Music, Late December Melancholy

If you haven't yet noticed, I conceal links in text. I should perhaps think up a better way to illuminate links--it's a resolution. I'll figure it out in 2015, just like everything else. 

Feels good to write on the new laptop--the MacBook Pro Retina, I'll have you know--feels good on the fingers, hands, wrists, and scrumptious on the eyes. 

I adore late life combacks, and I'm happy to see Hailu Mergia in the Post and hear him on the new album.

What's not to like about Derrick Lara, of The Tamlins, reggae's best-known back-ups (think Peter Tosh, Marcia Griffiths, Delroy Wilson), covering the young Michael Jackson?

Soon to be hip-as-fuck-if-it-already-isn't molam and luk thung: Saksiam Petchchompu & Pornsurapon Petchseethong. Funky. I hyped the first edition of this compilation back in 2009-10--take that hipster fucks. 

My Fela of the moment: Carry Me, I Want to Die; Shabazz; Young Fathers.  

Unusual and dope: Rita Indiana.

Tulipa Negra--Dance. 

The French are the most Hip.

I'm into the nu Prince album but can't find any tracks on youtube; I like Clouds. 

Mary and I got back together earlier this year; I found my parents beaucoup 1980s Sade vinyl.

Loneliness.

I visited Portland for the first time in 2014, a charming visit. 

Kitsch 

Sinkane: bout to blow up.  

Darling Neal at 23 in 1968. 

What I think of as perhaps my current favorite, from the album inspired by Ray Charles' Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music.

Excessive? I hope not. Enjoy. 

 

 

Back East

I'm back. I've been on vacation. I've been home.

I began a new series of stories last night. They are at present a series of anecdotes, told from the perspective of a friend, Holden, who has experienced psychosis and remains paranoid. In recent weeks he has become concerned about surreptitious and sinister white vans which appear in his driveway, and are perhaps of indifferent purpose. He feels under the eye of  six or seven Ethiopians. Once, at a party, I saw Holden throw contact lens solution into a bowl of punch, and turn, wild eyed, at the surrounding crowd: "That's LSD." Holden then, with some violence, jerked his head around on his neck, and spat at the revelers, growling, "I've contracted HIV." None of this was unusual, at the time, as five or six close friends had begun to manifest certain symptoms of serious mental disorders (we were all twenty, twenty-one). It was par for the course. 

A few days ago I obtained the following information: a dear old friend, Oriane, decided she'd had just enough, stepped out of her bed, and walked out of the nursing home--this is neither metaphor nor hyperbole. Oriane was born some years before 1920, the daughter of a well-known naturalist and photographer. Oriane and my grandfather were great friends and bitter friends, each lusting for the spotlight, each full of wit, levity, and tales to last long into the night. I saw Oriane over the summer, and I did believe it would be the last time we would meet--months earlier she had fallen and broken a few bones, and, in disbelief and rage (at ninety-something she lives alone, perfectly capable and competent) she threw herself onto her bed having resolved to die. She spoke to no one for twenty-four hours, when a well-meaning acquaintance dropped in to assure all was well, and discovered all was, unfortunately, not. Oriane spent the next six-eight months in a nursing home, confined to her bed. When I saw her in August, though frail, she remained quick and sharp. For whatever reason I was full of aphorisms that day, and, after my aunt noted this, I told Oriane I was hard at work on a dictionary of axioms, observations, adages, and general pith. "I hope only you find someone out there to read it," she replied. I am elated to hear she has recovered.

Sadly, another old friend did pass away this year. She was an artist, scholar, musician, hippie den mother, organic farmer, lover of the shaggy, and inspiration to many--an Obie who went on to take her MA in Classical Greek and Latin from the University of Chicago, who would host musicians, poets, civil rights activists, rabble rousers and reds for late night philosophizing, music-making, and merriment on her farm, and remember (and remark) with pride that the FBI kept an eye on the goings-on at her house. She moved to my hometown in 1984, in her sixties, where she became a central figure on the scene with her Dobro, her sketchbook ("subjects festooned around the room"), and her beautiful, bright presence. We both were on-air talent at the very same radio station, and as an impressionable adolescent I watched her cat Millicent when B left town on occasion. We watched Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, and I thank and think of B as one of many real-world saints who lighten the darkness for the rest of us. George Eliot says it best: 

But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.   

Goobye, B. 

Goodbye, 2014. 

Look Homeward, Angel

I've been listening to the new d'angelo album Black Messiah, on youtube (I know, basic as fuck), and in between songs I keep having to endure these anti-smoking ads.

I don't smoke. Alright, I might have a smoke or two when I'm drinking. But I can count the number of times I've bought a pack on one hand. Three fingers. I am d.o.n.e. with muhfuckin' anti-smoking ad campaigns.

People smoke, people get sick; some of this is smoking-related, some of this is not. The amount of money, effort, and energy wasted on anti-smoking campaigns, hard-earned money stupidly spent, and the effort/energy that might be expended on causes which truly merit our resources, this irritates my sense of decency, my common sense and common reason. I am entirely in agreement with David Hockney, one of the great artists of our time to boot. If I ever amass a vast quantity of wealth, I'm putting some of it into a pro-legalization-of-cocaine advocacy group, because I believe this would vastly disrupt the cartels (power and influence of, violence and atrocities committed by) who are breaking my heart in Mexico, and make more life in the drug-consuming zones (Europe, the US) more entertaining.   

But back to d'angelo: the new album is dope as fuck. I haven't said that in a few years. This album is like voodoo: it's ethereal, funky (Sly, where you at?), soulful, cosmic, complex, symphonic. And d'spite the heroin, d's voice sounds as if it hasn't aged a day in fifteen years. With all the horror and pain and suffering and tragedy in this country and the world, we need d'angelo. We need him bad. And maybe we also need heroin?

I saw the new Chris Rock film, Top Five, with Brooklyn and Loisa in DC Sunday. The same day we went to an incredible Ethiopian place Loisa had meant to visit for some time, went down to Anacostia, and ultimately ended up at the MLK Jr. Memorial. Coincidence? I asked Louisa if there was a theme to the day and she laughed, "I know exactly how you'll tell this story, M, 'Loisa insisted on a tour of black DC.'" Speaking of, Rest in Peace to the Mayor for Life. It's hard to believe he's gone, really, but as the demographics continue to shift in the District, well, in a way it makes sense. The twentieth century is over. Some things have improved, some things have worsened. I hope, like Chris Rock said a few weeks ago, white people have become a little less crazy. DC remains, like most of Amerikkka, a hard place to be black.

