the guez

What would you do if my love ran out of gas on the interstate and abandoned the way between my ocean and yours? What if it decided to get a cup of coffee instead and linger amid the plains and diners of the middle. Maybe it would find your love on the side of the road. And our loves would laugh and tell stories and talk about those days. Maybe they'd run away together and leave us to wonder what happened. (nov '04)

Powerwalking up 8th avenue one morning, late for work and trying to close the gap between where I was and where I needed to be fifteen minutes ago, I was struck with another sobering thought. If a portal to another dimension magically opened up on the sidewalk beside me, and by some stroke of luck I happened to see it, I wouldn't use it. I would not use it. sigh.

today in an effort to reduce the baggage in my life, I threw out all of my socks with holes in them. now my feet are cold.

There was a time when my filmmaker boyfriend took a job as an art model in order to make ends meet. The artist who employed him posed him nude against walls under bright lights and painted him, not as he was, but as he would be in fifteen years. He removed most of the muscle, added some fat, let the cheeks sag, the hairline recede. He added experience and some bitterness to the face, a hardening around the eyes. It's disconcerting to see what your lover might look like in the future, when time erodes his little perfections. This person. This man. Could I love this man with his sad eyes and sagging flesh? Besides, how well does this artist know my B anyway? Who's to say he'll ever wear that expression? Around the time B started modeling with more frequency, his restlessness started to shake him. He spent a lot of time thinking, started writing more. Had a birthday, realized some things, locked himself alone in his room for days at a time writing, screenplays, comedy acts, sk...

I recently got a gig cutting web videos for Hearst Magazines. It's not a terrible gig. Though arriving in that airy lobby every morning as those editors and models for Cosmo and Seventeen strut through the turnstiles in their heels and pose on the dual escalators past the waterfall, has done something to my self-esteem. Which is sort of why I never read those magazines in the first place. But now it can't be helped, and I've been forced to confront my own schlubbiness. The nice thing about working in film is the jeans/t-shirt uniform which I bring to new levels by also not doing my face or hair until I get to work, after which I run to the bathroom and half-heartedly throw some clips in one and powder on the other. Besides, I live in Williamsburg/Greenpoint which makes Disheveled into an art. But Hearst is Manhattan - the kind of Manhattan where Sarah Jessica Parker bought her shoes and gossiped and ate brunch on HBO. Hearst creates that Manhattan. And a short while I afte...

is an asphalt factory in Queens. Which is where brian, our flat tire, our broken jack, and I spent the afternoon. When the triple A guy finally arrived to lend us his jack, we were half delirious from the fumes and the inside of our noses burned in an unnatural way. How do you like them apples?

Sure, there are days when the fear really gets to you. There are days when you wonder why you made this choice, when you have no idea how to accomplish anything or even what the next step is. The path is all full of brambles and your paycheck is late. And of course the fear is nothing compared to the times when you wake up in an empty apartment and the only plan you have is to work in your bedroom alone all day and then go to sleep in the same room in order to do it again tomorrow. All for a movie that's full of flaws and empty of promise and not necessarily worth it. Then there are the days when you go to Joe's house to borrow some lights and he lends you his camera too so that one huge problem is solved, and you find it's easier to breathe. And then you put your glasses on to discover the brown lump on the couch is kenan feeling sorry for himself on a gig that fell through, and would you like some tea? So you drink the tea and tell them how you couldn't help but feel ...

Powerwalking down 8th avenue after work the other day, I was struck with a sobering thought.  If a portal to another dimension magically opened up on the sidewalk beside me, I wouldn't notice.  I'd be too busy stressing about rental houses and insurance agencies, and I'd march right past. Somehow, without my noticing, I'd become a grown-up.   The thought was so disturbing that I spent the rest of my walk trying to figure out how to reverse the effects. Maybe it's time to get out of the city?

