Still Sundays

September 26th.

Noise, like all conflict, is internal. “le seul mot juste“. Life in HD.  Roman Candles. An artist who can’t sell his work. Love is a mockingbird.

If you would like to know what Still Sundays is about, please take a quick gander here and just read the third paragraph. Thanks.

This morning I woke up to the alarm of papers and pages of books on my desk trumpeting. They hollered louder than my azote dreams. Their small Powwow gained momemtum due to the cool morning breeze, rhythmic and controlled, in and out my window.

No Sun.

Yesterday morning I claimed birds are louder than the sirens in New York City. And added in delight, They really are! A few hours later I couldn’t think while walking because someone’s car alarm going off held my thoughts at gun-point. A few hours thereafter, I was in the small but busy park known as Verdi Square, located at 72nd Street and Broadway in New York City’s Upper West Side, surrounded by many, waiting to meet a friend, and I might as well have been in a silent movie. The scene felt  abnormally muted despite cars driving past, people talking and walking, and the sounds of the subway station nearby. Later in the evening when I returned to my neighborhood, my relatively noiseless block, the serenity was sideswiped by two cars that sped by, blaring neither hip hop nor music—just noise—from their poor excuse for car subwoofers.

If all conflict  is internal, so is all noise.  Stirred water in a river or a lake doesn’t reflect a clear picture.

Sounds I could normally ignore were amplified, sounds I enjoyed were fuzzy, and a soliloquy that I didn’t allow the privilege to be spoken aloud, even if it’s a monologue without an audience, kept going on….

Stillness out of focus.

Last night I booked my ticket to visit my sister and her fiance in Nashville, Tennessee. She only moved there a few months ago. I have never been. And this is how New York and I sustain our relationship: I leave. Usually when it gets much colder than around mid-October but sometimes we have to check our internal temperature. My mother will be visiting her at the same time from California. My brother and his wife will join from L.A. for a few days as well. Lots of warm noise awaits for the soup my brain needs.

Then I think I am jumping continents.

I write slow. I have to accept that. Sometimes I don’t think I am even a storyteller but a word collector. It has less to do with the craft of writing and more to do with my own psychological issues:  my desire to share how I see the world and “that you can too!”

I am desperate to make the world see what I see. Not to subscribe to my worldview, but to just wipe their lenses, rub their senses a little, for a high definition resolution of Life. I mean the colors, the textures, the smells, the cool hat with real leaves on a man no one noticed when he stepped into the restaurant just to use the restroom. I know I am not the only one who notices the world as I do. I know that. But others don’t share. I want to share. I want to caste a spell with my words so we can all come together because there is more of us than we really think.

Maybe I should learn how to paint and photograph? Not because it would be any easier by any means but worth a try? Until then I am a Maelstrom-dancer throwing the net out there for “le seul mot juste“—the one precise word. God help me.

Friday night after Marco Roja’s yoga class I was levitating in air. I waited for my cross-town bus and there sat a man also waiting for same. He was dressed nicely and carried a shopping bag and a handbag. I looked at him and looked away, strumming an imaginary pianodrum as the music from my headphones dispersed through my nerves in my arms to fingertips. It wasn’t late at night. This man then took a lighter and lit something inside his nose. Some concoction of drugs.  At first I thought he was setting his nose on fire. He wasn’t. He looked away embarrassed. I stared at him right on as if he was a homeless bum who couldn’t see me. He did it a few more times and put away the lighter. A few minutes later he asked me, “You ever been high?”

I answered the only way I knew then, “I am extremely high right now and you just killed my buzz.”

I was angry and sad. I worked my ass off—in this instance literally—to get high and here he was with his quick-fix.

Could he please come to Marco’s yoga with me? Marco says Ashtanga yoga—which is not what Marco’s classes are but Marco’s original training was in Ashtanga—six times a week for six weeks can rid any dependency.

I have this pathological belief that all people want to be happy, free, and desire to evolve.

Someone told me I am intense. This used to offend me. I associated it with being serious and not light-hearted. Now I gently remind the witness—as if my Being me is on trial— best not to assume without evidence.  Intense or not, I know I am intentional. Intense. Intentional. Purposeful. Attentive. Life is short, so much is not in our control, do I want to be any other way? No.

I don’t defend this accusation anymore. I instead offer Kerouac’s infamous antidote for such people:

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!”

I call my kind of people my “Roman Candles.” I have a select group—some know each other and some don’t within this group—upon whom I have carefully bestowed this title. Once a friend said it hurt them that I didn’t consider them a Roman Candle. I replied, it hurts me too. Anyone can be a Roman Candle. But I can’t make you see your light. I can only light fire with fire.

I met an incredible artist at Union Square. He wasn’t particularly friendly but was polite with eyes blazing aquamarine tones.  He is there regularly or I would share his name.  He wanted to know if I could serve as a model or if I knew anyone that could. I looked around at his work. Vibrant colors of figures—male and female—stood on large canvases; he was no doubt in a league of his own. I told him I didn’t have time. He gave me his card in case I knew someone else. I told him he could put an advertisement in Craigslist or through a University for paid models. He said it is not the same.

I told him his work was fantastic and out of my price range and got ready to leave. He said, “I can barely sell my work.” I told him of Twitter where there were many artists sharing their work through that medium. He said he had considered it. Then he said something that has been rattling in my head since: “I think it is a curse. I exploited and manipulated the hearts of women as my muse. I capitalized on something very pure for too long. Nothing like a curse of a woman who truly loved you. In my case, many did.”

There is much more to his story since I ended up listening to him for thirty minutes. Maybe it will find its way in some fiction, but the aforementioned I offer now. Perhaps our collective sympathy for his regrets will allow the Universe to provide what is needed for his craft to take flight once again.

Maybe not.

“It’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.” Love is a mockingbird.

It’s Sunday.

Love is resilient.

Love is my blood.

It’s Sunday.

It all comes together on a Sunday.

~a.q.s.

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