Some have remarked this is Chris Rock's Annie Hall, and I'm not sure about that (it isn't because Top Five disappoints). No, I simply find the movies very different, though they do both illuminate different social worlds of New York. The best and most important scene in Top Five is the Top Five scene with Tracy Morgan, set in what I believe is a Harlem NYCHA apartment; Cedric the Entertainer delivers a best supporting actor worthy performance (though he'll never be nominated) as the quintessential Houston con-artist, Jerry Seinfeld and DMX have amusing appearances each, and Rosario Dawson gives us a brilliant, calculating, vulnerable, and journalistic representative of the paper of record, the NYT. I find it interesting that Jay and Kanye co-produced this film, especially in light of Kanye's recent marriage to Kim K.

Loisa is an amusing character. She's adopted academic utilitarianism to a problematic degree; she makes serious decisions based on the philosophy. I think it's crazy, but Loisa is a great person, who has dedicated herself to a cause through and through (she works for a major humane organization), and I consider her to be one of the kindest and most genuine people I've ever met.

There are slips, though.

Once, Loisa and Grace drank to excess, several years ago in $Skid Row$. Unexpected from Grace this was not; just a day before a few of us had brought take-out margaritas to McCarren Park, and, after the margarita was for the most part consumed, Grace in her shriek-cackle recounted her recent amorous adventures. "I don't know what it is, it must be my pheromones! Sven--do you remember the Swede? Sven texted me the other day, 'Grace, when can I come over and fuck you again?'" Grace relished the fuck. There were families and elderly folks nearby reading their newspapers, I was mortified, though the elderly men seemed entertained.

On the night Grace and Loisa drank to excess, Loisa I had never seen so intoxicated. She remained very much in control of herself, which is why this story shocked me so. Loisa is proper, Loisa is moral. Loisa, muttering about something or other, I interrupted--dental dams had come up earlier in the night, and I asked her, "Besides people with HIV and other serious STDs, who else uses dental dams?" Loisa: "People with Aspergers." Shocked. I turned, with wide-eyes, to look at Loisa, who upon catching my eyes burst out with a Grace-like demonic cackle.

Years prior, during a frightening prank, Loisa violently grabbed her "best friend" (who is a story unto herself), shook her, and yelled into her face, "Do you know what's going on?" As the "best friend" shook her head, she inadvertently let out a slight giggle, as she was in on the prank. Loisa noticed this, whilst continuing to shake the best friend: "Are you lying to me?" And then Loisa slapped her best friend, hard, across the face.

Loisa is capable of delightful surprises. To be fair, she denies both these stories.

Brooklyn and I had a long conversation about our hometown, our friends, and how we've not met anyone who had an adolescent experience at all similar to ours (sex, drugs, booze, euphoria, tragedy). The people we knew really were (and in most cases still are) unstable, were once beautiful and full of potential, and seized life with the kind of reckless abandon I've seen only in the movies.

I'm now back in our hometown. It's bizarre. I'm still processing how I feel here. The plan was to drive immediately to see relatives in another state, but this has been abandoned, so I've picked up a few radio shows and plan to see some friends I haven't caught up with in years. One of them, a former roommate who now has a fiancée and infant, has invited me to come over for drinks and dinner tomorrow, and I am concerned he's up to something, like he plans to drug me, with perverse intent. I also feel uncomfortable around babies, but how do you get around that with new parents? Sorry, I don't want to hold your child--it just makes me feel uncomfortable, I can't drop it like I can a cat.

I come from one of the flyover states; a few years ago I thought this was unusual and exotic, and I would admit this at nightclubs, parties, galas, whatever. I soon learned it was something to be embarrassed about, which was funny. "Are you kidding me?" I thought. But that's how it is in New York. Now, for the first time, on the ride home from the airport I saw with altered eyes the countryside, the sprawl, the people: empty, hideous, provincial. Today I had lunch with a Boricua friend at a local café that serves marginal New Orleans-inspired cuisine, which also happens to be a restaurant where many of my friends are employed, and we talked about these strange feelings I'm having. She wasn't surprised.      

I'll be here for two weeks, until just before New Years. I feel a bit like Quentin at the end of Absalom: "I don't hate it I don't hate it I don't hate it." And I don't! I'm not a pretentious asshole. But life and time and people are a curious and confounding mess which through we must muddle. Like Betteredge, I have my Robinson Crusoes, one of these being The Moonstone, which I read on the flight from DC to my state whilst eavesdropping on a wonderful couple bickering in small words full of years of disappointment and indignation.      

I can't wait to see the Pynchon adaptation, and have begun a foray into the films of Douglas Sirk, the Rossellini/Bergman triplets, a few Antonioni films I haven't yet had the chance to view, and favorite roles of Bacall, whom I miss dearly. I intend to attend the Mariinsky at BAM in January of 2015, and today bought an LP of the 1966 Bayreuth Karl Bohm-Birgit Nilsson Tristan and Isolde for exactly twenty-seven cents. Music that encapsulates the homelessness of the human condition, the isolation and bitterness and beauty of life.

Goodluck in the Park, Chopin, and Enough is Enough

It's always Winter in America.

Santa Claus, Do You Ever Come to the Ghetto?

Goodluck, Central Park

Goodluck Again

Snow on the boardwalk, Brighton Beach

Mural, Ideal Glass, 2nd Street at Bowery/2nd Ave

Gwen, Margarita, Constance, and Mamie

Ms. Diallo

The Food We Serve Is As Good, As Music Of Chopin

A walk down Madison Ave

Last night Jose told me about the CIA Torture Report, that the contents of the report were worse than he had expected, far worse. I couldn't believe it--that it could be worse (we're both informed and have read widely on the subject since the revelations broke some years ago). I thought certainly the use of waterboarding was likely to be far more widespread than anyone could believe, but was, like Jose, expecting the report to be watered down, to identify rogue actors within the enhanced interrogation program, that kind of thing. Unfortunately, the report features items such as "rectal feeding," detainees kept in "coffin-like boxes" for "266 hours," the threatening of detainees with sexual assault of their children or mothers, detainees on life support after only days or hours in captivity (which indicates the report doesn't fully outline the degree of the savagery), and detainees who died during torture. The sadism described is medieval.

I was so upset I had to take a long walk, and additionally thought maybe I would find myself a chocolate chip cookie or croissant. How could people, people like you or I, torture other people, like that? With such brutality! And with such sadism.

