War

Geyron’s War Record 

“Geyron lay on the ground covering his ears The sound
Of the horses like roses being burned alive”

-The Autobiography of Red (Anne Carson)

The war has not ended yet, and we have passed 4000 American deaths. The fifth anniversary was last week. Did you protest?

We lined up all down fourteenth street, from Eleventh Avenue to Avenue A. We met in Union Square. I carried a coffin with an Iraqi flag on it. I feel like I was in thousands of pictures.

Remember, and keep pushing for change. We cannot afford apathy right now. Educate yourself.

5 years ago, 8 years ago. Bush was elected eight years ago. Nine years ago is when my mother was diagnosed with cancer for the first time.

I just keep telling myself to keep fighting, then maybe it’ll all be over soon.

Now what?

There was a 70s porn themed party/photoshoot a few nights ago. I, unfortunately, was unable to partake in the dress-up because I arrived late (working until midnight and all that). It was lewd; it was scandalous; it was perfect.

 Then, my parents arrived, and I received a prescription for prozac. I allowed myself to cry in the 42nd st. subway station, and I think it was the best thing I could have done.

The St. Patrick’s Day Parade was yesterday, and it was beautiful to see all the green. It was even more beautiful when I parted with my parents for the last time until August.

More than likely I will be moving into my own room in an apartment shared with three other people in a couple of weeks.

These are the things that make up life.

Busy

Get High

“You must always be high. Everything depends on it: it is the only question. So as not to feel the horrible burden of Time wrecking your back and bending you to the ground, you must get high without respite.

     But on what? On wine, on poetry, or on virtue, whatever you like. But get high.

     And if sometimes you wake up, on palace steps, on the green grass of a ditch, in your room’s gloomy solitude, your intoxication already waning or gone, ask the wind, the waves, the stars, the birds, clocks, ask everything that flees, everything that moans, everything that moves, everything that sings, everything that speaks, ask what time it is. And the wind, the waves, the stars, the birds, clocks will answer, “It is time to get high! So as not to be the martyred slaves of Time, get high; get high constantly! On wine, on poetry, or on virtue, as you wish.”

-Charles Baudelaire

I feel like I’ve been living off cigarettes, espresso shots, and Chinese take-out for the last couple of weeks. They are the things that sustain me.

I just took a job working at Starbucks, and I feel like I’m running into the ground. Training, so I’ve worked nearly every night for the past two weeks. 0-60. With schoolwork as well, I sat on the bus with a book in my hand and tried not to cry from exhaustion. For several days. Not to mention I feel incredibly guilty for working for such a major corporation. But, hey, at least it’s not McDonald’s, or Wal-Mart.

Last night I had an early night, so I got off at a decent hour. When I finished I lit a cigarette and sang really loudly through the streets of downtown Brooklyn on my way home. I got more than a few strange and/or condescending looks, but in the end I was feeling good. I was feeling happy, for a brief moment.

I never know what greets me when I return. One night, it was a Marie Antoinette party and very cheap champagne. Most nights, it’s just and Nintendo 64 and Mario Kart. Some nights it’s poetry, some nights it’s philosophy, and some nights it’s being eaten alive by worms.

I’m finding the balance. Or, at least, trying to. Trying to stay excited, to stay high.

Maybe…

I was talking to three newly acquired friends at brunch the other day, and they asked me if I had made any New Year’s Resolutions. I told them that I don’t believe in them. They asked me if I had any goals.

I told them that, yes, there are things that I wish to do in my lifetime, creatively or otherwise, but that, for the moment, I don’t think that planning is a good idea. I told them that sometimes plans get in the way of what we could be experiencing in the day to day. We have to live for the moment and go with the flow. I hoped I didn’t sound too much like a hippie.

They told me that that sounded very Eastern and that they could appreciate that. But I’m not sure I even agree fully with my own sentiment. I think you have to find a happy medium in both worlds, or your life will fall apart.

Late night, and I’m having an emotional conversation with a friend. She asked me what the happiest moment of my life was. I told her I couldn’t remember. She asked me what the worst was. I couldn’t answer that either.

I told her I was tired. I’m tired of fighting, tired of the ups and downs. She told me to stop trying and fighting and just be. I’m not sure that’s the way the world works. I wish it did.

