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signed, frustrated in jackson heights

moxie is sleeping. she's adorable, an 18 month old who i'm watching every friday. makes me miss my kids, the incredible world of wonder that young children inhabit. moxie's vocabulary is expansive and she makes great linkages. i say, do you want to go outside? and she says, coat. hood. soft. soft. she knows what's important.

so now moxie is down for her nap, i'm just getting over the maddening trip into queens -- over an hour due to "a security situation" -- read: someone left their backpack behind. and now i've been asked to cover a shift at the field tonight, the late shift til 4 am. i know, i said i wouldn't write depressing entries about bartending any more, but this time it's not the work that's getting to me. it's the lack of it. since red hot cut my hours at the beginning of the year, things have been getting tight, and now that monkeytown and stanton social haven't worked out, things are really tight, so much so that i have no choice but to take this shift. the problem is that i had a whole evening planned with michelle, and now that's out the window. it's still butt-ass cold here, so it's not like i'm even going to make that much money, but i have to take what i can get. i'm trying not to spend money but it's hard, this city eats money like so many moths in a library.

i guess my laziness is to blame, feeling like i could make ends meet without packing my schedule with work. but it looks like i've got to find more work before the moths find my savings. with the upcoming trip to spain (which isn't particularly cheap), it'd be hard to get anything -- hello, give me a job but in 6 weeks i'm leaving the country. not gonna happen.

i'm starting to see why jessie is ready to move to portland.

a change is gonna come

my goddamned internet has been out all week, and by some miracle at 2 in the morning i'm finally able to glom onto some hapless neighbor's connection. where were you when i wanted to write on sunday, or check my email this morning, or at all over the past week? but here it is, and i feel like i should take advantage.

this past weekend it was in the 50s. winter is coming to an end, i thought. right now there's a 40 miles per hour wind blowing off the harbor and the wind chill is closing in on zero. so much for that.

the sunshine still gave my spirits a much-needed rise. i always become less productive when it gets cold, but this winter it's just been absurd. the few journal & blog entries i managed to force out of myself are testaments to ineffectiveness, creative and spiritual cravings with no relief and a lack of connection with my own inner self, not to mention those around me and in points afield. and it goes beyond this winter, and it always has, a lack of motivation and a tendency towards coasting through life. well, i have decided: no more.

sitting on the promenade watching an 18 month old child run in circles around her mother, i was struck by how fragile our lives are, how little time we have to make our mark on the world around us. and i don't mean being rich, or famous, or infamous. i mean, do we take care of the people in our lives? do we care of ourselves? do you feel like you've done all you can to create positive forces in your life and in the lives of others? well, i've tended not to over the past couple years and it's time for that to change.

after months of fucking around and getting pretty much nothing done, i've turned into a whirlwind of activity. i've probably played guitar for 15 hours since Friday. i've written new songs, fixed old ones, gave my room a thorough spring cleaning. i've journaled, i've done extended sessions of yoga and meditation. don't worry, in the midst of it i still managed to party my ass off both friday and saturday nights. i'm not going to change everything.

it's late and i'm trying to break my habit of sleeping until noon, so i'm crashing out. but know, dear readers, that it'll be a while (i can only hope) before you get another utterly depressing entry about bar and city life.

snow falling on oscars

a light snow is falling, and will continue to fall as i soon sleep, and tomorrow the city will be again be destroyed, a mayhem of black gritty sidewalks and salt and ice and et cetera. new york is truly a joy during winter.

i'm still recovering from portland and i've got a busy week coming up, so this will be another short one, a quickie to keep all seven of you coming back week after week. i swear, i'd like to write more here, but if i don't even have time for my own journal, how can i make time to write for public viewing?

my plan currently: not drinking so much. we'll see how that goes. updates later this week!

and as for portland:

see
1
and
2

pretty tame. i'll tell you all about the rest soon.

oh the cold, oh the mess

my toes are cold. my fingers are cold. new york is cold and messy. greatest city on earth? they could learn a thing or two about cleaning up snow from minnesota. whatever, i head to portland oregon tomorrow and everything will be melted by the time i'm back anyway.