The thing about New York: you're never too far from human misery, and every day you're confronted with a new tragedy, whether it's desperate looking women scavenging for cans in the bitter cold, vacant-eyed men roaming the streets yearning for compassion or death, homeless children and teens, abandoned house pets nuzzling disinterested legs. It's tough. Some days I come back to the apartment and weep for all the misery in the world, all the suffering, all the sadness. Well, not weep, but tear up and stare at the ceiling, despondent.

The city isn't just proximity to human misery--if it were, no one would want to live here! What redeems New York is human possibility, and the beauty of the warmth and compassion of the majority of the people who live here, when it comes to helping strangers. You've probably read a story about the homeless man who needed a new backpack, his old backpack disintegrating, when, in the nick of time, a stranger hands him a new backpack. This kind of thing happens all the time, and though a backpack isn't really what the homeless man needs (how about an apartment and a job), there are cities where he wouldn't even get a backpack (Chicago and Los Angeles immediately come to mind).

Possibility and beauty are the other major redeemers of New York. At my depressive nadir last night, I sat in the Pacific Street station, waiting for the train, reading The Moonstone, while a young woman played the guitar and sung nearby. She was a distraction, though, mostly because she good, very good. She covered a song which by now we've all heard, Pumped Up Kicks (just in case), for which she won amateur night, apparently. Here's the version she's uploaded. Neither are very good, and there is some odd fuzz at the end of the version on her youtube channel, but I know why she won amateur night--she has a fantastic voice, a mature, self-aware style, and someone should sign her, develop her, and cut the album. She calls herself Opal Ell, and we need new names like hers as a culture, new voices, and especially young voices who sing in the subway and on the streets, people who take whatever platform they can because they have something to express and the talent to express it beautifully.

Opal turned my night around, and I visited Strawberry Fields because it's been thirty-four years since John Lennon was gunned down as of a couple days ago. I went on to my lucky fountain, said a few words, and left two pennies on the edge of the basin, now drained of water for the winter.

It was a nice enough night, so I cut across the Park and strolled slowly down Madison, which I've come to consider one of the most sepulchral places on the entire island. It's so dodo, all of it, such a hyper-expensive morass of hopeless loneliness and dissatisfaction. The fact that Donna Karan, from her perch on Madison Ave and her house in East Hampton, is considered to be a representative of the downtown scene and downtown at this late moment when the downtown scene has had its last gasp--there is an aspect of New York and America in general that has lost its soul. New York is a microcosm of the world in many ways, and also a microcosm of the United States, so the corporitization, suburbanization, and mass, homogenous commodity culture that has taken over the city is representative of what has occurred and is occurring in the rest of the country and in the world. It will pass, like everything else. But we shouldn't let it pass without acknowledging its existence, critiquing it, analyzing it, and understanding it (this condition), because if we neglect to do so what follows may be far worse than whatever it is we anticipate, like the CIA Torture Report.

Fashion needs new designers, young designers with ideas. This kind of culture, along with most forms of artistic expression, is born in the streets. It is a low to high process--one needs only to examine the French restaurants of New York to understand this: the classic, rarified menus of the fifties and sixties, themselves part of a much older tradition that evolved out of the countryside, are all but extinct. The last in the grand dame tradition that remains is La Grenouille, though it is, coincidentally, New York's best restaurant and certainly one of the best restaurants in the entire United States. Many bistros and brasseries have opened in New York, but these serve a kind of French cuisine I would consider to be pedestrian, middle class, or working class. I write this not to disparage these restaurants, as I frequent many of them, I solely intend to describe a change that has occurred, an elevation of something once considered inedible in French cuisine--or if not inedible certainly not fine.

Fashion needs an enlivening, badly, and a kind of emergent designer that doesn't aspire to design clothes for the wealthiest few, but to revolutionize what everyday women wear on a day to day basis. If this person knew his or her history, he or she would only need to look to the story of Chanel for an example.

Otherwise, Madison Ave is New York's glamorous dodo--a beautiful piece of taxidermy.  

Sharon Jones and Philip Glass

Last Thursday three of us took the A train to the Apollo for The Daptone Soul Revue: Sharon Jones, Antibalas, Charles Bradley, Naomi Shelton, and a few supporting acts/openers. I came up from the Foley Square protests for Eric Garner, Dean and his roommate/girlfriend from Bed Stuy where they live. Dean claims to have slept with three of four female roommates, and is now "dating" the third. Poor policy, I'd say, but quot homines, tot sententiae. Many of the characters in this diary take their name from literature, and, as you may have guessed, Dean comes from Dean Moriarty. He's no Sal Paradise but then neither am I--in fact the name Moriarty has always fuddled me, as I associate him with Sherlock Holmes worthy adversary. No matter--let's move forward.

Dean is in the process of taking a master's in social work at one of the famous New York schools. I think of him as being foppish mess, full of inchoate and incoherent ideas expressed with an energetic convoluted-ness. He's immature and nearly thirty, and when he drinks his tentacles fly around the room dripping pus about haphazardly. I like Dean, but his behavior is difficult to manage and, because he's immature and thoughtless, the behavior is often offensive. We'll come to this.

What a thrill it was to walk into the Apollo. I thought of Adelaide Hall, Ella Fitzgerald, Mahalia, the Soul Stirrers, Aretha, Ray Charles, and of course, James Brown, of all the music and history that has passed through the theatre over the years, and all the regular folks who have come to hear the music. I had never been to the Apollo before, and it was a culmination of many things--I had a feeling of understanding, of oneness with a current of being, a feeling I haven't had since talking Kant in college, something I first experienced in Pizarro's tomb in Lima. There I felt the burden and logic of history; the the Apollo I felt a supreme beauty and coherence. If that makes any sense at all.  

Naomi Shelton did Harlem Mavis Staples; she hobbled out onto the stage with assistance, but as soon as she started singing--mmmhmmm. That woman has a serious voice and knows about the good news. A few acts later came Charles Bradley, who has been waiting all his life for this moment (he's in his sixties) and screamed and hollered as he churned and oozed around the stage in a costume even James Brown might've been too demure to don (it featured a phallic, sequin-covered tie that hung between his legs). Antibalas brought down the house--they went over time, and it appeared as if the stage management had to remove them from the stage. Much of the band seemed carried away, in a trance, and so were we in the audience, people dancing, writhing, clutching at their genitals. The thing was only steps away from an orgy. And then Sharon leaps onto the stage after a Hardest Working Man in Show Business-style introduction. I didn't know how anyone could follow Antibalas, but Sharon blew them out the water. That woman has a power in her voice that I've never heard. Sharon covered "Every Beat of My Heart," which Gladys cut in 1961 when she was just eighteen years old. Sharon can sing eighteen years old. The pinnacle of the show--there were two in Sharon's set--came when she preached, frantically, hysterically, as if the music, feeling, and spirit were about to carry her off, about her cancer, how she caught it, how it almost killed her, and how she beat it. I thought the theatre might come crashing down--I don't think the Apollo has seen a show of that caliber since the sixties. Sharon finished up with her version of James Brown's "There Was a Time" in which she teaches us all about the mashed potato, the tighten-up, the chicken, the twist, the camel walk, the boogaloo, and a selection of other interpretations of dances of the 1960s. This is up there with the best shows I've seen, and I've seen most of the best (the notable exception being Prince).

