If You Dig

S U P P O R T  n  J O I N

UnHappy New Year

What's wrong with this picture?

Look closely.  There is an office chair in the street.

The cops either don't seem to want to be photographed, or don't seem inclined to take any next steps, decisive or otherwise.  Or they don't know which next steps to take.

A bike parked, or abandoned, in the middle of the crosswalk -- its rider, apparently, just stopped  and climbed off -- reflecting either whimsy or chaos.

... An office chair, in the middle of the street.

Something has happened here, is still happening ...

It's a great picture.

Tragically, what happened in the center of Paris, is not at all whimsical.  Charlie Hebdo may be whimsical ... a French Onion, if you will ... a satirical humor publication, today, in the minds of extremists armed with Kalashnikovs and bottle rockets, twistedly perceived to be "paying the price" for its satire, humor ...

There's nothing funny.

Terror has struck in the heart of Paris.  It's time for PEGIDA to march in and occupy.

Then, lights can switch off in Notre Dame ... the Eiffel Tower goes dark, the Bastille gets stormed, its streets clogged with dialogue ... at least there's talking.

What's missing across much of Europe, outside of Germany, it seems, where PEGIDA -- Patriotische Europäer Gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West) and its opposing movements have grown vocal -- is a sense of engagement.  A willingness, inclination, to take next steps ... and a lack of preparedness and security about doing so.

In too many European quarters (if you want to speak about "white privilege"), there is a strong unease that 'something is happening' - but this weird, fervent hope that it might go away if left alone ... ignored, ridiculed or excluded.

The banlieues are teeming with crime and poverty.  "We" are afraid to go into the banlieues.  Perhaps as a solution, the banlieues should be invited to "us".  I propose, as a tentative outreach toward solution, instead of derision, frustrations and more violence, a simple détente:  a peaceful series of salons, to which all religions, social strata and colors, by invitation and wholly welcome, arrive.

Dinner is served.  You've got champagne and Weißbier ... Red Bull and escargot ... Döner Kebabs with chantilly!  Fear and hatred, pride and prejudice, war and peace, at table together ... Sharing apéritifs with beliefs, ideologies ... cultures, menus, ideas ... art and humor -- what "works" and what doesn't, and why --

Sharing dialogue, human connection, eye contact ... the necessary first steps toward understanding.

Simplistic perhaps.  A utopian wet dream.  A fantasy ... but something's got to start somewhere.

Bad Lines and Inspiration

"Some might argue that it’s hubristic to write in the first-person.

"I (me, myself and … ) disagree.

"What I would argue is that the first-person, as a narrative form, should be retired. This would limit, if not eliminate, all the posers, pretenders and Starbucks dreamers who 'share' themselves like drunken cheerleaders. It would also pretty much lay waste to the 'blogosphere' … this, arguably, not a terrible thing.

"Several decades ago -- before our Facebook, cut and paste, 'open-source' world --  there were older siblings … also scribbling, pos(t)ing dreamily, into Barnes & Noble 'journals' the size of granny panties … or contributing to Fray."

It's All About Me(dium)

in

Inspire the World

Independence

Photo(s) by Jglo

I'm a part-time expatriate.

I am not an ex-patriot.  Just because I spend time abroad, and maintain a little Schloß looking out over Bavarian rooftops, doesn't mean I belong here ... or understand, particularly, the workings of the Bundestag.

I don't (yet) speak German, cannot tzpe things easilz ... Canät get through a newspaper, could not compose a blog or story ... Can't get past amenities, or pleasantries about das Wetter auf Deutsch.

But I'm not in München for conversation.

I'm here because need for change brought me here.  And business ... The Erneuerbare-Energien-Gesetz (EEG) is what started the whole solar power ball rolling ... and though planned reductions in government incentives and an overall energy market stabilization quelled the schnell reich dreams of many by the time I made my move to Germany ... still, I felt overdue for a change.

From the loud desperation, the quietly screaming ... the more and more frequently tipped boiling points; the embarrassing "news", the incessant "discussions", the swiping of credit cards and dignity ... which the United States, 'tis of me, has come to embody;

I needed respite, from upwards of €12.5 T ($17 trillion usd ... that's TWELVE ZEROS, folks!) in national debt ... and from the recently confirmed worst U.S. president since World War II ... Certainly, of my own lifetime.

