I don't mind any of it anymore.

Walking home from the train, the weather decided to turn against us. Well, the rest of us.

All of the sudden I wasn't angry anymore. And all of the sudden I didn't feel so guilty. Walking home slow in the downpour felt good, and I was going to take all the time in the world; Because that's all I've got.

It's hard to explain, so I'll do the best I can. Until you can experience it for yourself. And only then will know know how happy I was.

About half a block from my apartment, I realized that my father will never know what this feels like ever again. Rain. And that made me happy. Because I can still feel it. I can still open my palm and watch the little rain droplets splash around the wrinkles of my palm. I know it sounds cheesy, but if I wont, then who will?

Standing out in front of my apartment in the rain face upturned, made everyone stare. And I didn't mind that anymore. It probably didn't help that I had a huge smile on my face either.

I don't mind feeling angry.

And I don't mind feeling guilty.

I don't mind feeling any of it anymore.

For whatever reason the rain felt too good to get out of. When someone offered me their umbrella, it would make me annoyed that they chose to not feel it. I wanted to take off my sweater and my shoes and feel it all over. But I would probably get sent to central booking where ham sandwiches would await me. Instead, I took a lap around the block. And then another. And another. And another, until I was drenched.

It's kind of like the light bulb in your brain goes off, and all the sudden it all makes sense.

What all? I don't even know. But you just feel like you get it. All of it. And everything is finally fine, even if it isn't. This is what the buddhists must call nirvana. Or something close to it.

Even though I was completely soaked to the bone, I wanted to stay outside longer. But the grumbles from my stomach beckoned me away from the perfect wet weather.

Now I sit here typing this out to all of you soaking wet; in a state of which the rest of the world could do without.

And I'm way more than okay with that.

Do-Nothing

Doing nothing.

Thinking nothing.

Seeing nothing. 

This is how I've spent my last few months. Only it's more noticeable now that I don't have the heavy 'clack-clack' of the shutter of a camera as white noise. 

There is no more cancel out. Just cancelled. 

I  like it that way.

-------------------------------

Reaching for the bottoms of my pockets, I trudge along Clinton street, fearful of anyone who looks like they might want to speak to me. It's not as if I've suddenly grown afraid of them, just tired of them. 

An empty shell amongst emptier shells. Still reaching for the bottom of my never-ending pockets. I don't know what it I've been trying to grasp. Anything. All perceptions of reality have failed me, except for the lint.

Letting the fog from my empty skull clear, I realized I've trudged the 20 blocks back to the 6 train. Without even knowing it.  

---------------------------------

Sleeping has been a similar experience. 

The stomping upstairs continues; Only it belongs to someone else now. 

4am. Shuffling. Stomping. Pounding of a beat on my head. 

Counting backwards from 10.

Deep breaths. 

Pillow over my face. 

Finally, I notice it.

The sticky downpour outside will be the only way out. As if you'd ever think that the sound of pennies covered in maple syrup would ever help. 

After listening to them drool down the buildings and fall into the pit of garbage outside my window for what seems like an hour, Im finally able to drift off into another nightmare. 

Hungry and lonely, yeah, I've been there before

The little hand again and always grabs the larger calloused one. Today, a visit to "the ponies" and then chicken fingers at The Captains Table.

Buckled in the back seat of the dirty black '91 toyota, I kick my feet confined by the clear jellies and frilly white socks that hold them hostage.

Drawing smiley faces and hearts on the foggy windowed canvas helps pass time, as well as mining for crumbs of only he knows what in the nooks and crannies of these crusty velvet seats.

The man up front lights another home grown cigarette and turns up the sporadic jazz music that has been pouring out of the speakers and dripping into my ears ever since we left the driveway.

Minutes pass and we pull into a green glowing lot, lit by the neon O-T-B adorning the white building, just as a star would resting atop your christmas tree. The little hand waits for the larger, loving, calloused one to let her out.

There, towering ahead, she looms. Watching me, laughing at me, as I step once again through the engulfing silver plated doors, onto her maroon carpeted tongue, and shuffle my way over to the tall bony bar. The hands grab me under my armpits, to seat me next to miniature pencils, colorful score cards and toy t.v.'s. He exits stage right. Upon his return, I am handed a pencil and a list of pseudonyms, being told to pick my favorite.

I am a rabbits foot.

I am an old rusted horse shoe.

I am a four leafed clover.

