The fourteen boxes of dinosaurs.

In the back room, a handful of us unboxed the 150 remote control dinosaurs. "Who we giving these to?" "Not sure yet but who wouldn't want 150 one foot dinosaurs with rubber skin at their disposal?" "True...Can we have a dinosaur race before we give them away?" "You're always a few steps behind, aren't you Stanley?" *She looks at you for an extra second (while you force a grin) as to tell you she understands what you're going through* She gives you a giant stack of "AA" batteries and whispers "The race is in ten minutes."...During supervision she gives you quotes about romance and swooning, talks about grace, meanders as a good supervisor would on intimacy and living in the moment and not questioning things. A few clients called to cancel today so I spent most of the day doing paperwork, some stats, some objective randoms. Squirrel talked about her and her secret lover. This sprained finger won't seem to go away...Where is the cord to my shaver?...Where is Charlie's battery charger?...What is going on with all the dead bananas in my fridge?..."Observe the symptom set"...Jake left the most tender voicemail on my phone this morning. I have to make sure I spend some time on Sox's couch so she can run through her crazy astrology shit and explain to me a few things. Reprieve: The waves between reality and non-reality. Random dinosaurs and tripods that magically get pulled out of bags (and why does this fuckin bag strap suck so bad? Only Charlie could understand that rant). The sound of skateboard wheels. The sight of the side of your face as you find your way to the bathroom. Imogen Heap's "Closing in"...Sometimes you don't need to write the song when someone wrote it for you already. Sidestreet: A pringle, a cartwheel, some sanity, a suburb, the right to be wrong, and the realization (via members) that saying "it is what it is" is conceding your right to be right...I'm on a yoga mat and oddly its not a smokescreen of any sorts. That in itself is fairly endearing. I'm looking at the little girl at the bakery and will surely ask her mom in jest "Is she going to be the type of girl whom the baker doesn't let near the bread?" The mom'll just look at me, see right through me, and go about her business knowing I'm gonna ask her again the next time I see her.

There is velocity when no one is moving.

A corny girl in emo gear from hot topic who grew up with pop music drops her quote on you:

"You'll say it's really good to see you, you'll say I missed you horribly, you'll say let me carry that and give that to me and you will take the heavy stuff and you will drive the car and I'll look out the window making jokes about the way things are."

A little boy with a worn and beaten helmet that's been passed from father to father is going to be on his big wheel riding full speed down a hill while his grandparents stand out front tracing lines with their feet on the grass. When everyone goes inside for a second, he's gonna look at you and expect you to say something and you'll just stand there, smiling. You have no idea what to say, staples on tongues, eyes on the tiniest of features. You'll imprint the stillness of faces staring at one another, and he'll inquire with his shoulders and brow. If he were older you'd say "I'm just a boy who's in love with your aunt" and he'd accept it but he's too young to get that so you'll say nothing and smile. And he'll finally turn away and ride off. He'll look back as he's riding toward the hill as if to say "whomever you are, just be by my side, ok?" Be sure to follow him as he's not quite able to ask just yet.

While she takes a picture of chopsticks, you're watching her. She's fumbling a camera and her fingers are pointed out in ten different directions. Her nose and mouth are twitching in ways no one sees. "Fuck fear," she wrote in an email (and you'll see it in the way she removes her black dress later in the evening). You lean in and inquire with shoulders and brow not paying attention to the picture at hand. You've never agreed more as she passes back the camera and feels her head coming on strong, says nothing, but knows you know.

Holding and the vinyl behind glass.

This photo was taken seven years ago while walking along Newbury street in Boston. I remember having my Nikon slung over my shoulder and eating Reeces Pieces. I remember walking away from it saying to myself "I needed that." It was on a flight of stairs reflecting off a broken gate and not one person the entire time I sat there next to the stars noticed them. It was the same day I realized I needed to get out of Boston and that I had no money to do so. Anything else would be embellishing shit. You outgrow cities sometimes *LA, San Diego, Syracuse, San Fran* or its just some hunch that what you're really looking for is in another city and it's a shame when you don't have the means or balls to find it...(When in doubt, move to Vermont for a few months to find some ground with one theatre, one market, one cafe and a bay window overlooking Main street where you'll put your desk and get lost in words for a single winter. Marked as: a very very good move in regard to self-care at that time). In New York, every so often I needed some kind of sign to let me know that I was supposed to be there. It was a splotch from a graffiti mistake, an old Chinese lady calling an NYU student a "stupid yankee," a couple smiling from across benches on the subway observing things that no one else was seeing... These little tiny baby signs would always come without fail right at the time when I questioned that certain something the most. When you need that one picture to pop up in your day for whatever question you have pending, holding, making you knot up and fold into eighths, it'll come.

*What do you do to feel closer to the person you love most? There's a mix tape as yet made by two lovers who figured it all out and put in a cassette, drew images for the case, and typed out the most relevant lyrics on the inside. They ran out into the rain with a little cassette player and two headphones and listened to it immediately, meticulously. They knew they had to as there are moments in all relationships where every doubt gets intertwined into heartstrings and forces two people to find the center*

Comps.

Gone for two weeks...It's Charlie's turn when i'm done...She's yet to move out her Bishops.

Constructions - - Pushing palindromes to the Chagrin of those with the conch.

