findyourown

eco-system

ruckerpark — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 15:08:11 +0000

lately i have been unsubscribing from quite a few listservs. mostly announcements for parties and clubs i don’t go to, stores i can’t shop at, information that means little to me. i have also been subscribing to some: inspiring messages from the stars (up above, not in hollywoodland) and planets, inspiring messages from the corporatized buddha (give me a break, its the interweb after all). there seems to be a trend. no money, starved spirit. no cash, need a plan. bread and cheese do not, it seems, go together.

waiting game

ruckerpark — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 01:58:59 +0000

he taught me how to wait. he taught me by tying me to him then cutting the string and tying me to a bike rack or bench or telephone pole, parking meter, mailbox, 5-speed clutch. now that i have the will to wait for love, i have use of the tools i gathered doing all that waiting against my will. sitting in my car for private eternities.. reading, knitting, writing, singing, trying to keep warm, trying to keep cool, trying to keep it together. i learned how to find an appropriate and/or suitable place to urinate in almost any demographic. how to walk into a yogurt shop and take a plastic spoon from the counter, and walk right out with confidence. these are the skills and the process was dull, demeaning. the graduation, gradual. and the spoils are like medicated ghee on my eyeballs; suprisingly oily and unsurprising. all the shame and anger i used to feel at my forgottenness, all that betrayal and servitude, now fallen away, melted and almost gone. all almost gone like a grandmother dead 20 years this month but not dead because we all stilll need and love and dream and are her so. because he now still can feel how he then gave me my broken-ness.

so i waited for him yesterday with the want and the love firmly set and i learned some things in the process. i sat in the car and translated a susana baca song with my cellphone, and i agreed with my preciously conceived notion that whoever that man is trying to sing her song (david byrne, turns out) should have asked someone who could give him a more honest opinion about it without fear of social death. i spent some time with myself and with haruki murakami, and with a scary how-to book about grant writing that was secret propaganda for an american nationalism i cannot swallow, and i walked up and down court street several times. the last time it was raining and i had left all three umbrellas and the one raincoat in the car so i got wet. at the corporate bookstore i copied a pattern for a big wool blanket and a couple of new stitches, and i sat and thumbed through some dead white man’s thoughts about love and disagreed with gentle blackafrican certainty. there was a man in the cafe reading a novel to his wife, but that’s all speculation.

money for parking tickets

ruckerpark — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 16:16:49 +0000

$35 for parking at a broken meter, on or around smith and pacific. absolutely had to walk around aimlessly and then with a purpose, to find bedouin tent and have some lentil soup. the music it seems, is only for weekenders and its one guy who smiles when provoked and solos endlessly over beats he “made?” at home. it provides exactly the atmosphere one requires when eating a few too many beets.

$185 to get the car out of the brooklyn navy yard impound lot. i cannot resist saying “thank you” to the traffic cop who shuttles me to my car to retrieve the insurance and registration so i can be proven authorized to pay all this money for free overnight waterfront parking.

$118 ticket on the car when i am finally reshuttled back. ticket is dated approximately 10 minutes before the car was towed, which was approximately 30 hours after i parked there in the first place. saturday traffic cops, it seems, are bout it bout it.

the angel on the left shoulder says contest, but the devil on the right is too lazy for picket lines.