chicago was colder though. my god, it was cold. i haven't started shaking uncontrollably from cold since i lived in minnesota. but i did there, walking from the lakeshore back into hyde park. i think my dad learned to make pancakes there, the pancakes at the original pancake house tasted just like his. and it is where he grew up. hmmm.

so i got back from chicago on sunday night. it's now thursday, i haven't unpacked and i leave again tomorrow. i've been busy.

did you enjoy valentines' day? or is it valentine's day? who owns that crass commercial usurpation of love? i ate sushi and was cold. i lost my glove walking back from the restaurant. michelle bought me a book of 100 love sonnets by pablo neruda, and i bought her 100 poems by e.e. cummings, not all of which are about love but the best are. "i like my body when it is with your/body. it is so quite new a thing." her present was satisfaction of all five senses, a scented candle, massage oil, chocolate, poems and music. she's the best!

reading: john barth "the floating opera" david foster wallace "a supposedly fun thing i'll never do again" and still to come, ben okri, his sequel to one of my all time favorites "the famished road" -- find it. read it. email me about it.

i have to go to work. this is when i love commuting downstairs, because i don't really want to go outside.

the cold and the business

i'm just waking up from the second night in a row bartending downstairs, and i'm working tonight too. this is getting a little tiresome, but since i'm still training at the stanton social, i need the money. i really wish i wasn't working tonight, especially since i leave for chicago at 8 am tomorrow.

i finally have an internet connection in my room, so i thought i'd take advantage of it. it's hard to write much these days since the only network i have is at work. and we've discussed workblogging before.

so what's new? red hot is moving uptown to 30th and madison -- gone the cobblestone alleys and supermodels of soho, but also gone the old hallway. i've been working in a narrow hallway where i have to push my seat forward every time someone walks by, which is pretty much constantly throughout the day. but now, we're getting a couple red hot workstations and a corner with a view of the empire state building. well, the corner is nearby, it's not like i actually have a view.

what else is new? i'm going to chicago tomorrow to lecture at columbia college. i've been too busy to even go through my lecture, and by the time i speak tomorrow night, i'll be running on fumes. luckily i can damn near do this thing in my sleep. anybody in chicago? i'll be at the ferguson theater at 600 s. michigan at 6 pm.

anything else new? oh yes, winter is HERE. true, it'll be even colder in chicago, but after a frighteningly mild winter (70 degrees first week in january), the cold has finally set in. i live two blocks from the new york harbor, and my god, the wind whipping down my block is something else. coming home from the subway, it feels like it gets colder every single step of the way. the other problem with the cold is that no one is going out, which means no one is coming to my bar. which means i have no money. at least columbia is paying me to come out there.

so i have an unbelievable to do list before i have to open the bar at 4, but i just wanted to say hi and let you all know i'm doin' alright. and by the way, did i tell you about my parents' new blog? here it is. i love the newest entry about being in a quiet retreat at an old mansion in the foothills of the himalayas and being overrun by a massive bollywood movie production!

begone monkeytown

the folks are visiting this weekend, so i probably won't get a chance to write for a while. so here we go!

the dull ache of a slight hangover has become my general state of being recently. nothing debilitating, nothing dangerous, just a lot of parties and bartending and staying up late. it's true, i moved to new york to live out my dreams of working as an advocate for music-based health education and african development. but you know what? i'm having a lot of fun and i honestly can't imagine being able to work full time in an office right now. things are slow at red hot and look to be getting slower, but at least i'm still involved in some way.

but bartending and i are a good match. i've come a long way since barbacking in chelsea, and now i've opened the newest page of that history. i briefly mentioned that i was working at an interesting bar called monkeytown. well, interesting doesn't pay the bills. so through a connection at red hot, i've landed a job at a lower east side joint called the stanton social. as those of you whose computers will allow you to see the site will see, it's a damn swanky spot. friends who know it say it's where midtown execs take their dates to prove how cool they are by "slumming it up" in the LES. it was strange to sidestep the passed out junkie into the glittering foyer for my interview. even stranger -- albeit no longer surprising in this town -- was the complete lack of an interview. it seems like you can only get a job in the new york service industry (or most new york industries) if you know someone, but jeez, not a word and i'm training on tuesday?

i might have to rename this thing "adventures in manhattan" -- but i know better than to blog about work. right jessie?

