Aubrey Sitterson, via Facebook:
"I want to have an upper body that says "I mean business," and a stomach that says "I still like to have a good time"
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Friday, April 3, 2009
Great Paragraphs
From "Henry Miller on Writing"
When I think of the titanic efforts I made to canalize the hot lava which was bubbling inside me, the efforts I repeated thousands of times to bring the funnel into place and capture a word, a phrase, I think inevitably of the men of the old stone age. A hundred thousand, two hundred thousand years, three hundred thousand years to arrive at the idea of the paleolith. A phantom struggle, because they weren't dreaming of such a thing as the paleolith. It came without effort, born of a second, a miracle you might say, except that everything which happens is miraculous. Things happen or they don't happen, that's all. Nothing is accomplished by sweat and struggle. Nearly everything which we call life is just insomnia, and agony because we've lost the habit of falling asleep. We don't know how to let go. We're like a Jack-in-the-box perched on top of a spring and the more we struggle the harder it is to get back in the box.
I think if I had been crazy I couldn't have hit upon a better scheme to consolidate my anchorage than to install this Neanderthal object in the middle of the parlor. With my feet on the desk, picking up the current, and my spinal column snugly socketed in a thick leather cushion, I was in an ideal relation to the flotsam and jetsam which was whirling about me, and which, because they were crazy and part of the flux, my friends were trying to convince me was life. I remember vividly the first contact with reality that I got through my feet, so to speak. The million words or so which I had written previously, which were intelligible words, mind you, well ordered, well connected, were as nothing to me -- crude ciphers from the old stone age -- because the contact was through the head and the head is a useless appendage unless you're anchored in the mid-channel deep in the mud. Everything I had written before was museum stuff, and most writing is still museum stuff and that's why it doesn't catch fire, doesn't inflame the world. I was only a mouth-piece for the ancestral race which was talking through me; even my dreams were not authentic, not bona fide Henry Miller dreams. To sit still and think one thought which would come up out of me, out of the life-buoy, was a Herculean task. I didn't lack thoughts nor words nor the power of expression -- I lacked something much more important: the lever which would shut off the juice. The bloody machine wouldn't stop, that was the difficulty. I was not only in the middle of the current but the current was running through me and I had no control over it whatsoever.
I remember the day I brought the machine to a dead stop and how the other mechanism, the one that was signed with my own initials and which I had made with my own hands and my own blood slowly began to function. I had gone to the theatre nearby to see a vaudeville show; it was the matinée and I had a ticket for the balcony. Standing on line in the lobby, I already experienced a strange feeling of inconsistency. It was as though I were coagulating, becoming a recognizable consistent mass of jelly. It was like the ultimate stage in the healing of a wound. I was at the height of normality, which is a very abnormal condition. Cholera might come and blow its foul breath in my mouth -- it wouldn't matter. I might bend over and kiss the ulcers of a leprous hand, and no harm could possible come to me. There was not just a balance in this constant warfare between health and disease, which is all that most of us may hope for, but there was a plus integer in the blood which meant that, for a few moments at least, disease was completely routed. If one had the wisdom to take root in such a moment, one would never again be ill or unhappy or even die. But to leap to this conclusion is to make a jump which would take one back farther than the old stone age. At that moment I wasn't even dreaming of taking root; I was experiencing for the first time in my life the meaning of the miraculous. I was so amazed when I heard my own cogs meshing that I was willing to die then and there for the privilege of the experience.
When I think of the titanic efforts I made to canalize the hot lava which was bubbling inside me, the efforts I repeated thousands of times to bring the funnel into place and capture a word, a phrase, I think inevitably of the men of the old stone age. A hundred thousand, two hundred thousand years, three hundred thousand years to arrive at the idea of the paleolith. A phantom struggle, because they weren't dreaming of such a thing as the paleolith. It came without effort, born of a second, a miracle you might say, except that everything which happens is miraculous. Things happen or they don't happen, that's all. Nothing is accomplished by sweat and struggle. Nearly everything which we call life is just insomnia, and agony because we've lost the habit of falling asleep. We don't know how to let go. We're like a Jack-in-the-box perched on top of a spring and the more we struggle the harder it is to get back in the box.