... I remember being with Milf-y Vanily one night back in the day ... and we got around to discussing Richard Nixon, like you do .... I guess it was because I was coming out from the bathroom making a peace sign, and Milf-y laughed and said I looked like him (?).  Or something like that was going on ...

Anyway, she suddenly became embarrassed, like actually blushed ... and I looked down to make sure I wasn't trailing any toilet paper.  She finally, after some (not so ;-) gentle prodding, said, "I actually voted for Richard Nixon!"

I remember thinking at the time, how sweet it was that that mattered to her ... Was it really such a point of shame (or playful pride??)?

Nixon's flameout in real time was just at the cusp of my cultural awareness - I was only entering Kindergarten then.  I knew he did something, and he was being replaced, and it was a darkly newsworthy time in America ... but I had nothing to do with electing him myself, of course -- at two, I was only along for the ride -- and I don't recall my parents ever saying much about him, or politics in general, one way or another.

They were probably ashamed as well, come to think of it ... and being from an earlier time than Milf-y, didn't bother speaking too much about things they felt they couldn't control ... America's first presidential resignation being one of these.

So when Milf-y Vanily played all coy, I started to think how sweet that was ... but also how little her shame (or embarrassed pride) really mattered in the great scheme of things.  It was history, and Milf-y really was from another era ...

I quickly put on my pants and left!

I relate this now, having grown into a Milf myself ... I'm a FILF!  I'm FILF-y ... approaching fifty ... and I empathize with the embarrassment, playful or not, which my companion shared with me that night:  I actually voted for Barack Obama.

And change is needed.

 

Tell Me ...

Comments

are Open

... Be Gentle

December's Children

A big and special Danke to some dedicated 'likers':

M. Funk FineArt // Photography

seedbud (Leaf and Twig)

Ming Wang Photography

Leanne Cole Photography

Thank you for checking out and checking into, regularly liking ...

Freundlichkeit (Human) Kindness

"(L)ife in itself is a chain of rainy days ... I think I'll go for a walk with my umbrella" - Sun-Young Park

'Kickin' it old school', as the kids say ... pen and an actual notebook, loaded with paper, not apps and icons, in hand ...

There's something to be said for people-watching -- Leute beobachten (or Schadenfreude, as the case may be) -- or spying, as the good people of the Gärtnerplatz in Munich keep saying.

A sort of equivalent to New York's Union Square, der Gärtnerplatz -- minus the nodding junkies, the smelly nutters, the ridiculous "protests" ... the homeless with pent-up, directionless anger ... directed toward themselves, at bottom; but then, at white people, black people, chess winners and losers ... People with hair, and wearing glasses.  Or not.

At the world and everyone, every thing in it.

... unlike Union Square, in fact.

Der Gärtnerplatz is not unpleasant.

November wird hundsmiserabel, I think rudimentally to myself - like I'd think to myself forty years ago, when English was a new language.  Then twenty years ago, when I first visited Munich, I instantly felt that I'd spend some time here.  Relatively quiet and small, i.e., liveable, compared to the ugly, pretentious slut, Berlin and that clenched New York pretender, Frankfurt.

"Franky-Boy!  Mr. Albert Sinatra!" the DJ'd announce giddily ... and the bar would erupt in a marble-mouthed chorus - like a room full of stroke victims, shouting heavily accented, tone-deaf English:  Ist!  Op!  Zum!  Du!  New-York, New-YORK!!! ... 

"Franky-Boy!  Albert Sinatra!" the DJ'd cry, and the Weissbiers would hoist to the sky and I'd sigh, and just know I at least had to try and get back here!

"Polizei!  Hilfe!  Polizei!"  A night cry ...

I slip out the door of my terrible pension, across from the station, and go down to see.

There's a guy on the ground, with a boot in his back:  "Release me!" the guy's yelling up, in English, to a man in green, one of Bavaria's Finest.  "Bullenschweine!" (the guy's switched to German) ... "Sofort!" he shouts to the boot in his back (and the cop's deaf ears).  "Release me!" he Englishes again, "Immediately!"

The Bavarian cop presses down in a Schuhplattler.