ouch!

we all have our various aches and pains; some more than others, some better, some worse. some is manageable and some is chronic. hard to grit through it sometimes, other times it's a dull echo at the back of our minds. today, my friends, my pain is with me, too present to ignore and too sharp to manage.

through a painfully hilarious set of circumstances, in october of 2003, i found myself at the bottom of a staircase in berkeley california after having fallen ten feet from the balcony above. my injuries were serious, a fact compounded by my doctor's lack of concern and failure to effectively treat (or even x-ray) my mangled body. after months of struggling to get through my days teaching preschool, i threatened my doctor with a malpractice suit unless he put me in physical therapy -- he was reluctant and wanted me to take more vicodin, to which i was already addicted and through which i was only further poisoning myself. when i managed to see him, the physical therapist examined me for a few minutes and said, i am so sorry we did this to you. after a full set of body x-rays revealed an unhealed fractured tailbone and spinal disc damage, i finally began a long healing process that has included acupressure, acupuncture, massage, chiropractic, reiki, hot tubs, ice, hot tubs and ice together, more physical therapy, substance-based self-medication, bed rest, and (the only one that's lasted) yoga.

as long as i do the yoga routine i've developed for myself a few times a week, i can more or less live my life pain-free. it's become difficult, though, as the lifestyle of a bartender doesn't exactly match with that of a yogi. i promise myself as i close the bar that i will get up and take care of myself, and suddenly it's noon and i'm still asleep. the last few weeks my practice has collapsed, and with the added strain of a whirlwind, less-than-24-hours trip to boston over the weekend, i've finally hit my breaking point. i came home early today hoping to take the time to take care of myself and discovered that my back was in such bad shape that i couldn't make it through most of my routine, and now i am sitting at my desk (bad) typing (bad) and wishing i wasn't in pain. i haven't completely thrown it out yet, but it's close, and i'm concerned that i have to close the bar at four am thursday and saturday night.

i guess this is just my absurdly long-winded way of saying:

my back hurts, and i don't like it.

as well as:

bartending is toxic and i'm not taking good care of myself.

or:

man, i was drunk when i fell off that balcony.

and perhaps the lesson for today is:

do your goddamn yoga.

over the top

after that last post, i got a couple of comments and calls from concerned readers. don't worry. i'm doing just fine. i think i was writing more about the feeling than actually feeling it. i was just a little upset because i made $70 on monday night and that's just not enough to get by.

bartending sucks. happy new year!

and why do i say it sucks? because i love it but i'm not making any money. last night i had the worst night i've ever had behind the bar and went home with so little money i feel like i should spend all week huddled in a corner to avoid spending what little i have. it's an up and down life, i suppose, and i love working on karaoke nights, but it's just not enough, especially given that red hot has cut my hours back and my other new job at monkeytown isn't so lucrative either.

this is a terrible city to be broke.

new york can smell weakness and fear, loneliness and poverty. i've tried not to take for granted the lushness of my first nine months here, but now that i'm in some lean times, i feel the weight of this city pressing down and demanding so much. it's not like i'm in trouble or anything, i wouldn't want to worry my three readers, but i know there are so many of us who struggle to make ends meet here. and for what? to pay exorbitant rent? how many of us are truly living out our dreams here? i thought i was there for a while, working as an advocate in my field. but i seem to have lost my way. it's 1 pm and i'm still in my pjs. does anyone care? do i need to be anywhere? no. and that's a dangerous situation.

thank god i have a girlfriend who's watching out for me.

speaking of that, here's michelle. she's amazing.

the great white north

i seem to remember another blog of sorts with the same title, one of the dispatches from my trip, adjusting to the blonde, blue-eyed, scandanavian whiteness of minnesota after africa

but this time it's a different sort of whiteness, the quiet white solitude of standing in the middle of a frozen lake. frozen lakes make the most amazing sounds! frightening, like when the ice cracks and crumbles underneath your feet, and even if you're looking at a car driving across the foot-thick ice, your breath stops. mysterious, like the timpanic shudders of shifting ice plates, deep low rumbling sounds, whale-like and primordial.