*People who paint Rorschach inkblots should be given more love* Palindromes as a refresher: racecar, live not on evil, step on no pets, damn I, Agassi, miss again! mad!, Lisa Bonet ate no basil, a man! a plan! a canal! Panama!...This stupid shit is relevant because it forces someone to look at something beyond face value. It's a red herring, yes probably (as is the Kinsey report which will be mentioned in a bit), but nevertheless, its important...Spent the break catching up with some of my past and taking that quote I had mentioned a few blogs ago into serious consideration as to be a little more honest about how I truly feel about being home and/or adjustments to affect/effect. *young men bent on fixing false affections should be cornered and warned of the dangers* Construction is as followed: Take 100 of the most irrelevant of palindromes. Shuffle them into the memory of the kindest, most sincere, most unassuming of young women on their way to attack their 20's. As they mature, have all of them stand in front of Exner at his most productive of years and let him hear their definitions of dysfunction. Let the handful of those with choosing rights (those who think of projective tests as idiotic and too subjective) be schooled alongside the very boys these women give birth to. Nurture the quirkiest of idiosyncrasies and if they ever ask as a child if there are fairies and magic, you kindly say "fuck yeah there are! And you can see them all!"Let the palindromes become stories and sheepish grins for four year olds who will soon enough see Santa as a fraud. With superlatives for these children of mothers who were raised with the idea that juggling, unicycles and sleight of hand were more important than rational logic and conventional choices, put them at work in the most demanding of work environments. Let them march, let them write into the LA times about the Kinsey report in 48' being devoid of any diversity yet the beginning of the largest palindrome to speak of, let them teach swing and art therapy...Today is January 1st, 2008. The piles of books are the only things off limits. It's starting to be that time. There's a 45 year old man in an old green hat he bought one day in Chicago screaming off the rooftop "We're simplifying this mother fucker right here!!!"

When leaving the closer room.

Contrary to ideals of what walking out of a therapy room would look/feel/seem like, the closer room (the room in which i do therapy) looks nothing like the picture to the left. *This, the exit of Bourgeois Pig near Depaul, is instead what I would want myself and those I see to feel as they left the closer room (not sure why its called this so don't ask)* Instead, you walk out to a staircase which is usually dark, almost always empty, and most surely holding in the echoes of the entire building. Today's questions from therapy: How to keep a girl away from prostitution, how to stop a boy from cutting the bottoms of his feet, how to keep a man from losing faith in those around them, how to help a mother of six to ask herself the very questions she's afraid of in regard to her childhood, how to keep oneself from pushing an agenda, and how to help a teen boy realize his mother actually has good intentions...Six fishbowls to attend to, break, and walk away from. Glass, water, debris as the catalyst for coming across...Flying to LA in two days so this will be the last post of the year. Some awkward conversations, some endearments from childhood, some pressing issues better left for musing upon on the sand in Manhattan Beach. Relevant spottings, passings, moments in 07': Charlie and the plastic fruit containers from Stanley's Fruit and Vegetables...Old friends from Syracuse in Coney Island acting 20 again...The birth of "hmm, maybe it does exist," introductions to the world of road bikes, goodbyes to the idea that childhood friends would never confront the hardest things in the the attempts to make some sincerities right...The passing of the color maroon...Hellos to Summer, beginnings of novels best read with a lover, guac, corn chips, veggie tacos...Succumbing to American Apparel gear...The return of Sox and Matt...The birth of fame for Terri...Weddings...Overpriced airplane tickets...Critical mass...Raspberries...Broken shelves, broken frames, art for art's sake...My Nintendo DS lite, the scribblings on the back of an envelope of a phone bill which would be a playground for psychoanalysis: *hyena has a penis and gives birth.garter snake morphs into a woman to stay warm. woman as fire. seahorse switches sex...solga...blue line. the lyric is missing but man him something to do with insight when the words are muted... a window washer competition*...reintroductions on ways to spend time properly...the amazing friends in Chicago who have helped make a temporary home more believable...words passed in bakeries and cafes and patisseries...introductions to the family system...humility...hoodies...grace in the form of vulnerability. Eugenides quote about something to do with not believing in one word emotions like "sadness," "joy," or "regret"...To multi-layered "hybrids" interspersed with idiomatic and idiosyncratic abstractions to give the softest and sweetest of emotions their just due. When leaving the closer room, faith in the idea that the most tender of emotions folded up in the most complicated of origami shapes could be at least labeled "something bigger and more important than I had ever imagined."

The Chinese, virgin suicides, and looseleaf notebooks.

I was walking downtown near my old apartment in the E.V. when I took this picture. He was fast asleep snoring in the same manner that I do. I got to thinking that someone like this must hold a lot of secrets. Or so I'd hope. I would see him on 6th then 3rd then in Chinatown then in the Bowery. Always in that same crab position with one hand on his suitcase, always with his eyes closed, always snoring. He's like that old man in "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues." Perhaps he went to college and studied differential cryptanalysis and in 79' read Adi Shamir's "how to keep a secret" and shat his pants because he knew how huge that paper was. This then would surely have made him invest all his time learning everything about algorithms and public key cryptography. Perhaps he got disenchanted by the fact that such epiphanies to security issues lead to more security issues. Perhaps he has been fucked with for years as an immigrant while assholes like me take pictures of him and stare at him wanting answers and making up hypotheticals more in reference to my own hopes than his. Perhaps he's just a man who wants some space and peace of mind...Need to finish reading Charlie's book. Need to find those piles of looseleaf notebooks wrapped in rubberbands that I always meant to give out for Christmas. Need to make a guac mix for a day or two of solace before flights to Los Angeles. This afternoon I was cleaning up some old files from ethics, family and seminar and came across a quote: "The best measure of change in self is the long term effect it has on others that are important to you. If you 'change' and your family does not, then either you have not changed as much as you think you have or you are using a lot of distance to deal with others." (Kerr)...I need to disrupt the system.

