I recently just got back to New York from Boston. During the trip I continued a long standing meditation I have with myself — figuring out what relatives a city would be.

Example

If San Francisco is a nurturing mother
then New York is a strict father
and Los Angeles is a bastard child
Under the circumstances that caused me to visit Boston (an aritifical intellignece conference), I came to the conclusion that Boston is your dweeb cousin.

But the relationships are not set in stone. They fluctuate depending on the organizing analogy. In other words. The following only holds IF we imagine SF as a nurturing mother.

If San Francisco is a drunk uncle
then New York is a distant cold father
Los Angeles is your bitch step-mother
Boston is your pretentious older brother.

How do you see the cities that you know best? Holla at a brother.

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Quote of the Week:

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

   A stately pleasure-dome decree:

      Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

         Through caverns measureless to man

            Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground

With walls and towers were girdled round:

And here were gardens bright with sinuous rills

Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;

And here were forests ancient as the hills,

Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted

Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!

A savage place! as holy and enchanted

As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted

By woman wailing for her demon-lover!

And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,

As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,

A mighty fountain momently was forced;

Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst

Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,

Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:

And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever

It flung up momently the sacred river.

Five miles meandering with a mazy motion

Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,

Then reached the caverns measureless to man,

And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:

And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far

Ancestral voices prophesying war!

The shadow of the dome of pleasure

   Floated midway on the waves:

Where was heard the mingled measure

   From the fountain and the caves.

It was a miracle of rare device,

A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

   A damsel with a dulcimer

   In a vision once I saw:

   It was an Abyssinian maid,

   And on her dulcimer she played,

   Singing of Mount Abora.

Could I revive within me

Her symphony and song,

To such a deep delight 't would win me

That with music loud and long,

I would build that dome in air,

That sunny dome! those caves of ice!

And all who heard should see them there,

And all should cry, Beware! Beware!

His flashing eyes, his floating hair!

Weave a circle round him thrice,

And close your eyes with holy dread,

For he on honey-dew hath fed,

And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge – Kubla Khan

I’ve been thinking about Xanadu a lot the last couple of days.

No, not this Xanadu.

Not this Xanadu, either.

Rather, this Xanadu.

As the world order seems to be dissolving or rearranging or ovulating (reference any major newspaper for details) I would like to order a new world, with chili sauce on the side. This is costly, so costly I can’t afford it.

I read in the news that Justin Timberlake does drugs. Maybe if I gradually insert myself into his life I can be around him while he’s all high and stuff and take his ATM card.

I’ll pick up where this *NSYNC pantywaist left off

and pay the cosmonauts to hook me up.

It will be me and a big space tank of ol. It will take a long time to get to Xanadu, but it will be worth it. I’ll take my tank of ol and pour it into the rivers of liquid methane and ethane carving Earth-like features into Titan’s landscape.

I will still Moonshine.

I will sit still and pet a dog with a fishbowl on his head and look back towards the sun and the world I left behind. I wonder if at that distance the sun will be blinding, or if I could just take it in like an extra big star?

The Earth will be too small to see, but I can look closely at Saturn, which will surely dominate the night sky way out there. It must look five times the size of our moon. It seems like it would always be night.

And then I’ll be blindingly drunk all the time, staggering around beneath enormous rings of particles.

I’ll be much closer to the edge of the solar system, and every time I look up, wasted, beneath that bizarre and unfamiliar sky, I’ll get a feeling like vertigo, or a door opening behind me at night.

If I jump I’ll feel like I might just drift into space.

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One obvious benefit of never leaving the greater nest of one’s birth city is that old friends always end up having to return because Jesus is blowing out the candles again or, as the case may be, some relative is getting married.  After the ceremony time was set aside for a confluence of old faces round tables with first burritos and then beers littered about in various states of being.  Somehow conversation wound its way round until my friend began to recount various experiences of being a single woman in Rome which is most easily compared to that of a young and startled ewe in some run-down iner city petting zoo.  Women walking alone don’t endure just cat calls or hungry stares but actual groping, grabbing, pinching, petting and other less than sophisticated forms of degredation.

Those rascally Italians, gold chains and body hair and the pasta and those antiquated attitudes towards any woman who’s not their mother.  Everyone’s heard stories about Italian men and everyone files it in their greaseball dossier next to the file that talks about Germans’ affection for mixing sex with their shit, or shit with their sex, or whatever the fuck that’s all about.  That’s how it is, how offensive, but what are you gonna do?

Meanwhile I’m busy looking back at the documentary Z Channel and a clip of Jim Jarmusch talking about seeing an Antonioni movie (I think it’s La Notte) on television.  A woman crosses a piaza choked with tight stripes shirts and deep set eyes that follow every move she makes, every shift of the hip and the turn of an ankle.  She walks through the center of this maelstrom of simmering blood acutely aware, I’m sure, of a very curious power.

Walking home from the bar I duck a woman trying to beg a cigarette off me.  I apologize but deny her request and turn away as quickly as possible– I know her.  Almost ten years ago I worked down the street at a record store and she would come in with stolen CDs which I would buy for nothing so that she could get crack.  At the time I didn’t feel anything about my efforts on fencing hot wares but I was certainly confused about what to do with this periodic visitor.  I didn’t wanna deal with her, I never gave her money for nothing, but I could never kick her out of the store.  It seemed easier to give her a couple of bucks so that she could go be a junkie instead of treating her like a junkie and kicking her out– I don’t think I did the right thing and I don’t think it led to anything remotely ‘good’.  She would see me on the street and she would never hit me up for anything other than a hello.  Sometimes she would walk with me down the block on her way to God knows where and it always kinda bothered me until some outreach center stopped us on the sidewalk and tried to insist we used condoms at which point it really bothered me.  Eventually she burned her own bridge by running around the store one night flying high– she insisted on sweeping and cleaning the bathroom in exhange for all I had done to help her out.  She ended up ripping off some shit from the back and I didn’t see her again.  At least my stupid behavior up until that point was clarified.  Almost ten years and while she doesn’t look any worse she’s not doing any better.  Mostly I was amazed that she was still alive– something of a revelation to think that a strung out junkie can cut it so long on the streets.  In a way you almost hope they overdose so they don’t continue to live in their rat cage world– it’s just too terrible to even imagine a week of being her let alone a year or five or a decade.

