night&
Recent Entries
1/27/12 10:12 am - the light
The entire city is on fire, smoke rising up beside trembling towers to the red heaven above and in the street below bodies running, leaping in panicked packs in every direction. The heavy crashing of buildings cracking, trembling with internal thunder and crumbling, the concrete making your legs dance below you when another skyscraper tumbles downward. Screams echo through the cracked concrete valleys, over the broken sculptures of useless cars and smashed glass glittering every block like razor snowfall. A shuddering silence overtakes all and thin black powder drifts slowly from the grey sky, falling through the haze of smoke and fading out.
The city is behind me. A ruin on the landscape, a silent, smoldering wreck. I walk the road until the tarmac ends, overgrown with weeds and dandelions that burst beneath my boot. Birds chirp and flutter in the tangled world of branches overhead, the sun warm and golden as a trumpet's call. I walk until I find the tree whose branches reach up to rearrange clouds and step into the hole in the ancient bark. Over and under massive roots, deeper into the dark, moist-smelling dirt and damp wood turning into the earth. The tunnel grows smaller and I'm crawling, soon enough on my belly. The darkness overtakes. There is no light, no sight to see. There are no sounds. The only distinction between my body and the tightening hole is the mechanical motion of my fingers and shoulders pulling me through.
A faraway star in the night. Growing larger. Digging through the dirt, approaching the light. Remembering my strength. Approaching. The light glimmers, solidifies, growing whiter, solid, filling my vision until the tunnel widens and I'm on my feet. The walls on either side of my hands are cool concrete.
I step into the room and the light is a 60 watt bulb hanging from a black wire. The tunnel collapses with a muffled thud behind my back. The light flickers, twitching light around the filaments. I feel like I should worry, but I don't. The light sizzles out.
1/25/12 09:00 am - staten island
I don't want to write any more.
1/21/12 01:46 pm
I forgot.
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1/21/12 10:39 am - table for one
This morning I watched the sun come up indigo through the falling snow and thought, 'it must be blue where you are.'
1/20/12 08:47 am
I woke to a mostly empty room brightening with sunlight and the cat pacing around the mattress on the floor.
There are still bags of clothes (many to be gotten rid of) one chair, the modem and router blinking in the corner so we could watch roseanne on the laptop before going to sleep.
We got the big u-haul truck around noon and, upon k.'s arrival brought all of the big, heavy furniture down the three flights and into the truck and back up again. Over and over. Astrid packed smaller boxes and filled reusable bags with stuff and we loaded the cars with that too.
We inspected everything for bugs. That made it take twice as long as it had to but we can't take the slightest chance of bringing them back with us. I went through my grandfather's super 8 cameras, and his medical bag, and both were clean. But I found a bug shell in the wooden case of my ww II folding typewriter and first put the case in the garbage, then eventually the typewriter itself had to go.
I first found the typewriter when I was exploring the abandoned tb hospital buildings on the grounds of sea view hospital. A bomb shelter basement contained a tunnel that resembled something out of doom. One cooridor was blind for a quarter mile, walking low beside massive pipework. Another tunnel was all arcing brown stone overhead, and occasionally sunlight would come through a grate in the sidewalk overhead. One tunnel led to a building where the basement office was untouched since the 60s and on the desk was this typewriter. I had never used one before. I poked at a few of its keys and moved on, above ground again.
Some years later I happened to visit sea view when they were selling objects from inside the old hospital. Most of it was worthless, useless junk, and the only curiosity was this heavy little black case, like a wooden suitcase in miniature. I knew what it was. I'd become a collector. They couldn't put a price on it because they couldn't figure out how to open it. I opened it, showed them, and we agreed on $15.
The cat is rolling around on the blanket beside my leg and Astrid's sleeping soundly beside me. What's left? Astrid decided to throw out her favorite chair. There were nights where she could sit down and get bitten five minutes later. She took a kitchen knife and slashed the floral print, gutted the cushion, and walked away crying. K. and I carried it down to the street. A half-hour later, we were loading my stereo into his truck and I leaned on the dresser waiting for the trash when I noticed something small and black emerge from the gaping hole in the chair and crawl out of it and into another place of darkness. Bedbugs move at a particular speed, a rapid scuttle, slower than cockroaches but unmistakable. Because they're so tiny, they have to be blindly moving across a white sheet for you to really see it before it blends into a surface of any other color.
