Holy Crap!

Been busy-- w/ rdg, poetry & job related stuff-- & so haven't really picked up the The Village Voice in a while. Wow, there's a sh**loada movies coming out this Fall! Oscar time again, I guess. Anyway, it's bad enough i haven't gotten around to seeing Ponyo-- great reviews are motivatg me-- bcuz i haven't been hangin w/ my usu tween crowd (aka my nieces), but i've been rdg reviews on Michael Moore's, Jane Campion's & also Lars von Trier's newest (controversial of course) films. I figured i wouldn't make up my mind to go see Quentin Tarantino's newest movie, though i'm a huge Kill Bill Vol. I & II fan (I have a lot of self control, & little money, so i'll wait till Inglorious Basterds comes out on DVD).

There are a bunch of books that i wasn't too motivated to rd before, but am startg to feel the motivat'n bug now that they're bieng, or have been, made into movies-- superficial i know. No matter how hard Oprah tried, all i know about Cormac Mccarthy's The Road is that it seems to be somewhat similar to Stephen King's The Dark Tower series of books: I (The Gunslinger), II (The Drawing of the Three), III (The Wastelands), IV (Wizard and Glass), V (Wolves of the Calla), VI (Song of Sussanah), & VII (The Dark Tower). I know that both authors ideas are set in a post-apocalyptic world. And both have a man and boy traveling together (eventually King's Gunslinger, Roland, acquires some more traveling companions besides the boy Jake).

These books possess an overwhelmgly profound wealth of literary feats-- to this day i'm still uncoverg King's literary references. It's not only "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" by Robert Browning, but Rhea of the Coos fr Dark Tower 4: Wizard and Glass, refers Robert Frost's "The Witch of Coos." King's work tend to echo epical poetic traditions themselves, w/ their titanic themes of journey, revelation and finally, sometimes, redemption. (The Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption short story is one of my favorites of the written word-to-movie genre-- O how i love Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman in The Shawshank Redemption!).

Anyway, before this post turns into a love fest to Stephen King, another book w/ a movie version coming out that i've been hesitating to rd is Push by Sapphire-- poet extraodinaire. I've been to see her rd in person (a tiny dynamo!). I may bail on rdg it though (prob the movie too). These books w/ their glut of painful human suffergs, especially the injustices committed against childhood-- because i was a child myself, once-- are just too much to rd sometimes. The written word is alive to me. It took me a while to recover fr such books as Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison, The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold, When Things Get Worse by Barry Callaghan. Sigh.

Anyway, I'm off to the Poets House grand opening tomorrow, Yay! I'm going to miss the old Soho locat'n-- fond memories of workshop & rdgs. But I love the Hudson River locat'n (even better memories of summers down by the water-- especially those great evts i managed to make it to along that long stretch of the Hudson River Park:

September 25, 11am–5pm Invocation of the Muse: Poets & Musicians Toast the New Poets House

Finished rdg "Eclipse"

over the wkend-- the third book in Stephenie Meyers teen vampire romance series that started with Twilight. To say these books are addictive is an understatement! I'm long past the teenage stage, but i've been gobbling them down like the most addictive of sweets, since rdg the first book about three wks ago. Since i can't get enough of them & i'm too poor to actually buy my own copies i've been findg them at the public libraries pretty consistently since last wk.

I ended up watchg the Twilight movie, months ago, completely by accident. My sister's boyfriend always get a bunch of random DVDs fr someone he regularly goes to. Since he always has just the most unlikely choices, we ended up w/ it in the bunch he had brought over. A fan of paranormal romances, i fell for the movie and haven't been the same since. I found the book in the lib a few wks ago & rd it in, like, twenty-four hrs! I got my hands on New Moon last Mon. & was done by Tues. It was such a relief to finish it before the movie came out. Things kind of took an uncomfortable turn for me in Eclipse though. I haven't felt so compelled about a book since Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code.