The other night my roommate’s bleaching the living hell out of the shower curtains to quell some rebellious mold and I’m being as polite as possible about her use of chemicals.  She mentions someone who had worked for a while with us at Amoeba, a girl who’d fucked up quick enough to be fired without any emotionally charged discussion or, well, mention at all.  She’d come in the store that day strung out and beat to hell, out of her head with a black eye and bruises down her arms.  Some sort of incident ensued and she staggered out of the store after screaming at security.  A co-worker who lives in the Mission said he’d seen her turning tricks around his house.

Last time I’d seen the girl I ducked her as best I could but she was too clever for me and looked back through the clear class bus shelter wall and got up to say hi.  She was pretty well dressed, adult looking department store outfit and a little professional bag and a little handheld device of some sort.  Said she’d gotten into the wonderful world of personal assistants for a couple people she knew– keeping track of appointments and running errands for them, that sort of thing.  She didn’t look fucked up at all, but I always thought she was a little bonkers when I knew her and every time I’ve been trapped on the street in conversation I’m always trying to break away.  Sure, sure, we’ll go have a drink some time, I’ll see you.

But now instead of annoying she’s just become– what?  What has she become?  A ghost to haunt me ten years down the line?  Probably not, probably she won’t be alive much longer.  It’s the most horrible thing I’ve heard in a long while, hearing about her.  What can you do?  That’s how it is, how offensive, but what can you do?

 

You can’t find SFPD statistics on prostitution on google, that’s for sure.

-Q&D July 19th SFPL 3rd floor MAIN350 (General Collections)

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Quote of the Week:

Well, we just had a really interesting discussion. I told the Prime Minister that the United States strongly supports a free and independent and sovereign Lebanon. We took great joy in seeing the Cedar Revolution. We understand that the hundreds of thousands of people who took to the street to express their desire to be free required courage, and we support the desire of the people to have a government responsive to their needs and a government that is free, truly free.

We talked about the need to make sure that there is a full investigation on the death of former Prime Minister Hariri, and we’ll work with the international community to see that justice is done. We talked about the great tradition of Lebanon to serve as a model of entrepreneurship and prosperity. Beirut is one of the great international cities, and I’m convinced that if Lebanon is truly free and independent and democratic, that Beirut will once again regain her place as a center of financial and culture and the arts.

There’s no question in my mind that Lebanon can serve as a great example for what is possible in the broader Middle East; that out of the tough times the country has been through will rise a state that shows that it’s possible for people of religious difference to live side-by-side in peace; to show that it’s possible for people to put aside past histories to live together in a way that the people want, which is, therefore, to be peace and hope and opportunity.

And so, Mr. Prime Minister, we’re really glad you’re here. I want to thank you for the wonderful visit we’ve had, and welcome you here to the White House.

-President Bush, April 19, 2006

Why the hell is Israel attacking Lebanon? I’m sure the 61 people killed near the airport and along main roads had everything to do with those 2 soldiers going missing. So much for proportionality or negotiation or any sign that something more than simple barbarism is driving this attack. I thought Bush was a Republican. Shouldn’t he be pointing out that Israel President Moshe Katsav is simply wagging the dog?

Ah, yes, hello there. So you’ve decided to run your groping eyes all over my nubile prose. I admire your taste. As if reading this wasn’t its own reward, I’ve dropped a little breadcrumb below…

Just let that play while we sit and chat (thanks to William for this gem of wonder). I’ve decided to give a rundown of… ok, actually, just turn it off, it’s really distracting… I’ve decided to reveal the recent joys that del.icio.us has bestowed on me and any who subscribe to their ‘popular’ feed. Now, I find myself in an awkward position because, like a good mix-tape, you don’t want to start with your strongest stuff on a blog post. It has to be good, but there has to be room to really lay it on. I’m throwing this rule, and caution, into the wind to bring you the moneyshot up front:

Funny enough, a link that I came across only minutes after I saw that commercial answered my immediate question: What happens to the kids who grew up on shit like this? They raise kids like this, that leave white painted skidmarks on your soul and make you bust your crank on their soft heads. Serioulsy, I know it was the ’80s, but the pulsing synesthesia and macabre mescaline caverns of a corn pops comedown took me by surprise.

What those parents need is something that will curb the euphoric response their children receive from making daddy cry. These sentient child restraints will pin and detain those little goblins until you get home from work and deign to kick the food dish within their reach.

I know, too far. Maybe if I had put all this information in a list then people would excuse my cruel hypotheticals. See item #1 here. In fact, let’s have a short list of all the recent lists I’ve come across on del.icio.us:

Top 3 Lists

1. 13 things that do not make sense
2. 10 Reasons Why Gay Marriage Will Ruin Society
3. 10 Most Expensive Cars

Those are actually three different titles for the same list.

I have to get back to keeping exciting things from happening at my corporate executive job and securing my white paint so the kids can’t get it, but I hoped you’ve enjoyed the tour (and remember, you’re being watched so I’ll know if you didn’t click through all the links).

I don’t know how to leave you, but I know we’re in the middle of something, we’re here to stay, and we raise our head for the color rEEEEEeeeEEeeeeEeeeEed.

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