The day I rode the elevator with Mr. Baldwin.

When the door of the elevator opened, he was standing next to his son. They both looked exhausted (neither held any reverence for the winters). I was holding a copy of blue note jazz LP's *before the fated world of umbrella labels* (Grant Green, Hank Mobley, Donald Byrd, Lou Donaldson...) and two grocery bags of fruit. Without stopping to attend to his son, he glanced past my hand and the LP's and nodded to himself *not intended for me in any way* His son had his lips, pursed and rosy, and he was slightly awkward with eyes that were constantly looking through (not at) everything in their path. I had known how highly endeared Mr. Baldwin was to watching this little boy count floors. I had heard that he was heading home soon *speculation* His little boy, raised with all the unconventional means for the most healthy of childhoods, looked at hope like a prism. Being that it was the first time I had actually seen this boy, he looked much older than I had supposed. Mr. Baldwin had his right hand pressed against the middle of the young boy's back while he stared up at the top of the elevator. He was listening to the sounds of cables covered in plastic rubbing and slapping against metal. There are those indelibly delicious moments when your very aspirations lay in the middle of a young boy's eyes staring through an elevator wall while his father watches on. I would have said something but neither was aware I was in the elevator. I shook my grocery bags a bit as to warn them of an upcoming floor stop but they paid no mind. There are those important days where you're unheard, ignored and unseen. This sets off a chain reaction in all the right directions, for fathers and sons to take note of the importance of such silence. I stepped off, turned back, and saw Mr. Balwin staring intently on a young boy looking up and wondering why the elevator stopped in the first place.

Constructions - - Reclaiming three panel strips.

Four robots: Kiyomura Samurai. Chroino FT, Reem-A, and Salamandra Robotica. Go green: Pull cord generators, sphelar sun absorbers, hybrid batteries, and energy curtains(embedded with solar cells and light emitting materials). A handful of sitcoms: Silver spoons, the facts of life, the great space coaster, good times. The aforementioned were all taken and thrown into three panel comic strips by penny arcaders, mass media mavens with sketch and ink skills, wired magazine mac boys with pro tools and adobe love, and the most reclusive of artists with ideas much too fragile to be discussed in any other way. You're in a room filled with these comic strips, thousands of them really. The construction is as followed: take a few weeks to read through the sketches, the balloons filled with words, the intentions of the writers and illustrators. Be meticulous and go over everything. Keep what's relevant, including feelings, bits, fragments, and themes. Burn the rest. Find a box to store what's to be saved and give the box to the person you're endeared to the most...I had an ethics test today. In an extended three panel format, you would see caricatures of myself, the professor, the handful of others in the room. You'd see a lot of squiggles above my head, furrowed brows, breaks staring over to Brooke and Ash and Alyssa and Elsa. The end of the strip ends with me alone a room looking up at a clock and shrugging my shoulders. That strip will hopefully be in the box alongside an old heathcliff rant that you're especially fond of for some reason...Vacation starts today. Or something resembling such. Comps Jan.2. *strip in search of an optimistic illustrator with a good eye for making shadows alongside lamplight*

See line woman.

"On May 13, 1939, Herbert Halpert made a series of field recordings in Byhalia, MS, including several with the family of Walter and Mary Shipp." There were 14 children, all of whom wanted to help Mr. Halpert record. The eldest daughters, Katherine and Christine, were the anomalies of the family however because they had exceptional voices and were able to carry certain eerie tones that would turns simple lyrics into haunting landscapes. Mr. Halpert was blown away and recorded the two of them alone without other family members by having them sing a few feet from his mic with various rhythms and lyrical sets. One fragment of his project, "sea lion woman," was taken by Nina Simone who looped the hook, remastered and re-named it. Field recordings were the first inkling of sampling. Root. The fragment took various shapes over the years becoming a template for folk singers, blues guitarists, London DJ's and jazz hipsters wanting something of substance: Sea Lion Woman, See Lyin' Woman, C-Line Woman, See-Lye Woman, See Line Woman, She lyin' Woman. This is how street narratives come about. Family history, day one, hour one. "Trust the narratives."...Application: Boy and girl sit in garages and attics and write lyrics. They play some shows. They seduce one another with a mic a few feet away from one another. He writes a song. Girl claims it hers. Boy leaves and feels nothing but spite. That song, in turn, is stolen from her. He writes three more, she writes fifteen. Each song takes from one another. There's one song on a few crumpled up papers: "wiggle wiggle, turn like a cat, wink at a man and he winks back, now child see-line woman."...that song goes unseen though you'll hear it in verse. It vanished the minute the two girls, Katherine and Christine, let a stranger hear them and bottle up their voices.

Reasons to own a BMX bike shop.

