recurring dreams of loss and pain
featuring actors too often seen
make the waking world into a sham
and find the truth in sleep
Brown Penny
William Butler Yeats
I whispered, ‘I am too young,’
And then, ‘I am old enough’;
Wherefore I threw a penny
To find out if I might love.
‘Go and love, go and love, young man,
If the lady be young and fair.’
Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
I am looped in the loops of her hair.
O love is the crooked thing,
There is nobody wise enough
To find out all that is in it,
For he would be thinking of love
Till the stars had run away
And the shadows eaten the moon.
Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
One cannot begin it too soon.
Online text © 1998-2005 Poetry X.
7.29.2005
7.27.2005
7.26.2005
Know your rights: Subway search tips from Alert Reader Matt
When Refusing a Search, Be Cool
If you choose to walk through a random search area and are stopped, you may refuse to be searched. In fact, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly has said that you are free to "turn around and leave" any subway system where police are conducting random searches.So if you are stopped, remain calm and courteous. And don't ever -- under any circumstances -- talk back or raise your voice to the police officer. You have nothing to gain -- and everything to lose -- by escalating the hostility level of the encounter.
Calmly and clearly say "Officer, I do not consent to any searches. I'm going to exit the station." Then immediately exit the station -- and do not return through the same entrance.
Refusal is Not Guilt
The police directive states that individuals who refuse to be searched can leave the subway system, and that such a refusal "shall not constitute probable cause for an arrest or reasonable suspicion for a forcible stop."
Warning: If you refuse to be searched and attempt to enter the turnstile anyway, you may be arrested.
Shut Your Mouth and Your Wallet
Some media reports state that police are requesting identification and in some cases immigration papers.You do not have to answer any police questions or give any information -- including your name, ID citizenship or immigration status -- whether or not you consent to a search. But remember, anything you say can be used against you.
Do Not Physically Resist
Again, it is illegal for police to search, detain, or question you just because you refuse a search. But if the police proceed to detain, search, or arrest you despite your wishes -- do not physically resist. You may state clearly but non-confrontationally: "Officer, I am not resisting and I do not consent to any searches."
WARNING: DO NOT RUN!If you refuse to be searched and run into the station, you could be shot to death! On Friday, an innocent man was shot in the head by police in a London subway station. The man had run away after being approached by an undercover officer.If you're approached by anyone suspicious in the subway, walk to the nearest uniformed officer for help -- but don't run away.
For more tips on maintaining your civil rights and safety while helping to prevent terrorism, look here http://www.flexyourrights.org/subway/
one thing here: while i may occasionally have left my house with a small amount of pot for recreational purposes only, and would prefer not to be searched, or for there to be any reason for searches at all, i'm also grateful to the nyc police in particular and law enforcement authorities in general for putting their lives on the line to stop the bad guys who want us all bloody and crying and then dead. fuck you, terrorists.
When Refusing a Search, Be Cool
If you choose to walk through a random search area and are stopped, you may refuse to be searched. In fact, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly has said that you are free to "turn around and leave" any subway system where police are conducting random searches.So if you are stopped, remain calm and courteous. And don't ever -- under any circumstances -- talk back or raise your voice to the police officer. You have nothing to gain -- and everything to lose -- by escalating the hostility level of the encounter.
Calmly and clearly say "Officer, I do not consent to any searches. I'm going to exit the station." Then immediately exit the station -- and do not return through the same entrance.
Refusal is Not Guilt
The police directive states that individuals who refuse to be searched can leave the subway system, and that such a refusal "shall not constitute probable cause for an arrest or reasonable suspicion for a forcible stop."
Warning: If you refuse to be searched and attempt to enter the turnstile anyway, you may be arrested.
Shut Your Mouth and Your Wallet
Some media reports state that police are requesting identification and in some cases immigration papers.You do not have to answer any police questions or give any information -- including your name, ID citizenship or immigration status -- whether or not you consent to a search. But remember, anything you say can be used against you.
Do Not Physically Resist
Again, it is illegal for police to search, detain, or question you just because you refuse a search. But if the police proceed to detain, search, or arrest you despite your wishes -- do not physically resist. You may state clearly but non-confrontationally: "Officer, I am not resisting and I do not consent to any searches."
WARNING: DO NOT RUN!If you refuse to be searched and run into the station, you could be shot to death! On Friday, an innocent man was shot in the head by police in a London subway station. The man had run away after being approached by an undercover officer.If you're approached by anyone suspicious in the subway, walk to the nearest uniformed officer for help -- but don't run away.
