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.