It's always closed. Downstairs in the basement is a makeshift skatepark where the owner decided would be a good outlet for himself as well as the kids (the ones in the know at least) to stay in from the winter cold while still having ramps and metal piping to play on. "Shit, I'd rather have them in my basement than being outside getting into trouble. At least here I know where they are." *this is what community care looks like* Inside, the store is nondescript, skateboard boys as interior designers. Some shoes, some shirts, some bike parts, some bikes. Walk toward the back, two couches covered in doritos and bike bits, gamer mags, Hannah Montana toys (BMX bikers eventually grow up and have daughters who hang around the store bored out of their mind wishing they were elsewhere). A flatscreen TV with a huge iguana to the right of it sitting under a heat lamp, also surely bored out of her mind). Alongside this makeshift living room/lobby/waiting room are bike repair stands where two owners (Alex and Jeff) spend most of their time putting bikes together, swapping parts, selling road bike conversions, and serving as therapists/social workers to the boys. At any given late afternoon you could hear the following from a 13 year old's mouth. "That Tat I paid for was 350 not 175 because the fucker charged me under the table cause I couldn't sign consent," "I touched her titties but she got scared and walked back to Chem," "I love this show *pointing at The Brady Bunch*." I spent many afternoons on the couches waiting for my bike and just taking in the community. It reminds me somewhat of being 15 in Los Angeles in a friend's home covered in dirty clothes, games, pornography, cds, records, and feeling right at home (Mr. Dobalina, Mr. Bob Hata Dobalina). The owner likes to weave his stories into his time in the shop. "...when I was their age..." He tells the story to Ang and I. Youth. Violence. Carelessness. Ego. Desert Storm. And then the condom breaks. And the back gives out. And the leg gets fractured in 7 spots. A handful of moves, a handful of bad decisions. Then humility. Then grace. Then a botched health care plan turned right and some money out of "thin air." "Call my mobile phone in another few hours and i'll have disassembled your Raleigh. Your rims will be here on Tuesday but it'll take me a day to get the closed hubs you want...Ooh, and i'll call my friend about the bike stand. There's paint and shit on it but its solid." He told us when the summer comes around, we have to come join him and ride BMX bikes into Lake Michigan off street ramps. "Right around 5am. We'll drink and skate and just hang till then. It hurts if you land wrong but you gotta come." Ang shook her neck, that move that suggests a finger snap, and grinned at him "we're all over that ish. Just tell us when and we're there."

*In a Harvard symposium going on at that very moment*:
Myth #1 It's too late to start something that ambitious.
Myth #2 You're better off without it.
Myth #3 Watching it is just as good as living through it.
*Charlie peeks her head into the window of the lecture and screams "What is IT!!!?", smiles, and runs off karate kicking into the air.*

Movement and iconography

He told me he sings when most afraid. "Every fuckin day, yo!" I saw him walk in today and felt relieved he was ok. He had a red hoodie covering his red afro, talked for an hour on how everyone called him “ro fro” showed off his thumb size brush handed out by the state, and walked all of us through paying for a mistake. A handful of us ate lunch and he talked to some of the younger boys about corndogs and trading "shit food for good food" because you get to eat more and stay out of harm's way." He talked to the adults about how to sleep in blankets half your size and how to hold onto your pride when all that comes out of your mouth are apologies. He left a paper bookmark on my desk that has nutrition listings of major foods. I placed it in a first edition hardcover of Skinner's "beyond freedom and dignity." As he walked out, he said "you pay a price when you take for granted space to move. It's really that simple." On the back of his jacket, an intricate circle with arrows facing up and dashes, a symbol with earth/fire/water written alongside the edges.

The Chevy Chase Country Club.

Also known as The Cornelius Crane Chase Country Club. "Before becoming famous as a writer, actor and comedian, Chase worked in many jobs including as a cab driver, truck driver, motorcycle construction worker, waiter, busboy, fruit picker, produce manager of a supermarket, audio engineer, salesman in a wine store, and a theater usher."...He was also expelled from four private schools (or five depending on who you ask) in his youth. He has made a career since doing what no one else was willing to or knew how...*paths to success* But I'm wondering what in the world he has to do with a country club with his namesake 30 miles northwest from Chicago in Wheeling and why the committee from that particular town would name their snazzy joint after him. "Built in 1927, the classic, Tudor-style clubhouse harkens back to a genteel and elegant era when making guests feel welcome was an art form." 125 acres of "welcoming."...So we have this boy who was unconventional and spent most of his life trying to go against the grain, pushing the envelope on practicality. And we have this conventional clubhouse holding onto old ideals for dear life. Its fitting. More country clubs and aristocratic societies should be named after comedians and misfits. The Steve Martin Coutre Fashion Boutique, The Sam Kinison Haut Monde Golf Club, The Gilda Radner Taste and Tea Cafe Society. Perhaps I underestimate the trickle down effect trickling up. Something refreshing about the idea of someone proving me wrong in a board room of that ilk...Onto the more relevant. The ice was bad last night and I, as always, served as quite the shitty navigator. Charlie took hold of the instructions after awhile as to not lose the piles of dried up snowballs that will surely melt away eventually. There was an experience shared followed by disconnect followed by silence followed by the softest of words that are always needed when walking alongside salt dolls in the most fragile of places. Additionally, there's a theatre usher biting her nails right now hoping there's a therapist out there who understands why she's so bent on running the other way.

A typebar, inked fabric, and a carriage return.