For more tips on maintaining your civil rights and safety while helping to prevent terrorism, look here http://www.flexyourrights.org/subway/
one thing here: while i may occasionally have left my house with a small amount of pot for recreational purposes only, and would prefer not to be searched, or for there to be any reason for searches at all, i'm also grateful to the nyc police in particular and law enforcement authorities in general for putting their lives on the line to stop the bad guys who want us all bloody and crying and then dead. fuck you, terrorists.
7.25.2005
fer de lance, as of july 22nd
well first thing's first, armstrong takes his seventh and self-proclaimed final tour de france. is there anything that's beyond this guy? armstrong, buttstrong, headstrong... dickstrong? er, excuse me. anyway, go lance!
before i go get some work done, i wanted to bitch for a moment about the newest subway announcement, which goes like this: "as of july 22nd, police are authorised to conduct random searches on your backpacks and other large bags..." while i appreciate that someone up there wants to make sure no one's carrying a bomb, i am pretty sure that wouldn't stop them from arresting those among us who might happen to be transporting the kind of things one might put in a bong.
ugh.
well first thing's first, armstrong takes his seventh and self-proclaimed final tour de france. is there anything that's beyond this guy? armstrong, buttstrong, headstrong... dickstrong? er, excuse me. anyway, go lance!
before i go get some work done, i wanted to bitch for a moment about the newest subway announcement, which goes like this: "as of july 22nd, police are authorised to conduct random searches on your backpacks and other large bags..." while i appreciate that someone up there wants to make sure no one's carrying a bomb, i am pretty sure that wouldn't stop them from arresting those among us who might happen to be transporting the kind of things one might put in a bong.
ugh.
7.20.2005
7.19.2005
7.18.2005
love sick
my aunt, who raised me along with her sister, my grandma, has cancer. this is a long stomach-aching nightmarish kind of thing that i hate, like when my grandmother had to go on dialysis and then had a hysterectomy and died.
i am such a pessimist, such a hypochondriac, myself, that i feel i lack sufficient faith. i want to believe so hard in the miracle that the miracle imprints itself into reality, but instead i fear that the sheer weight of my cowardliness is a danger to the people i'm worrying about. am i so selfish that my fear, my knowledge that someday something terrible will happen to me, outweighs my ability to be brave and to love and to have real hope? (oh, hell, am I so ruinously self-involved that, like a black hole in the center of the galaxy, i believe that the black gravity of my miserable heart swings the stars around?)
how do awful illnesses sneak in when no one's ready and bite out chunks of living flesh while we cry and wonder what happened to the so-real time when everything was different and okay?
when grandma was admitted to the hospital, it was because her legs were swollen, and then it was because she had kidney failure, and then she was diagnosed with uterine cancer and then, on the last day, when i got there too late, she was dead. swollen legs, kidney failure, cancer, death. it's like stomachache, bad clams, neurotoxins, paralysis, death. or ski injury, slight scratch, infected cut, necrotizing fasciitis, no arms. you start out with a flesh wound, and you end up pale and cold with your tongue sticking out a little, quiet forever, but still smelling just like you always did, surrounded by crying people who can't understand how yesterday grandma was sick and just look, she's lying right there, but she's never, evern getting up again. oh, mercy.
my aunt, who raised me along with her sister, my grandma, has cancer. this is a long stomach-aching nightmarish kind of thing that i hate, like when my grandmother had to go on dialysis and then had a hysterectomy and died.
i am such a pessimist, such a hypochondriac, myself, that i feel i lack sufficient faith. i want to believe so hard in the miracle that the miracle imprints itself into reality, but instead i fear that the sheer weight of my cowardliness is a danger to the people i'm worrying about. am i so selfish that my fear, my knowledge that someday something terrible will happen to me, outweighs my ability to be brave and to love and to have real hope? (oh, hell, am I so ruinously self-involved that, like a black hole in the center of the galaxy, i believe that the black gravity of my miserable heart swings the stars around?)
how do awful illnesses sneak in when no one's ready and bite out chunks of living flesh while we cry and wonder what happened to the so-real time when everything was different and okay?
when grandma was admitted to the hospital, it was because her legs were swollen, and then it was because she had kidney failure, and then she was diagnosed with uterine cancer and then, on the last day, when i got there too late, she was dead. swollen legs, kidney failure, cancer, death. it's like stomachache, bad clams, neurotoxins, paralysis, death. or ski injury, slight scratch, infected cut, necrotizing fasciitis, no arms. you start out with a flesh wound, and you end up pale and cold with your tongue sticking out a little, quiet forever, but still smelling just like you always did, surrounded by crying people who can't understand how yesterday grandma was sick and just look, she's lying right there, but she's never, evern getting up again. oh, mercy.