I think if I had been crazy I couldn't have hit upon a better scheme to consolidate my anchorage than to install this Neanderthal object in the middle of the parlor. With my feet on the desk, picking up the current, and my spinal column snugly socketed in a thick leather cushion, I was in an ideal relation to the flotsam and jetsam which was whirling about me, and which, because they were crazy and part of the flux, my friends were trying to convince me was life. I remember vividly the first contact with reality that I got through my feet, so to speak. The million words or so which I had written previously, which were intelligible words, mind you, well ordered, well connected, were as nothing to me -- crude ciphers from the old stone age -- because the contact was through the head and the head is a useless appendage unless you're anchored in the mid-channel deep in the mud. Everything I had written before was museum stuff, and most writing is still museum stuff and that's why it doesn't catch fire, doesn't inflame the world. I was only a mouth-piece for the ancestral race which was talking through me; even my dreams were not authentic, not bona fide Henry Miller dreams. To sit still and think one thought which would come up out of me, out of the life-buoy, was a Herculean task. I didn't lack thoughts nor words nor the power of expression -- I lacked something much more important: the lever which would shut off the juice. The bloody machine wouldn't stop, that was the difficulty. I was not only in the middle of the current but the current was running through me and I had no control over it whatsoever.
I remember the day I brought the machine to a dead stop and how the other mechanism, the one that was signed with my own initials and which I had made with my own hands and my own blood slowly began to function. I had gone to the theatre nearby to see a vaudeville show; it was the matinée and I had a ticket for the balcony. Standing on line in the lobby, I already experienced a strange feeling of inconsistency. It was as though I were coagulating, becoming a recognizable consistent mass of jelly. It was like the ultimate stage in the healing of a wound. I was at the height of normality, which is a very abnormal condition. Cholera might come and blow its foul breath in my mouth -- it wouldn't matter. I might bend over and kiss the ulcers of a leprous hand, and no harm could possible come to me. There was not just a balance in this constant warfare between health and disease, which is all that most of us may hope for, but there was a plus integer in the blood which meant that, for a few moments at least, disease was completely routed. If one had the wisdom to take root in such a moment, one would never again be ill or unhappy or even die. But to leap to this conclusion is to make a jump which would take one back farther than the old stone age. At that moment I wasn't even dreaming of taking root; I was experiencing for the first time in my life the meaning of the miraculous. I was so amazed when I heard my own cogs meshing that I was willing to die then and there for the privilege of the experience.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
i used to have a girlfriend known as Elsie...
Natasha Richardson in Cabaret, 1998Thank you for helping to ignite my love of musical theater. Rest surely in peace.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
I have a crush on Richard from Gawker
because of this, because it speaks to my ongoing battle with New York:
Goodbye! The city said. She wandered off, so did he. And the camera hovered. Somewhere in the East Village a girl sat while her laundry rolled around and around and around in a washer. She thought about Oregon, about Danny, about her mom. She missed all of them. On the Lower East Side an old man stood waiting for the light to change. How the neighborhood had changed, he thought. How everything has changed. The walk signal came on, and he pressed on. In Gramercy a husband rolled over in bed and pulled his wife close to him and began falling in love with her all over again. In Hell's Kitchen a boy looked across the bar at another boy and they both felt that something dangerous was about to happen. In Times Square a tourist stood lost and bewildered and amazed. In Harlem a man waiting for the bus watched skeptically as a stream of new arrivals came spilling out of the subway. Kids. College kids. In the barrio there was a party for Danielle, who got the job. In the Boogie Down a dad saw his kid sleeping in the car seat next to him and things made sense again, for a moment. Over there in Astoria they opened a second bottle of wine. They yelled in Jackson Heights because he was gone and was never coming back. In Greenpoint they spoke Polish on the phone, they told jokes that couldn't be translated. In Red Hook they finished moving the last of the furniture out of a TV show loft. In Park Slope a writer said goodnight to an otherwise empty apartment. In Midwood, the wait was worth it. The pizza was delicious. In Brighton Beach they watched the waves. Spring was almost here. In Tottenville a mother walked the quiet house and thought about summer camps, beach vacations, the spit-spit-spit of the sprinkler she'd need to get out of the garage.
And there was Whitney still, wandering lost and utterly unaware through this place. This wonderful place. These blocks like bones, these buildings like skin, these trees like hair. This mystery. This love. This sad stony expanse. This bright gleaming embrace. This hope, this fear. This silly, marvelous home. This City.
sampled from Richard's review of the final episode of MTV's The City.