Barbara Blackburn is the fastest English language typist in the world, according to The Guiness Book. Using the Dvorak Keyboard, she has maintained 150 words per minute (wpm) for 50 minutes, and 170 wpm for shorter periods. She has been clocked at a peak speed of 212 wpm." That's just ridiculous. I sweat her...I mention Miss Blackburn because of a few things. One, The Dvorak keyboard has a layout that really makes sense and, unbeknownst to most, its in your OS (mac/xp/vista/linux included). Programmers are starting to use that ish, high-end ergonomic typewriters are starting to pop up, and unlike QUERTY type it wasn't modeled after the primary reason to simply avoid jamming on typewriters. It was created by studying letter frequencies in words and physiology. Also, more importantly than all this random shit you could surely find on wikipedia, the Dvorak Typewriter is playing a major role in the story itself. There's a rare 1961 Selectric 72 made by IBM sitting on the table alongside a book of encyclopedias of the older couple who broke out of the fish bowl long ago. in their 70's and 60's respectively, they fell in love long ago and the idea of their former selves still burgeoning into relevant pieces of their current framework left them giddy in the mornings, old handmade pieces of art from the 50's and 60's strewn about. The typewriter is relevant because at the time, the man didn't buy into the Smith-Corona salesman's pitch. He wanted something different. the keys didn't make sense to him so he told the dude, who became increasingly pushy, to fuck himself with that baby blue typewriter before he went stomping out. He eventually came across a neighbor who had a "slightly offbeat suggestion." The typewriter, eventually became hers as she cultivated random ideas on it while he baked and learned the crafts that she grew up endeared to. As per many others of their generation, they got extreme pleasure from adages of their past and present as a means for inspiration. "Function when open" and "anywhere except for the mind" would make the two of them chuckle as "It is an ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way" would make them lighter when questioning one another. The most important day was the one where he accidentally came across a page that wasn't intended for his eyes. She had been sitting at the typewriter for hours. He asked her what it was that she needed and she shrugged. Out of frustration, she left the room. He had reached over for the "YZ" of the encyclopedia and couldn't help but to see the one line on the typewriter. He first looked around at some of his paintings and random clocks in the home. He then let his eyes roll past the otherwise blank page and read it out loud to himself which startled him and made his heart start beating: "Save a wall for me." ...*Did you see that shit? He just got it*

To mimic an artful dodger.

"...The strong winds of up to 30 miles per hour greatly increases the likelihood of power outages by this evening. It is advised you stay in." What would Banksy do on an afternoon like this? He'd be outside on a sidestreet in London mocking Christies and Sotheby's with a mural intended to insult and admonish *street lines can always be retracked onto walls* and he'd go so far as to paint himself on a wall on the east bank to give the police a better clue. The most obvious of intentions. "Not long after his work began fetching huge prices at auction houses, Banksy whipped off a painting of an art auction. It shows an auctioneer standing before an audience that is bidding on a framed canvas that says..."I can't believe you morons actually buy this shit."...Francisco De Goya would be smiling, his Maja naked then clothed then naked again before the audience had a chance to gather their thoughts about the work. *Insert Gordian knot here*...What's the danger of endearments when the spectator becomes bed-ridden? The idea of mediocrity in that light scares me. Where's my raincoat? My screw on rain guard for my Fuji? My worn down Stan Smith's? A good day to go outside along Milwaukee ave in search of a loophole, drenched from a storm.

Why we love stretching the rhombus.

Had lunch overlooking Chicago at the Holiday Inn today with Charlie. (Segue: who was telling a joke in the Chicago Tribune today, btw?) Chinese take öut, coke, psychopharm chit chat, a new position to prescribing drugs to clients, a shoulder strap that never seems to sit straight, feminism diddling at dawn, two reports that linger in the back of her head. 34 degrees outside. A reprieve in the shape of a five foot five inch woman in black boots and jeans curled into and draped over a red lounge chair on a Tuesday..."Aperture as an opening, as a hole, slit, crack, gap." Pull apart the entire camera till its in pieces. Take the lens and hide it in a book. Take the shutter and hang it from your ceiling: prevention. Though the take out wasn't very good, there's something to be said about small escapes in the middle of a day when you have a chance to put it all aside...Blink. Blink. A to do list that's piling up needs tending to. A myspace letter. An email. A facebook letter. 100 text messages. I need to dust off my pencils and buy some new stamps. 10019. 90504. 02139. 94127. 05401. 78201...Destinations. November, the official novel writing month in the US, is a few days from being over. I have some serious making up to do. In the back of my head, I keep thinking there's a goodbye that I'm missing. There was a day like that where it was avoided or maybe it was a pencil written letter that I never sent but should've. Perhaps folded up into a paper airplane and dropped out of the window I was sitting alongside this afternoon...Envisage, something in a bottle: an introduction that was missed (yes, there will be many of them). In the background: "...if you see me walking down the street and i start to cry...walk on by....walk on by." An obese woman's proclamation came in a whisper from under the awning of an old building. Inside, a young slinky woman afraid to go outside. The house was being pulled apart by the community piece by piece. The rocks, outside the home, were building themselves up from the momentum. The obese woman, softer eyes than you've seen in years, is fuming. She couldn't wait till the house was completely törn up (not sure why 'torn' pulled a bjork just now) and the girl inside would have to confront her. The windowsill, the pink insulation, the borders to the doors. It all went. The girl inside got scared and hid under whatever she could till everything was gone sans one side of her home. The women outside, far from savvy, mustered up all her guts, stared at the slinky girl in the face and said softly *for its the only way she ever knew how to speak* "You fucking bitch. Don't you know I have it harder than anyone. Do you know what its like to be 300 pounds and the only person that will talk to you is someone who has made their decision about you before you speak? ...I'm sad I couldn't have been there before the house had come down. I'm a hundred and fifty pounds but I'm sure I could have worked well enough with lumber, a hammer and nails to rebuild in the dark when no one was looking. From the top of my head, there are at least 10 or 12 PsyD students who would have put on their sweats for the sake of saving the two very people who should have never lost their allure toward one another.