In the end, we decided that no one really truly knows one another.

I stopped taking the pills that are supposed to keep me from going crazy. They aren’t working. And part of me feels that if I’m going to feel, then I’m going to really feel. Can you embrace emotion and in the end transcend it?

Buddhist monks were able to light themselves on fire in protest of war and watch themselves burn to death because they learned this practice of being. They didn’t flinch. I respect them for this.

I’ll either experience peace or lose my mind in the meantime. Hopefully, it won’t come down to a burning, down or out.

Back to the Way It Was

Wow! These things refresh my belief in the city and in life and its experiences.

Chinese New Year was last week. We had intended to go to Chinatown, but ended up at a local bar on Karaoke night with $1 PBRs. Shit, I know.

A friend, who is very, very white had the courage to perform “Jesus Walks”. A audience member warned her, “you better do this right”. She nailed it. Everyone was into it. She was declared “white chocolate” by the locals later. Another friend owned Frank Sinatra.

That weekend, four o’clock became my bedtime, and the city was experienced again. I attended a Slam at the Nuyorican on Friday night after a vegetarian diner, after a record/coffee shop, and after 50% off shoes.

The rest of what happened this weekend is a little too gossipy to include on the Internet, but it was adventuresome. Maybe when situations get resolved, I’ll tell you about them.

I’m exhausted, but I’m enjoying the carelessness, the fluidity, the politics of it.

It was in the teens yesterday. I’m ready for warmer weather. But at least it snowed. If it’s not snowing, there is no reason for that kind of behavior.

Invisible City

“I thought: ‘You reach a moment in life when, among the people you have known, the dead outnumber the living. And the mind refuses to accept more faces, more expressions: on every face you encounter, it prints the old forms, for each one it finds the most suitable mask.'”

“…I thought: ‘Perhaps Adelma is the city where you arrive dying and where each finds again the people he has known. This means I, too, am dead.’ And I also thought: ‘This means the beyond is not happy.'”  

– From Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino

According to Calvino, all cities are just variations of the same city. And here we are.

Blogging for Choice

Yesterday, while I was riding the subway, a sign caught my attention. It advertised “Free Abortion Alternatives”.

Yes, that’s right, an “abortion alternative”. This was obviously from a pro-life (anti-choice) group. When I looked on their website (curiousity and all that), the organization claimed to be “saving the abortion capital of America”. I don’t buy it. By claiming to “save” someone or something, you are implying that they are condemned to begin with. This statement simply cannot be made with good conscience. Religious conservatives cite God’s will. How the hell do they know? They pervert their own religion.

Yes, abortion is a sticky subject, but one we as people have to deal with. No one wakes up in the morning and nonchalantly thinks “I’m going to have an abortion today”. It’s a serious decision, and all the options have to be weighed. But the beauty of choice is that the woman gets to make that decision, not some heavy government hand controlling her body.

Because up to a certain point, that’s all a fetus is. It’s still a part of the mother’s body, acting almost as a cancer.

Before Roe v. Wade was passed in 1973, abortion was only allowed in a few states. Roe v. Wade made safe and legal abortions available nationwide. Now, those rights are being limited again. Many wish to overturn Roe v. Wade.

I heard a testimony from a preacher at a Unitarian Universalist Church the other day. He said that, before Roe v. Wade, he had been a caseworker for a 19 year old girl who was pregnant. Abortion was not legal in her state, so she desperately performed a DIY abortion. She died.

And this is why I vote for choice. How are we to condemn the desperation that haunts preganant women? Especially when the thing growing inside them is not yet a human, is not yet able to sustain itself outside the womb. The health of the woman should always come first, and that is my strong belief. Having safe abortions available will save the lives of many women, because making it illegal is obviously not going to make things okay.

I vote for choice because some people should not carry a child through pregnancy. I was told another story of a woman who became pregnant accidentally, continued taking epilepsy medication throughout her pregnancy, and ended up having a child who was underdeveloped, both physically and mentally. This is not fair to the baby, nor is it fair to the mother.

