Posts from the ‘Moods’ Category
sometimes when i’m working, i think i’m that piano riff in a sentimental mood by coltrane. that’ll get me going and then of course i’ll have to follow that with killer joe by benny golson, you know that live track on terminal one. i’ll be snapping my fingers like i’m a true to life jet. and then when my turn comes for the piano solo, i’ll do my thing with just one hand. i’ll let the other hand do whatever the hell it wants.
New York, NY — Within the last few months, scientists and wildlife experts have identified a new strain of hipster prowling the streets of New York City. While they maintain many of the same political views as the modern hipster, the post-modernist hipster has fewer androgynous characteristics. After several undercover operations, scientists and experts have learned they do not have Bravo-watching parties at their Williamsburg lofts and are morally opposed to turtle necks and capri pants and thongs and black plastic glasses and shared bubble baths. Instead, the post-modernist hipster frequents bodegas and other cheap hang out places where they eat unhealthy and high-fructose laden chips and donuts and drink 22s of Budweiser, in order to achieve the coveted “pouch.” Scientists have labeled this behavior as “female symbiosis lather,” which in layman’s terms, is an attempt to acquire a “creation of male identity encapsulated within the large intestine.” This is directly correlated to the behavior of the Wagabe Crocodile found in Budva, Montenegro.
at the time, i was working for a small graphic design company on twenty-third street. i wasn’t making a lot of money but at least i was getting experience. i started out in traffic and then after about a year or so i was on the branding team. not bad for a kid out of cleveland going to public schools. then things changed when i met mother. she was maybe about fifty-five, and looked like a cross between the lady from murder she wrote and meryl streep, but her skin wasn’t as smooth. i was at a grey’s papaya munching on a hotdog and she asked me for a fifty cents for the subway. i gave her fifty cents and then went i went to my apartment that i shared with my old college buddy lester, she was there in the hallway, along with three guys in suits. i thought it was going to be a shakedown but then she said it. she kept saying sergeant hectorish lee over and over and over again. by maybe the twentieth time she said it, and at that point i was tied to a chair, things started to make sense, a lot of sense.
when i got out the bus, we were somewhere in lower manhattan. i could tell because all the streets had names and shit and it was narrow and there were bricks everywhere and the girls were all walking alone in their thousand dollar pea coats instead of numbers and avenues and straight lines and suits and fat midwestern tourists in nylon jumps and white sneakers. i thought we were supposed to be going to a pumpkin patch but then it hit me that halloween was already past. when i asked the bus driver what we were doing here he looked at me all strange in that “you’re the boss so why you asking me asshole” kind of look. i didn’t say anything because i didn’t really feel like arguing and i hadn’t eaten my breakfast yet. i usually have oatmeal, you know bob’s high fiber natural oatmeal. i add some flax seeds in there and agave syrup because it’s sweet but doesn’t have the same sugar crash as sugar or honey or even maple syrup.
i guess i first justified it in my head as her being “just different,” you know, clothes bought from the second hand stores, hates her parents, believes that neocapitalism is the root of all oppression. i didn’t notice really that she drooled a lot when she ate until my buddy dean said it to me a few weeks ago. i swear, man, i woke up a few days ago and jesus, i was sweating all over the damn place because i just realized that she had asked to take a pint of my blood the other day for some emergency blood donation drive at the blood bank. but she did the procedure herself in my bathroom and you know for the record i did not feel too comfortable when all was said and done. you should see my friggin’ arm. and then came the kicker just yesterday. she was talking to me about the biography of thomas dewey and then all of a sudden she started to take off her face. no joke man. her face.
i remember when.
she was on top of her game, just as her parents always said. she was naturally good and practiced a lot to ensure she stayed good. but the one weakness she always had as a kid came back to haunt her that one day in September, as the summer and fall gave hugs to one another.
when all is said and done, and the war is final, they will always be there, amongst the empty buildings and silent sky.
when you think about it real hard, we are all ones and zeroes, zeroes and ones. some of that makes hard substances like concrete. other times there’s a conflict between the ones and the zeroes and it’s in those spaces that you have to be careful because that’s where they can come out and get you.
i know billy, but it is beyond the question of good and evil
then what is it?
it’s about the quota. we have to fulfill our quota.
but why me? why not little jane?
that’s just the way it is. we all have to make a sacrifice. this is yours.
e v e r y d a y aperture 