneaker (same person as November 11 finding).
June 16, 2008	Westham Island, British Columbia	A man's left foot (same person as February 8 finding).
August 1, 2008	Near Pysht, Washington	A right foot inside a man's black size 11 shoe.
November 11, 2008	Richmond, British Columbia	A known woman's left foot (same person as May 22 finding).
October 27, 2009	Richmond, British Columbia	A right foot in a size 8 1/2 Nike shoe. The remains were identified as a Vancouver-area man who was reported missing in January 2008 and died of natural causes.
August 27, 2010	Whidbey Island, Washington	A juvenile or female's right foot.
December 5, 2010	Tacoma, Washington	A juvenile or a small adult's right foot inside a boy's size 6 Ozark Trail hiking boot.
August 30, 2011	False Creek, British Columbia	Sex unknown. The foot was found in a man's white and blue size 9 runner.
November 4, 2011	Sasamat Lake, British Columbia	A man's right foot inside a size 12 hiking boot. Both were identified as that of a local man who went missing in 1987. Foul play is not suspected.
December 10, 2011	Lake Union, Seattle, Washington	Human leg bone and foot in a black plastic bag under the Ship Canal Bridge.
January 26, 2012	Vancouver, British Columbia	Possible Human Remains Found Washed Up In Shoe

lost my vision on Singing Beach (named after the sound the sand makes when you're slumping around) in Manchester By The Sea. I accidentally, after taking a brisk dip in the Atlantic, kneeled on my spectacles and crunched them in half.

blindly yours,

XXXXXXXXXXX

(maybe I will tape them together, using a different color every week to keep it up to date and thrifty)

fortune cookie from providence rhode island:

"If the brain were so simple we could understand it, we would be so simple we couldn't."

New Home

New Home

From Spring Park Ave to Spring St. 

97 Spring St. #1

Cambridge, MA

02141 USA

(write me)

Sunday Night

Make use of the things around you.
This light rain
Outside the window, for one.
This cigarette between my fingers,
These feet on the couch.
The faint sound of rock-and-roll,
The red Ferrari in my head.
The woman bumping
Drunkenly around in the kitchen . . .
Put it all in,
Make use.

- Raymond Carver

NY City Scape

Going to New York

glostah, ma.

magic, smoke and mirrors

this was the first day i had dunken donuts. 

supermarket cats & loose lases

GOD CAN - FORGVE

a flat cement runway cut through dense fog, a green ocean lapping up both sides of asphalt,  shepherding us to an enshrouded chinese temple at the edge of sight, that turned out to be an empty tourist look out. The expansive ocean view: five feet into a white void.
A sound so low and sonorous that it got hold of you at the base opened up from the nothingness sky. This chaos grew louder, until it visibly revealed itself as airbuses, several shades of grey darker than the clouds that enveloped it, as close as planes should be to your head, flying into Logan Airport, seemingly a stones-throw away. Wouldn't the bright yellows, red, and oranges of an explosion be beautiful amongst all of this harboring grey?
////////////////
mammoth-sized, deserted factories that sheltered the sky for those traipsing the sidewalks under turquoise-oxidized streetlamps. South Boston. wondered into a dwarfed pub : "Murphy's Law" to find ourselves the only customers besides an obese man on his second or third coors light, his bar stool turned away from the door, and towards a flat screen. I took out money from the atm, the bills have been bathing in the noxious odor of moth balls, undisturbed and resting. The overhead florescents were on, and I was feeling pretty ravenous, so my first pint went down in an impatient swirl. Shamus, the barkeeper, found several commonalities with G and myself, and thus started unloading his tumultuous life patterns on us: divorce, unemployment, daughter, friend screwing the wife, neighbors finding out....etc. He was on the verge of tears when he explained a story of running into the ghost of Lizzie Borden, the young girl in Fall River, MA, who axed up her parents. Perhaps this was around the same time that he diagnosed himself as an alcoholic, nonetheless, it makes for a great story.

Lizzie Borden

Lizzie Borden took an axe, 
gave her mother forty wacks.
When she saw what she had done,
she gave her father forty-one.


///////

[ver-seylz]

Short Trip, Home

 half heads of cabbage

 broken zippers

beautiful people

In the News

 

A landscape as a state of mind.

...being the procrastinator that i am, i have been avoiding starting writing a paper this morning on michel foucault's "other spaces: utopias and heterotopias" in relation to on kawara's date painti...... but have been listening to this on repeat:

did it on em.