On the subway their was also a sign from Planned Parenthood. It said “I’m on the pill. But I still use a condom everytime”. If this were the prevailing attitude everywhere, not only would accidental births be more preventable, but STDs would not transmit as easily.

Education is key. People who rail against comprehensive sex education and then limit a woman’s right to choose her fate confuse me. Make sure both girls and boys understand what they’re getting themselves into. Make sure access to birth control, condoms, and emergency contraception is available. Then, we won’t need as many abortions.

There should always be a health exception for the mother in matters of limiting abortion times. Always.

I’m also a fan of adoption. I think that it is an option that should be seriously considered. However, I believe that it is up to the individual and the individual’s moral beliefs to decide what to do in the case of an unplanned pregnancy.

And that’s really what this is all about: options.

Today celebrates 35 years since the passage of Roe v. Wade. Be thankful. Celebrate.  

MLK Day

You know, it’s amazing how far we’ve come since the days of the Civil Rights Movement. And I know you’re going to see that same message about a thousand other times today, so I’m not going to put you through it again. But I will say that I think it’s incredible that we have a black man running for president who actually has a shot. Not to say they’re aren’t still problems with race in this country and throughout the world. We still have a long way to go.

During MLK day, you usually hear the same clips over and over again. “I have a dream” anyone? Here is a clip from illdoctrine.com that has some quotes you probably won’t hear today, but are great anyway.

 Here’s to a day off school and work (for some at least). Enjoy it!

Reality

A recent review of Disney’s new Broadway musical, The Little Mermaid, pointed out that happy endings are not always logical. Of course, we already know this, but we seem to want to eradicate our logic just for the sake of Disney. But sometimes, in real life, relationships are not meant to work out. And sometimes they are. If mermaids were real, man and mermaid maybe could fall in love, but the logistics of their situation would never work out. That’s just the way it is. And every telling of the story prior to Disney’s adaptation acknowledges that. Sometimes, we need to get back to “reality”.

But while millions of children around the world have rooted for the unconventional love between the two heroes of The Little Mermaid, no one seems to be able to root for real human connections, for relationships that have real effects on real people, the kind that play with people’s emotions and hearts. Sometimes, that love is “unconventional”, at least to the millions of Americans who can’t seem to see past the idea that there is more to the spectrum than male and female (penis in vagina) monogamy.

Mike Huckabee pulled out a tired argument the other day. You know, the one says that if we allow gay marriage in this country that pretty soon men and dogs will be getting married. Now, some might agree that men can be dogs, but in the end, we all know it’s not true. To equate a thinking, fully developed and loving person with full consent capabilities to an animal that is unable to give any kind of positive consent or exchange any kind of communication for commitment, is ridiculous. And, effectively, that’s what they’re doing. A connection with any kind of dog (or pig or horse or farm animal of your choice) will never rival human connection. People are not animals. People are humans. We’re more evolved than that. Give us some credit. It’s the same kind of logic that says if you drink one drop, you’ll soon be an alcoholic, and millions of Americans drink on a regular basis and don’t need rehab.

Yesterday, I went shopping in Manhattan where we talked about everything from sex and relationships to fleeting fame, from writing to vegetarianism, from poetry to prose. We later went to a local coffee shop (my friend contemplating stalking the attractive waiter) and talked about more serious issues: economics, being liberal or conservative, health-care, abortion. I decided that I’m glad for contraception and reiterated my desire to never have children or be tied down permanently. Commitment (in whatever definition), maybe. For a lifetime? That’s too daunting a task for me.

We ended up in a friend’s room in a land of hand massages and Polaroid pictures. We talked about bad break-ups, letting go of past relationships, and the best rock n’ roll songs (by definition the quintessential must contain fast cars and fast girls, it was decided). I had intended to get a little tipsy (enough to be more relaxed) and then leave, but I ended up somewhere past tipsy and short of trashed. It was comfortable, as I watched a friend fight sleep after the alcohol hit his system. The world rocked a little as I came back to my room and wrote poetry in the wee hours, which was illegible when I woke up this morning.

So now, I must continue and get back to reality. It was fun while it lasted, but my happy ending isn’t logical, because this market does not humor logic.

Closing

The last showing of the broadway musical Rent will be running on June 1st 2008.