This Nightlife

for Robert Maril

It's 100 degrees in New York City,
and the only thing that can save you,
is the insane sparkling explosion of
Dr. Brown's Black Cherry Soda
on your tongue, like the future's version
of what a cherry used to taste like,
before the absence of bees
eliminated them not only from our mouths
but from our memory.
Then a stranger, a boy with cutoff jeans
and a string of red plastic beads says,
"Where is fashion in a time like this?"

--Acidic light, laid over the walls and floors
like a bright blanket of paisley laser beams.
--You holding onto me, attaching yourself,
saying, "This nightlife,"letting the idea hold in the air.
--Then, "I can't do this anymore."

Fridge Poems, Vol. 3

Someone gave me--maybe it was my mother--a set of magnetic poetry pieces, which spent almost 10 years stuck to one side of my fridge. In the first few years I spent living in my apartment, people made poems with the tiny words, but eventually, it became uninteresting, or too difficult, or some other reason. No new poems were made, but the old ones stuck. When I moved, I tossed the tiny pieces, but saved the poems that my friends had written via my digital camera. The pics are bad, but the poems are real. This is volume 3 of 5.

As Featured In

Many months ago, they made a movie called "The Backup Plan" with Jennifer Lopez. In it, she is a single lady who falls in love with a cheese farmer. And this cheese farmer sells his cheese as a farmer's market that, at least in the film, is a Hollywood-looking version of the Union Square Greenmarket. Deep Mtn. Maple, whose farm I work for, sent dozens of empty bottles to be filled with tea, or some other brown liquid, so that the maple syrup stand in the film--this is supposed to be the Northeast, remember, not a California backlot--would look real. This attention to subtlety would give the film's audience an almost unconscious sense of place. Or maybe it would be totally unconscious, since this is as much screen time as we got: (See that yellow tent behind JLo that says "Deep Mountain?")


Interestingly, or perhaps not interestingly, there is also a shot of this stand.....Northeast farm fail.

Fridge Poems, Vol. 2

Someone gave me--maybe it was my mother--a set of magnetic poetry pieces, which spent almost 10 years stuck to one side of my fridge. In the first few years I spent living in my apartment, people made poems with the tiny words, but eventually, it became uninteresting, or too difficult, or some other reason. No new poems were made, but the old ones stuck. When I moved, I tossed the tiny pieces, but saved the poems that my friends had written via my digital camera. The pics are bad, but the poems are real. This is volume 2 of 5.

Trying to See Plants

Today, we went to Lowe's. We got lots and lots of pots, huge bags of dirt and some tools. Our new house has a garden out back--er, rather, about 300 square feet of dirt which we hope to eventually make into a garden. (Is a garden a place, or a place-in-progress, or does it matter?)

As I said to my friend Nick, "I don't really see plants." Which is to say that, yes, I see them, but I don't really register them as something I'm interested in. Does that sound crazy? Since I'm a person who spends his weekends at work in a place overtaken by the glorious bounty of the earth? I can't remember the kinds of things that each of them needs. Lots of water or not much water? Lots of sun or shade? And what is partial sun? And remembering to pick and prune and cut and all that, I just can't figure any of it out.

Thank goodness for Kip. He has put everything that I bring home into the kind of container it likes, seems to know what they will need when they need it, and hasn't complained at all when I bring home strange things like . (I am not as easy-going when it comes to, well, okay, everything.) We don't want to put anything into the ground that we plan to eat--who knows what's gone on back here for the last fifty years--so for the time being it's all in pots. Eventually, we hope to rip up this strange material the previous tenants put over the ground, and figure out what to do with the space. Decking? Chairs? Planting boxes? A pool?

Here's what we're growing so far: Green Grape Tomatoes, some other kind of tomato, Peppers (red and yellow, shishito, orange thai, serrano, poblano), Genovese basil, sweet thai basil, French and lime thyme, French tarragon, rosemary, cucumbers, lavender, Turkish parsley, Crimson Climber Morning Glory, Moonflower, and Giant Salmon Rose Zinnias. Does that sound like a lot?

And here's what it looks like:
If any of you have tips you can let me know. Like, forreal.

Fridge Poems, Vol. 1

Someone gave me--maybe it was my mother--a set of magnetic poetry pieces, which spent almost 10 years stuck to one side of my fridge. In the first few years I spent living in my apartment, people made poems with the tiny words, but eventually, it became uninteresting, or too difficult, or some other reason. No new poems were made, but the old ones stuck. When I moved, I tossed the tiny pieces, but saved the poems that my friends had written via my digital camera. The pics are bad, but the poems are real. This is volume 1 of 5.

Brooklyn !!

Kip's cats were inseparable, like a single animal with one set of thoughts--twin boys, mostly Russian Blue, skittish but loving and lively. They slept together, ate together, smothered us with their furry nuzzles in the bed together. Then we woke up one morning two months ago to find Joel walking funny. Actually, the way he was limping his hind leg made me feel as if something was seriously wrong--my instinct said this can not wait until later, he needs to go to the doctor right now. I wondered if he'd broken his foot in the night, or caught a toe somewhere and had to pull himself free. The vet said that it was bone cancer, and his legs were eaten up with it. We aren't the kind of people to let things drag on and on, and so Joel never came home. Since then, Zane has been a new, refreshed kind of cat--demanding more and more attention in the cutest, most delicious of ways, and wanting nothing more than to be by our sides at every moment. Yesterday, when I moved my two cats from Astoria to our new apartment in Ditmas Park, I wondered how the meeting would go.