Gists, smears.

"A nut nut is a person who is nuts about the fun of eating nuts." Epanalepsis. *for grief of grief and love in love* There's a picture in the middle on 9 x 12" raritan heavyweight. One of the first dozen sketchings of a muse. The point is that no one is going in the same direction. *Thank goddess for anomalies* It's done in chalk and the next person who reads it rubs it a bit with their palm. And then the next...and then the next. Then mass appeal, then critical mass, then mass (as in church). Then the picture is just something you swear was once there. Then you're back to being naked for first time pressed against your most endeared lover. What's the residue and is it quantifiable? In the minute details of this picture is an oxymoron like sweet pain, cheerful pessimism, cruel kindness, soft screams. Something to be laid softly like yourself into warm laundry on a bed. But the coup is that its done for you not by you. Free agent. Free agent. Free agent. You're more present than you could have hoped for. Smashingly good, this coup. Frighteningly so, she tells you to own it.

A dialectical as the white elephant of an empty room.

I read a letter from a 28 year old "boy" in jail today. The letter was for someone else. It was given to me because within the letter, he asked if the words could be passed my way. When opening the letter, a post it note fell out. He had drawn a cartoon portrait of himself in blue ink standing in a jail cell holding two bars. Above his head, a tag on top with a question mark that read "Home?". My conversations and time spent with him were limited but I need to go visit him. Visitation, which is on Wednesdays, is a time I can make. Was I any different than he was at 28 in regard to wanting to be understood? Under desperate circumstances, would I not have done the same thing as a reaction to what I know I needed to save myself from falling in the same light? The push/pull is the overlap on how a messenger bag is treated/used/hidden/and ultimately discarded. When people find their way into the closing room long after both individuals have moved on, you'd have never guessed any of the words were ever passed. The letter, crumpled and disregarded into a ball then glued onto a canvas as a boulder being rolled up a mountain (in acryllic) by a man. The man, as Sisyphus up close, is no different than the boy's face on the post it. The internal monologue juxtaposed against all the logic in the world leaves him without words. This is the struggle for every single boy in their 20's. I can't help but to think there was something I could have done differently to help him.

Constructions - - Alternatives to a pushpin.

A handful of people around you are kissing each others necks, ears, shoulders, nape. You're in a room covered in wood, decor as an old wood cabin, and if the door is let open, the wind would blow the candles out. 25 of them. The heat is on and you can smell the sweat off skin. Like you're watching vampires, you can feel vices, the sultry of tongue and eyes, the urgency of responding to pulsings. Exposed hip and thighs, lungs being pulled in and out, you're in a vacuum. "Grab me tighter." There's a construction long overdue. It involves an empty frame, two ropes hanging from the ceiling (three quarters way to the floor that are 10 feet away from each other) and a woman standing naked behind it. This would have to be in an adjacent room as its much too dark, the one you're currently in...There's a pile of rocks on each side of her and an open window for the construction to take place. In this room, the wind from outside is warmth and from the inside, its static and her skin is cold. You're not allowed to enter through the window but you're aware that there are vents. You can hear her heart beating but her eyes are closed. You need to find a way to let the frame hang in the center of the room with no additional pins, no string, no smoke or mirrors. She can't leave the room until you do and there are better things she could be doing than standing naked in the middle of a room freezing her ass off. Outside her window, a teen boy and girl, mismatched but trusting of one another, have something in mind to bail you out. They have a plan. And fuck, I've gotta concede, its brilliant.

Slip along.

Bombarded by Murphy's law today. Laughably so. Trope as a simile: like not minding a gap and being stuck between platform and train as its doors close. Trope as irony: Is as was, Sultry lulls in the midst of creamblue tints...As my head hit the parked car door, I was lucky enough to stop my bicycle from slamming into the car as well *legs as pillowcases, always save the toy*...Hours later in a hoodie over my head you could almost hear the snow pushing its way in. Fuck the umbrella! (On days like this, Fuck the post office, the DMV, Microsoft Outlook, and relinquished stock as well)...If I were a character in DC's multiverse: Night ends with her throwing incredible words I could never, and would never, want to live up to. She tells me about groceries that were bought for Thanksgiving. Talks about her riding in the rain, about the muscles that trembled in yoga, about eating that one sugar cookie of the year. Before sleep, the coriolis effect comes into play with her kneeling down onto the ground and watching the angles and feeling the direction of the wind. She says softly "It's not really a hurricane. It just feels like one, babylove."...A few liberties taken for the sake of not having to retrace through the redundancies. I was riding, against wind, in the rain today. Thank goddess for rotating frames of reference.

She knows you already because of two things.

