Rain Dance (reboot)

When it's not icy cold in New York, it's raining.  There are so rarely days of pleasant weather, or of pure sunshine ...

“Can’t Stop the Weather”, ©Jeff Glovsky

In remembrance of some messy Marches, and other months of the year when it's not just winter in the U.S. northeast -- and in toast to St. Patrick's Day, when Erin goes braless and drunks will be pissing like New York skies -- I give you a little rain rant, from my ongoing (decades long) work in progress ...

It's said to rain a lot, Seattle.  London is renowned, of course, its foggy, mossy climate ...

How come no one ever sees ugly New York for what it is, though?

It's a grey and pissing open wound!  Forever dripping, drizzling like a swollen, leaky faucet.  Let's give credit where it's due, now!  Let's acknowledge that we rot here in our festering putrescence, in the scalding fetid moisture of our cemetery skies.

Let's hoist mighty, high, our rain guards as we slam through, past each other ... as we're snarling in our moldy streets.  While cursing and drowning and suckling, and snarling ... While always hurry scurrying to our empty lives and nowhere beats ...

GUESS WHAT!?  You're gonna die, you Suit!  You pick out my eye with your sodden umbrella [... even make that aimless be-there poked with passion on your phone toy!]*

It matters nicht, 'cause we're all dead.

from Central Park

by Jeff Glovsky

* * *

 *original text (1993):   "... even make that aimless be-there scrawled with Cross pens in your ledger!"

Grey(t) Love, Escape

“Grey(t) Skyline”

* * *

Whenever I'm back in New York for extended periods, which is becoming less frequent as I ripen like Käse, I'm reminded simultaneously of what still iron-grips me, keeps bringing me back here ... yet why I began to escape in the first place.

I've long said, in New York (in Manhattan, that is), there is no middle ground:  You're either perfectly young for it, or perfectly old.  You enjoy the clubs, lounges, (now corporatized) live music / night life scenes ... the all-nighters, 4am diner hangs ... or you're comfortably numbed.  You've learned where to go, what to see, who to do for your comforts, and you can afford these.

In the midlife, there is only flight ... from noise and Groundhog Day-like hassles, constant inconveniences, too many people (incessant noise!) and tourist price-gouging.  Add to this, a milennial sheen ... This privatized, Disneyfied, playground vibe ... This "service"-oriented age of "transparency", where everything's glass and in fact, nothing's private and even the taxi drivers pretend now to "like" you (transparent, indeed!) ...

Entering a pizza place last week, I'm greeted by a greasy apron caught up in this fantasy, all beaming as he asks me, "How are you, good gentleman?"

"Uh, yeah ... Gimme a slice," I grunt.  "Not hot.  Just like it is."

"It's cold!" shouts he with glee, imploring.

"Don't care.  That one.  With the cheese.  Not.  Burnt.  No, not that one!  Looks like ASS ... "

This happened last week.  Looking back, I think for a minute, I have no idea why I'm acting that way ... but then it occurs to me, Wait.  Yes I do.

I'm middle-aged now.  Gearing up for a thirtieth high school reunion (!) ... and New York -- in reality, a shoulda been transitional situation, where it's never been easy to live, just survive -- now feels to me like a burial ground.  My mood and spirit, hopes and humor, all but submerged, subsumed when I'm here ...

“Subsuming”, ©Jeff Glovsky

I have flown ... but can't yet keep too long away.

Until I can, long for the New York I was young in ... the mind your own business, out of my face place ... Grown up, Garbo-esque, I request at least that.  For now ... while I still can't fly too long away.

* * *

Fall Foliage

“Autumn in New York”, ©Jeff Glovsky

Thoughts, Prayers, Remembrance

"A cacophony, full arsenal ... that crisp, blue morning"

"Celebrating" 9/11 (in 2013)

Disposable City

Discarded ...

Of the street and of the moment

Companion Piece (Characters)

Walking around the streets of my old town .. the Upper West Side, where I lived and breathed.