When Zane saw Bad Thing (yes, that's his name) for the first time, electricity fired through the air and Zane made the most incredible, completely recognizable--which is to say, human--movements. It was so clear. He thought it was Joel, then upon realizing that it wasn't, he blinked, set down his head, and let out a sad, guttural wail. I'll never forget it. This first, tiny interaction was enough to send me into a spiral of sadness and longing, which I'm sure was nothing like the confused tunnel of memories that Zane was going through. We recognize that cats are "like" us a little bit, but we too often see ourselves as different creatures. What a beautiful, extraordinary, unexpectedly emotional moment.

Since then, they have growled, hissed and postured, in every room of the new house, trying to figure out who belongs where--maybe not understanding that as of yesterday they both belong everywhere. The most coveted area is, of course, the bed, where both of the humans are laying flat for long periods of time, and are most likely to hug and squeeze and love them. We'll see how that works out.

The move has been a lovely one, despite the days of stress and anxiety and uncertainty, and I am sure that when the boxes are all unpacked and the house starts to look like somewhere people could actually live, we'll settle in nicely. People keep asking if the move "went well." It did, despite my movers showing up 2 hours late. Although the hardest part is the part we're doing now--the deciding not only where to put everything, but more importantly, how you want to move through your space. How do you want to sit in your new office? Where should each "category" of kitchen item live? What art do you want to look at when you sit in this chair, or that chair? How do you work the dishwasher, and the new-fangled stove that preheats to 400 degrees in 6 minutes, no really.

Bean, my more adorable and more, um, Rubenesque cat, has spent the last 48 hours under the guest bedroom in the basement. She has come out once to pee--that I know of, and a few times I can coax her out for a few minutes of loving and a little sip of water. The last time I moved--9 years ago, when she was 4 years old--she stayed wrapped up inside an overcoat on a chair for three days. I want my happy little girl back.

I'm thrilled, don't get me wrong. The house is so beautiful, and so full of promise and opportunity, not to mention the most luxurious washer/dryer and central air that a person could desire. Oh yeah, and we have a backyard--it's a wreck right now, but soon (soonish?) we'll have a deck and some plants and a little garden party.

But...promise me that we made the right choice. Promise me that the bumps in the road ahead will be remembered as tiny victories over the things we used to think were problems, but really weren't. Promise me that soon we'll all end up, the five of us, napping and talking and loving in the bed with no growling or hissing (or snoring from the boyfriend). Promise me that everything will be alright.

What I Am Thinking About This Week

Today, as I begin changing everything I can think of from my old address to my new address, I am thinking of every place my information resides--banks, insurance, magazines and post office, credit cards, AAA, more and more, and more that I surely have forgotten. I'm also thinking about all this Facebook privacy stuff, how everyone is going crazy reacting to the idea that maybe your "information" has been compromised, and what is going to happen when your "information" is leaked to "outside sources." And, on top of that, I'm thinking of the census takers who I see walking around neighborhoods, with their clipboards and their open, hopeful faces. And also their begging and knocking on doors and talking to people who are too confused, or jaded, or suspicious to answer the questions. In short: I am thinking about all the ways in which we want and don't want to be known.

I am curious about the shock and surprise people are having, or are at least expressing, when they find out that Facebook, a free service, has shared their "information" with third party websites in order to, well, sell you things. I only ask: What did you expect from a website that asked you to enter all your "information" and then tracked every click of here and there? Also, What information are you trying to protect? Also, it only knows what you tell it.

I am thinking about one of my favorite things in New York, which is the moment when you put something on the curb that you don't need any more and then you go to get a Vietnamese ravioli, and when you come back, it's gone. I am thinking about how I love, love, love the efficiency of this. And I am even imagining what the object must feel when it is given a new home, and suddenly made useful once again. This makes me think of Naomi Shihab Nye's poem "Famous" where she says "I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous/or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular/but because it never forgot what it could do."

Right this moment, I am thinking: I should not have eaten the entire of bag of potato chips.

"Now you have to start letting it go," said Peter, my editor, after I turned in the final draft of my novel. I thought I had been doing that since 2005, which was when I originally finished it. (I say that--originally--because not only did Peter ask me to write a new scene or two, and to adjust a thing or two, I think I probably could have tinkered with it for another five years. It's true when they say you never finish a novel, you just stop.) But I hadn't really let it go. Do you ever? I tell you this about Peter firstly because he was right (as per usual) and also because I notice myself wondering how I am reflected in the work, and wondering how to let go of that. Just tonight, I handed a galley to a friend of a friend and thought "Oh, there I go, into his hand, into his head, and digested." (Of course, this is not really how we read books, and I know that, so I am aware that it's me and not the real thing that's happening.) What's interesting, and hard to deal with, apparently, is how I want to be known for the book, but also distance myself from the book. Oh, art, you are so complicated and wonderful and I love you!

New Occupations

• Pie-rate
• Phishmonger
• Revengineer
• Turban Planner
• Cluckmaker
• Investment Bonker
• Flautaist
• Buttler
• S'morrier
  

What You Find When You Go Through Everything