Joost Burgi, late in the 16th century, was the first one who discovered logarithms. Sadly, some cat named John Napier published first and got all the accolades. Fortunately for Joost, he had some other tricks up his sleeve: like inventing the minutes hand on the clock in his studio during spare time...Think of days before this clockmaker. One hand spinning around per hour. No frame of reference for the subtleties or the nuances in a classroom with friends or a workplace with fellow bees or a bedroom laying naked with your lover. Like taking away the sound of immediacy. How do you feel about that? You'd have to trust the urgency in your body to push, pull or linger. A young boy before Joost sitting with a girl wanting to tell her what he's been feeling and having to trust his body time for measure...Read a book this afternoon called "Identical Strangers" written by a freelance writer and filmmaker. Lovely and sweeping but a shame we need books to reassure us what we already know. There are already people who know you. You've always been connected to them...*optimism* Tomorrow I'll be sitting in the DMV. Will forget the minute hand as to save myself the tension from the details within the minutes...If I could cut out the second hand on my wall clock and html a code to block the minutes on my blackberry, I would. I'm well aware everything important is made alone (or with your most beloved) in a dusty, unkempt studio, real or imagined.

"Imagine a slightly different version of you walks across the room, looks you in the eye and says “hello” in your voice. You discover that she has the same birthday, the same allergies, the same tics, and the same way of laughing. Looking at this person, you are able to gaze into your own eyes and see yourself from the outside. This identical individual has the exact same DNA as you and is essentially your clone.
We don’t have to imagine."
–From "Identical Strangers"

The edges of Brooklyn rooftops.

Repeated at this moment as a return nudge to the emails I've been getting about NYC--the EV, Brooklyn, D.U.M.B.O and the corner of Houston and Crosby (Do give a nod to that little Indian man with the food cart who always put extra rice on my plate and talked to me about beautiful "wow wow women" while I sat on the fire hydrant every Tuesday eating lunch): When Basquiat died, Keith Haring sat around in mourning on his couch off Elizabeth street trying to pay homage to his friend from Great Jones whose little scratchings on East Village sidewalks (De La Vega wasn't the first) made him realize how he wasn't the only one who had figured it out. Random diner passings of the most delicate, most fragile, most relevant of glances and quirks. Relevance. Basquiat's signature on every piece was a small crown which, to him, represented youth and innocence. In his sketchings, writings, chalk drawings, and larger pieces, the crown would always be on one of the edges...At his first show after Basquiat's death, Haring showed his piece to the public...The piece, titled "A pile of crowns" was simply dozens and dozens of crowns piled upon one another like a trash heap. No words ever needed to be said.. A lot of people let it go that day. It, as Charlie would inquire about, was that little prickle of regret from not paying more attention to the sidewalk art they had stepped over daily *Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow* That, and the piece allowed him to let go of a part of himself he adored...There was a day in the Winter, a handful of us on a rooftop in GreenpointWilliamsburg. A large bag of Haribo, sticky fingers throwing bears onto little hispters in hoodies. "I just hit that kid in the purple jeans in the eye," "Didn't panda bear backpacks die out in 84?," "I'm upset that I'm so bothered with that suit on the scooter but that just isn't right."...*I have someone I want you to meet. I might die tomorrow, you never know* ...Simultaneously, three introductions just happened. A girl in her twenties just got off her ass after having sat on the bathroom for three hours drawing silhouettes of her former selves; A boy in his teens just made his way after having fallen into the gap between two street ramps; A mother tired of crying in her car opened the garage door and got in a taxi. The three of them miss you dearly. In the time It takes for them to catch up, your letter will have arrived via bike messenger (in a ridiculous chrome fixy, mind you). Get out your binoculars. You're going to want to see the expressions on their faces when they read the last line on why it mattered so much for them to meet.

English as a second language.

Was reading Camus' "lyrical and critical essays" this afternoon as procrastination from the piles. Reminded me of the abstractions we get lost in. Rhetoric as seductive. The banter they use to argue with in the middle of the playground: "playful and whimsical," "Less economical," "a chance for more depth," "more sultry and better for escapism." I was talking to Charlie awhile back about this and she said she did it as well as a child in her journals. Codes and similes and allegories in order to make people work to understand where the center is/what the content actually is. Refuted as hiding, concealing, masking, splitting. I've always thought intertextuality had it right when suggesting there's no more allowances to use the word "sky" and "sun" and "the moon" and "the darkness" and "the sea" without falling brutally into those whispers of "horribly cliche" or "Fuck, that shit is just corny, yo!" Reminded me of something a dear friend told me one afternoon at a bakery in Somerville, MA (Someday cafe) after having told her about some stories of international students I taught in writing workshops (Boston) years ago. She was dry, impersonal, almost not present yet considering language and connectedness in such a subtle manner you're at once reminded why you should keep certain people within a stones throw:

"I suppose you had to learn how to talk in a different way, a way that maybe you're kinda awkward with...a way you're not used to...Straight forward."

Today, no constructions, no missed introductions nor talk of sandstorms, muses, curvature, curtains covering sound, vanishing treehouses or Satir's parts. Paint a picture for me. Use no brush. Synesthesia as a sole means to get your point across. "I feel," "I am," "this is what I mean exactly." What's being said in those moments? What's lost in the translations? Missing parts. Arms, legs, tongue, clavicle...She's right. It makes more sense to put it all on the table. Theory. Lesson one, day one, minute one: "Put your body into it. If they can't hear the songs, fuck em'." *Insert hypocrite here as well as the 10 year old you* But. And. So. Then again.

