VERBAL CREATURES

(An older entry, that began as a free-association exercise to express my love of words and writing. At times bordering on an obvious ethereal absurdity, it’s one of my favorite poetic pieces, uninhibited by rigid form or strictly logical waves of thought. It’s feelings-based, peppered with linguistically driven dream-like imagery.)

In the course of my night, there’s a resting wave which utters through my shaking spine.  It wails of grace and beauty.  It echoes songs of love.  It captures the essence of who I am and what I need to be.  I am the music, but can’t convey it without the sounds of all who sung before me. 

I am the night living among the shadows of the sleeping day things.  I am the darkness and what can seem to be so right.  I silently dance across the vagaries of my other night friends.  Careful not to wake the tired souls of Monday morning. 

My ears hum the sweet lulls of the days before me.  The woes are mine, the sins are cast upon me.  I am alone, yet alone for now, for others have been alone before me.  I lovingly type word after word of fictitious verbal creatures that have never once existed.  They are now my proud companions.  They are now the proof I have of singing women in my head.  They verify me, they indulge because of me.  All I have went into them, and all they have comes back to me.  I gladly smile at the word creatures’ doings – their makings and shakings, their rinsing and convincing, their torpid cries and somber lullabies. 

The word creatures do their creature like things.  They makes honey-kissed tarts with marmalade dressings.  They inspire frugal men to do their frugal things.  The little word creatures sometimes leave everything as it already seems. 

My words they are ok.  But when I try they quickly die.  When my mind is free of care they make the readers stare.  They’re so beautiful they are.  The are like no other.  So unique, so unlike their brothers.  The words they move, they dance, and run.  The are free, and free to be wherever they may need to be. 

Methinks that once a word was out of line and ran away from his shelter-like book where all the words would reconvene.  But that’s alright, more room to be made for the prodigal word,  The one who would find his way back to his roots.  The one who would learn that life is not possible all alone. 

My little creatures are well-aware that they must work in together, whistling when they must, but never by themselves.  The work they make will move hovering mountains and push plain sweet grass fields miles from their base.  Together their deeds will reconceive notions and develop plausible solutions to otherwise trivial dilemmas. 

I am the Word Mommy and my words are because of me.  They make me proud, and they make me feel happy.  And then they make me feel sad also.  They make me feel a lot of things, and things are good as well you know.

SPUNTINO

(An immediate response to my visit with the owners – family friends – of one of the most successful Italian restaurant ventures in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. I had once briefly trailed there, but during a time when I was already holding down a full-time advertising job in Manhattan. My mind and heart were not fully ready to take on a career for which I had so passionately expressed interest. Upon revisiting, I was saddened by the fact that I hadn’t had the opportunity to explain my position. And my new outlook given the circumstances of my life and associated growth.) - 

 

 

I suddenly want this more than ever. The atmosphere is warm and inviting – despite the less welcoming reception I think I’m being given.  I know I may be unwelcome. For a host of reasons. Family politics for one?  Or my wavering nature demonstrated in the past during a very uncertain and unopenminded period of my life.

But I talked a good game back then. They saw the charming salesman in me – the unconspiring, but intelligent promise I could offer to their bottom line.

I know I might have dropped the ball though. I showed hesitation. An incongruous performance from my naturally genuine personality pitch.

And there was never a chance to explain. There rarely is when dealing with those who don’t particularly prefer that type of confrontation. 

Now I’m eager to just reconnect. It’s one of the few challenges in life that I would actually welcome. Trying to win someone over that’s possibly put up steel walls between us. I respond well to being ignored I guess. I’ll keep pushing. I need to explain myself. I need to make a statement about my relentless desire to join their team.  

The music grooves with a laid back southern twang. I could dig this. The flavors from the sweet fennel sausage and bitter broccoli rabe panini are sharp, explosive and memorable. It’s home and it’s heaven.

ANYONE CAN BE AN ARTIST

(A brief reflection on a shared experience with a 5 year-old boy named Ethan.  Iʼve had the pleasure of working with him as a volunteer instructor at a childrenʼs cooking school in downtown Brooklyn – November, 2008):

Today’s the third time Ethan asked me to draw him a picture.  I’m finally beginning to catch on.  He either sees my drawing as a form of entertainment or else he’s too afraid to try it on his own.  I think it’s the latter. Because I couldn’t agree with him more.  We share the same fear.  But it’s my responsibility to stop it, before it becomes too real.  Before he projects it onto anything else.

I suggested we each take a pen stroke and match each other’s move.  A fun form of interaction.  A painless demonstration of symmetry.  He hesitatingly gave it a go – preemptively expressing his worry that he may not get it right.  I had to quell it and encourage.  ”You can’t mess it up.  If you do, we’ll fix it together.  Do you know some of the best artists were the ones that created from their mistakes?”  (An insight I borrowed from a recent encounter with my landlord – once Andy Warhol’s right hand man and now still a peculiar but generative creator).

So Ethan takes a stroke.  It’s backwards.  Maybe he’s dyslexic.  In fact, I noticed he’d reversed all the letters in my name when attributing me credit for the drawing.  I decide to create from his accident.  Though we’re following a cartoon book model illustration of a vampire, I add a bit of my own style.  A larger cape than the book had intended.  The boy wasn’t happy with the lack of an exact match.  But I think that it sufficed.  I think for a moment he saw the bigger picture.  He hadn’t ruined the image.  He’d only helped to break the mold.

A FIRST MEMORY, A FIRST BLOG

one of my earliest memories of being comforted brings me back to about age 3.  i was living in my first home in staten island, ny.  i don’t think my younger brother had yet been born and so now it feels as though I was still the baby of the family.  there were loud, heavy crashing thunderstorms.  perhaps my first conscious experience of this frightening phenomenon – or at least it was the first time i was old enough to articulate what i was feeling in words to accompany my cries.  i remember these cries too though – i was shaking uncontrollably.  it seemed as though the horror would never end.  a choking, self-perpetuating anxiety that possessed me wholly and instantly.  and then my mother, very simply, pacified me with an icy coca-cola from the fridge – it was 1981 and they were still available in the classic glass bottles.  tonight, at age 30 i downed a familiar swig of coke after battling an incessantly helpless and isolated day.  it happened to have the same effect and so triggered this random thought.