Dean was drunk when we left, drunk and looking for trouble. I had come from the Eric Garner protests; we were in Harlem. Dean insisted on smoking a blunt in front of the police, in front of the Apollo, without a clue as to what that might mean, how that might make people with a different skin color feel--something they could never get away with, right in front of the police like that--and in front of the Apollo, which is a respected landmark. It was semi-disgraceful. I rode the A to 59th with Dean and his roommate and then transferred to the D.

Saturday last Cash, Sadie, Princess, and I saw The Etudes at Bam. What a treat it was to see the old lion himself perform the first two etudes, with the forgivable slovenliness of the composer, tempo uneven as if Philip himself is, in this first performance of all of the etudes, himself becoming reacquainted with his own work. It was beautiful and melancholy, aged lovers holding each other on the train, each more in love with the other than ever, youth an eternal present rather than a distant memory. Ten pianists tackled the etudes, and it was fascinating to see these divergent interpretations. Princess, Cash, and I loved the etudes; Sadie sort of didn't get it, although I think she was happy to have been brought along. Sadie has told me she doesn't like medieval or religious art, and Sadie's a Spaniard through and through: she rejects ritual, yet requires it, requires the evocation of sex, of violence, of redemption. Cash has improved immensely since moving to New York, he loved the etudes and had unexpected and intelligent things to say about it.

Princess had been shopping for a stylist all day, and was fraught when she arrived--she'd been to Macy's, Bloomingdale's, Barney's, Bergdorf, and the first three were just crawling with the hordes. Poor thing. She was dressed like a Geisha and I realized she has a fluid/natural/organic grasp of style, it's impressive. She talked about a few years ago, when I had incorporated "Crunk" into my name, and how she thought that was iconic of a certain time, age, era, etc., which of course I loved to hear. She works at the boom boom room and has lately begun to enjoy heavy drinking. Cash looked at me with delighted surprise when she told a story about returning to her $Skid Row$ apartment so drunk, and, being unable to find the key, falling asleep in the hallway. When she woke up in the morning, she threw up, and still couldn't figure out how to get into her apartment. "We should hang out with Princess more often," Cash said.

I'm reading Wilkie Collins' mystery The Moonstone, which is the most wonderful winter novel. On the horizon is a beautiful biography of George Sand I found at City Opera, a first edition, Infamous Woman, Conrad's Lord Jim, Valley of the Dolls, The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born. Many things. Saturday I leave New York for DC and my hometown soon after that. I'm nervous, I feel unsafe when I leave New York for these provincial pieces of my past.

DC promises to be amusing, as I'll lodge with Brooklyn and we have much to catch to gossip about. Brooklyn plans to visit New York for New Years, but New Years is such a pain in the city I have no idea what we'll do. Brooklyn's best lady friend Eliot will be there, who I once nearly slept with I think, although of course I could be wrong. That night she wore an orange jumpsuit, and Brooklyn was drunk and I sort of felt Eliot ran out on me, and Brooklyn kept semi-aggressively commenting "I know why your mad." It was so bizarre and unusual, like one of those strange and fragile surrealist attempts at cinema.

I made a trek out to Soul Food Kitchen on far out Fulton in Bed Stuy last night: might be the best soul food in New York. I had catfish, mac n' cheese, okra, and greens, and I'm bringing carry out to Kate for her birthday party Friday.

Why would anyone ever leave New York?

Ghosts of Midtown Past

57th

Vaguely Socialist Peasant on 48th

Wonderful 1930s Greco-Gauguin Dreamtime 

Found in New York

The Post Office

Ceiling detail

Alright, so occasionally I use the photo filters

The creatures that haunt my dreams

Near Fort Tryon

Tompkins and Jefferson, Bed Stuy

The Godfather, Tompkins and Fulton, Bed Stuy

Isaac and Michael

Sharon Jones

Reminds me of Merida

Llorona, Lower East Side

Why can't people be more like fish: simple, and kind?

Kafka

I mentioned the Brooklyn Heights girls--the two I almost lived with? Well, one of them told me all about her intense curiosity in Kafka's letters, diaries, journals, etc., of course it goes without saying he was a fascinating, unusual, a neurotic. Según Freud, the illness of the neurotic is the illness of modern civilization.

Last night I went to flight attendant friend's holiday party in deep Queens. Deepest Queens, an area the look and feel of which makes it feel like it could be anywhere or anything. It's so abstract. Flight attendant friend and I met a few years ago on a flight from New York to my state of birth; I had a little shoulder-bag with me that I had stowed in one of the overhead bins. During those quiet moments before take-off, the flight attendants closing and inspecting the aforementioned bins, passengers settling in with a book, their anxieties, thoughts of wherever it is they have left and wherever it is they are to go, and the head flight attendant pulls out my shoulder-bag, a Colombian mochila, and, in a tone audible to the nearby fifteen or twenty passengers, says, with my bag held up, "Whose purse is this?" For once, my seatmate is a very attractive woman. What humiliation. Immediately with some awkwardness I stood up and claimed my bag, and told the flight attendant that "it's a shoulder-bag not a purse." Chuckling from the surrounding rows. "Looks like a purse to me!" she responded. Carly, my seatmate, doubled over in laughter. We struck up a conversation and discovered we were on our way to the same town, so I gave her a ride home from the airport. We've been friends ever since. She's a flight attendant with a major carrier, and the more of her friends I meet, the more I respect the carrier. The flight attendants are well-treated, a diverse and intelligent mix, multilingual, fun, and best of all, genuine. Be kind to your flight attendants, readers!

So last night I went to the fur-themed holiday party Carly threw at her apartment in Queens. Immense apartment, the only abode I've been that can hold a candle to Brooklyn's place in DC, so far, full of women and gay men dressed in fake fur of all kinds. Eventually I met a charming redhead who reminded me of another friend, also a redhead, a dancer, with similar facial features and a matching attitude. Incredible as it is, I was to discover the similarities between these two women run deeper: the two share the same first name. But the redhead of Carly's party came with a highly unusual maiden name: Kafka. It's a family legend Franz is a cousin once-or-twice-removed. Kafka comes from Phoenix, though she married a Brit, has a lovely baby daughter, and had been living in London until city life became too complicated. Before she married, first and last names were alliterative Ks. She shouldn't have ever changed it, I told her.