"Free sex!  She was giving him free sex!" the guy yelps.

And nobody is really quite sure what that means.

The next night, I spy the guy, Larry, rolling (for he'd had a chair, and been unceremoniously dumped from it the night before by the 'man in green', one of Bavaria's Finest) through the Gärtnerplatz.

I ask him what happened:  what he'd done, and why he was being arrested?

"Wasn't me," he avows.

"Yes it was," I avow back.

He asks me to wheel his chair "just up the street".

Well, I'm not sure what to do, really.  'Kindness breaks no bones', as they say here ... but I don't have time to be wheeling Larry!  The German autumn night is young, and I'm supposed to be meeting meine Frau ... Meine Frau ist stinksauer auf me mow ... er, now ... and I was going to bring her some Blumen flowers.

Eenie meenie meine Frau ...

Can't be wheeling Larry now!  But he's an American, like me, in Paris ... Larry, Gene Kelly and I ... start pushing, his weird German wheelchair across the Gärtnerplatz.

"That's it," he grunts, "just up here."  We get to the steps of the Staatstheater, and I start thinking Larry might have a date too.  Gonna meet up his love for a night at the opera ... but no.  Larry asks me to hang a right.

Then another ... We go around again ... Twenty minutes or so later, we're back at the steps of the Staatstheater!

So, "This is where we part, my friend ... "

"Oh, I'm your friend now," the strange(r) Larry snaps.

I leave him, sitting in his chair as it begins to rain, again, in autumn Munich ... ein Sauwetter!

Not getting better!

November wird hundsmiserabel ...

"The Shadow", ©Jeff Glovsky

September...Auf Deutsch

Happy Feedback

In the slice knife that is A.M., I cut through to get my things done ...

Mornings out and up with tea ...

In New York ... before loud hordes shatter each day, and in Munich, before tourists pour onto the canvas ...

I pour my breakfast loads in ...

 Mornings

I Can Dance!

I don't make music.

I can write and take pictures (I can bitch slap shade throwers) ... I can mix sounds and voices and instruments live.  I find comfort and meaning and rhythm in words, and can lyricize random poetix with ease.

Oh, I can compose things ...

I can even plink and tinkle a little.

I know what sounds right, I'm not tone deaf and I know what's 'in key' (though I'll never be there!).  I'm not an aggregator of esoteric crap on an i-pod ... There is nothing more curious, or annoying, to me, than knowing that for some reason, you've collected more than 5,000 songs (are there even 5,000 songs??), with a healthy dose of Inuit, bagpipe or "chakra music" in your song library.

Now I can appreciate some sexy throat singing every now and then ... Get down to a little Achy Breaky Mani Padme Hum on a Friday before last call.  But to walk around with that shit in my earbuds for any stretch of time is beyond my capacity ... and yours too, if you're going to be honest!  You don't need to be streaming it - and I certainly don't need you showing me that you're hip enough to 'get' or "like" it.

Anyway ... I'm not a musician.

I'm musical, and music has informed my life ... but a creator of music (or a designer of sound), is something I'm not.  I also can't draw, but that's a whole other post.

So whenever I find time to hang out on SoundCloud, I'm generally wondering why I'm there.  Why would I, not being a musician or creator of "sounds", sign up there?

Why would most people? then, becomes the question.

Whenever I bang around on SoundCloud, I'm praying it won't algorithmically single me out ... like, "Jeff Glovsky plays Barry Manilow on SoundCloud" ... That would be mortifying.

Because that's all I do there -- that's all I CAN do -- is listen to ("play") music, and then repost ("share") it.  I suppose I could put a couple playlists together ... and those would be, like, my "sounds", right?  Isn't that how it works?

Or maybe I'll record myself reading my writing - the ultimate self-absorption ... a maximum masturbation session!

"Amsterdam Avenue, holy midnight", I'll intone enigmatically ... my deep yet keening voice, preening dramatically.

"...on my knees...like Romeo!  Verona, in my pantaloons!  Elizabethan trappings, Al Pacino in delivery...Like, "Attica, oh Attica!  Oh, wherefore art thou...ATTICA!?

"I'm screaming.  No one hears me.