I watched the little fucker appear and disappear in an instant. He crawled over the floral print and was gone. I told Astrid and we both laughed, to think we were this close to putting the chair on the moving truck.
An hour later the chair was gone. Some other unfortunate decided the chair was somehow salvageable.
The pickers in this neigborhood are tenacious. I lost count of how many people were ticking through the bags of empty dvd cases. They took the brass hardware off of the dressers. Then again, when you have artistic people with decent incomes who have been putting out the most amazing things in the trash for the last thirty years.. and a transient population of young people who throw out posessions rather than carry them when they move, why not? It's the way much of new york used to be. Treasures sat on the street for days before being claimed. That was before the class divide really became the unchanging reality and this place became totally fucked. Today Astrid is going shopping with her mother. I'm assembling the pile of things to go into storage and compiling all of the laundry. Tonight at the new apartment, just general assembly, and tomorrow we're in.
There are still bags of clothes (many to be gotten rid of) one chair, the modem and router blinking in the corner so we could watch roseanne on the laptop before going to sleep.
It went like this. We woke about 10 and immediately got to work; emptying dvd cases and throwing out boxes of comic books and unplugging electronics and inspecting every record for signs of infestation and debating whether or not to keep Astrid's favorite chair and getting ditched by flaky friends at the last minute and having to decline other friends because despite their eagerness they're sick with the head cold that has taken everybody down for at least a few days and we can't have that.
We got the big u-haul truck around noon and, upon k.'s arrival brought all of the big, heavy furniture down the three flights and into the truck and back up again. Over and over. Astrid packed smaller boxes and filled reusable bags with stuff and we loaded the cars with that too.
We inspected everything for bugs. That made it take twice as long as it had to but we can't take the slightest chance of bringing them back with us. I went through my grandfather's super 8 cameras, and his medical bag, and both were clean. But I found a bug shell in the wooden case of my ww II folding typewriter and first put the case in the garbage, then eventually the typewriter itself had to go.
I first found the typewriter when I was exploring the abandoned tb hospital buildings on the grounds of sea view hospital. A bomb shelter basement contained a tunnel that resembled something out of doom. One cooridor was blind for a quarter mile, walking low beside massive pipework. Another tunnel was all arcing brown stone overhead, and occasionally sunlight would come through a grate in the sidewalk overhead. One tunnel led to a building where the basement office was untouched since the 60s and on the desk was this typewriter. I had never used one before. I poked at a few of its keys and moved on, above ground again.
Some years later I happened to visit sea view when they were selling objects from inside the old hospital. Most of it was worthless, useless junk, and the only curiosity was this heavy little black case, like a wooden suitcase in miniature. I knew what it was. I'd become a collector. They couldn't put a price on it because they couldn't figure out how to open it. I opened it, showed them, and we agreed on $15.
The cat is rolling around on the blanket beside my leg and Astrid's sleeping soundly beside me. What's left? Astrid decided to throw out her favorite chair. There were nights where she could sit down and get bitten five minutes later. She took a kitchen knife and slashed the floral print, gutted the cushion, and walked away crying. K. and I carried it down to the street. A half-hour later, we were loading my stereo into his truck and I leaned on the dresser waiting for the trash when I noticed something small and black emerge from the gaping hole in the chair and crawl out of it and into another place of darkness. Bedbugs move at a particular speed, a rapid scuttle, slower than cockroaches but unmistakable. Because they're so tiny, they have to be blindly moving across a white sheet for you to really see it before it blends into a surface of any other color.
I watched the little fucker appear and disappear in an instant. He crawled over the floral print and was gone. I told Astrid and we both laughed, to think we were this close to putting the chair on the moving truck.
An hour later the chair was gone. Some other unfortunate decided the chair was somehow salvageable.
The pickers in this neigborhood are tenacious. I lost count of how many people were ticking through the bags of empty dvd cases. They took the brass hardware off of the dressers. Then again, when you have artistic people with decent incomes who have been putting out the most amazing things in the trash for the last thirty years.. and a transient population of young people who throw out posessions rather than carry them when they move, why not? It's the way much of new york used to be. Treasures sat on the street for days before being claimed. That was before the class divide really became the unchanging reality and this place became totally fucked. Today Astrid is going shopping with her mother. I'm assembling the pile of things to go into storage and compiling all of the laundry. Tonight at the new apartment, just general assembly, and tomorrow we're in.
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