Horror and My City

Woke up craving rice this morning. I am making yellow rice and pigeon peas for breakfast, which will be good as leftovers for dinner too. Oops, just remembered I said I wouldn't talk about what I ate in this blog if I made it. Maybe the mention doesn't count if I haven't actually eaten the food yet. Last night had fantastic caramel apple pie with ice cream after movie with Russ (I didn't make pie so still not breaking my stupid rule). Russ and I discussed music/poetry collaboration, many things paranormal, and moving away from NY Metro area because of higher and higher cost of living. Problem is we both love Manhattan and don't want to go far from it. I knew from the first time I saw the city, on my 9th birthday, that I wanted to live in it. Managed it from 1979 through 1993, and still curse the day I decided to move to Brooklyn which was followed even more disastrously by a move to Long Island. Long Island, good for the kids, blah blah blah.

Movie, Silent Hill, a waste of three hours of my life (okay, 2 hrs, 45 mins. The first fifteen minutes were interesting.) Plot a mess, acting lousy, and most importantly not scary, just gross. Left Russ after pie and walked a good way back to Penn Station. Happily soaked in the energy, moon over Union Square, cool night air. Had a nightmare last night that 200 planes attacked NYC, and I watched buildings fall from the window of a highrise. Loud speaker announcement that amounted to "We told you we'd be back." Maybe it is time to move.

A Step Away From Them
Frank O'Hara

It's my lunch hour, so I go
for a walk among the hum-colored
cabs. First, down the sidewalk
where laborers feed their dirty
glistening torsos sandwiches
and Coca-Cola, with yellow helmets
on. They protect them from falling
bricks, I guess. Then onto the
avenue where skirts are flipping
above heels and blow up over
grates. The sun is hot, but the
cabs stir up the air. I look
at bargains in wristwatches. There
are cats playing in sawdust.

On
to Times Square, where the sign
blows smoke over my head, and higher
the waterfall pours lightly. A
Negro stands in a doorway with a
toothpick, languorously agitating
A blonde chorus girl clicks: he
smiles and rubs his chin. Everything
suddenly honks: it is 12:40 of
a Thursday.

Neon in daylight is a
great pleasure, as Edwin Denby would
write, as are light bulbs in daylight.
I stop for a cheeseburger at JULIET'S
CORNER. Giulietta Maina, wife of
Federico Fellini, é bell' attrice.
And chocolate malted. A lady in
foxes on such a day puts her poodle
in a cab.

There are several Puerto
Ricans on the avenue today, which
makes it beautiful and warm. First
Bunny died, then John Latouche,
then Jackson Pollock. But is the
earth as full of life was full, of them?
And one has eaten and one walks,
past the magazines with nudes
and the posters for BULLFIGHT and
theManhattann Storage Warehouse,
which they'll soon tear down. I
used to think they had the Armory
Show there.

A glass of papaya juice
and back to work. My heart is in my
pocket, it is Poems by Pierre Reverdy.