Tortoise meets boombox

Goethe said,

“One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.”

I speak awful lot of UNreasonable words each day.
Exaggerations.
Pure silliness and drivel.
Gibberish and cartoonish blather.
Vulgarities! Profanities!
And oh, my, the hiccups. Yes, the hiccups are highly unreasonable.
_______________________________________________________________________

I would add to Goethe’s list:
Correspond with a loved one.

The bane of my New York exsistence (well, one of them) are blisters on my heels. They’re crippling. And pretty much unavoidable, even though I now own a scooter.

New shoes, man.
Dude, all the walking.

Last summer, new to the city and working crazy awful shitty hours at a terrible expoitive sexist diner, I aquired blisters on both heels from standing on my feet for 17 hours a day. They turned septic. Eeww. Black blood oozing from an open sores with ankles turning gouhlish green from infection.

Two trips to DOCs (they asked if I was a dancer and I sighed….waitressing is so less glamourous and less war-wound-worthy) and lots of antibiotics later…I quit that job.

But now my heels are raw again…and these new cute black flats are to blame.

hum? oh, please don’t talk to me

She rests her head on her right hand.
So does he.
She switches hands.
So does he.
He’s copying her.

Him:
Hey.
I just quit smoking.
Its really tough ’cause I really want to, you know, smoke, right now.

Her:
(startled)
Hum? Oh.

Him:
Did you buy something cool at Paragon Sports? My neighbor ownes the whole store.

Her:
(still startled but calm)
Oh. Um. Yes.

(She looks straight ahead. Then she digs a book from her bag.)

Him:
O’Connor? I read O’Connor. You know, Green Leaves? Yeah, I read some O’Connor. Yeah.

Her:
(Silent. The ‘act’ of reading.)

Him:
(Stands)
Take good care of yourself now.
(Shifts)
Bye Bye.
(Shifts)

Her:
Uh huh.

Him:
(Exits building)

She watches him through the glass window as he lurches across the street but averts her eyes when he re-crosses the street and re-enters the building.
He gets in line and orders another coffee.

She exits.

Today I bought a Babka

I finally got a paycheck
and put it in the bank,
and then I thought, “what the heck”
I’ll buy a chocolate cake!

What the subways used to be like

New York city has since deported all muppets.

Spider, spider, on the wall
Ain’t you got no sense at all?
Can’t you see that wall’s been plastered?
Get off that wall you silly….spider.

Sleep tight.

Hot Child in the City

Its the time of the summer when tar rooftops require oldies but goodies ambiance.

Sometimes the day goes by and it just makes sense.

The sun pokes over the bedpost to say, quite flatly, that I should be awake.
And then I am.

I walk, and ride, and scoot, and tread, and sweat to get there.
And then I am.

We traverse to laugh. We angle to agree. We negotiate to know each other.
And we do.
Perhaps not throroughly, but well enough.

And sometimes someone else’s words just sound so good.
“A sea of green
giving way to an
ocean of grey;
I’m on my way to you”

The nexus of the universe
we deemed to be at the intersection of 1st Avenue and 1st Street.

Then we realized while mouthing shaved ice on the corner of Clinton and Delancey, that the heel of the Williamsburg bridge has a rivaling magnetic pull.

However, today we discerned that TraderJoes on 14th and 3rd is a potential worm-hole of serendipity.

Ever shifting?
Or self-created?