Constructions - - Swimming as opposed to dying in a fishbowl.

There's a six year old that thinks she could fly. I've been watching her for the past few hours and have been given strict orders by my supervisor to not afford her more than a few seconds of running room as she would surely jump on a table, chair, shelf, bureau, cabinet and jump off with her hands spread out, feet and toes extended out like a aerialist. She has gauze bandaged on her forehead, arms, legs, and shoulders. Her nose is cut and the right side of her face (eye included) is still a bloody scab the size of a small pancake. I told her to follow me into the kitchen so I could get some tea and she ran out toward the front table, jumped onto it and made two long steps toward the end of the table. Fortunately I was able to run at her and pull her down from the hip before she was able to try yet another stab at flying. This one would have landed her in into a set of potted plants, azaleas, rhododendrons, pentanthera. A small part of me wanted to let her jump just to see for myself in the hopes that everyone was wrong about her. Her mother wanted to show her Sears tower this week. Parenting skills. The last that came out of her mouth was the importance of hybrid batteries *Eneloop, go green!!!* "she's been known to talk about things that she really shouldn't know about." The construction of this is as follows: don't doubt, don't patronize, hire a swim teacher, immerse her as a mermaid, introduce her to the 3, 10 and 20 meter springboard. Sublimate...While this is all going on, the importance of the tango lessons that will be in progress in another hour are not without mention. The scrabble tournament that will be cancelled due to the dancers is surely going to cause a rift in how the group at large is going to interact. The particular introductions you expected from this crossing will not happen for another few months. What will you do in the meantime? Their suggestion: Liszt, Scarlatti, Haydn. It's the best they can do which is sad considering. The rebuttal: Pianos made of old songs dusted, temporarily revered, posthumously spoken of with fondness but ultimately left in vacant spaces. There's an olivetti typwriter which doesn't depend in any way on the past...Today was the last I'm going to see of this young flying girl. "I was almost sure she'd play a bigger role." Mistaken bellwethers all too often attended to not knowing the connection to the bigger picture. The glass bowl is filling with water as we speak. "Yeah, i'm a fan of that shit. Bring the boat. Bring the sun. Inflateables, for sure. And don't forget to bring a sledgehammer cause we're breaking out of this bitch!"

Pulling strings off from hanging dolls.

As like years before, a handful of introductions were missed. The room was ransacked and the metal fold up chairs were strewn across the floor, covered in broken glass, rope, yarn, string, burnt papers, and some old sneaking suspicions that were never answered after inquiry. You're walking out of the room quite pleased you had missed that meeting. This is called a red herring...Two quandaries: a women with child who is enmeshed and can't empower herself. A man who was once married who can't seem to find grace in the prospect of not having the center of himself (HER) anymore. What to do when people tell themselves they're too old for play therapy? When their inner child becomes a cutter, a fan of false affections, ambivalent to healing, or simply bent on running away with gun/knapsack...Waiting on Toni and Angela today. *Paraphrase what Carmen said last week* The library is filled with the usual slinky Art Institute bandits. The rattle of colored pencils, the smell of fabreze on the emo boy's hoodie, the skinny jeans folded on top of air revolution remakes from 1987. This corner chair overlooks CRP periodicals which makes me wonder the whereabout of all these therapists. What became of them? Which ones found what they were looking for?...Envisage: the end of the afternoon. Fall. The L train (red) heading north toward Roger's Park *with Lake Michigan feeling particularly female on this day* riders exhibiting the following nuances: Apathy superimposed on listlessness superimposed on the prospect of all things resembling the word "perhaps." A free agent, let's say a maladjusted yet whimsical doppelganger of self. She (if you're a he)/He (if you're a she) teaches you a trick. Do you trust this person? Do you use the trick?...I'm now in a room filled with Yoko One art instructionals. It's spotless, the room and the wood floors. Three windows look out to downtown Chicago. The white on the walls and the absence of fold-up chairs makes me wonder if the introductions actually took place or if i'm yet to even be invited.

Reading, cereal and skin.

Gorilla Munch. Rice milk. Sliced mangoes. A red couch, mismatched pillows, and a hardcover copy of Miranda July's "No one belongs here more than you." Waiting for morning. In the background, dog eared paperbacks (Southern females writers, Baldwin, Murakami, Munro, Woolf, Safran-Foer, Zadie, Eco) piled up to the shoulders, The lead singer from a thousand times yes singing on how her heart is in Atlanta. *I could sleep in with her voice for moons at a time* A to-do list involving flights to L.A, a book of ethics, a vinyl needle, clients to create wellness plans for, a deep v wheel set, worthwhile larks and a family therapy project better saved for days after Thanksgiving. There's a second person narrative coming out from the floorboards: "pay for your health plan," "commit to your sleep," " finish the 3 projects under your sofa," "return the calls from those who have been waiting for months to hear back from you" How do you listen to the parts in the corners? A few cars driving through the back alley with occasional late night winter transients wrapped in tattered blankets and newspapers walking along the pavement whispering through the windowsills that the center of the bone is where all the content is. It's past two thirty in the morning and I want nothing more than to close my eyes only to open them to a steampunk aesthetic and an antique skeleton key from a toolbox which fixes a broken sidemirror to a sleek red car. The owner of the car, sleepy eyed, is curious as to why both of her hands are holding tiny aluminum, copper, and bronze cranks and gears.