7.16.2005
okay maybe not totally over
the not-smoking continues
i had a great lunch with mom and dad today. mom made a pork loin with amazing baked peach haves all brushed with butter and peach schnapps, which was really amazing, and grilled polenta and shrimp and tarragon garlic bread and salad and apple pie with ice cream. we washed it all down with montepulciano and vin santo. oof.
i watched "a home at the end of the world" just now. farrell might not have the best grip on the bobby character, but he's so transparent that i just forgot who he was, despite the caterpillar eyebrows. it made me think of wilcox and gerard. i didn't expect to like the film, so it was a pleasant surprise, plus ho-yay.
one more thing: the power of air conditioning. shout out to mymandy for procuring and installing the four-hundred and thirty-three dollar monster and propping it up with disused paperbacks and videotapes. oh, bless him, now the apartment's not a torture chamber and there's the added benefit of white noise, and being able to close the windows so we don't hear every single person in brooklyn walk by on the way to the park and the F train and the sidewalk sale, not to mention the xylophone weirdo down on the subway platform just noooooooooooooodling away like decent people don't need some blessed peace on sunday at ten am. also, germans upstairs, SHUT UP.
er, the not smoking. i had a cig last night after six days, and as i told the man this morning, it was like scratching an itch and not having get any less itchy. odd to think i've been smoking all these years and it turns out it's not what i wanted anyway. if it's not nicotine i was after, then what is it?
7.15.2005
Ew. Damn him and his penis nose.
i've said it before, but i'll say it again. at the risk of feeling like a complete idiot, i have to confess that i am in love with Owen Wilson, and that we belong together. we are gonna have the cutest little babies. Leave your pussy brother at home.
Come to mama, Owen, and let's get freeeeaky...
also, nice hair... jesus.
i've said it before, but i'll say it again. at the risk of feeling like a complete idiot, i have to confess that i am in love with Owen Wilson, and that we belong together. we are gonna have the cutest little babies. Leave your pussy brother at home.
Come to mama, Owen, and let's get freeeeaky...
also, nice hair... jesus.
death: really not an option?
the non-joys of non-smoking and the aftermath of big Steve's retirement: an top-level analysis of why i feel like packing it in.
i just had the miserable, sadly unsobering (in that i am not drunk, because if i was, not only would my colleagues be pissed, yo, but because if i was then i'd be smoking a fucking cigarette, goddamnit...) realization that my life is over.
two things went into this, and they're both pathetic and shallow, so if you're looking for depth and scope here, then fuck the fuck off. okay, ready?
why my life is over:
1. i quit smoking and i have realized that i have one extra mouth and brain, and two extra arms and lungs and,
2. no more new stephen king novels, ever, not even terrible ones.
you see where i'm at here? they cancelled buffy, i'm a size eight, the world is just going to hell AND i can't smoke a goddamn cigarette or look forward to being creeped out by El King. dude, fuck it. game over.
the non-joys of non-smoking and the aftermath of big Steve's retirement: an top-level analysis of why i feel like packing it in.
i just had the miserable, sadly unsobering (in that i am not drunk, because if i was, not only would my colleagues be pissed, yo, but because if i was then i'd be smoking a fucking cigarette, goddamnit...) realization that my life is over.
two things went into this, and they're both pathetic and shallow, so if you're looking for depth and scope here, then fuck the fuck off. okay, ready?
why my life is over:
1. i quit smoking and i have realized that i have one extra mouth and brain, and two extra arms and lungs and,
2. no more new stephen king novels, ever, not even terrible ones.
you see where i'm at here? they cancelled buffy, i'm a size eight, the world is just going to hell AND i can't smoke a goddamn cigarette or look forward to being creeped out by El King. dude, fuck it. game over.
7.11.2005
grandpa and grandma
i had a dream last night that i was on vacation with my dead grandparents. my grandfather was trying to tell me that he was going to die and i just couldn't believe that it would really happen that way. the funny part is that it is usually my grandmother that i dream about and wake up calling for her, but this time it was my grandfather. i miss grandma so much, and not a week goes by that i don't dream about her, but in all these years, i never have dreamt about grandpa. i also never realized that before, and now feel strangely about having not thought about him that way in all these years, though he did leave when i was six.
hmm.
i had a dream last night that i was on vacation with my dead grandparents. my grandfather was trying to tell me that he was going to die and i just couldn't believe that it would really happen that way. the funny part is that it is usually my grandmother that i dream about and wake up calling for her, but this time it was my grandfather. i miss grandma so much, and not a week goes by that i don't dream about her, but in all these years, i never have dreamt about grandpa. i also never realized that before, and now feel strangely about having not thought about him that way in all these years, though he did leave when i was six.
hmm.