  

Glouchester

Pronounced: [glosta]

At the check station, cashing a money order:

Her gold name tagged glimmered " YDALMIS" behind the bullet-proof glass. Her accent was sliced through the conversation vent cut in the middle of the booth. Her fingernails, long and pink contrasted the green bills she was counting, and her green polo uniform, complete with an golden embroidered text that read:  PLEA$E.

dance yourself clean

I was ordering an americano when a hand came from behind me and swiped off about a dozen cappuccino mugs from the bar onto the floor, where they all but smashed into tiny pieces. The same hand then proceeded to go into a cookie jar and retrieved the chocolate chip one with due satisfaction. I, then traced the cookie to the hand, up to the arm and finally to the owner of this tumultuous elephant trunk to find a hasidic jew that immediately fled the scene. I noticed he was wearing steel washers on his fingers, like children when pretending to be married, only his were being utilized as some sort of brass knuckle that he repeatedly tested on the cafe's glass facade as if it were a punching bag. After this ruckus, he dashed for the intersection of Union Square, one that has about five lanes of cars all merging in the center, which is where our friend laid down a la odalisque with his cookie, like a peacock fan in his right hand. He then retorted to the gathering onlookers: "I have just ingested enough lysergic acid that I am no longer a citizen of this country!" Two police cars, a fire truck, and a paddy wagon all showed up within five minutes and their inhabitants all circled the man who sat nibbling his cookie, as cool as a cucumber, laughing hysterically at the ring of uniforms that fenced him in.

I left without knowing the rest, the crowds were too much. It was also the sabbath today. It will probably be on youtube. ho hum.

a woman with birds nest like hair approached me near a highway on-ramp. She was strolling along the sidewalk wearing a flesh colored sports bra and cut off denim shorts, essentially nothing. In a very manly voice she asked me if I knew where the closest junkyard was.

Come On & Take It

Evergreen Prisms

Gannon L. McCarthy

a Jack Daniels honey whiskey promoter at the liquor store giving out samples:

"I could just pound it for hours, and I don't even need a chaser!"

Her shirt was pink and on it said: "I'm a Keeper"

i believe her name was Barbara:

"I was overwhelmed by this feeling inside. All I could do was get up and clean the apartment for hours. I was running around, just cleaning. When I finally sat down, I noticed I had one of Ed's nicotine patches stuck to the bottom of my foot."

Q & A with Sad Magazine.

clear horizons, I want more of them.

I found another Orgone Accumulator in the flower bed at Harvard Science Center. It was buried, with only a small inch of it sticking out. I dug it out immediately knowing what it was.
Now I am doubly protected!
Bring on the LIFE ENERGY.

fortune cookie last night:
"Book Lovers Never Go To Bed Alone"

The morning started off a comfortable routine: black coffee, cigarettes, open windows issuing a cool breeze that lapped at our bodies under a grey sky being burnt away like a match to a white napkin. Rushing to the underground to catch a ten o’clock Peter Pan Bonanza bus to Newport Rhode Island. Four people on the bus nicknamed Peter’s Dance (the upholstery, of such buses are inspired by unworn collared shirts from the 80’s; rainbow stripes, falling like ruffled sheets of paper, or painted toe-nail clippings over a charcoal-grey landscape). Passing countless Dunkin Donuts, and other vernacular commercial buildings: Red Lobsters, Olive Gardens, places I have only seen on the television when I was a child, but have never been to; summon a strange disconnected nostalgia, of getting rug burn on my chin from my parents brown rug while laying down, straining my neck upwards to watch the commercials in between episodes of Roseanne, or Doug.

We are let out in a bus loop where people are waiting above signs that say “no loitering” with a salty sea smell that I’ve nearly forgotten. The main street, riddled with tourist shops, sweat pants, “Only in Rhode Island,” pink pants with blue whales on them, ray-bans, chocolaterias, anything sophisticate or sailboat-ish. We wait for the one bus that circles the peninsula, its a gold-plated trolley with lush velvet maroon ropes that manicured hands pull when they reach their destination. We sit on the heavy lacquered wood bench while five men, younger than us with briefcases, suits and peach fuzzed faces, a business meeting? get on the bus. Gannon asks them for directions to the mansions and asks what there is to do here in Newport, they reply “it depends on the day. Sometimes its quiet, sometimes there’s stuff.” We all get off at the same stop, they go to a business university that looks like a victorian castle named Salve Regina University, and we go down to the cliffs over-looking the atlantic.