Goodbye! The city said. She wandered off, so did he. And the camera hovered. Somewhere in the East Village a girl sat while her laundry rolled around and around and around in a washer. She thought about Oregon, about Danny, about her mom. She missed all of them. On the Lower East Side an old man stood waiting for the light to change. How the neighborhood had changed, he thought. How everything has changed. The walk signal came on, and he pressed on. In Gramercy a husband rolled over in bed and pulled his wife close to him and began falling in love with her all over again. In Hell's Kitchen a boy looked across the bar at another boy and they both felt that something dangerous was about to happen. In Times Square a tourist stood lost and bewildered and amazed. In Harlem a man waiting for the bus watched skeptically as a stream of new arrivals came spilling out of the subway. Kids. College kids. In the barrio there was a party for Danielle, who got the job. In the Boogie Down a dad saw his kid sleeping in the car seat next to him and things made sense again, for a moment. Over there in Astoria they opened a second bottle of wine. They yelled in Jackson Heights because he was gone and was never coming back. In Greenpoint they spoke Polish on the phone, they told jokes that couldn't be translated. In Red Hook they finished moving the last of the furniture out of a TV show loft. In Park Slope a writer said goodnight to an otherwise empty apartment. In Midwood, the wait was worth it. The pizza was delicious. In Brighton Beach they watched the waves. Spring was almost here. In Tottenville a mother walked the quiet house and thought about summer camps, beach vacations, the spit-spit-spit of the sprinkler she'd need to get out of the garage.
And there was Whitney still, wandering lost and utterly unaware through this place. This wonderful place. These blocks like bones, these buildings like skin, these trees like hair. This mystery. This love. This sad stony expanse. This bright gleaming embrace. This hope, this fear. This silly, marvelous home. This City.
sampled from Richard's review of the final episode of MTV's The City.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
A brief service announcement from Rachel
"Hey Brutus...what the fuck?"
Beware the Ides of March, all.
Beware the Ides of March, all.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
A brief service announcement from Rachel
On the Fancy Food Show due in New York on June 28-30th, 2009:
"Why do we have to wait? Why do we have to wait so long? Why can't it be now? Why can't it be every day? Oh God -- I have a problem. I have Fancy Food Showitis!"
"Why do we have to wait? Why do we have to wait so long? Why can't it be now? Why can't it be every day? Oh God -- I have a problem. I have Fancy Food Showitis!"
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
New York, I'm Yours
I was listening to The Decemberists on the way to work this morning -- "Los Angeles, I'm Yours" specifically -- and it made me wonder: why do I stay in New York? Reworking some already well written lyrics, here's why:
There is a city in the sea
A restless company
I don’t suppose you want to
And as it yells its angry tale
In sadist detail
Its affinity will haunt you
Its streets and avenues
Manics and ministers it hears
A destructive harmony
Shattering symphony
Hope and hopeless on the shore,
New York, I’m yours
Oh fellows, cocksure with allure
Empty of the pure
You can see my fear
And all the boys you drag about
A weeded crescent fount
From Saturdays to Saturday
You up and downtown crowd
Eyes hanging at your lips
We hope for the realest thing
As ancient choirs sing
One anxious cherub wheels above
New York, my love
Fuck, what a surge of pained brio
Seething on senses
Salient and surrogate
But oh, the smell of destiny
The heartache and vanity
It only makes me stoned
Oh great catastrophe,
Ditch of iniquity and tears
How I abhor this place
Its sweet and bitter taste
Has left me wretched, retching on all fours
New York, I’m yours
Saturday, February 14, 2009
never have I loved since then.
Because nothing has really changed and everything has really changed, today I default to last year.
Thank God I have The Tents to get lost in. Saved by Fashion Week. Who'd of thought?
to love.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
I double fist.
With my blogging that is.
I'll be contributing regularly to Gastrononymous (my friend's, Lauren Murphy, food blog) with recipes, restaurant finds and anything else that relates to my epicurean endeavors in New York and beyond. Yummy.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
a great way to start the day.
This is one of those things you discover that makes you smile...and then makes you hate yourself for not being so simplistically creative. Alas.
via I LEGO N.Y.
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