"But now give it out how I'm a writer...Writing!  No more shitty gigs...No odd job mental patient lot, no theater, theayter...NOT!  I'm never gonna work again!"

Yeah, I could read that.  My overwrought and written words pouring out inconceivably:  me reading and recording them!  See, reading a prose piece or poetry live, at an open mic. -- or better, by invitation -- is one thing.  But taking the time to record and promote something ... that's not what I do.

... Yet.  Like working up the nerve to dance ... 'cause that's also something I don't do.  I might bop to the beat like a tactile transducer, or stamp my foot up and down like a farmer ... or maybe even twerk a little.

But I don't dance, and I don't write or play music.

I can only share my own sounds.

Balance

I recently stopped in to pay a hotel bill from a year ago.  In the lakeside northern Wisconsin town I grew up in, I was able to establish credit with a locally owned and operated franchise, God bless 'em ... and G-bless and huge thanks to property manager, Lisa, AHS Class of '85, who greenlighted the account.

Whenever I'm 'up north' now, traveling solo, to visit family and collect myself (or old belongings and record albums (!) that I wish to keep) ... I have a welcome place to stay that doesn't have to be my old bedroom.  I'm able to stay a spell and pay later, without any kind of restrictions, hassles, room, key or damage "deposits", or even having a zero account (folio) balance.  It's like an honor system, pay as you go thing, and nothing could suit my needs more aptly.

I was 'home' last year at exactly this time, and took advantage of the hospitality ... Then, over the course of 2013, I set up digs overseas, lived and worked in New York, forged a new path and wrestled with SEO ... and did not keep up my end of the tacit arrangement with the local hotel.  I returned to New York at some point during this past summer, to numerous mailed invoices from the hotel, and entreaties from poor Lisa, usually scrawled in red pen, "You NEED to pay this!" ... "Please pay IMMEDIATELY!" ... "This is 340 days past due!!!"

Now despite what you may or may not have heard, read, searched, found, discovered or lazily and ignorantly swallowed about me after typing your search query - not only am I not a "criminal", "thief" or "scammer", but I'm also not a lowlife or a deadbeat.

I'm BUSY, and have been POOR most of my working, adult life!  But this does not mean I'm unwilling or even unable to pay you.

So I paid up the hotel bill from 2012 ... and not once did anyone trash talk, threaten, insult or talk nonsense about "theft (of services)" or any other "charges"; or furiously type in an email, or publicly post anywhere online, that Jeff Glovsky is a "criminal", "scammer", "thief", "schemer" or "scumbag".

Photo(s) by Jglo

Such offensive, false and defamatory language was eschewed in this case, by a person who knew me (or at least knew of me, having actually met me once or twice in high school) - and knew better, professionally, than to carry on like an asshole.

For this, I am grateful, and offer back the greatest respect.  This particular hotel franchise, and its parent, will always have my business.  To those other businesses and services, and people, to whom my business and my person might somehow be unwanted, good riddance and good luck with yourselves.

You're not needed.

("O-kay", I hear you shrugging ... the second syllable going up a couple octaves in your nonchalance.  I don't really give a shit either, just so you know.  Couldn't care less.) 

Now on the other hand, if you're a business owner -- like me, a professional, breadwinner, family  man --  and your earning power, livelihood and reputation have been attacked and/or destroyed by ... well, someone like me:  feeling aggrieved, slighted, inconvenienced, insulted and raring to poke a fat finger back, and/or spit, in your eye ... and you've been so maligned ... why not tell me about it?  Why don't we join forces?

I want to know what you've been through.  I want to hear the way "AlanP"'s anonymous "yelping" has all but ground your business to a halt; how "quixotic"'s frustration with her life and day has wound up on your hotel doorstep, so that you've had to end up dealing with her and reading all about your alleged 'negligence', 'dishonesty' and 'crap service' for the next however many years you remain in business after the internet is told to "BEWARE!!!" of you.

I invite you to share your story, and name the real names of your most rude, overbearing, obnoxious and entitled-feeling guests and customers.  In the interest of fair play, and of course, "freedom of speech", this time has come.

"Tipping Point", ©Jeff Glovsky

Syrias-ly?

Yes, it's personal.