Where Amy's boyfriend broke the bar sign ... Joe G. (and Jeff G. - Jg²!!) shared a "bromance" before there ever was such a thing ... Skinny Jen and her Nicolas Cage-looking fella consoled each other through various episodes ...

Where Rick and Judith became "JewRick" ... where the multi-talented Angry Black Man targeted his future wife (proving there's trueness to "love at first sight") ... Where "Humphrey Bumphrey", "Gus", "Sergeant (Pepper)" and "Ass Feast" (don't ask!) trod the boards ... "Zoo Loser" and her sister, "Scab" (...seriously);

where Wolf and Ernest prowled the streets, the latter with his harelip up, a picture frame around his neck ('cause he was "FRAMED!", see?); or imploring passersby who'd listen, "What's the greatest nation on earth?"

Why, that would be the "Dough-nation!

"Donate to the United Negro Pizza Fund?" Ernest would ask, and I always would.  For one thing, Ernest was pleasant ... He was personable.  Not full of these fake Munchausen-esque self-pity syndromes, sitting planted on the sidewalk in people's way.

No, Ernest didn't have a new scrawled sign with a different sob story, in a different neighborhood, each night or week.  He didn't dress up for Halloween and make angry demands ... nor did he own a cell phone or iPad and sit there entitledly, chatting or tapping away on the sidewalks while fully expecting someone, at least, to rain into his paper cup ...

Ernest spoke for his place and time, in a way, and his generation:  he was engaged, first off ... He would make eye contact ... made an effort ... He was annoying, a little, but not unpleasant or nasty.

My pal Wolf, on the other hand ...

Though Wolf was also engaged:  in keeping alive, afloat, on the move (always prowling) ... He was never just sitting there, obnoxiously waiting.  Wolf, and I'm pretty sure, friendly Ernest, would have accepted employment had it been offered.  Neither seemed entitled or above it all (despite appearing on, and of, the streets) ... and neither one of them was overtly faking.

I think of old friends on the Upper West Side, and acquaintances and names I knew ... More clearly envisioning 20+ years ago, than my life here this century, which ended last decade ...

I've moved on.  Though I still think of Amy, Joe G., Skinny Jen ... auld FU in general ... Wolf, Ass Feast (!), the Angry Black Man and Ernest ... and I think still of Zorro, who loved to dream ...

Each night, caught her traipsing her mangy hound here ... the two of them dressed to the nines, fit to kill!

Then, "Zorro" was sixty, if she was a day ... apparently living to find a friend.  I followed her down for ten blocks the first time, the wide and noisy street between us:  me, on the east of Columbus, that is, and she and her mutt traipsing down on the west side ...

And Zorro flicked hair from a flattish sombrero, this dyed blonde, unruly and posthumous mane.  Her little pooch cried out as well ... the two of them begging, imploring attention ...

It was me, though, who tanked on that need as they vibed there!  That mutt, but outrageous, and yapping like mad.

"Sssshh," Zorro pampered and squatted down then ... to cuddle and fondle and soothe her dog friend ... and down there like that, her short skirt rode up high, and her narrow and varicose thighs kissed the midnight.

... As much as it hurts me to realize, admit it, I've outgrown New York.  Or it's left me behind ... or I've simply and finally, indeed, moved on.

* * *

The "Zorro" bit, adapted from Central Park (a work in progress) ... Thanks for reading!

All Over the Streets

Splash Forth (Summer)

 

 

  

Football Fever (Fumble)

ich liebe es

New York is not a football town.  "Its" NFL teams, the Jets and the Giants, both live in New Jersey.

