rimbaud is getting to me, maybe

There was a point about four weeks ago when, for the first time since last year, I wrote like mad everyday in a little notebook because I felt like my thoughts were beginning to get overwhelming. Certain thoughts suddenly get very loud when you find that you have significantly less to do. The same effect happens when you stare out windows for too long, I think. I just moved into a 6-person, 3-story townhouse for this New York school year and I have a view that begins over Morningside Park and extends into Harlem and all the things in the northeastern corners of this city that I have never been to. Boredom, vastness, I don't know what it is that they do that suddenly triggers your brain into murmuring at you but they do.

I am struggling with a few things, I guess -- but who doesn't? In the meantime I am attempting to play it cool and not embarrass myself in the process. It works, more or less. A friend of mine called me a defeatist the other day. What? Really? No, I wouldn't say defeatist; I'm just a hesitant realist. I can't afford to give up my wariness; it's expensive and precious and it seems that when I do give a little bit of it up something goes broken and I have a hard time making good repairs. Who ever heard of a broken mirror that looked good when you glued it back together? I can't take risks breaking too many mirrors. The funny thing is I guess I'm decent at playing it cool but I'm pretty bad at giving up pride at the same time. Ouch, ouch. Something needs to happen in situations like these.

I bought these tulips in Holland that need planting. I am hoping they'll grow well on my windowsill. The amazing thing about tulips is how they seem so temporal, but out of those same old bulbs you can get something beautiful to blossom for at least a good four years. You just have to be willing to start a few things over and try again, I guess.

two poems by people who are not frank o'hara

An unemployed
machinist
An unemployed machinist
who travelled
here
who travelled here
from Georgia
from Georgia 10 days ago
10 days ago
and could not find
a job
and could not find a job
walked
into a police station
walked into a police station
yesterday and said
yesterday
and said:

"I'm tired
of being scared
I'm tired of being scared."

- John Giorno

-------------------------------

Like musical instruments
Abandoned in a field
The parts of your feelings

Are starting to know a quiet
The pure conversion of your
Life into art seems destined

Never to occur
You don't mind
You feel spiritual and alert

As the air must feel
Turning into sky aloft and blue
You feel like

You'll never feel like touching anything or anyone
Again
And then you do

- Tom Clark

meditations after back from across the atlantic

To Houston: I don't think I could come back to you and live in you even if I wanted to. There's something about you that reminds me too much of old stupid ideas and old boyfriends and your stretches of asphalt and cement depress me a bit. I can't use my feet on your sidewalks or I'd never get anywhere or perhaps experience something violent like nearly being run over in an air of humidity that seems to persist 85% of the year. Everything within you is out of reach aside from the pharmacies and fast food franchises; you're like a city of suburbia but almost worst in the way that you could fool someone into thinking otherwise. I don't know if I could ever be happy with you for that long, even my body tells me so. I am tired of allergy attacks and coughing fits in this house. My mother feels it too, and we suspect it to be a mold attack. What's going for this place? It's cheap and it's good to doctors and engineers. I'm not good for either profession.

Something about Europe creates wanderlust in a person. It convinces you for awhile that you can't deal with America anymore, although I guess you get over it after awhile. I miss the way I ate for five weeks (although dinner was often terrible lunch and breakfast were fine and balanced), and even the difference in how people spoke. French may sound pretentious to some Americans but I find it beautiful. It's as beautiful as the oldness of the continent; I already miss walking on cobblestones at the chateau, even if they ruin most shoes a girl would wear.

I tend to over-romanticize all this, I am sure, although I wonder sometimes how much I would actually miss America if I were to one day disappear across the sea. I think I would miss thinking in a native language, and I would get tired of old ways of thinking. I see this frustration in my parents and I am not sure how well I'd be in that situation, although who knows. I think Europeans (on a large scale) are very proud of tradition which is wonderful to an extent but can also sometimes be problematic. Who knows what would happen anyway? I am not old until I can't use my legs any longer.

Something strange: somewhere between the drive from Brussels to Fontainebleau in my uncle's car we passed by Illiers-Combray, the town in which the narrator of In Search of Lost Time spends much of his childhood. The book was in my lap as we passed the town by. Another strange incident like this happened about three weeks later while reading a biography on Frank O'Hara by Joe LeSeur -- there is a section in the book where LeSeur recalls talking to Frank about whether or not they would see Noel Lee in his performance of a Copland fantasy, I think it was. That week I found myself working on Noel Lee's string quartet and met the man himself, who was on the piano faculty of the program and is in his 84th year. There is something rather magical about him: after giving lessons on the fairly high stage (about three feet off the ground) of the Salle des Colonnes in the chateau, he would leap off gracefully -- like the way a cat jumps off a fence when he has some different place to go.