War-like, with screaming calls to battle ("YOU ARE A F*#!ING CRIMINAL!") and overreaching shock and awe tactics, designed to get all Hiroshima ... which sadly (for everyone involved, and too many who were not at all), has achieved its intended effect over the past three years.

I have lost.  Copiously, tangibly.  And to this day, I continue to be abused and bullied by certain fools who believe it's their right or their calling, or it's somehow okay, because Hey, it's "out there", online, so it must be okay ... and must be true!

You don't mind, do you (Scumbag), if I pile on and harass, make demands of your ass and get all hateful?  You deserve it!  You must be used to it, right?

I'll just post a little bit too ... slander, libel ... add a few non-facts after the fact.  Use CAPITAL LETTERS - because like the rest of the internet, I'm PISSED OFF!!  Entitled, self-righteous, anonymous (though you'll always know very well who I am) ... and I'll do this, unless you meet every demand I decide to make!

You own the apartment - I'm your guest, in your property.  But I'll fight you!  Create problems, invent them ... talk nonsense, "yelp" bullshit and CALL YOU NAMES because I'm a misery.  Plus I feel inconvenienced.  

Plus, I read online somewhere that you deserve what I am fully prepared, and have cleared up my life and calendar, to give you.  Or give someone; "Jeff"'s not even your real name!  All criminals use aliases!  Jeff Glovsky's a crook, right?  You rip people off!  I'll make it certain that your clients and customers -- whom I'm not involved with, don't know and have no business ever being in contact with -- all know this ... so that reasonable dealings and communications, resolvable problems which might arise and/or potentially smooth and successful transactions with them -- developed and nurtured from a place of trust -- remain elusive to you, your family, business(es) and livelihoods.

... ?

But about your apartment - I lost your key and locked myself out.  So??  I won't cover the cost of the locksmith and the replacement key.  Of course not!  I'll CALL THE POLICE if you try to deduct the cost of the locksmith and the replacement key from the security deposit I argued about giving you.

I'd like to pay for the apartment in full the day I arrive, please.

Wait ... Why is this not possible?!?

Okay.  So if you can't just hold the apartment in limbo, turning away other potential tenants and hoping I actually show up in a couple of months ... then how about I send you $25, $50 in good faith?  Obviously, I won't pay anything else up front.  And I've got a friend in town who can visit the apartment and see it for me (just to make sure it exists).  When will you be in town?  If not, I'd like to do a walk-through when I arrive, before paying - Again, just to make sure your apartment exists and I'm not being SCAMMED!!!!!!

... Then, depending on what you have inside and the overall condition of things, I'll offer you what I think is an appropriate security deposit for myself, my two pets and my three children (but really, it's just me who will be staying in your apartment ... just as we discussed.  But we're all well-trained and well behaved.).

Jeff!  I've been trying to reach you.  You don't pick up your phone, and you won't let me text you?!?!?? I just called your wife and parents (I found them online), to see if they could help me contact you ...

Anyway, I'm 'checking out' of your apartment in ten days from now ... just as we discussed.  I want to make sure you're there when I leave, to get my security deposit back.  My flight is at 6am.  Probably leaving the apartment around 3:30 ... Make sure you're there, or I'll CALL THE POLICE again (Scumbag)!

Actually, such tenants -- such human beings -- from the belching, eruptive bowels of hell, have been relatively infrequent ... yet it's a tragic fact, to which I can and will attest, endlessly - that such obnoxiousness, stemming from fear and fueled by ignorance, does exist.

Because in 2010, things were made personal.  The sovereign state of my personal name and reputation was invaded -- raped, violated, left to die by the side of the information superhighway -- and as a result, everybody ended up losing battles.

Now, going forward, it's the ones who keep coming ashore with faulty intelligence -- the lazy and dangerously misinformed, who launch and re-launch the same attacks, the same Hiroshimas, September 11ths and Syrian gas nightmares ... perpetually offensive because they think there's no defense -- who are going to end up not winning the war.

My Night on the Street

I fell down the other night.

I don't do drugs, I wasn't drinking.  Just, walking along the fringe of the fringe, on the south side of Union Square Park, I wasn't paying attention and suddenly, my right foot found itself not finding sidewalk.

Instead, to my surprise and embarrassment, I found myself stumbling off the curb.

