NYC Doesn't Care

You can have a life, a DEVOTION around the cult of NYC.  You can be its slave for years, trying to get it to love you back.

But it doesn't give a fuck.

You can starve, can live in a closet, can work 24/7, can work as a barista, can perform on Broadway.  you can make it there one day and feel like you are starting over the very next.

Other cities will welcome you back with open arms.  Embrace you like your Mom.  Alumnae returning to the geographies of their youth.  New York will be like, 'Oh, did you leave the party?"

Every neighborhood, every block is a new beginning.  You start from scratch, you reinvent yourself.  Hopefully smarter this time. 

You can go for years and never run into any of your previous friends, or selves.  And then you can spend 24 hours playing "This is your life", and seeing mirrors everywhere you go.

The Glory of Mudding

Some of the places she swam through were just mud.  Swimming was a glorified description, it was closer to crawling.
She didn't mind; most of her days were clinically clean, made up of glass and metal (steel brushed, smoothed and polished) and zero-friction grounding cloths.  Lint and dust collected on the screens and had to be wiped off periodically, such a fine layer of dust. White dust. particles.

Sometimes, she LONGED to dive into nature.  To feel the irregularities in the soil, to watch animals and insects go about their merry way, eating and being eaten.

She used to be afraid of deep water, where she wasn't able to touch the bottom.  But one day, she swam in water that was over her head, and she managed to stay grounded to the surface. After that reorientation, she was fine.  It no longer mattered if the bottom was 7 feet away, or 70.  What mattered was the distance to the surface.

She had a fetish for temperature.  She was sensitive to it, there were certainly extremes she liked and didn't like.  She had burned her hand trapped inside of a fire once. (EDIE SEDGEWICK), by touching a door knob whose metal conductivity had told her there was a fire on the other side.  She didn't open the door, and thus her life was probably saved.  Ever since, she paid attention to temperature.  Bedcovers,  doctor's fingers, etc.

The mud she got herself into was the connecting part of 2 bodies of water.  A river flowing into a side pool.  She had to corss it and didn't mind getting messy.  In fact, she liked it, and stayed extra long and played, like a dog, like a child, like a bird.

And then she got washed off in the rest of her travels.

But the sensation of the mud clung to her long after she had been clean.  Like wearing a suit that stayed with your own movements, nothing that slipped away across your skin, like clothes.  Cold, and slippery.

A Dream of Escape

A dream of escape.

Here in the Northeast in America, we are under a cold snap.

Since Christmas, we have been suffering with below zero temperatures and into the predictable future (according to the iPhone).

And then, with or without a cold (which I have), we are essentially trapped indoors.

I've been lucky to have a writing project to take me out of myself.

The BEST vacation I can ever have. 

Muddy Waters

I dream of mud.  Well, I don't dream, but I think of it. Swimming in it. Swimming in shallow ponds, hitting my knees on the muck below.

I think of it as a sensuous delight.  A way to FEEL.  Not just the wet, but the sediment;swimming through the world, in the few places I can.  Knowing it is made up of decaying dinosaurs and leaves and birds and sea monsters. 

I had a dream once of the very shoes that Van Gogh painted.  Dirty and old, farmer's or worker's shoes, and how they were made holy by the strokes of Van Gogh.

The dirt from the grave.  Wipe it from the headstone, but the dirt on your hands is "clean" dirt, innocent dirt.  Isolated from the corpses below, insulated in a cement box, inside which is a wooden box, inside which is a silk lining, and probably all the flowers you laid around his chest, and the knitted wreath that you bought at age 5, when you had no idea you needed to bring money for the fair, and a teach gave you a dollar.  He had no idea it was a Christmas ornament either, and so he put it over his button hole.  To be funny, or to be Jewish, you were never sure.  he is in the movie EXODUS.

Hardy Pond

Every morning, I try to walk by a Pond.  Because I can.

I want to take pictures of everything, all the colors, all the reflections.

I suspect the Pond is only 3 feet deep most of the way across, with lots of water weeds.  And ducks, who are very jealous of their own territory.

Every morning I visit, wanting to escape into the underwater world.  Sometimes its too cold, but I still want to see.

Longest Time Without Swimming

Funny, since I last swam in Walden, I have spent a very long time out of the water.  I used to crave being able to dance freely, without gravity, inside the water.

I miss it, but not enough to brave the cold.  Although it is nice to know I could.

Has it been a month?  I've forgotten to keep track!  That's how long it is!

Nothing Compares to Walden

Sometimes, you have to just admit it, when Walden is around, nothing can come close.

Even in NYC, when the pool is so accessible, there is still the idea of Walden, the open water.  The expansiveness of it.

Chlorine is intolerable!!

(Hopefully until the pool seems warm compared to Walden and a nice alternative!)