Tuesday, September 18, 2018

Skyline Climbers



  • The dogs of Manhattan seem miserable, caged even leashed outside, piss-smells on nothing but hydrant and concrete, flinch too many humans flinch honking cars flinch fucking sirens.
  • Walked from Penn Station to Whitney Museum then weaved through Greenwich Village (got to Houston, didn't go to Soho) then 5th up from 10th to Broadway and Broadway through Times Square up to Museum of Art and Design where Broadway meets 8th and 60th but ran out of time, walked south on 8th to 31st and Penn Station and Earthgirl and bus home.
  • Had two slices, one for breakfast, one before bus ride home, I cannot get pizza like this in Moco or DC, the fuck is wrong with people around here.
  • I am not the dog-whisperer the cat-whisperer I am, but I can talk to dogs and not a single dog of the dozens of dozens I saw but the three pit-bulls who each adopted a homeless guy I gave food too smiled at me.
  • I would love a four day weekend in NYC once a year, that's enough.
  • Astonishing David Wojnarowicz exhibit at Whitney (photo above taken from a Whitney outdoor terrace looking east, below, Wojnarowicz).










ONE POSSIBLE MEANING

Charlie Smith

This afternoon the park is filled with brides.
Among varieties of persuasion the big trees turn back toward the forest.
Adventurers gather in side streets.
The police are looking hard at the sky.
Down at the bay, boys trapped in solitude fish.
Girls hike their pants and stare at the wave line,
remembering secrets they once held dear.
The day offers a ridiculous variation as
an excuse for not coming in on time.
Wild imaginings take the place of religion.
Someone who can't swim offers to cook.
We've devised a means for the obstinate children
to be fed, she says, but no one understands this.
We crave affection, but give only advice.
There are walls topped with broken bicycles.
Someone makes an obscene offer and this
is the best we get all day. Oh don't give in
so easily she says, handing over the keys.
We climb the blue fire escape.
We would like to keep going,
skyline climbers, old men remembering their childhood
who devise a few illegal experiences no one wants to try.
It gets to be more than the officers can take.
The park is dusty, dark, yet the children,
ignored all day, play on, convinced their dedication
releases a magic that changes everything.

7 comments:

  1. Closest I've come to NYC pizza in MoCo is PizzaCS, which IMO is very good. I was also very sad when Haven bit the dust because New Haven pizza is even better than NYC. I will be taking comments off line...

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    1. Yeah, it's about the best, and the parking is easy, but a slice rolled into a tube with orange grease running down the chin....

      Have you tried Pete's New Haven corner Wisconsin and Fessenden? I never thought about the New Haven thing till now. Was good the twice I tried it but out of the way re: when I eat, will go back.

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    2. Pete's is pretty good but I thought Haven was better.

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    3. O, on Wisconsin down from the Women's Farm Market, I'd forgot about them, I think we didn't try it until they were close to going out of business....

      Vace across the street from whatever Haven is called now makes good pizza and sells slices - something else you don't get in Moco.

      I know people who go Pines of Rome, Pines of Rome, but no.

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  2. ...the fly in the ointment...

    Thanks for the mention!! Best is yet to come!
    Lived in Manhattan for 15+ years. Walked everywhere all the time. That smell, those sidewalk dwellers, that oppression, those slices, the fucking museums, that goddamn music scene. Went back for a conference in December. Zero nostalgia, but muscle memory of moving through underground tunnels and on subway cars and in and out of foot traffics.

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  3. Thankee Linky. Lived in Manhattan (333 E. 3rd @ 2nd Ave) for a while in the late 70's with the Girl Who Refused To Be Mrs Mongo. The building shared a wall with a Catholic convent house. In the winter of 77-78, before the first snowfall we forgot to close a bedroom window; on waking early, faint light, found a tiny drift like a sleeping cat had collected on the floor just below. At the same time, somwehere in the Naked City, Trumpy was bellowing into a phone, all blow and hoors. I feel so honored.

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  4. Um... that was 333 E. 33rd (Thirty-Third).

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