Kafka has appeared twice in my life in the last few weeks: what could it possibly mean?

I've been listening to Fela as I write, which reminds me: I finished Chimamanda Adichie's Americanah a few days ago. Ultimately I found the novel disappointing--thematically there are three distinct experiences Adichie explores, and the first and second are far and away the most interesting. As Adichie's protagonist reaches maturity, she loses depth--she becomes dull. The quality of the writing remains high, but the agony of it, the effort that went into it, all this changes--the texture, once beautifully and carefully sculpted, becomes smooth and indistinct. It seems as if Adichie ran out of steam at a certain point, and simply needed to finish the book, to put it behind her--this is understandable. I look forward to reading her next book, as I believe as a writer she does have the capacity to produce a masterpiece.

I've begun Wilkie Collins' Moonstone, which is a wonderful book and wonderful winter reading in particular, and has reminded me of the out-of-the-past idea of the "morally fallen," the disgraced woman (and occasionally man) of epochs long past. I was discussing Red Hook with my cousin, and I mentioned that I always think of Red Hook as the place where one should move after a disgraceful affair, a place to hide, to be alone, to reflect on the foreclosed life that might have been. She agreed, and knew someone who had done just so, only to become involved in another lurid affair, can you imagine?  The Moonstone proves to be delightful, as I knew it would. The edition I have is cumbersome and unwieldy, and this summer I found a pint-sized copy of Conrad's Lord Jim, so I may carry that around in my coat pocket when I'm unable to lug around a large tome.

My friend Grace is in Los Angeles this week photographing and drawing bulbous nudes with tattoos, her favorite subject. Grace is a favorite, and may be the reason I obtain the position with Sony Pictures. She shrieks, she screams, she exposes as much tattooed flesh as possible whenever possible. I can't wait for her to move back to New York. I don't understand why anyone moves to Los Angeles--sure the weather's great, but it can be cold, you have to drive everywhere which really means sitting in traffic for hours and hours and hours, and the air is awful.

Tonight I'll see The Daptone Soul Review (Sharon Jones and Charles Bradley) at the Apollo, and Philip Glass Saturday at BAM. I'm extremely excited: Sharon Jones is the Queen.

I hope to participate briefly in the Eric Garner protests outside City Hall later on today. It's been suggested police wear cameras, to prevent incidents like the death of Michael Brown, or at least provide irrefutable video evidence--well, with Eric Garner there was video evidence. If, as is the case with Eric Garner, a video can't convince a grand jury there is probable cause to charge a police officer, what's the point of cameras? I've said it before: a racist, trigger happy country produces a racist, trigger-happy police force. It doesn't matter if the officer in question has apologized, claims he never meant to harm Eric Garner, says he's sorry and prays for Eric and his family. Eric Garner was a father of six. Six children will grow up without a father, will have this injustice hanging over their heads the rest of their lives. What a shame.

We can talk about racism, but what we really need to do is talk about racists, because they're out there, and they're the reason we don't see indictments when it comes to the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. It's a tragedy and a disgrace. I hope this is a watershed moment, when the sensible people step away from those with the words of inequity on their lips, the racists with hate seeping out of their pores.

RIP Eric Garner. I, like the court jester of our time, am lost for words. 

   

Suggested Reading

Chris Rock is back.

The best in reactionary, New York of Yesteryear, may be found here, and also here, of all places.

Before South Williamsburg became $Skid Row$, the neighborhood was once known as Los Sures. The people behind this documentary/new media extravaganza have been busy.

Possible origins of the term 86'd--etymology is a favorite hobby.

Diana and Francy and Nostalgia and Tristan on a Tuesday.

My demographic ages

My parents left Sunday. Seeing them in the city reminded me of those penultimate days of summer, when one has come to terms with the calendar and the fact that September is only just around the corner, when the sun has begun to dim and the sharp opacity of winter strikes the leaves, brick, and concrete, and when the days aren't quite as long as they were in July. I've been maudlin lately as well, and speaking almost entirely in analogy and metaphor. New York in these months is eternal dark and grey. I can understand why Georgia O'Keeffe left Stieglitz to repeatedly paint the vagina in New Mexico. Incidentally, is this not a novel euphemism?

Parents and I went to visit the magnificent old Boar at the end of 57th next to my grandmother's building and there he was, presiding over the East River as if it wasn't 30 degrees outside. I'll revisit him in the spring, and if my childhood memories hold true that park will have filled up with a bacchanal of flower and bloom come April. I miss her, Margaret. I would've loved to have visited the Frick with her, to have painted with her, to have talked politics with her, to have heard her turn of phrase, to have felt her kindness, to have watched the boats on the East River from her kitchen window, to have glimpsed the joy spread across the creases of her face when she, the first to know, would hear her favorite granddaughter was pregnant. She is, my cousin and her husband surprised parents and I before dinner. I couldn't believe it! I had no idea and would never have guessed. I'm thrilled, happy for them, and I have to in some way help them find a two bedroom because I would be devastated if they left the city, especially with the little fluffle, or "the business" as she's calling her (they're to have a little girl).

Kim and I went to my favorite place in Soho last night, Ciccio, which I write with some trepidation as I feel the hordes have yet to discover how pleasant it is, the quality of the homemade pasta, the feel of the place as one in which one can simply share a "second kitchen" with friends, as remark the French. It reminds me of the little bakery on Ninth where Taylor and I used both to collect breakfast before this whole "ambassador" campaign was formally announced.

Kim I've referred to many times, but have never described. How to talk about Kim? I had to convince Kim I would make a good friend, when we became close, years ago, in the months following her return from South Africa. Kim is a professional gossip, and used to, within a half hour of meeting someone, if she determined this him or her worthy of her attention, would ask how many people he or she had slept with? Kim at her worst is aggressive, contradictory, unpredictable, generally volatile, and will delve into obsession monologues relating to her high school social life. Typically, however, she's entertaining, a wonderful and reliable thread of get-togethers, and a devoted friend. Many a charming afternoon I've spent on the couch with Kim, discussing this or that or nothing at all, and I cherish these occasions, as we're both busy these days. Kim went corporate, she's doing very well, and she lives in the West Village.  