I drove my car back from Massachusetts last night singing on the top of my lungs. I sang every song I know. Every showtune from every album I had as a child, from every play in high school including the parts I never got. Before that I sang about the woman who swallowed a fly. I don't know why she swallowed a fly. I sang about the rare bog in the valley-oh, meeting a bear up in the woods, about picking up a bumble bee. Then I went on to all the lyrics I could remember of all the pop songs and all the folks songs I could think of. Unfortunately, I couldn't get very far on those without help and so I just switched to a new song when I couldn't remember a verse. Which is why I ran out of songs to sing when I was still in Connecticut.  When I finally arrived in Brooklyn, my throat was hoarse. And when I reached under the seat to grab my stuff, my hands closed around something unfamiliar. It was the crack pipe belonging to the asshole who stole my radio. I rasped out a quick cur...

Yesterday the jackhammer woke me up at dawn and told me spring had come.  I ran downstairs and asked the orange man what they were doing and he said they would just dig up this block and leave the rest of the street alone.  But I didn't believe him.  When I turned away, the little hammer winked at me. Cheeky bastard.

If I remember correctly, the term from screenwriting class was ethical mode of action . To get it, you take a character and push him, and then push him a little more until he is quite uncomfortable, and then you sit back and watch what he does. His behavior in this extreme moment of his life defines his future existence for you. And hopefully it will prove you've concocted a person with the strength of will to stand up to the empire, or whatever it is you want him to do. Discovering elements of one's own ethical mode of action is a lot less fun. My discovery began this way: Enter a windswept,autumn night. A few sprinklings of drops, the hint of a rainstorm. Make it late for a work night- 9 or so o'clock. Add a good amount of crappy-job fatigue, accelerated by the knee-snapping speedwalk of a greenpointer with a half a mile still to go. Make sure it's just late enough that moving the car is going to take some time, and then throw in, just for fun, the discovery of a pile...

One summer spent in New York with my car (my LA sweetheart) has yielded this conclusion: Having a car unjustly towed by the NYPD, and having its window smashed and stereo stolen by a garden variety Brooklyn thug feels exactly the same. It costs about the same too. Conversely, the resulting misery is inversely proportional to the sweeping lights of joy experienced when the last concrete building outside the city fades away and all the adventures of the countryside spill out onto the road. So it was worth it I think as I send my car back to its winter hideaway in my parents' driveway in Massachusetts. Despite the price.

Ode sleepy dawns in greenpoint the sun slips past the dreamsighs of my pillow and waits listening the orange man assembles he bows to the foreman raises his instrument and begins O dear jackhammer what would summer be without your per- p-p-pERp-p-p-perPET-ual PUSH

My apartment windows don't have any screens. My roommates like it this way. And so do I. It's prettier. We get unfiltered Brooklyn sunlight in every room. When tall, skinny neighbors come to visit, they can holler up at me and I can stick my head out my bedroom window and holler back. I have total freedom to lean out from the living room and glare my disgust at the latin music beating from the parked car on the corner. And one day, I really will have the courage to lean way out and yell, "Yo! Cheese Sandwich!" to the slow bodega clerk across the street so that my food will be ready for me when I get downstairs. We live only barely separated from the outside world. No screens, no air conditioners. When the neighborhood cats go into heat, we know it. When I was little, my parents used to joke that I had sweet blood. I imagined my veins running rich with fruit juice, and felt special for all my bites. So my first summer in this apartment, snapping awake every night and s...

At nine o'clock in the morning, before she left for work, my roommate sat down at the kitchen table and wrote down on a piece of paper, "I, Julianne B- ask Katerina to take my teddy bear, my cds, my photo albums, and some clothes including my good shoes." I read the list outloud over her shoulder. "So that's what you're going to take with you today?" "No, it's what Katerina shold grab for me if the apartment catches fire." I glanced out of the window to where twelve storeys of apocalyptic smoke blackened the sky two blocks away. Down below, a line of men in uniforms stood ready in front of our building, waiting for the slightest wind shift to tempt the fire with the prospects of fresh fodder. Because who would be satisfied with an empty warehouse, when there's plenty of prime real-estate right next door? "Umm, if our house catches fire," I said, "I don't think Katerina's going to want to spend time going through y...