it's true, i prefer the lake in summer and the calls of loons and herons, the silent majesty of the northern lights. but let me tell you, dear readers (actually only bret -- i have no illusions about my readership), i *needed* this break, badly. i didn't realize how much the city was getting to me. the late nights, the constant cycle of drunk/hungover/drunk/hungover -- and that's when i'm working! -- the noise, the people, the noise made by people, the dirt and grime and stinkiness of it all. in a few short months, brooklyn has earned a special place in my heart. but that doesn't mean i always love it, or it's always fun. i have a whole slate of new year's resolutions and they all relate to finding time for contemplation, art, self-maintenance and quiet.

and tomorrow i will be right back in it. dates and bartending and parties and bartending and a busy couple of weeks. but i will also be back, and i am ready.

did you know that 200 million people have stopped writing in their blogs? Experts say the number of bloggers in the world will plateau in 2oo7 at around 100 million. C'mon bloggers! Now there's a good resolution:

MORE BLOGGING.

happy holidays!

back in minnesota. we're heading up to the lake tomorrow -- looking forward to the quiet solitude of the frozen north. and no internet. next entry should be just before the new year.

it's strange, i've been so busy that i haven't had time to get in the christmas spirit (santacon excluded, naturally). can you believe that jc's bday is already here? i can't. it's a weird one here, since my folks are leaving the country from january to august, or something like that. i'm hoping to meet them in spain. anyone going to be in europe in april?

i was planning on making it to five of the six xmas services, but only made it to three. still, more church than in a long time. i miss it. but now it's time for a bath instead of the late service.

merry chrismukah!

best christmas ever?

finally i start working on this thing again and our internet goes out. awesome.

so here i am in an internet cafe. is it bad that i'm still recovering from the weekend on tuesday? i can't believe the past week.

it was a big one.

have you ever heard of santacon? it's pretty much the best thing ever. imagine a thousand santas rampaging through manhattan. "WHOSE STREETS? SANTA'S STREETS!" it's not just in new york, so check your local listings next year. and anyone who lives in new york *has* to come next year. we filled up one bar so full with santas that santas were actually crowd surfing on other santas.

here we are taking over the essex street stop:



i have much bigger news though. much bigger.

i seem to have met someone. someone who's pretty amazing. i like her. i mean i really like her. she's from minnesota, so we'll get to spend some time together over the holiday. did i mention i leave on thursday morning? well i do.

i think it might scare you all if i told you how much i like her.

we'll leave it at that for now.

time to shop!

the week in review

monday.

1.all day session working on listening station for january exhibit on media and hiv at columbia college in chicago.
2.magnetic field free show. close at 2 am.

tuesday.

1.all day at red hot.
2.up late finishing listening station booklet.

wednesday.

1.all day at red hot.
2.training at monkeytown. slammed beyond belief. close at 4 am.

thursday.

1.all day at red hot.
2.live band karaoke at magnetic field. sing springsteen's born to run in santa costume. close at 4 am.

today.

1.sleep.
2.late shift at magnetic field.

tomorrow.

1.10 am: santacon.
2.magnetic field 4th anniversary party. not working. but partying.

sunday.

1.sleep.
2.sleep.
3.holiday potluck at jessie's.
4.sleep.

goddamn i'm exhausted.

what time is it?

it is most certainly not time to get ill. it is 5:30 am. the bar is closed, but my god, it's hard to get to sleep straight out of work. i don't have a whole lot of time for writing these days (thus the unforgivable three month gap), so i guess i'll take it when i can. i'd forgotten how much fun it is to tell all my readers whatever i feel like.

so today (tonight? this morning? i'm so confused) i'd like to talk about thumbs.

i never knew how important the tip of my left thumb was to me. and then i cut a nice chunk of it off while making sour mix. it's not the worst ever and i don't feel the need for specific details, but using the tip of the thumb in any way is pretty much impossible at the moment. i've had to readjust everything, and since i work with my hands all day, it's been a little strange. every time i start to get frustrated, i think back to a photo exhibit i saw once in kampala, scarred and battered victims of the lord's resistance army. black and whites of people with one hand, no hands, one arm, no ears, no nose. those suspected of revealing the lra's location had their lips removed. truly gruesome and horrifying.

those pictures make it hard to complain about my little thumb.