The cliffwalk that takes you on a Disneyland-like train ride through the historic mansions, great sights and views, numbered spectacles, strolling with the same three repeating archetypes of pedestrians (old women with short grey hair, colorful sweat pants clamoring over boulders, middle-aged couples; worlds greatest dad, Patriot supporters, camouflaged wearing dogs, wives without eye-contact or words, and young girls, tuned in, jogging in inspirational clothing: just do it, I put the tude in attitude, I will be here forever, and ever and ever....
Needless to say we veer off from the path, and discover many things: there is no such thing as a boring rock, countless ecosystems and strange (to me) creatures of the atlantic, how the colors of the new spring fashion line is “totally harkening to colors of the brown algae soup, so stagnant and silted with its soaked package of half-smoked marlboros, and entropy,” hours spent staring at the endless horizon of ocean and sky, and how deeply I care about the person sitting next to me, a someone to tell things to. Pass countless photo-ops that the archetypes mentioned above stop at, and pose, a star-fish, jumping jack position inside of a tunnel, the odalisque over some rocks...etc.

This is some context of the Mansions and cliffwalk at Newport Rhode Island.


Oh, and the Marble Mansion, the most known Mansion in Newport, modeled after Versailles, is, as it happens, for sale.

After walking for hours we catch the bus back into town. A Christina Ricci look-alike gets on, along with a group of cliquey girls that attend Salve Regina. Nothing seems “real” in town, whatever notions of authentic are. People are hiding behind facades of the past. Girls straight from Jersey Shore, accent and all, bend over pretending to vomit as they recoil yet give themselves to the mangey chow whose eyes are nearly oozed shut, whose fur is matted and dreadlocked, mopping the streets of butts, chewed gum, and ice-cream cones, and whose owner, a local who I feel for in dealing with these women, and all the tourists all the time.

We venture into an army-surplus store where a seventeen year old girl, dyed green hair, lanky, spiked bracelets and a large hoop in her bottom lip, plugs away at her cell phone behind the cash register, as some anonymous pop-punk circulates the store. We ask her what there is to do in Newport, and she replies with a reddening face, “drink”.
We head for the bus back to Boston, when I hear a clicking sound as we pass a parking lot. The sound is coming from a parking lot payment booth. A guy in his late twenties who overlooks the acre of space -- now empty as the sun sets -- taking the correct fare from each family in their minivans, , is tapping out a one-hitter against the side of the door, who exclaims “I’ll be here all night” as Gannon and I look over at him with sympathetic laughter, and he turns back to his bunny-eared television set positioned in front of him, now stoned.

In Boston go to the Friendly Toast, I order a mixed berry, red bull, ice-cream smoothie, that tastes a lot like peto-bismol, but soothes my insides that are burnt out from the lengthy sun exposure, I felt like a sizzled piece of bacon, forgotten on a plate.

I am interested in the disregarded and the peripheral as a means to look into the unconsciousness of our society in search of what drives it, and how these objects and locations come to affect our overall being and identity within a given domain. I am administering a narrative discourse in the form of a critique of our modern culture: a contemporary document that is produced at an experiential, straight-forward level that aims at a more thorough penetration of the surface. This surface under investigation is a barrier that has been fabricated through certain aesthetic choices to reaffirm ideologies that sustain historical, cultural, and at times political myths. The photographs show what it looks like when a culture upholds this barrier to devise an authored view of how they want to appear to others. Often this visual culture has been faced with a sort of aesthetic violence or erasure that is inherent to neglect and a weathering from natural causes, however, this further demonstrates the ephemerality and exhaustive qualities that these cultural myths are built upon.
________________

This is one of the projects that I have been working on so far while in Boston.
Let me know what you think.

met a girl at a party who applies period blood behind her ears as pheromones.

left vancouver at 7am.
to edmonton, to toronto. flight canceled to boston. now i am in a holiday inn. its midnight. stranded.
i traded my dinner voucher for two fingers of jim bean which i downed. walking around naked, moved all the lamps into the bathroom, smoking a cigarettes, taking a hot bath, listening to my friend wallis, anyone need any towels? everything brought to you by air canada, who are now on strike. hopefully make it home tomorrow to boston. i have a wake up call for 4am.
probably wont sleep....room service?

i was riding the subway last wednesday when i noticed intermittent groupings of people that had a black mark of the cross on their foreheads. i was slightly unnerved, thinking charles manson was making a comeback in boston. i told gannon, about my sighting, or my jacob's ladder-esque hallucinations, and he told me it was ash wednesday.