Kim isn't happy in New York, and she keeps on talking about Seattle, San Francisco, even San Diego. I'm not sure she'll be happy anywhere if she can't be happy in New York. She did break up with her boyfriend, which was too bad because I liked him, but I could see that he wasn't right for her, for so many reasons. Since Lindsay is the root cause of the split I feel it is up to her to find a replacement. We were both sort of down because one of our most attractive friends got engaged to her boyfriend in the Jardin du Luxembourg this weekend, which is elegant and whatnot, good for them. I don't dislike Angelica, I don't dislike her now-fiancee, Jay, but the fact of their engagement distresses in that it illuminates to both Kim and I how poorly off we are when it comes to romance. Angelica and Jay are both beautiful, they're a beautiful couple, though of course Jay isn't good enough for Angelica, but who is? I'm happy for them, though, and she's moving to New York so I actually am glad they're engaged and that's out of the way so he can't coerce her into remaining in LA like last time. Angelica is sharp and prone to flail about, she's stunning. She's in publishing and arrives in February. Jay wants to act; I haven't seen him act, but, thinking only of his appearance and his personality, he has a much better chance in New York than he ever had in LA. I don't believe in his prospects here, he possesses a elfin beauty that's distracting in a supporting character, and I can't imagine him playing anything else. These people who want to act, like Tina, on her third nose job, what are they thinking? They're suited to a plethora of trades, and yet they wish to act. Not everyone can be Pacino, not everyone can be Streep.

Cash went back to our hometown and his girlfriend mentioned marriage again. He's into her, but can't envision spending the rest of his life with her. To this I replied, "well, there is always divorce." I don't understand why people don't just accept divorce as a fact of life--so many of my friends and acquaintances, weighing the decision of whether to marry or not so carefully. Divorce exists! I feel to an extent divorce has taken on the moral ugliness of the fifties, with so many of my peers resenting their parents for daring to divorce, to have the gall to separate. These demanding children! Would they rather the parents hate each other for the duration of their time on this earth? Anyway, the conversation with Cash threw me--it was different to hear him talk about deep, serious realities of love in a somewhat quotidian manner--ie, these are things he is thinking about, these are everyday matters.

At dinner, Kim complained that she doesn't like Cash, but mentioned that he was looking very attractive the last time she saw him (Saturday). This is a problem with Kim: she'll often choose to dislike friends of mine, and voice her displeasure to me. It's one thing to dislike certain qualities in a mutual friend, and even to complain about these qualities to the friend-in-the-middle, but to actively dislike, exclude, or make decisions based on this dislike, that is a character flaw. That's unclear--let me try it another way: I might dislike a dear friend of a friend, dislike certain personality traits or dislike them generally, but I'll rarely, rarely give this feeling words, especially to my friend about their friend. It's bad breeding.

The dinner was opulent and delicious. Ciccio is an excellent restaurant. I took parents on their first night in town, and they loved it.

I mentioned the Lauder Cubism Collection at the Met in the last mini post--has anyone else had enough of this parade of Picasso? I saw Jacqueline and Picasso at Pace: overly intimate and bizarre, Jacqueline glowering at you from every corner of the room, and Picasso and the Camera at Gagosian, which contained two or three arresting works but not much else. It is clear both galleries are trolling out whatever might sell while everyone is in New York for the winter. Aunt Kate knew Jacqueline when she worked with the Hermitage, and found her absolutely detestable, haughty and affected but nondescript, bland. Cubism (at the Met) was the same, with too much early Braque and Picasso in angular constellations of brown and carrot, though it did reward with an exquisite and enormous Léger and the admirable Juan Gris' striking portrait of his mother.

Princess, Cash, and I are going to see Philip Glass do the Piano Etudes at BAM this weekend, and I may also see Sharon Jones at the Apollo. Princess is a friend enmeshed in the fashion world. I can't wait to see her--she's sociable, brilliant, unusual, amusing, but most of all, we'll be able to gossip! Not that I know very many people in fashion, but Princess and I know many of the same people from our days as earnest, beautiful club kids, eyes full of the conviction that what could be might really come to be. Princess and I almost lived together in Chinatown, but now she lives in Bushwhack--it's just too awful. She had a cramped flat in Alphabet City but it was just so much for so little. This is a problem with New York, the so much for so little issue when it comes to housing.

I haven't been to Harlem in some time and I also need to visit the Cloisters, so maybe I'll make a day and night of it. My friend Jean lives up there and, like Princess, I haven't seen her in awhile. It's never too late to reconnect with friends with whom you've fallen out of touch. Friendships aren't like leftovers: while whatever you've brought home with you might spoil, you'll always have the memory of the original meal. Well, I have some wonderful meal memories, and it's time to find these people. This is why I'm going to flight attendant friend's furry soiree all the way out in Kew Gardens, Queens, and why I continue to make the effort. Especially because the new people I meet tend to be so fucking crazy. For example:

Remember the women I nearly roomed with in Brooklyn Heights? I went to the apartment of said women the other night for hot toddies. One, the sometime WA assistant, proceeds to explain she's due to leave for Colombia in the morning and can socialize for a moment but must return to arranging her things. The other begins to monopolize the conversation, the one with the intense interest in Kafka, and proceeds to go on and on about how she identifies with Anne Frank. She once mentioned this to George Saunders at a book signing, and with what wide-eyes he stared I can't imagine. This is unkind of me, but her monologues reminded me of Bad Charlus, and I felt uneasy and a little tipsy and generally queasy. I might've enjoyed it if I hadn't been trapped with her, if there had been one or two other people around, but there was no escape, no Brooklyn in whose eyes I might find confirmation, eyes to share feelings of incredulous delight and discomfort. No, I just had to listen to her go on and on, it was dreadful. I didn't end up leaving until after one in the morning, and because of this I missed the birthday party for Princess and a general mess of a party at a Dean's in Bed Stuy that I would have really enjoyed. So this is why I want to reconnect with people I like, people who aren't crazy. Proust has a wonderful moment on the experience of discovering madness in passers-by, I'll find it and quote it in the future if I remember to do so. We then discussed the difficulties of finding like-minded people in New York to befriend, how New York can be rough, socially. I couldn't think, I don't believe I said anything of note, I was capable only of a weak mumble. It is hard to find interested, interesting, genuine people who aren't fucking crazy in New York, I suppose, but aren't we all a little bit crazy? I'll contact Brooklyn Heights girls again in the near future, lolz. At least they aren't women who over-utilize inflection, a behavior I cannot endure. You hear it on the street, often: "I JUst DoN't knOw WhAT I Am GoIng To Do?" I could write that phonetically but that would require an incredible effort and I think what I am describing is obvious enough: either you yourself are guilty of this, or you know people who do it and don't really consider it an issue, or we're soulmates and you know exactly what I mean and you also despise the sound of these creatures who belong in Chicago or Houston or whatever pit of degradation out of which they crawled. These people will be important in the upcoming requisite entry on New York and gentrification.  