Chock a Block. So everyone knows that our existence lies on a dimension that is coiled around an infinity of others similar to our own but different in as many ways. All of these planes of existence lie tightly wrapped and slightly translucent, like that vibrant vegetable, so that it's hard not feel that with the right kind of light and the right way of looking, you can see into the next one. There are some places where these dimensions lie so close together that to see the next one, you hardly need any light at all. Like, of course, in New York City. For example, in my neighborhood in Greenpoint, you can find the land of the children. Twenty or so kids without the suburban luxury of furnished basements, their dramas play out on the streets. Clustered on sidewalks, playing cards, wrestling with a basketball, eying each other. For some reason, I can see them as clear as day, but they can't see me. Sometimes I stare at them, just because I can, because they can't tell. You k...

Have you ever seen a stranger on the street and known in an instant that they'd be an excellent person to date your ex? Something about the carriage of their head, the way they meet your eyes, unashamed in public, grinning at you a little from under their fluffy hat. He could love you, I think. Easily. He could love you and you'd sing songs together and romp around and have adventures in odd places. And I'd hate to hate you and probably love you too after the jealousy faded. Cause you look awesome and fun and I've always had trouble understanding ownership anyway. I wondered once what she was thinking, peeking at one such girl on the V train. Did she look back at me thinking her ex would like me too? Or maybe I got it all wrong. Maybe she was just looking at me alone, dreaming little dreams, a half smile turned away at the last second. Who knows why people stare at each other in the subway anyway?

"I'm sorry. It's awful, I know." "It's- Yes." "I tried four times. I can't write block letters. It's the reason kenan never let me draw the stadium posters. I was only allowed to color them in." "Look, it's fine. Do you have a ruler we can use to hold it up?" He folded the piece of paper in half so that the lettering was more prominent and the crossed out M resembling a W was no longer visible underneath. "But nobody will be able to understand what it says." "It's ok. Anybody who sees two kids with a sign is going to know they want a ride and that they want a ride to Manhattan." "Greatest city in the world." Yesterday and the day before, some desperate drivers took us in through the tunnel to meet their quota. So our plan was to try to shorten our walk and get a ride TO the tunnel, or even better, to the bridge. "Look, this time let's not get in just any old car that stops f...

      Well, this week beats last week's gig as a waitress at a money-laundering operation for Albanian thugs. That blog was too hard to write, so I skipped it.       "Ok, here's the pitch." The producer slid into the chair between the piles of vhs tapes and invoices, pushing aside the giant rubberband ball and the plastic keyboard accessories that we'd been throwing at each other earlier. He shoved the storyboard in front of us. "So there are these people and they're driving in this car. They're having so much fun that they don't want to leave. We need music for it that is classical but still kind of poppy. You know, fun and cute but sweeping and orchestral. Something hip but not too young. Something moving, but not powerful. You know, popular but not too recognizable. And we need it in an hour."       So the task fell to us to dig through our music files and memory for our favorite songs that could be used f...

Spring was joyful but short-lived. Now the air is like dirty bathwater and there's no easy place to go swimming. It smells like rot and exhaust and there's always some guy on a jackhammer outside my window in the morning. On the subway, I practice careful breathing. Sandwiched between so many damp bodies, the air is sick with the sweat of multiple ages and genders and ethnicities. The other day on the bus, a short man standing next to me looked down and inadvertently wiped his sweaty, bald head on my arm. Not wanting to embarrass him, and not having anything with which to clean myself, I let this stranger's sweat dry on my body. And still, I am so glad to be back. New York! I spend my free time puttering around my new apartment, running my hands on the windowsills, breathing into my little potted plants. Buying lamps and growing roots, slamming them into the ground. home home home home home home. Then at night, practicing guitar up on the roof where it's cool, the eas...