In slow motion, I lurched like a grazing animal, suddenly on all fours... then on my side (Tuck and roll, I recall very clearly thinking.  Tuck and roll!).

Then flat on my back in Union Square.

As I'm getting up from 14th Street, looking around to make sure no one's pointing and laughing, a 20-something shambles past and asks, "You alright, man?"

I leap to my feet (or tell myself that I do... Actually, I get up in reverse slow-motion, sadly paused on the grazing animal frame), and mumble, "Fine, I'm fine.  No idea how that happened."

The 20-something's no longer even around - having perfunctorily asked the old man who fell down in front of him if he was okay, but then hurriedly shambling off on his way.

The fact that the old man (me!) was able to "leap to his feet" (in his mind, at least), as opposed to continuing to lay on his back in the street like a testudine, provides no comfort.  The old man was mortified, feeling his years.

All of that notwithstanding, however -- and despite a black smudge on one knee of a new pair of slacks! -- I felt worse for the shambling 20-something.

As he shambled off there, presumably to get back on Facebook, I thought of the void that he found himself in:  the creative cypher of his generation... the utter lack of creative anything.  The cutting and pasting, sharing and "adding", the mash-ups, re-blogging and "liking" without knowing why, or at all.

The propagation of mediocrity... the computer-made images, sounds and graphics, the "music" unwritten by human beings... or written once, but co-opted, "remixed" now by people with exaggerated senses of Self; or self-esteems poking their heads out like flowers (or testudines)... reminding themselves feverishly that they CAN:

They CAN draw.  They CAN paint.  They CAN dance and make music... They ARE artists, producers, DJs and filmmakers.

They DO exist... but on the backs and shoulders of technology; or the original work of others that they feel entitled, and are openly encouraged, to "share".  Today, everything is "open source", like an urban dictionary or Wikipedia... ripe to be right-clicked, picked apart, distributed and contributed to, mainly because it CAN be.

But wait.  It's not yours.  So really, you CAN'T.

Thick-thighed specimen!  Irish step-dancing like Riverdance... sweating and not keeping up with yourself:  yes, you CAN dance.  By all means, you should knock yourself out!  You're allowed.

But you shouldn't.  'Cause really, you CAN'T.

So I lay there... just, not getting up from 14th Street.

From the fringe of the fringe south of Union Square Park, on my back in the dark, I retain no illusions:  pushing fifty and virulently anti-Facebook - unwilling to embrace fully the winds of social media change... having stumbled and fallen with nothing and no one to blame but myself... with only original thoughts, words and images... I am the biggest shambling loser.

I'm the one keeping me down for the count.

Gifts and Ripoffs

"Thanx to all the cats ... in our brotherhood." - Boris Koslov

I was digging around some old notebooks the other day, looking for a phone number I knew I'd scrawled - an old (212) number from 'back in the day', before telephone land lines (or spiral notebooks, for that matter) became obsolete ... and I was struck by what a fan I'd been.

In learning the craft of writing, and of becoming (more or less) myself, I seem to have tuned into a few of the biggies ... certain manna, and ticks and inflections of theirs, picked up by my young and thirsty antennae, all bursting with needing to take it all in.

All words and text below are mine (by Jeff Glovsky), as they were written -- sometimes thirty (!) years ago -- in the (sometimes overtly) sampled stylings of ...

John Lennon: 
Taking a might bath arggh, wee Bob?  I'll go ant pack me baggies!

Bruce Springsteen: 

Crucifix Jemina crossed me off the sidewalk.   Didn't have a leg to stand on anymore.

Charles Baudelaire: 

This city, even under the weight of fat tourists, reeks of thirty years ago:  all the noise and crime and ghetto-blasting; drugs, ill-tempered ugliness ... Its beauty become horrible, its awfulness old hat.

Henry Miller: 

New York now is dozens of little acceptances, all at once working to keep you down.  You're not a success, for one example -- or even taken seriously -- if you're not shelling monthly, say, two thousand for your hellhole.

Jack Kerouac: 

It's Tuesday, 10:15am ... What job to go, to do all day?  Resumés - Too many in the past too many each weeks.  Yet the phone's as sick and dead as soul.  Now she won't call.