Response to the landscape: Point Roberts

Jeff Downer
Horizontal, Forever.


The guy behind the bar uses different recipes everyday. Todays menu was hot dogs on toast. The only customer other than us was a man who ordered a coffee and stood staring at the wall with a goatee that was long and braided. He looked like he just got out of jail. He sat there for at least an hour, as we ate the plate of toast, cheese and weiners. We then asked the bartender about him. Apparently he visits the bar a few times per night ordering coffee and using the toilet. Panning back, you see us at Breakers, “A Gamblin’ Bar;” written in nostalgic blue and pink neon that reflects off the empty tarmac parking lot, wet from the Pacific's tumultuous, autumnal, clammy haze of moisture, that seeps past your woolen garments and into your bones. This bungalow, townie bar is established upon a rock face with sinuous shrub, fir, and arbutus roots weaving in and out of amber colored dirt, like dark curly hairs that find themselves nestled in a damp sponge. This establishment overlooks a horizon of a remote ocean; its like staring into an envelope: two-dimensional planes of grey that merge in the dark center, the furthest point from your eye. Sitting up at the bar, on a red vinyl stool, you are enclosed by windows that invite you to consider the landscape of infinity -- where an endless grey ocean meets an overcast sky -- that is often veiled, or obscured by the smoke screen, created by the crackling cigarettes that those around you clutch between their fingers, as they emit smoke and mirrors, like a magic trick, from their mouths. The sun washed flower print curtains may not be the ideal frame to this vast, oceanic, environment, where you melt into your chair, experiencing existentialism first hand, as you realize your place in the world and your own personal (in)significance, by staring across the water to Japan, but it will have to do.

You finish your Rainier lager, pay, and clamber through the doors into the outside, leaving the three middle-aged regulars and their vodka cokes with their vibrant yellow popcorn machine and three televisions: Komo 4 News Seattle, a disconnected hockey game, and the food network (inspiration for the chef’s rotating menu). Your struck by the silence that surfaces in between the rhythmic cacophony of the salty waves crashing into the sharp, grater-like rocks, covered in barnacles and torn seaweed. Your breathing synchronizes to the waves (or you would like it to) and you notice your gait, as it slices through the misty fog towards the looming, up-rooted trees, that are being endlessly clawed at -- naked, deprived of their protective bark -- by the monotonous hands of the ocean’s waves. You have a hard time keeping your balance when you reach the gelatinous sand, maybe too many libations (but your lips aren’t numb) or you have been haunting the city’s cement sidewalks too long, and find the natural ground somehow, unnatural.

The horizon exists only because of the large ferry in the distance, that, like a paper-slicer, glides along the ocean’s surface, and visually cuts it from the sky, leaving you with two planes of infinity: as above, so below. The always odd but familiar foam, that peeing mimics in the toilet, lines the shore, and with it, are the ocean’s trinkets and knick-knacks: kelp, bird gutted crab shells, and an enormous myriad of rainbow plastics that have been disjointed from their original purpose, and become artifacts of distant, romanticized cities: Hamburg? Piraeus? Kobe? Barcelona? In one direction this ethereal landscape is enclosed by a barrier; a chain-link-fence, a reference to society, the very thing you came to get away from. Beyond this mesh screen, where air flows fluidly from a public sphere to private one, is a seemingly forgotten, weathered patio furniture set covered in bird shit that seems to resemble a somewhat natural form of graffiti. It’s as if the birds purposely use Mr. ____’s plastic adirondack chairs from Target as a toilet, lets hope so.

The beach is laden with sand dollars, like a jackpot payout at the crazy diamonds slot machine when the tokens overflow your collection basket and spill onto the geometrically patterned carpet covered in chewing gum and cigarette ash. You reap in the winnings, and put the sand dollars in your white plastic shopping bag that is adorned with an image of the stars and stripes above the text “Proudly Made in the USA,” that you got at the USA Mart to carry sundries that you can’t find at home: canned bread and collard greens, vegan tamales, and three bottles of wine for nine ninety-nine. The cashier, the one you love seeing every time, but sympathize with, because you know that he hates his job, with his thick New York accent and resemblance to Don Knott’s character on Threes Company. Or the time you were scanning the bulletin board’s classified section and found an add for a portable Underwood typewriter, which you called, and you ended up getting the USA Mart customer service desk, who transfered you to a voice with his dialect.