7.08.2005
parrot with a prosthetic leg
one-eyed, with attendant tunnel-vision,
compassionate accessories aside,
no one will be climbing trees like we used to.
in a state of permanent drizzle,
of thin gray spittle flooding up the deep pores of the world,
from the deepest subway bores and river-crossings,
all the way up to the porch, the door, and across my floor.
how long before we all go in?
we one-legged, one-armed ladies,
hook-handed half-blind villains,
crippled housecats,
handicapped husbands, mad fathers,
mothers in comas,
friends locked behind portholed chicken-wire doors,
lovers with bloodied hands, and bloody eyes,
midget movie stars with bribed brides, heh.
cat-scratched final resting-places,
ringed with fingernail half-moons
for us all.
7.07.2005
ichthyology, etymology, epidemiology, entomology
this is a wild of shadows
shadow had it almost right
here, the pilot-fish, silverfish,
house-centipedes
this is archaeology and anthropology
I see the beginning
but it's all bugs to me-
comfort of symmetry
scattery in the brake lights
and ferny shadows
deeply gray and brushing my calves.
these words lose their meanings
in the proud nose of the world
and people in overhanging branches sing along
at shake and jake's christmas club,
while lovers whose old kisses wink here still linger drinking
and bits of shrapnel glimmer where they landed
like schooling fish in their underwater library silence.
7.06.2005
Urf. I'm at the Flash Forward conference at the New Yorker Hotel today. It's not quite the learning experience that I had hoped for, nor are there any useful agency contacts to be found... At least not so far. On the bright side, there's a cocktail hour from five to six, and then I'm heading downtown to Pete's on Irving to have a drink with my buddy Tim from Businessweek.com.
My old company's sent over some lovely documents legales, bless them, so that's one more thing to worry about. Making me wish I was on a beach in Mexico... or maybe Vietnam? Not the Kim Jong Illin' part, of course. Whatever part has got a nice beach and good food, I guess. The fuck do I know?
Note to self: take meds.
Maybe the weather's getting me down? Or maybe it's just that as soon as one thing starts to go well, something else starts to look like its going to crash and burn. (Take meds regularly.) In this case, I'm starting to be less, well, 'porky', I guess is the word, but I've got a new job to handle and MymAndy seems to have flown off his... handle. Really, I guess everyone's just stressed out and hot and miserable and it seems like no progress will ever occur. I need a real vacation. At least I have opportunities, anyway. Beats the alternative.
So... what? I feel so blahhhh. I've been sick all week and when I talk, it's Thelma (or Selma) Bouvier, which is so unappealing. I wish I could make some progress here, but it seems everything's on hold for the now. Mercury must be in retrograde...
Pisces: (Feb. 19—March 20)There will be little change in your uneventful life this week, which is too bad considering you've been hanging from those manacles for a couple decades now.
http://www.theonion.com/horoscopes/
My old company's sent over some lovely documents legales, bless them, so that's one more thing to worry about. Making me wish I was on a beach in Mexico... or maybe Vietnam? Not the Kim Jong Illin' part, of course. Whatever part has got a nice beach and good food, I guess. The fuck do I know?
Note to self: take meds.
Maybe the weather's getting me down? Or maybe it's just that as soon as one thing starts to go well, something else starts to look like its going to crash and burn. (Take meds regularly.) In this case, I'm starting to be less, well, 'porky', I guess is the word, but I've got a new job to handle and MymAndy seems to have flown off his... handle. Really, I guess everyone's just stressed out and hot and miserable and it seems like no progress will ever occur. I need a real vacation. At least I have opportunities, anyway. Beats the alternative.
So... what? I feel so blahhhh. I've been sick all week and when I talk, it's Thelma (or Selma) Bouvier, which is so unappealing. I wish I could make some progress here, but it seems everything's on hold for the now. Mercury must be in retrograde...
Pisces: (Feb. 19—March 20)There will be little change in your uneventful life this week, which is too bad considering you've been hanging from those manacles for a couple decades now.
http://www.theonion.com/horoscopes/