New York is a sports town, to be sure, with millions of fans and statisticians supporting half a dozen professional teams across leagues in ice hockey, football, basketball, even soccer and of course, baseball ... but only the Yankees, and B-ball's Knicks, seem to whip up actual "New York" hometown frenzy.  If you're from out on the island (or like to tantalize and frustrate yourself year after year!), you might prefer to cheer the Mets - or skate to the tune of hockey's Islanders.  Often you'll pass through the city to get to New Jersey, to watch the Devils, the Red Bulls ... or see a football game.

"New York", per se -- that is, Manhattan -- is generally flyover country when it comes to football.

So why is Midtown Manhattan in lockdown this week, as hundreds of thousands of additional sports fans, and statisticians, pour in, to clog the streets, drink free coffee and essentially tailgate down Broadway and across Times Square, to experience the first ever Big Game in "New York"?

The Big Game, Super Bowl XLVIII, is not in New York!  It's in New Jersey.  There, in the clogged and congested bedroom arteries of diners, Italian restaurants, bridge and tunnel noise and traffic, bad roads and off-ramps and overpriced -- way overpriced -- fleabag motels, should be the lockdown!

I start mixing metaphors when I'm angry ... Or when I find myself in a scene not mine, or a world I can't fully comprehend.  I'm not a sports fan myself, first off.  I couldn't care less about the "Big Game".  Super Sunday has become just one more in a long list of endless winter holidays ... Another excuse to be forced to entertain, be entertained, invite friends over and overeat.  Except for the nachos, and maybe an off chance of catching a wardrobe malfunction, I prefer to stay in bed and play KenKen each Super Sunday.

"Darla," I'll ask my wife (though that's not her name).  "Darla?"

"Yes, Jeff?"

"Are the teams still playing?"

"Yes, Jeff."

"Can you bring me a nacho?"

I used to like football, and all sports.  Don't get me wrong.  I went to the gym once.  I walk, and do things.  Why, when I was Lorde's age, I actually played football.  Played hockey too, and to this day, can skate a mean crossover.

But unfortunately, I suck at KenKen ... and I can't stay in bed all week!  Which brings things around to my original question.   Why is Midtown Manhattan in lockdown?  Once again, "New York" has subsumed its surroundings, and sucks up all of the hype and attention ... falling over itself to piss me off!!!

As I'm driving up 1st Avenue, hoping hopelessly to cross to 8th, I bump and fender-bend and ding into the first available parking thing I see.  I stop the car and get out, and walk across town ... passing buses and taxis and gridlocked thousands.

By the time I get to my morning appointment, it's afternoon.  I walk back across town.

go, big blue

Overkill (Polar Bromides)

Fast Forward (2015):  It's Only Winter

When winter storm "Hercules" took a dump this past week, I, like millions of Americans, woke up to CNN newspeople yelling and laughing, and climbing snow banks and oddly gesticulating, as they do, toward satellite maps and radar readouts.  They made jokes and threw snowballs, and pointed out snowplows and train crews doing their jobs.

When the MTA cancels full service for something other than a shooting or a sleep-deprived speed demon, you can rest assured the weather is actually bad.  Millions of people in the New York metro area alone are impacted directly ... Not to mention the densely populated Eastern Seaboard, from roughly Richmond, Virginia up to Boston, and inward (Philadelphia, Newark, Albany) ...

Add to this the domino effect of canceled flights, disrupted travel, delays and impatience, shutdowns and slowdowns, severe Arctic cold and a weather-related death or two ... and you've got the makings of a weather "event".

But seasonally speaking, is it really so newsworthy?

Like millions of Americans, I woke up Thursday morning to a snowstorm.  Like hundreds, perhaps even thousands of Americans, I wondered after the fourth or fifth hour of "Breaking News" coverage, what the big deal was.

In other words, like millions of Americans -- and people from various regions across the globe also directly impacted by winter weather -- I woke up to a snowstorm.

“Tundric Technicolor”, ©Jeff Glovsky

What's the big deal?