I want to say one or two little things about Ferguson: fuck the police! Racist fucking country! Makes me want to move to Europe or back to Latin America, but I won't really do that because I love New York so very much. The tragedy may be, for people of a certain age, similar to the Dreyfus Affair, in terms of how I have observed it opening faults and chasms between friends, leaving some on one side and some on the other. I'm just glad to be in New York. Parents and I followed the protest after dinner with Katy on the Upper West Side, on the way back to Chelsea, where they were staying, we were all upset, shaken up, etc. We didn't get mixed up in it because it exhausted us, it was too raw, we were too sad, too tired by the expectedness of the decision not to indict.

I'm in a really good place with New York, very happy to be here.  

Two treats tonight: Diana and Dreams. 

Back to Bolivia

As can be imagined, with family descending en mass on the city, I have accumulated an immense amount of material and have many things to write as yet unwritten. In time! For now, a collection of photos. Along with Thanksgiving visitors and tourists, the ghost of Picasso has come to New York. I've seen him at the Met, at Gagosian, and at Pace. Where will he turn up next? Are familial relations decidedly cubist? Stay tuned.

Subway Animal Sightings, II

A little colibrí, practical picaflor, whirring zunzún, or fluttersome gorrión.

"When I lived in Texas sometime around '71, almost every night we drank the money we'd made that day, at a little honky tonk on 7th. Great God! I feel as if I haven't heard the blues since then. It was hot, so hot you could feel the dust burn your lungs. If we didn't have whiskey, man, we had nothing. One Sunday it rained, hard, the kind of rain that floods all the arroyos and in those years used to close the highways, and the honky tonk shut down because the woman who ran it had to handle flooding at her mother-in-law's. Joe came back from Louisiana, he'd hitched it to New Orleans and was supposed to be back before the rain, but ended up in a five-dollar motel in Blue Bayou. When he did finally turn up, Sharon, his woman, she shot him, she'd had enough of his nonsense and I believed she left that day for Los Angeles until years later I had a postcard from her, she was living in Chicago. I cleared out of Austin as fast as I could."

Hummingbird

And this is how a friendship ends...

I grew up in a charming neighborhood, where everyone knew one another. We were on the edge of the   heart of downtown, and five of us neighborhood kids were especially close, rambling through backyards and alleyways, causing trouble, playing games, kid stuff. It was somewhat Huckleberry Finn except we were all more Tom Sawyer. Well as we grew up things changed in ways expected and unexpected, though we have all more or less remained friends. The most susceptible to peer pressure in the group, Dougie, I remember him doing blow in the bathroom of our favorite Chinese restaurant when I was still in middle school. It was crazy, this woman had known us since we were kids, and he got down in the bathroom of her restaurant. Dougie became completely tied up with this charismatic loser, Cucumber, and we would all worry about him, especially Reverend, Naleg, and I, but also Anthony. Today Dougie's doing just fine, on the verge of moving to Denver or Santa Cruz or Monterey or wherever, he is one of those fortunate souls constantly in trouble who in the end always manages to slick his way out of the worst of it. A few years ago I heard he had gone to a casino, and a few of them, Cucumber, Dougie, Rico, etc., had thoroughly blazed a van in the casino parking lot. They were unaware or had forgotten that casinos have surveillance and security, and take these things seriously. They were all arrested, and Dougie had what he believed to be mdma. In fact it was meth (two life lessons here folks), and we all thought Dougie might be in serious trouble, not-vote-again kind of trouble. But he managed to squeak through, somehow. He's white and this is America. I digress.

Dougie was the first of the group to break away, but whenever I see him its all good. If Dougie were to visit I'd put him up no question, and we would have a great time. With Anthony, my charismatic, sensitive, birdlike, full of social potential amigo, its a different story. Anthony in college had a bad girlfriend, Mercedes Salome, who has serious emotional issues. They would have screaming fights in the middle of campus during crowded hours, and they're both very distinct in appearance and dress the part, so everybody knew. This was a campus of 40,000 or so. I remember a sorority girl I saw for a few months told me one night about "these two hipsters" she'd seen "screaming at each other in the middle of the street by the Union" and I knew immediately it was Anthony and Salome. It was a real problem, and when Anthony and I were both big into OC, the height of our friendship, the fights with Mercedes were the worst. Anthony and I went to New York for Thanksgiving during this time, and she would call him at all hours, at least ten times a day. It was unusual. 

Anthony and I had a big falling out because he accused our former dealer of molesting a pillhead, and I told Anthony that this was a lie, because it was, and that I thought Anthony's conviction that he, Anthony, was a drug addict, was a self-deceptive prescription for the symptoms resulting from the damage he sustained during his parent's divorce, that his father is, has been, and will always be the problem (Anthony had at this point embraced his father, the loser who allegedly beat his mother before their divorce). It was real, and we were with friends at an isolated cabin in the middle of the wilderness. Reverend and Forrest were there to mediate, luckily, but it's never been the same with Anthony and I ever since. And then some shit happened between Salome and I, and I still keep in touch with her and am actively encouraging her to move to New York. She's on track for her PhD, but isn't wild about her program or her current situation, and I think she'd do well here. I told Kim and Brooklyn about this and they were both aghast, the typical wide-eyed look of shock followed by the shaking of the head. The issue is, I like Salome, I always have, and it isn't that I hate Anthony but I am prideful and do hold a grudge. I hated how Anthony changed when he stopped abusing prescription meds. I don't believe he ever had a serious addiction issue, at least to OxyContin, which is what he claimed. We had a lot of fun on drugs, especially the opiates: I viewed almost all the films of Jean-Luc Godard, and it was probably a lot healthier than the typical quantities of alcohol most undergraduates imbibe on a regular basis. Furthermore, I've seen real addiction, I know what it looks like: it's a disease, a tragedy, and we don't do nearly enough for addicts in this country. 

Tangent: mass incarceration is the The New Jim Crow. Read Michelle Alexander's book, and, right now, read this: What YOU can Do About Mass Incarceration Now, On Your Own. I am living proof that most drugs do not harm the mind. If you have read this diary, you know that I am not at all uninformed or unintelligent. 

So Anthony and I, well, if he showed up in New York I might not see him. I would make the effort, though.  