Darkness approaches fast during these autumnal months, and the sun that you haven’t seen in weeks is dissipating in a similar vein as a balloon’s when the air is slowly released, only this is silent, and you will find yourself set adrift in the darkened night. Getting on your bicycle, you cycle your way through the wooded path, uphill, passed the cemetery, two decorative plastic deers, apple orchards that have gone to seed, and the abandoned house where you found that mug with the sixties psychedelic landscape painted on it, when a spicy thick pother of smoke gets lodged between your eyeballs and your glasses, causing you to tear up, in the best way possible. The source of this smoke is billowing from a large teepee shaped fire in a cul-de-sac that several faceless shadows are huddling near. You are as helpless as the moths that hurtle themselves at the fluorescent lights outside of the 7-11 at all hours of the night, and find yourself leaving your bicycle on the sidewalk and joining these figures in the primitive art of fire staring. You find out they had a late spring cleaning, and they are burning their old pieces of furniture: love seats, coffee tables, and worn out shoes. They hand you a bag of Tostitos chips and a plastic container of seven-layer bean dip that is making its way around the fire.

I have lived this, and loved it.
and i have a fortune from grandma.

“In Boston they ask, how much does he know? In New York, how much is he worth? In Philadelphia, who were his parents?” Mark Twain.

a little slice of heaven on valentines day.

this is it:

"The world is an oyster, but you don't crack it open on a mattress," said a character in an Arthur Miller play. He was referring to the idea that if you're obsessed with sex and romance, your level of worldly accomplishment may be rather low. It jibes with what a friend in my youth told me when he noticed how much of my energy was engaged in pursuing desirable females: "They don't build statues in parks for guys who chase women." I realize you may not be wildly receptive to ruminating on these matters during the Valentine season, Sagittarius. However, the omens suggest I advise you to do just that. It's a good time to fine-tune the balance between your life-long career goals and your quest for love. "

-free will astrology.

I have been listening to the Bee Gee's!
(I can't believe it!) Its from the Bee Gee's 1st. Thats the name of the album.

Kabalarian Philosophy of Names:

The name of Jeff gives you a very inquisitive, restless, seeking nature. You feel impelled by intense desires that you cannot comprehend or satisfy. You have had the desire to accomplish something outstanding and to do something very worthwhile for humanity, especially early in your life. This name gives you a versatile, clever, analytical mind, but unfortunately you cannot direct your interest toward an undertaking for long, as you do not have the patience and practicality for systematic hard work and attention to detail. You resent obstacles, delays, and restrictions. This name gives you ambition, high ideals, and much creative ability, but the intense dynamic nature is too often spent in feelings and in moods, rather than in constructive action.

Your name of Downer creates an idealistic, sensitive nature and a desire for culture and the refinements of life. You would work best in a relaxed environment at tasks involving writing, mathematical, or analytical skills that require concentration. You appear calm to others, but at times you suffer inwardly with nervous tension. You can find it difficult to express your deeper thoughts and feelings verbally. It is much more natural for you to express your deeper thoughts in writing. A lack of positivity and confidence is a source of difficulty in making decisions in business dealings.

(apparently Madonna, the singer, is a strong believer and follower of this philosophy)
Find yours here: http://www.kabalarianphilosophy.org/name.cfm

I was in Harvard square buying stationary and envelopes, paying with my credit card, when the woman looked at the name on the back of the card and sent me this link:

Ancestry-based scholarships for undergraduate students at Harvard College

Charles Downer Scholarship Fund
Restrictions, in order of preference:
1. Students who bear the surname Downer and who are descendants of Joseph or Robert Downer of Wiltshire, England;
2. Other students bearing the surname Downer;
3. Descendants of members of the Harvard Class of 1889.