Visiting family and friends in northern Wisconsin this holiday season, I'd already spent several weeks with frozen finger and nose tips, relentless gray skies and accumulated December snowfall of over three feet (nearly 1 meter).  As an uncout' yout' growing up in the northland, I remember regular "snow days" - when school would be closed not because of snow, but because it was twenty below zero and pipes would freeze ... not only my pipes, but the plumbing in the late 19th century school buildings also.  It would be too cold for school!

When winter happens ... even a powerful winter weather "event", like a "Hercules" (or "Ion" now!) ... I don't need to be seeing reporters bundled up, telling me to keep warm, or how to throw snowballs.  I don't need to learn the phrase, "polar vortex".

It's WINTER.  It's cold out.  It snows.  Sometimes, it snows hard, fast, wet and sloppy ... Sometimes the cold is subzero, and ice forms.  Ice, if you're walking or driving on it, can make you slip and slide, lose control ... Drive safely.

“Rude Conditions”, ©Jeff Glovsky

It's winter outside.  If you prefer to stay inside, set your thermostat to 70-ish.  Don't open the window to let in fresh air - It may feel good for a minute or two, but in the end, you're only inviting the cold in; what you want to be doing is keeping it out.  The human condition of comfort demands warmth.

Stay warm this winter.  Bundle up.  Dress in layers - but don't wear anything too tight, or you might sweat.

Stay indoors if you'd rather, or if you must.  Have plenty of food on hand, a flashlight, blankets, and make sure all your prescriptions are filled.

Then read a book.  Or better yet, talk to your family.  Communicate.  Play games ... some charades, a little Monopoly maybe, some Trivial Pursuit.  Build a house of cards or play poker, or chess ... But unplug, if you'd like things to thrive while "surviving".  If the power goes out, try not to light candles ... It might be romantic, but you might fall asleep and your house might burn down.

Beyond this, don't be afraid to embrace winter:  its beauty, its power, its furious grace ... and celebrate what we 'up north' -- in the Northern Hemisphere -- are lucky to know as our holiday season.

“Celebrate (Life / Work)”, ©Jeff Glovsky

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

Vicious Bandwagon

"It always bothers me to see people writing ‘RIP’ when a person dies. It just feels so insincere and like a cop-out. To me, ‘RIP’ is the microwave dinner of posthumous honors."

 

Photo(s) by Jglo

We lost a biggie last week, with the passing of quintessential New Yorker, not quite glam rocker, punk rock godfather and irascible, not lovable poet "curmudgeon", Lou Reed.

Musically, Lou and most of his incarnations were secondary to my listening interests:  influential, sure.  Groundbreaking, no doubt.  Could he play guitar?  Listen to his attack, with Mick Ronson, on "Vicious" - but to my ear, something was always missing.  He couldn't sing to save his life, first off!  That droning, aggressive monotone in which he spoke his songs was clearly effective in serving the material -- imagine "Sweet Jane" or "Walk on The Wild Side" delivered any other way -- but in the end, it was alienating.

And that's exactly what the man, and the material, wanted:  you didn't connect with, or "get", Lou Reed ... You didn't "relate" to Metal Machine Music ... and even if you did, or claimed to, you weren't wanted.

As a listener, Lou Reed could take me or leave me.  And I was generally indifferent to Lou Reed.

Though musically (creatively, artistically), I may have found his 'don't give a fuck' shtick vaguely compelling in an arm's length, respectful way ... personally, in terms of the guy's overall comportment - Lou Reed, by most accounts, was a twat.  And I'm sorry (no I'm not), but he doesn't deserve the canonization he's been receiving from members of the press and others who suffered his "curmudgeonly" abuse, and it's somehow excused now -- no longer painful or professionally embarrassing -- because he's dead.

Typically hypocritical, and desperate to be loved-sounding.  "I was there ... a part of things.  I get Lou Reed!  And now he's no more, but his music lives on and I feel that too:  Look, I'm downloading "Perfect Day".  Isn't that neat?".