Naleg is a pure benevolence, a sage, a mystic, a master. Naleg is a proficient gardner and excellent cook, he is just a fountain of talent and amusement (Naleg is very funny, has a great laugh). Naleg moved to Washington (state) before college, and I've lost touch with him, but I saw him for his sister's graduation in our hometown and it was all good. I think we'll continue to not be in touch but see each other every so often and have it be like Yeltsin and Clinton, two people who genuinely enjoy each other's company but do so at intervals due to circumstances, in this case geography. If he ever visited New York, well, the fun wouldn't stop. 

What's the point of this? The point is that the Reverend, my oldest and greatest friend, whom I have grown up with and known since birth (our parents were friends before we were born), whom I brought to Ecuador and Colombia, has been in New York since Tuesday and I haven't seen him. I'll explain. 

The Reverend lives in Nash Vegas. He's in a band, and they're doing very well, I genuinely like the music, but its a struggle to give the world something it hasn't asked for and doesn't know it wants. There has been slow and steady progress, and luckily for the Reverend, the band are kind, even-headed people, for the most part. He is probably one of the wildest, and some are downright tame, avoid alcohol, etc. But the musician's life has begun to take its toll on my friend. He's picked up cigarettes, which is crazy because he had terrible asthma as a youngster, drinks heavily, late nights/bad food/no sleep. You get the picture. I had to cancel a trip to Montana this summer, but it wasn't my decision, and last November Cash, Reverend, and I drove an Audi from New York to Los Angeles. I won't even start in with the stories, but they range from Houston's best strip clubs, to Rothko, to desert hot springs, to remote New Mexico, to coked out Disney kids walking around naked in Park La Brea.

I went through a rough time, and the Reverend forgot my birthday, which is the kind of thing that upsets me, and with me, upsettedness transforms almost instantaneously to anger. The Reverend didn't call, didn't seem to remember until I reminded him, and though I was aware he planned to stay with me, he has other friends in New York he can stay with, so I made no effort to contact him. I actually forgot when he was due to arrive, and because he didn't contact me until the day he arrived, I made no plans. Years ago we would've snuck into the boom boom room or something like that, but meatpacking is beyond dead and I want to start hitting more parties near Central Park or stalk Bowie and Iman in Nolita. Whatever, it would've been a lot of fun. I told Cash I might fly to LA specifically to avoid the Reverend, and Cash gave me the Kim/Brooklyn aghast look, but we both knew it was a joke. The Reverend didn't even know Cash and I weren't roommates anymore, because he didn't bother to contact Cash either. So I called him on Thursday and made amends, said that this was silly, and then he blows me off over the next two days. Saturday I went out in Skid$ Row (my name for Williamsburg), and reached out one last time. Nada. Nothing. Two hours later I get a text, "Are you still at Baby's All Right?" Obviously not, as I went there for dinner (but you shouldn't, the food isn't good) with Lindsay and Kim. What am I to make of this? Am I crazy? Well, yes. But have I done something, anything, to deserve this? No. What is going on with the Reverend? It's sad, really: I feel I've lost my oldest and best friend, and there isn't anything I can do about it. I've reached out, I've made the effort, I admitted I was wrong. He leaves Tuesday and I have meetings all day tomorrow and a big interview Tuesday, so I really don't have much time. 

Via Camille, it looks like Cash will be on SNL. It's pretty crazy, he's doing well in New York and I'm proud of and happy for him. He had a hellish year before we moved out here and deserves this, and besides, I think he's sharp and witty, the kind of person they need. He isn't at all impish, mincing, simpering, insipid, or self-involved. I don't compliment or praise the creative work of friends unless it's actually quality: why would I do that? That's what a bad friend would do. People know this, and it has rooted out the serious from the flock of the frivolous. If Cash plays his cards right he'll go far. Lately women have been commenting on how attractive he has become, which is odd to people like Brooklyn and I because we still have a residual image of him as that chubby kid with a bad haircut and thick glasses who had a tendency to spill nacho cheese all over himself, the face in particular. Loisa had, without any intimation or suggestion, this very same memory of Cash. 

Whenever I see Lindsay she gets out the notebook. Last night I used Charlus' aphorism about New York: "if she's one in a million, there's eight of her in New York and twenty-four in the Tri-State Area." That went into the notebook, with my blessing, though it isn't mine. I have high hopes for Lindsay, I don't think she'll become the next Sontag or Arendt, but she's certainly capable of a Valley of the Dolls or an In Cold Blood. I wish she set her sights far from the Lena Dunham/Kathryn Bigelow gutter.

I began Chimamanda Adichie's Americanah a few days ago, and I'm very impressed. Her writing continues to improve, it's staggering really. She could surpass Woolf, Lawrence, or Achebe at this rate, though what would that really mean? That's a silly thing for me to have written, but I'll leave it. It isn't a question of surpassing, and once writing reaches the level Adichie's has, it is difficult to determine what's better, only what's best. And that is of course always Proust. But Adichie has become the formidable author of her generation. 

Jose and I discussed the legalization of cocaine today. I try to boycott the drug, because when you buy cocaine you provide financial support for violence in Mexico and violence in Colombia. I brought up the recent murder of the students in Guerrero, where I've spent a not insignificant amount of time, and after a long discussion of the morally bankrupt, despotic, and terminally corrupt PRI, we naturally moved to the legalization of cocaine. Jose suggested to me that were cocaine to be legalized in the United States, the cartels would simply and suddenly have a legitimate business. This shocked me, as it was a problem I had not considered (this is uncommon). However, I think it is also not quite correct: were cocaine legalized, the cost would drop substantially. Though the money wouldn't dry up, the legitimization of the cartels would entail a scrutiny that currently doesn't exist. I highly doubt politically the influence of the cartels would change much, although it would certainly decrease somewhat as the wealth of the cartels subsided. Point made. Mexico, mi linda, mi pobrecita.  

Night.

Landscapes and Places

Supreme Court

One of Whistler's etchings of Venice. Nowhere in the exhibition was it noted that Whistler was one of Proust's favorite painters, termed Elstir in the novel. I admire etchings, one of my favorite museums is the Rembrandt House in Amsterdam, which features a vast collection of Rembrandt's etchings 

The Peacock Room

Attractive if intolerable section of DC, cloud 

I went to the New York Festival of Lights in Dumbo or the Dumbo Festival of New York or the New York Festival of Dumbo. Whatever it was cool kind of

Talib in Dumbo? Say it ain't so...

Everything horrible about New York is overcome by places like this

A magnificent fountain 

Sunset from the 7 in Sunnyside