After a race is over, I am restricted once again to the back seat of the Toyota. Allowing my delusions of grandeur to take me over, I am unaware of how I am the only occupant here breathing the old cold air. With the thud of a handle, in scoots the man, shoving a less-than-full money clip back into his pockets. Grumbling, the ignition turns over a tired motor.

Pulling into another artificially lit area of tar, the tungsten light bounces off of numerous machines gas cans and chrome wheels that are carefully parked out front. As I am paraded past the beasts, I feel the urge to stick my little hand out and re-enact the domino scenario I had built earlier in the day. As if sensing my curiosity, the mans hand squeezes mine tighter and rushes me inside.

Being pulled into a dimly lit room, all that is noticed is whatever the light can catch. Bronze embellishments on one bikers key ring, the golden sap of beer in a mug, and the dirty ripped red stools. Once again, I am plopped at the bench of a bar. A drink is pushed in front of me, as if I had aged 19 years from the faux race track to this table. Five cherries swim stuffily around the bottom of the cup, in a sea of sprite. With a pat on the head, I am left with the bar tender to eat french fries and color with the two and a half dirty same colored crayons fished out from behind ice buckets and warm booze. Boredom consumes me.

Hastily he comes from the back of the room. Always and again the calloused hand grips mine. Whisked off the barstool, out through the door, and back across the landscape of bikes we weave. Shoved in the car, and only asked if I had buckled myself in a mile down the road, his tension eases, and a powdered white baggy is deposited into the cars center console. The radio static creeps around us again, and we coast home.

I was my fathers life insurance

I was my fathers lucky charm

I was a 3 year old girl on one of many past and future field trips.

Garden of light

You sit in paralysis of the outside world. Knowing everything on the other side of your door is hungry to kill.

Peering out of your living room window, what you hope to see are people. 

Hungry eyes, starved breath, and empty stomaches is the only thing that stares back at you. 

Packs of crazed hungry dogs peer around what little bushes are left, the bombed video store, and gutted car across the street whos' tires have been robbed of it by thugs long ago.

The only thing is, these savages aren't hungry for a steak and their war paint isn't animal blood. 

Their mouths drip with a red sticky plasma carrying ethrocytes; some components of the chemical makeup that classifies human blood.

200 people a month lie ripped to pieces on your streets.

And the only thing willing to clean up the mess are the dogs. 

Thousands of them roam the streets feeding on human flesh. 

Naturally the animals have an acquired taste.

Children get attacked on their way to school. 

Your mother on the way to the market. 

Your groom on the way home from work.

Your wife on her trip to the post office.

No longer must you fear your neighbor, or militant worshiper. 

Fear Fido. Beloved Bingo. Sweet Spot. 

He too is seeing red. 

It still doesn't matter weather you're man, woman, or child.

"Kill em all" they thought. "And let God sort 'em out."

-------

The siphilidity of American greed echoes its deafening yelp from the harbors of Tokyo to the cliffs of Dover.

Somewhere in between; The seven headed demon from the book of revelations rises from the Persian Gulf to descend its plague upon the villagers.

The city stuck between Iran and Syria is not hell on Earth, but hell itself. And hasn't had the luxury of recognizing the agonizing peace of limbo for thousands of years.

You live in fear.

You live in Baghdad.

You live in the center of Hell.

"Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave."

The List - New York City

I Hate:

Being harassed in my own city.

In my own neighborhood

On my own block.

People who think that just because I'm a little white girl, that they may speak to me however they wish. 

When people in my building don't hold the door for me when I always hold the door for them.

How my superintendent lives next door to us.

My superintendents' wife

The whore upstairs who thinks that it's appropriate to stomp around at all hours of the day. Including 4:00 am. I knew when I was five that if you're living above someone, to be a considerate walker. 

When the whore upstairs wanted us to turn our music down, so she told on us to the superintendent, and not to us first. 

When I stand on the counter in the kitchen with the swiffer mop and bang on the ceiling to let the whore upstairs know she's being too loud, and she stomps back at me. 

2nd Avenue

All the kids on St. Marks that think they're skinheads, punks, and homeless crust kids just because they have a shaved head, a studded belt, and haven't washed one pair of pants in a whole year. 

How none of these kids have ever had the shit kicked out of them, their parents abandon them, or how the hardest drug they've ever done was weed. 

How the post office doesn't sell envelopes. And that one time they decided to give me 50 one cent stamps.

The asian that works at the post office,and always tells me that my paper work is wrong when in reality it's all correct, and she's just a moron.

Euros

Euros in SoHo

SoHo

Asians that walk around New York staring at the sky.

Mostly, asians. 