It's like the selfish parent refusing to let go, and dressing the baby in punk and rock t-shirts; or the onrush of simpletons suddenly buying Steinbeck ... misled by the vaguely slinky title into thinking there's something Fifty Shades-kinky about East of Eden (before diffidently stalling on page fifteen, when it's realized there's no page of biblical passion!).

It's like a CE (Christmas / Easter) Christian ... High Holiday Jew, or an idiot who lines up to wait to eat out:  just a bandwagon jumper ("I don't even like hamburgers!"); or a 'friend', 'fan' or 'follower' without knowing why.

But you know people get all emotional / and sometimes man, they just don't act rational / You know, they think they're just on TV - Street Hassle (1978)

Simply put, enough with the Lou Reed eulogies.

Apparently, Lou Reed could be an asshole.  I never met the man, but I did deliver musical gear to his wife once (at the time, I think, his girlfriend) ... and she was an asshole!

No, that's not true.  At all.  Let me state unequivocally, that I'm joking:  Laurie Anderson, in the seven-second glimpse that I caught of her while I was humping an amplifier into place, was certainly civil ... and likely, she knew and loved the "real" Lou Reed, not the "Lou Reed" of (velvet) underground music ... the (john) caged "artist", the New York doll from "out on the Island" ... the asshole that comprised "Lou Reed" - which the real Lou Reed would deign to show us ... real people rarely the way they're perceived ...

There he goes now ... May that spirit of punk be left in peace, to rock on undiluted.

"Walk on The Wild Side", ©Jeff Glovsky

"Celebrating" 9/11

in 2014

A dozen years ago already.  Almost last century.

And I remember the sirens.

New York is, has always been, a hot bed of decibels.  Among other gruesome sounds and noises, sirens forever going off ... but on this date twelve years ago, as I sat on the Upper West Side near Lincoln Center, literally miles away from "Ground Zero", they weren't just hitting-and-running through my consciousness.  They were becoming embedded.

As the 9am hour began that day, on September 11th, 2001, the sirens kept coming and going off -- police cars, fire trucks and ambulances -- and coming from all sides:  from uptown, downtown, east and west ...

A cacophony, full arsenal, of howling sirens that crisp, blue morning, as I finished my bagel and sat wasting time, told me something substantial, and amiss, was occurring.

I was freelancing then (as I still freelance), but not working steadily.  One of my regular clients was an audio visual company installed with an office on the 106th floor of the World Trade Center, in the North Tower.  When that tower collapsed -- taking with it the office (where I'd arrived for a job just two days earlier) ... as well as the renowned Windows on The World restaurant and several friends and colleagues -- I was back home, having my every suspicion confirmed.  The sirens were right:  something massive was happening.

"Views on Freedom", ©Jeff Glovsky

A dozen years later.  Older.  Unwiser.

I think of the years in between with regret; of the lack of substantial forward movement career-wise, creatively, living-wise ... conjugally.  Businesses and a marriage failing, friends (and colleagues) come and gone ...

I think, twelve years later, of every nook and corner of the 106th and 107th floors of the North Tower, which my client, the in-house AV company, serviced ... and what I might've been doing just before 9am if I'd worked that day (and not two days earlier):  Sitting, sipping coffee, reading a newspaper, maybe doing a crossword ... waiting for the day's first meeting to begin, so I could unmute a podium microphone (then go back to my crossword!); then truly gruesome, hot decibel noise:  explosions, heat, fires, bewilderment, panic ... Where would I have run to die?

Knowing myself, I probably would not have piled into a crowded, dark and smoke-filled stairwell to begin a slow-motion descent from the 106th floor; or I certainly would have been loathe to do so, and likely remained put, trying to wait things out ('Let's see what happens').

As certainly, I would not have run and plunged for oxygen.  No matter how fresh air seemed to be evaporating, throwing myself out a window from the 106th floor wouldn't have crossed my mind as an option:  if the stairwell was unpalatable, trying to take flight, to this day, remains inconceivable.

