crepuscular

outside d.b.a. brooklyn 8/09




Different from the Nocturnal, or the Diurnal,
there is a shy, little known third sleep-habited sibling,
the awake in dawn and dusk,
those who live in the gloaming, only
twilight, Mourning Doves, that nameless rat and deer.
How strange that they have twice as many
days as us.
What will happen
when dystopia finally rolls around, huh?
In that constant grayed dim,
moths beetles guinea pigs
and cats will rule over everything
and be dayless,
sleepless and powerful a giant particulate
Leviathan in the translucent darkness.
And now,
this tangerine tastes alcoholic like a cider
and dusty like moths and garages, and I think
of fathers, yours and mine,
getting troubled in the twilight,
using days up twice as quickly after all,
theirs and ours, and those of many other
Diurnals (now insomniacs) that we love.





Crepuscular is a term used to describe some animals that are primarily active during twilight: at dawn and at dusk. The word is derived from the Latin word crepusculum, meaning "twilight." Crepuscular is thus in contrast with diurnal and nocturnal behavior. Crepuscular animals may also be active on a bright moonlit night.
The patterns of activity are thought to be an antipredator adaptation. Many predators forage most intensely at night, while others are active at mid-day and see best in full sun. Thus the crepuscular habit may reduce predation.

&&&, #1

hopkinton state park, MA / 5.09


I’ve been living hedonistically.
But I’ll always love shade plants more than sun plants,
their humble leaves rounded and tougher, duller darker
nothing showy like those dry bright noisy spangled
sun plants.
I prefer shade plants in the same way I will always prefer
The East Coast.
And still,
for someone who loves weird screensavers the way I do,
I make a good try at being useful.
Post-apocalyptic skills list into the double digits.
I don’t even run from bees anymore.
The houseplant has much in common with the shade plant
And is often a shade plant itself,
taken out of the ground with a little bit of dirt
to help us out up here.
Thanks Spider Plant.
My alley cave seems nicer now.
The day was so dark that the morning birds
never stopped calling. They
faded right into the evening birds.
The one that goes,
{Play or Sing: E sustained, B, B sliding to B flat}.

There’s only so much you can do
with what you get,
a broken chair,
a can of crushed pine-apples.

I Propose A Toast -

knees, mine / central park NY 8.09



Here I am finding myself wishing I’d have made something
and not wanting to make something. This happens to you too, right,
When Son House presents the Pony Blues,
When you hear the insects recently born in your alley,
new empowered party crowds arms bared
legs allowed by the new air’s slow
warmth, when radiostation is being created
somewhere close to you and you know
(because you and radio both agree,
you say Yes, exactly, to it)
and who could know about how here feels if they weren’t here now.
Radio and I should talk.
Someone tell them to say their phone number slower between songs,
like they would if they were expecting someone
to actually call.
There are more electronics home than people right now. When did it become like this?
To Do:
Sleep again
Wake again
Close the windows
Ask the city politely to stop pressuring me to participate
Participate
Pick up laundry.
My spicy breath feels seasonally inappropriate now. I must add
to my list,
Eat a cucumber.
And,
Buy a box of Sun, like the one Cara sleeps with, on like the day, plug
for indoor use only.
Set it on a timer to give the real Sun
a good example. Good examples always help
like the answers in the back of an algebra textbook help lazy students.
I ate the apples you left here last month.
They were gritty and old like the city and fermented like you.
Gritty and old like you too come to think of it.
You too had the chance at those new seeds but I ate them and have shitted
them out generously to this city’s soil,
made previously only of dead squirrels motor oil and newspapers,
now made also of cucumbers, this afternoon’s tacos
and the appleseed’s future apple-trees that should rightfully be growing from
your dead posthumous humus-dirt chest
sprouting in the center of your fertile pickled heart.