Unbelievable, but after talking to one

of my former co-workers fr my Coney Is job, I started to miss those mornings, hurrying along the boardwalk with only a few minutes to spare before i would be late. Trying not to let the miracle of working so close to the beach pass me by-- the wind flowing across the water in early morning coolness, feeling like an epic, as i look across the so-far empty stretch of sand.
Sand still drains from hidden crevices in the comfortable running shoes that i wore for my marathon days of standing at that job. A Charles Simic poem my friends:

Couple at Coney Island

It was early one Sunday morning,
So we put on our best rags
And went for a stroll along the boardwalk
Till we came to a kind of palace
With turrets and pennants flying.
It made me think of a wedding cake
In the window of a fancy bakery shop.

I was warm, so I took my jacket off
And put my arm round your waist
And drew you closer to me
While you leaned your head on my shoulder.
Everyone could see we'd made love
The night before and were still giddy on our feet.
We looked naked in our clothes

Staring at the red and white pennants
Whipped by the sea wind.
The rides and the shooting galleries
With their ducks marching in line
Still boarded up and padlocked.
No one around yet to take our first dime.

These are my thoughts

after lvg the Charles Simic rdg @ Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House last night:
-this is what i'm going to miss about NYC when i finally fly outta here like a bat outta hell next year-- walking thru the streets w/ a little plastic glass of white wine
-i've found a new (haha!) poet to love (Charles Simic writes the kind of poems that appeal to me: proletarian, profound beyond what is actually being said w/ vast stretches of silences in the center)
-this is what i like most about Lilli Vernon Hse-- the wine reception! (I felt better drinkg in the subway than i felt thru my entire day of errand hopping betw Bklyn and Manhattan)
-that girl who asked a question (can't remember what the ques was) sounded so much like Maria-- the Russian girl @ my summer job who told me about Charles Simic-- that i went lookg for her after the talk ended

Let me explain why i've been M.I.A these last few mos my oh-so-indifferent public. I've been workg @ my seasonal summer job out in Coney Is-- a vast wasteland of flaunted labor laws & criminal mismanagem't! But, alas, this soul destruct'n finally ended Mon & i seem to have some free time while my attempts to find somethg that pays above min wage cont to be ignored by this buyers market of a recession economy-- oh joy.

Anyway, Maria who is a Russian-born recent college grad who wrote for & was a staff @ her school lit journal told me about Simic, & right after rdg The L Magazine events sect'n i saw that he was kickg off the rdg season @ one of my favorite haunts.



Turned out he recently joined the NYU Faculty. Alice Quinn was her usu observantly literary self. A snippet fr the eve:

Alice quoted fr an essay where Simic said somethg to the effect that poetry was the orphaned offsprg of silence. Simic then laughingly disabused everyone of the notion of him as a solitary broodg poet walking the moors or-- more accurately it would seem-- the empty darkened wooded areas of New Hampshire. He-- more or less-- said to be careful of taking what a poet says as absolute truth. That he very much loves drinks & conversat'n w/ friends (& fr the hacking coughs throughout the rdg: Smokg?). What a man of words-- to the God of poetry & wine: Oh thank you!

Oops-- nearly fell of the train sta platform as i was transferring trains on the elevated outdoor stop. I stumbled as i was leaning out to look for an oncoming train. I started laughing & this lady who saw the whole debacle said "That wasn't funny." I just laughed some more. All that on a tiny glass of white wine!

To a Stranger Born in Some Distant Country Hundreds of Years from Now

by Billy Collins

"I write poems for a stranger who will be born in
some distant country hundreds of years from now."
Mary Oliver

Nobody here likes a wet dog.
No one wants anything to do with a dog
that is wet from being out in the rain
or retrieving a stick from a lake.
Look how she wanders around the crowded pub tonight
going from one person to another
hoping for a pat on the head, a rub behind the ears,
something that could be given with one hand
without even wrinkling the conversation.

But everyone pushes her away,
some with a knee, others with the sole of a boot.
Even the childeren, who don't realize she is wet
until they go to pet her,
push her away
then wipe their hands on their clothes.
And whenever she heads towards me,
I show her my palm, and she turns aside.