Now possibly (also knowing myself) ... I might have been downstairs already, out on the street - buying coffee or a newspaper, or using a payphone, when American Airlines Flight 11 crashed in, at roughly 500 miles per hour ... but really, who knows?

John F. Puckett did not have time to think things through.  Neither did Christine Olender, and 1,358 others above the 92nd floor.  I wouldn't have either.  Who does?  Who would?

All I know for certain is that I'm still here ... my flailing life, (e)strange(d), beautiful wife ... friends, family, my dreams and prayers.  And in the 'Big Picture' scheme of things, that's what I celebrate each September 11th - and the other 364 days also.

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.

Fight or Flight (or Up a Tree)?

We forget the lessons of our youth.

So when I read that Abby Wetherell, the 12 year-old girl unpleasantly surprised then badly hurt by a black bear in northern Michigan "played dead" in staving off further attack, it occurred to me, "What would I have done?"

Thinking it over, I realized with some surprise that laying down and actually playing dead is not something that would have even crossed my mind.  Instead, faced with the choice between fight or flight, the nuance of feigning capitulation (sleep, death) as a means of escape would have escaped me ... leaving my only option to be literal escape from the animal's paws and jaws.

I would've run like hell!  And probably not gotten very far - or gotten myself stuck in a tree, which is a lesson of my youth I do seem to remember, when and if ever being chased by an animal.  First, there is "don't run" (which I guess could be interpreted or translated to "play dead", come to think of it) ... but failing that, the advice I remember is:  run up a tree.  Someone told me that once, I'm pretty sure of it.  But bears climb trees (don't they?), or at least shake them ...

 

(fuzzy) Photo(s) by Jglo

My run-in with wildlife would've ended badly.

The girl, though, did well, and is doing well (already making the interview rounds).  It could've been me! I scream in silence to myself ... on any one of countless late night walks through the northern Wisconsin small town I grew up in.

Another recent incident to 'shake my tree' involves the late night (early morning) abduction of Alex Band, lead singer of The Calling - a group that has not been on my radar since I snapped off the car radio in disgust about 10 years ago, when that song came on for the zillionth time ... But what made the whole thing particularly jarring to me -- apart from this snark-fail attempt at trivializing the incident:

"Bad news for fans of the early 2000s: it looks like that promise the guy from The Calling made to go  wherever you will go will have to wait for a while, because he's not going much of anywhere for a while."

...Good writing, man!  And I feel your empathy as a "reporter" (and human being).

But apart from that, what gave me pause was that this slice of life also happened in Michigan - this time in the lower ("mitten") part of the state, not too far out of Flint, but in relative darkness, en route to the Canadian border.  In other words, peace of night, middle of nowhere - a climate / environment I know well, and a circumstance with which I'm also familiar:  specifically, a late night walk from hotel to convenience store while on tour or traveling; and in general, walking alone through peace of night and middle of nowhere.

It could've been me! I scream again ... on any number of occasions when, while walking "safely" outside of New York City, it would occur to me that if vans pulled up, bears showed up, axe-wielding creatures leapt out of dark woods ... there'd be no deli to run into, no taxi to hail ...

No one to hear me scream when I'm bleeding.

There's an "element of danger outside of Manhattan" a childhood friend said to me once when visiting from the Midwest - a remark he made in passing while I was conducting a tour of my ex-girlfriends' houses, driving him around through these late night, bridge-shadow neighborhoods in Queens, the Bronx and northern New Jersey ... pointing out to him my own personal landmarks and milestones since leaving the hometown we'd shared.

... That particular night, I guess I kidnapped my friend.  A fellow Wisconsinite, like

Walter Bradford Cannon, M.D. 1871-1945

"drama, (e)motion"

"drama, (e)motion", ©Jeff Glovsky

Thanks @Joe's Pub (at THE PUBLIC)  for reblogging.

Original Photo by Jglo.

"Like"

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.