I picked the wrong school. I am going to look into this further.

what i learned at the first day of school (in quotes):

"Whatever I write in email, it doesn't mean anything. It is just words
I write." (P. Hilton)

"One of the great things about books is sometimes there are some
fantastic pictures." (G.W. Bush)

"Generally speaking, you aren’t learning much when your lips are
moving.” (unknown)

woke up with an inkling of the big city. showered, shaved and headed to south station in chinatown to buy a ticket to nyc. within five minutes of the transaction I was literally shoved on the express bus by a little chinese woman wearing a red parka with the text “Fung Wah Express” in large white font, peeling off and worn, probably from the repetitive action of pushing people onto huge menacing vehicles. fifteen dollars, and 3 hours later I was squeezed out of the bus right in the bowery, with no place to stay and no plan of action, all I was aware of was the cacophonous bitter wind that was pummeling at me at a temperature of minus fifteen, and I was coat-less just a flimsy denim-jacket. I made some calls: Koko, Nathan, Dennis, William and then Niki, most plans fell through, but I finally arranged a place to crash in Brooklyn of a friend of a friends. I had a copy of Gol Nu Get Mote and wanted to take it to Printed Matter, not knowing where it was or having a map on me, I relied on my instincts and memory from the two other times I have been in this metropolis. When I was waiting at 4th St. station an older man wearing a long blue parka with a white fur collar kept looking at me, probably because I looked so damn cold and unprepared, but I thought nothing of it. I got to Chelsea and found Printed Matter, but then hunger set in, and I ate at this little diner across the street. As I sat at the bar drinking coffee, the man with the blue parka sat next to me and ordered a coffee as well. I ordered the hangover sandwhich, and kept thinking about this man next to me and how in such a large city full of so many people could we both be coincidentally be on the same paths and arrive here from the opposite end of Manhattan? I paid and headed over to Printed Matter and applied to have my book sold there. As I was leaving the man with the blue parka entered.
Headed to a bar-b-que restaurant to meet Clayton, who is in the band Crawl Babies, whose house I was crashing at in Brooklyn.

Around 10, a hurst pulled up to a funeral home and a draped-body on a stretcher was wheeled out. As I approached a gust of wind followed me, and whipped off the veil that was covering the body. A woman, recently embalmed, with pastiche make-up all over her white, soul-less skin was laying there, and her body jiggled as the drivers lifted the stretcher onto the sidewalk, it was a jiggling that resembled a voiceless “hello there”. I stood there, in shock, staring at the vessel, when I was shaken back into reality by one of the funeral home employees saying “sorry about that” to me. My nose started bleeding, as it had earlier on the subway, from what I thought was from vacillating between hot and cold climates so fast, however, luckily, when I was on the subway a man gave me a Dunkin Donuts styrofoam coffee cup and a napkin to bleed into - america runs on dunkin.
Also a man off the street gave me a huge german army parka because I looked so cold! And it took me forty-five minutes to find a place to piss in Chinatown, I had to buy a black-bean bun, but it was worth it.
Saw the Pink Mountaintops play in Brooklyn, it was a true rock and roll fantasy as I drank an old fashioned.

On the bus ride home, the bus stopped at a McDonalds in Connecticut and parked in the back.
I saw a woman who was driving a mini-van smoking crack by the grease dumpsters. A few minutes later, three women and a man in their fifties and a child came out with arms full of McDonalds paper bags and got into the minivan along with the woman who was smoking crack and they all drove away, a happy meal.
Got home and Nathan took me out to dinner.

plastic man, you are the devil.

so i wanted to go to a sauna and do some swimming here in Boston, and found out there aren't any recreational centers, only gyms and the ymca. so i signed up for a membership at the ymca - being that it is cheaper. I arrived late last night to a huge, old building, circa like 1780's, many meandering canals, rusted doors, a basement pool, dark nooks and crannies everywhere - the whole experience was like that out of a horror film. so after this old 80 year old security guard with white, slicked-back hair on a leathery, stained, taut face, wearing a tight green tweed costume showed me which lockers work out of all the broken ones, I wanted to go into the sauna. I changed and went in to find this black man stretched out on the top step with nothing on but a little white rag covering what should not be seen in public, and beside him, an opened bottle of vaseline. I was a gaff at what my mind was assuming was happening here, so I sat at the opposite end, where all the cool air was seeping through the door while I had one eye open to spot any dangerous moves. After some time going in and out of the sauna and lap pool, where swim caps are mandatory, I unearthed the secret to the vaseline can. The man applies it all over his body to block his pours, aiding him to sweat profusely.

From Erin Marranca's blog"

Metaphors for Life

I watched you fall asleep. At first you were cute,
but then your mouth was open
& you were snoring.