There's been Steinbeck and Steely Dan, Dylan and Ginsberg, Jim Morrison and Kurt Cobain ... and, when needing to take Mathers into my own hands ... a little Eminem even enters my prose mix.  I've got a work-in-progress with a title Charlie Mingus might be proud of, and I reference Mingus (Mingus, Mingus) often ...

... the Clown's Afraid Too

All of these influences have shaped and informed not only my writing, but my disposition as well.  While certainly not "sunny" overall, I can make (and sometimes take!) a joke, and efface myself on a regular basis; overall, though my life has sucked at times, it's a blessing to be in for an eighty year plan - which, if I ever do happen to become "sunny" (or in the parlance of DeathClock.com algorithmics, "optimistic"), might convert to 90+.

Thus simply, if not moronically, assured, I was strolling through Greenwich Village last night and I ran into a bass player I've known for the past ten years.  Boris is a valued member of the New York-based Mingus bands, all of the various configurations officially sanctioned by Sue Mingus, the Yoko Ono of Jazz (in a good way) ... in addition to playing out with his own groups and projects.

As we were chatting and catching up (I'd been a sound engineer for the Mingus Big Band), a woman came up to us and asked if we knew where Beyoncé was playing.  Totally rando (as the kids say) - having nothing to do actually with what the jazz bass player and I were discussing ... nor with the jazz bassist or myself at all.  Beyoncé and her (substantial) slice of the music universe light years beyond and away from the both of us, it was nonetheless common ground for the woman to approach, introduce herself and begin sharing her own dreams and small histories in entertainment ... Connecting in a way that only artists know how, because like attracts like, but we're all attuned:  to different stations, perhaps, but all with thirsty antennae and the radio on ...

Now if I could only find that phone number.

Don't Be Afraid

... the Clown's Afraid Too

untitled

©Jeff Glovsky

Words & Image(s)

Jeff Glovsky at Writers-Network

The New (York) Normative?

It's always jarring to return to New York from ... anywhere, really.  But especially from a comparatively Kleinstadt like Munich.

So the assault on the senses and momentary culture shock of landing at JFK, battling horrific traffic, crossing into Manhattan, then not being able to turn left down Broadway ... let alone new bike lanes, Citi Bike banks ... the city's new fire truck siren / alarm sound, which seems to be this mournful death wail (far from the happy little WOOO-WHOOOO-WHOOOO we all used to sing out, running about being "fire trucks" or "police cars" as children) (or yesterday, if you're me) ... becomes doubled.  It's a particularly American racing around / going nowhere.  The loud quiet loud of a nest of ants, which can only be found in the grungy noise sounds of a truly American nightmare city.

I'm walking through this mess the other day, and I overhear the following conversation ... two young ladies walking somewhere around me:

"Josh says it's just that she hasn't found the right cock yet."

"Wow.  That makes me feel like I like Josh a whole lot less.  It's heteronormative, oppressive and ..."

"I know.  I know."

Strangely, the most off-putting thing to me -- the part of the conversation which actually made me wince and cluck and pick up my pace -- was not the ridiculously expressed umbrage of the second speaker.  But I found that the most offensive thing to me, was the way that the first speaker, an otherwise lovely young woman (with a perfectly formed ass, I might add - which is why I started eavesdropping in the first place!) so casually, loudly uttered the word "cock" ... and actually inserted (*ahem*) this word into her conversation.

Now I'm no prude when it comes to doing, being; to using colorful language to inject my point (*ahem*) ... or re-create, or establish, a particularly Not Safe for Work (NSFW) world or environment.

But I don't speak that way.  I would never walk down the street with a friend, surrounded by tourists, their families and children, and declare loudly (and "heteronormatively"), "Why, she just hasn't found the right cock yet."

I wouldn't relate to a buddy, in public, "She had the fattest pussy I have ever been a part of."  I would never (to this day) tell my parents on a crowded sidewalk, window shopping:  "Yo, I want that fuckin' T-shirt, yo!"  If me or my brother had ever piped up that way, anywhere in public, my mom would have blushed and covered her mouth like Austin Powers ... then my dad would have hauled off and smacked us across ours.