O stranger of the future!
O inconceivable being!
Whatever the shape of your house,
however you scoot from place to place,
no matter how stange and colorless the clothes you wear,
I bet everybody in your pub,
even the childen, pushes her away.

What happened to the dog?

This is the ques a friend of mine asked me via email. For those of you who, like my friend, couldn't get thru on the site to lv a comment -- i've been wondering why i haven't been getting any comments @ ALL!-- i wanted to let you know what happened. I've been so busy w/ job search & trying to set up interviews &, let's face it, a million & one things that crop up during the course of a life, that when i called the ASPCA on tues to find out how the dog was doing, i was just overwhelmed w/ just this-- i don't think guilt-- regret the whole day. The long & short of it is the person i spoke w/ said they did get a call fr the area but never came to pick the dog up.

I went back to the check cashing place yest to find out what happened to the dog since these people never even showed up to get it! The young lady i spoke w/ said that the dog disappeared & that her co-worker then saw the dog in the garbage can in front out on the sidewalk.

To say i'm so overwhelming disappointed in the ASPCA is a complete understatement. I spoke w/ the same person this morning-- a very nice person who expressed his sympathies when i told him the ultimate fate of that puppy-- & @ this point i was trying not to break down crying. He explained that they can't always pick up all the animals that they get a call for in the course of a day. That they're a small org trying to service a wide area. That more often than not they do go & get the animal, & he recounted the # of animals that they did pick up that day.

It's cold comfort tho that this puppy wasn't one of them & so ended up dead. It says something so bad about the brutality of, i know not all but, some people. When i called on tues & was told the dog wasn't picked up, i asked "what happens when you guys don't go get them." He said well the police could have gone & gotten it. Well, i won't go into my views on the awful NYPD-- just about the last people anyone would want to call in an Emergency (which would make them happy, since they really could care less about what happens to the innocent).

But i blame myself too for not staying w/ that dog. I just never thought it would all end like this.

I saw just about the saddest thing today

On my way to one of the train stas in my Bklyn neighborhood, i saw this half-grown, seemed to be, boxer mix still in puppyhood-- she/he (in all the commotion i didn't even think of checking gender) had the fine squared head & bright glossy eyes i've somehow come to assoc w/ boxers-- trying to get inside a check cashing store. This little dog was so covered w/ cuts, bruises & smelled so bad, yet when i bent down to touch her/him was so energetic & friendly. I didn't know what to think as i went into the check cashing place & asked whose dog it was.
All the people waiting for service said it was, obviously, a stray & i said the poor thing needed to go to the animal shelter. My distraction seemed to be what the resourceful little dog was waiting for as he/she slipped in. One of the employees shouted that the ASPCA was on their way, as me & this young guy chased the dog all over the store. It must have taken us about 10 mins to get this dog back outside. It's a little over 20 degrees today, after our big snowfall yesterday, & i didn't blame her/him for wanting to stay inside where it was warm.
I wanted to wait for the ASPCA to come, but i had an appointment in Manhattan that i was going to be, at least, a half an hour late for as it was. I tried to tie her/him up w/ a plastic bag-- so that people coming in & out wouldn't be pushing at the dog's constant attempt to get back in out of the shivering cold-- but, walking away, i looked back & saw that already the poor thing had slipped out of that makeshift leash.
Being more of a cat person, i don't know too much about dogs. But more than ever i wished i wasn't so completely down & out. Already such a sweet dog-- didn't even put up much of a fight when me & the kid caught & carried her/him back out-- w/ care & comfort that dog would make such a wonderful loyal pet.
I'm going to try to find out what happened w/ that dog tomorrow. I come across so many strays on the streets & it makes me so sad. Things are so difficult right now. The no-kill animal shelter i worked for last yr in Queens has closed down-- along w/ another of the org's facilities. But so many orgs had had to restrict their resources or have gone out of business & w/ jobs so scarce i'm sure a lot of families, along w/ their pets, aren't too sure where the next meal is coming fr.