Puddles at the end of sidewalks. 

When delivery boys zoom through the puddles splashing water all over me.

People who go to NYU

Midwestern transplants who call themselves 'New Yorkers' after living here for two months.  You will forever be from somewhere else. Get over it. 

Kids who act tough because they now live in New York. You're still a suburban soul. Cut it out please. 

Tourists.

Tourists who come to New York and only eat at McDonalds, Subway, and Olive Garden.

Middle aged baby boomers who think that they can talk down to me because I didn't come from money, or have no interest in living on the upper west side. 

People who put other people down.

That time I found a woman's credit card in the west village Washington Mutual and tried to return it by calling the card company, and found her on the internet; all to return something important she had lost. 

That time I lost a $1,000 check, and no one even tried to return it to me. And I know they found it. 

How my laundry always costs $17

How the guys who run the laundry-mat look at me. 

Hipsters 

American Apparel 

Urban Outfitters trash

People who live in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, because its "cool". Brooklyn sucks, and I remember being a kid and hearing about people getting killed there. Take your fedora and suede headband and move to Fulton st. and we'll see how long you last.

How our apartment smells, and we can never figure out what it smells like or why it smells the way it does. 

How our apartment is always messy no matter how many times we clean it

But mostly, I hate how I am such a good person to everyone I meet, and get nothing but shit in return. 

This city takes and takes until it has all of you; and I'm starting to think that I should do the same. 

Karma Shmarma. 

Im a good person because I know that it's the right thing to do. 

I'll be a selfish person because it's the better thing to do. 

Im not giving up, just giving in. 

Prisoner of apartment 1D

Rent's past due.

The fat ignorant hog upstairs is still selfish enough to assume that she is the only resident of this building, and continues to stomp around as loud as she wants as a result of these narrow thoughts. 

There's an essential emergency every 30 minutes between the hours of 12:00 am and 9:00 am that the fire department next door seemingly just has to attend to.

This place always smells like some weird cooked food I can never put my finger on.

I'd say that I'm all alone in this just to sound more pathetic, but that isn't true at all. I just get the bigger headache from it all.

Today I thought I'd do something simple like get lunch. 

Boy was I wrong.  

Question:

What about ' Hey pretty lady' or 'Sup beautiful?' in your disturbing broken ebonics makes you think that just because you've said these oh so romantic phrases to me would make me want to skip happily home with you? 

Before hopping on the 6 train downtown, I stop at the deli to check how much money is dwindling in the balances of my checking account. Of course, some cro-magnon cretin in his bleach stained hoodie and plaster covered jeans shadows me inside; and proceeds to ask if I like "rock music".

Did I somehow trip into a wormhole and travel back to 1963? I hope not. Elvis sucked then.

Tired of being harassed in my own neighborhood, I bitterly tell him to mind his own, and fuck off.  Irritatedly I slide my credit card down the telling machine, and await my negative balance.

Like a crow pursuing a bit of silver, this moron neither ceases nor desists. 

Pushing whichever buttons the machine wants to work on this wretched thing, " Im sorry miss, I- Im a record producer a-and I was just seeing --" My mind stops. My ears stop. My logic, ceases to work. 

Did you ever have to do that experiment in high-school chemistry class, where you drop a mentos into a bottle of diet coke-a-cola? Well if you haven't, the soda will explode all over you in a fizzy mess. That's exactly what happened to my brain at that moment in time. 

Only my time had stopped. I could see myself screaming at this poor fool, but my voice was not my own. my sight was not my own. Essentially I was not my own. I had somehow transported into a fishbowl of a world where I was watching myself like on a television. 

Im so sick of it. 

Im so sick of all of it. 

Im so sick of all of you

Ain't never no land in sight

There's never sleep anymore. 

Only the sirens, yelling and the tap dancing cow above.

I wonder if my mother would still see it as "angels bowling". Probably not. 

And my constant wondering, about what he was constantly wondering. Now I'll really never know.

Marooned on a dingy in the middle of the ocean, is where I'd rather be. 

You know, one of those shitty little rotted canoes, with a piss yellow sail? 

And that water. As blue as any individual imagination could ever see its favorite tone of blue.

Lying on my back letting the sun cook my brain; exactly like when we were kids and we'd throw an egg on the neighbors paved driveway in the middle of the summer, just to test if it actually would cook. 

I'd like my brain to sizzle. And smell exactly like scrambled eggs. 

It's all I want to see. 

I would gladly throw away these dejected buildings to make my desperate escape to the middle of the sea.