My brother has written of the need (for him) to "live nebulously" - Society's crassness, vulgarity, (un)"reality" and growing disregard for privacy and private moments, enough to send him off into the night, on the back of a silver black phantom bike, a la Meat Loaf in 1979.  I, on the other hand, long ago resigned myself to a George Moore world view:

"Humanity is a pigsty, where liars, hypocrites and the obscene in spirit congregate."

This acknowledgment keeps me sane - in the face of Benghazi, Amanda Bynes, Edward Snowden and Anthony's Weiner ... not to mention all of the innocent talentless, hopefully talented ... overhyped "music" and "entertainment" ... and Baby Boo Boo (or whatever its name is).

It also keeps me from blowing my brains out whenever I'm back in a new New York City transformed into a highway rest stop - full of IHOPs and Slurpees and Kmarts and bike paths, and pedestrian areas of picnic/park benches, and nobody smoking or watching porn (except Anthony's Weiner) ... but the lovely young ladies all swearing away.

Public Solitude

There's a little place I go to have breakfast each morning.  Like religion, at 6am I'm there, and like clockwork, I order the same daily bread and coffee.  Everything else in my life can be chaos, but this breakfast time -- "hour of the pearl" as JS called it ... "interval between day and night when time stops and examines itself" -- is sacrosanct.

In New York, just before loud hordes shatter each day, and in Munich, before tourists pour onto the canvas -- and in any place I find myself with a café or diner open early enough -- I avail myself of public solitude.  Yet even when the loud hordes come, and the tourists pour forth, there is nothing as disturbing to my thoughts and balance, as the girls from South Africa who've been joining me lately ...

Sitting a few tables away, they'd first joined me for breakfast having arrived on an overnight flight, apparently.  They were chatting in their distinctive weird accents, about how their hotel wasn't ready yet ... the smoothness of their flight and landing, their overpriced, high speed cab ride into the city center, etc., etc.  All of the usual traveler noise, excitedly making this small talk between them ... counting their new currency coins and comparing breakfast selections and flavors to what they knew and were used to.  Etc., etc.

And this was all fine.  I liked hearing them, and enjoyed not being the only one in the café for a change.  Although once, in Zurich, I staked out my breakfast nook, and soon found to my chagrin that I would be sharing my hours of the pearl in Switzerland with Guenther, a "real" writer ... who would already be there at six each morning, occasionally drunk from the night before, dressed like Tom Wolfe, ein Traum in Weiß, and demanding the waiters bring him pencils.

Like some Hemingway asshole, Guenther would make these belligerent demands without saying "please", and get all pissed if one of his subjects dismayed him.  One day, a waiter brought Guenther a little box of colored pencils, saying something like, 'to encourage your artistic side, guter Herr'.  I don't know if the waiter was trying to be cute, or if he'd developed a sort of bemused, grudging respect for "the artist" and was attempting sincerity ... but in any case, old Guenther got heated!  Yelling "Ich brauche nur eine!" and proclaiming himself a WRITER, not some "Schwuchtel Künstler", he proceeded to carry on until the "Hund" of a poor waiter found him only one pencil, and not a colored one.

I was thinking of this the other day when the South African girls first joined me for breakfast.  I wondered what they thought of me, sitting there with my legs crossed, reading out loud to myself as I'm writing ... "Ich brauche nur eine!", I felt like shouting, as both of them sat down, at six in the morning, at a table near mine in the empty café.

Then they began nattering and chatting excitedly ... distinctive weird accents reviewing their travel, and outlining upcoming plans for their stay.  This was the first day, when they arrived.

And it was fine.

But now they're coming in each morning, and sitting and eating and sipping beside me completely in silence ... Ignoring not only myself -- the only other patron in our Hour of the Pearl café -- but also each other, preferring instead to be fully engaged by their electronic devices (a little netbook style laptop for one, a stylish smart phone for the other) ... on which they poke and tap feverishly, while sitting and eating and sipping beside me, wholly oblivious to their surroundings ... to each other, to me, to the new country they're visiting ... Heidegger's thoughts on "idle talk" and "passing the word along" ...

Unaware, or not really caring too much, about the nothingness that surrounds us all, instead sadly -- disturbingly -- contributing to it.

"Hole in the Atmosphere", ©Jeff Glovsky

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