three jobs??

at the end of this year, red hot is cutting my hours back to just a day a week. not really so tragic -- things are slow these days and there's not much more than a day a week worth of work for me.

so i found a new job. i've been bartending since july and getting more and more comfortable behind the bar, so i thought i'd take a shot and applied for a job at a high volume boutique bar in williamsburg. and they hired me! i started last night and it was trial by fire -- we had a private party and were absolutely slammed. plus we make all these complicated cocktails like tamarind margaritas, grapefruit caipirinhas, lavender cilantro mojitos, etc etc etc. i managed to hold my own and the staff seemed to be impressed. didn't get home til 4:30 last night. and since i'm closing at the field tonight and friday night, it's looking like another long week. but at least i'm having fun, right?

don't know my shifts yet -- i'll let everyone know soon. in the meantime, check out monkeytown.

and three months later....

this blog is officially back.
starting with some late night rilke, courtesy of a new friend.

god speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.

these are the words we dimly hear:

you, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.

flare up like flame
and make big shadows I can move in.

let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
just keep going. No feeling is final.
don't let yourself lose me.

nearby is a country they call life.
you will know it by its seriousness.

give me your hand

dreams, and lost songs

blogging at work again. badbadbad.

this morning i awoke from a short post-bar sleep with the most amazing song coming from dreamland (no, that's not the bar downstairs). in my dream, i'd been weeping as i wrote the song because it was so goddamn good. immediately upon waking i grabbed my phone and recorded the lyrics that i could remember, amazed at the incredible quality of this magnificent piece of music.

and then i woke up again. bleary, exhausted and utterly disappointed that i hadn't drawn this song in waiting out of my subconscious. looking on the bright side a few hours later, at least i'm dreaming again -- i guess i've adjusted to the noise of atlantic avenue.

in this chaotic rollercoaster that is new york, it's hard to make space for creativity. every time i leave the house it feels like skydiving, the city screaming by like the whistling wind.

how do we find time in our lives for that which sustains us and drives us forward? when i was living in minnesota i went to church twice a week, almost without fail. and since moving to the city, i've been twice, and was disappointed both times.

but what of the spirit? have i lost touch with that elemental part of me? is yoga three times a week enough to satisfy the needs of the soul?

i only wish i knew some ministers i could ask....

my friend the undertaker

i took a picnic out to the promenade on labor day, with my grandfather's copy of rilke:

already the ripening barberries are red,
and the old asters hardly breathe in their beds.
the man who is not rich now as summer goes
will wait and wait and never be himself.

nothing like some german existentialism to prepare one for fall.

the long stretch of benches looking out over the harbor were full with holiday revelers. an old man pulled in next to me and we struck up a conversation as i prepared my pastrami on rye. his eyes glowed with the arc of history as we talked of mayors, freeways, wars and love lost. as i gathered my things to head to work, i asked if we could exchange numbers. yeah, i got those digits.

and today we went out to lunch. i met 80 year old joe boyle at his office, the funeral home on my block. his cousin used to own the business years ago, and although he's retired, he still helps out around the place. we walked through the neighborhood, him pointing out a piece of quality iron work here, a new fountain there.

over burgers at an old diner, we exchanged stories, as he explained the art of embalming, explained that he owned 15 black suits, and told of another brooklyn, when everything was fine and the irish and the poles lived together, but then "the others" came and ruined this fair city.

guess i'll have to sit through a bit of old fashioned racism if want to be friends with the undertaker.

it's life and life only

i am reveling in a few spare moments for writing.

i am in love with this sticky city. it has wrapped itself around me and it's hard to take even a single breath.

i watch the metropolitans play and read the pure aching joy and mystery of shoeless joe, wp kinsella. they made a movie from it called field of dreams, one of my all time favorites. guess what? the book is better.

baseball as a metaphor for life, or something like that.

the jackhammer started at 7 am this morning. i kinda liked it. the noise from outside has started to feel like a rapturous urban embrace. it lulls me to sleep even as it shakes my room.

late night in washington square park, a wide-eyed junkie approached me with a crack pipe.

he said

"man, don't start with this stuff. i been on it for years."

"you want some?"

no thanks, i just came to piss in the bushes.