To Spring---

school's out for the winter

edward and jenny on our roof / manhattan 2.10




TODAY IS GREAT
SNOW IS GREAT
LUV U GLOBAL WARMING SEVERE STORMS
COME ON BEBE LETS FROLIC
AND THEN DRY OUR BOOTS BY THE RADIATOR
AND HAVE A NICE NIGHT IN YOU AND I ON THE LOVE SEAT.

Unsure of your position in human history?

hopkinton state forest, mass.



There is very little that you can do to comfort yourself.
At best, find someone to love, read Carl Sagan, and get out of your house before 10 AM every day.
At worst, sleep.

It's okay.

It was a bird in a cage

cold war bunker / nantucket MA july 09





warm war bunker / nantucket MA july 09






I just had the most refreshing sleepless lay-down I've ever had. I feel so good, and new. Lesson learned: embrace your insomnia.


HELLO AGAIN, EVERYTHING

I have not felt this sad or lonely in a long time, and now I have both

somebody with god & candle @ kent box / brooklyn dec 2009






But it's been so long that I forgot how to fix it

summerhot madness

this summer's tomatoes on the fire escape august 2009



went over to cara's new apartment last night, she's got exposed brick walls and a back porch with broken down chairs. i read a psychological study years ago that stated a high correlation between cityfolks with exposed brick in their apartments and overall feelings of contentedness. but correlation aint causation.

still, though, she's got a back porch with a sky in it, places for us to all sun our bones when this place starts to thaw (and it will)

after dinner we all started watching music videos with high school party scenes, feeling happy and like we had a past, and eventually we came upon will smith and dj jazzy jeff's "summertime"

that song makes me want to wear belly shirts and hang out on stoops and on cara's new back porch with the BBQ going all smoky and arnold palmer in my glass.

i'm realizing a function of my switching from digital to film: all my summer photos are coming back now, and i can't write about anything recent anymore. i look through my boxes and get pictures of tomatoes and tan faces and beaches.

so let me tell you a little something about my winter

it's cold, it's good, it's a little nervous. someone said the theme of this year should be decadence and i agree. i want to sit with all of you in warm rooms and revel in it. drink hot drinks out of nice glasses and wear impractically fuzzy socks that you can't even put shoes over, that's what i want.

i like winter best, i'm a winter creature, i like wearing more clothes and i hate sweat. i like seeing my breath. wearing big coats makes me feel tough and eastern european, i like to think of everything in cyrillic and all us humans just crazy enough to brave it these few months. i like how awake the cold makes me feel. i like how the city smells clean this once each year. i like the dry sidewalks like we're in the tundra, in a cold desert where everything just rattles and everything is hard surfaces. cities are meant for the winter and so am I.

i even like when the cold drives people inside, like any other condition new yorkers can't handle, like any time before 8 am. the streets get desolate like morning and walking around in my two pairs of pants and hood and black jacket, boots and flannel, long johns and blanket, i'm alright.

three cheers for winter shivers &
three chills for winter cheers

one girl girl-gang

meyer hall of physics/stuyvesant street garage/phil & john wayne at the kent box, nyc




as lil' kim would say, i was gone for a minute now i'm back at the jump off. (goons in the club 'case somethin jumps off.)

so everyone who's reading this is alive which means that we all made it through the worst of the winter darkness from hell, hope you're all at your artificial sunboxes basking and smiling because it only gets better from here. maybe vampires will finally become less popular. sunsets later and sunrises sooner folks

got a mason jar in my hand, some ones in my pocket and a sandwich in my stomach and it feels good to be back, i forgot how much my gang here loved to laugh loudly in restaurants, i forgot how good it feels to walk. forgot what a luxury the subway is, running all 24 hours (even the ungodly ones) and forgot how that agency to move is. no, i'm alright, i don't need you automobile, i've got the leaky tunnel and the plastic seats and the blackened tracks from here to anywhere. and im'a go.



what it really comes down to is why not

what it really comes down to is when, and let's

don't ask me what's happening because it's happening now so let's go.