Three Protests

Harlem 125th Street and 5th Avenue, June 6th, 2020
I found this one on that JusticeforGeorgeNYC IG account. After locking my bike in Marcus Garvey Park I walked up to 125th street. While I cautiously submerged myself in the crowd I overheard a Lieutenant say to a uniformed officer, “We are not kneeling today.” Sweating, tightly packed people faced inwardly around a megaphone projected young man, elevated above surrounding heads by an unseen support. The crowd steadily accumulated bodies and drew the faces of people stopping along the opposite sidewalk. With some nudging from people in neon vests only one lane of 5th avenue’s two barely allowed vehicles, a few city buses and sanitation trucks to squeeze southward. Two arms extended from and unseen body below the man speaking and supported him with two hands on his broad muscular back. The body of people jammed between them and the building appeared intent and restless. He spoke forcefully, oscillating his upper torso at the intent and restless faces encircling him, packed between him and the gothic facade of the National Black Theatre building. His speech culminated in a call and response. A skinnier man in a neon vest took his place and explained the marching route through the megaphone: east on 125th street, north on Lenox Avenue. Police escorted the march. I observed the people watching us as we passed what busy storefronts were open on 125th. Flower shops and small grocers hosted the somewhat stunned faces of people witnessing the protests which began over a week ago arriving on their street. Those cheering from balconies, passively held their phone cameras at imperfect angles. People on stoops and gathered around corner stores watched with fascination. Vehicle passengers traveling in opposite lanes of traffic, or halted at intersections by the protest itself eagerly participated in the chants. At the intersection of 135th and Malcom X the march condensed in front of the Schomburg Center for Research and Black Culture. Across Malcom X, northeast adjacent, John Rhoden’s commissioned bronze, United (family) stood above the heads and signs filling the street. People on balconies high up in the Clayton Apartments looked down at the crowd. A small drunk person with hardly any teeth stumbled through the crowd, slurring, extending a crumpled hand. The descendant of natives who built this country struggled to pronounce the name of a tribe and put forth a desperate unrelenting non-specific plea. Tears perpetually welled in their eyes, refusing to run down their cheeks. About ten yards away a person sermoned into the megaphone with a sharper, sober voice alternately muting and echoing the begging protest of the weary soul. The voice going into the megaphone came from a young man with a sweaty, shaven head and bushy beard. To the crowd, spanning the entire intersection he asked, “Who here believes that there is power in the name of Jesus?” They responded with unanimous applause. Next a young woman in an athletic outfit beautifully sang a single repeated chorus which contained the word hallelujah. I thought the march might be over, but it continued east on 135th and then north on Adam Clayton Blvd. Approaching 143rd Street the march of people slowed and turned east quickly condensing around a core group with the megaphone again in the middle. The tree shade between the Drew Hamilton Community center and P.S. 194’s paved playground area calmed the overheated bodies. Some not close enough to hear the megaphone listened to a voice on their cell phones, an IG live broadcast delayed by five seconds, an up close account of the current speaker. As I slowly moved closer I could see with my own eyes the woman who people were watching on their phone screens. A verbal argument over personal space caused the speaker to pause. Other voices began to urge a woman to be peaceful and deescalate. She was referred to as sister. As the woman with the megaphone started speaking again, listing names of black people unjustly killed by police, I heard some chatter on a police radio asking, “who is that woman, who is she?” The voice had a pretend casualness and seemed over-interested in the person referred to as “sister.” The woman‘s voice in the megaphone, as she prompted the crowd into saying Breonna Taylor’s name, followed with, “who would have celebrated her 27th birthday yesterday.“ She emotionally described the no-knock entry which lead to Breonna’s death and finished with, “And this is just the short list,” in a cracking, exhausted rasp that trailed off abruptly. Woos and applause came from the crowd. A young white man took the megaphone next and began speaking passionately. I stood on the base of a lamppost and framed in my phone screen the depth of the crowd stretching east down 143rd until it merged into the overhanging greenness of ginkgo and London planetree leaves. On the west end of the block, in front of the Engine 69 station house, the sidewalk and street was empty, a disorienting amount of unoccupied space. I walked west, leaving the protest behind and then south on Frederick Douglas Blvd, until a torrential rain fell from the sky. I stopped and bought a margarita and a bag of chips. By the time I reached 125th Street the sun was shining again. No relief followed the downpour. A lot of people crowded the sidewalkS around subway entrances on 125th, spilling across the intersections in the way of usual urban foot traffic. Tables were out with things for sale. A destitute person laid with their back barely pressed against the side of a bank. Their jeans and bursting ruined basketball sneakers observed the full power of the earth’s sun. People participated in the pre-summer day by carrying water guns, wearing swim trunks and indulging in frozen treats, with only an urban park and a closed public pool available to them. One man begged for change. I thought about offering my chips to someone. The idea of burdening someone with extremely oily and salty chips in that atmosphere seemed cruel. I had Black Lives Matter written in sharpie on the front and back of my loose fitting t-shirt.

Marble Hill Houses, Bronx New York, June 2nd, 2020
I found this one on twitter, just by searching the word Inwood, my local neighborhood. At approximately 1pm, I walked onto the lawn of the Marble Hill Houses where protest organizers, identify by green clothe tied around their arms, stood in a circle reviewing their safety strategy. This protest was being organized by State Assembly Person Robert Jackson, with a specific purpose to call for the repeal of 50-a. Mr Jackson wore a bright orange high tech looking athletic t-shirt. The planned walk was 5 miles long. He stood on a green painted park bench under the shadow of palmate leafed locust trees and spoke at first without a megaphone. With his blue medical mask pulled from his face, one loop still around one ear, in a loud and clear voice he said, “First we want everyone to be safe,” and then, “most importantly, we want to be able to express ourselves about repealing 50-a. Does everyone one know what 50-a is?” “Yes,” someone in the slowly growing crowd of approximately 100 people responded. “I make no assumptions,” he said and proceeded to explain 50-a in his own, plain way. A person of authority for the Marble Hill houses was the thanked. Other people were thanked. Mr Jackson identified some of his staff. He now had the megaphone which was working. Drums and signs were offered to people, as were packs of food, water bottles and other essential supplies. Bathroom locations along the route were identified and also a time table was laid out. They planned to arrive at Riverbank State Park, rendezvous with another state politician and rally for an hour. Senator Jackson picked up a drum and cautiously, playfully, to a few awkward laughs attempted a marching beat. Police escorted the march as it left the housing complex and stuck to the sidewalk south on the east side of Broadway. When we reached 10th avenue both lanes of were filled by the foot traffic of chanting protestors, marching under the elevated 1 train tracks. In the beginning there were a few lulls between chants. One person’s sign said “No other profession had a song written about them called Fuck the Police,” or something like that. Vehicle traffic passenger and drivers, including city bus drivers, honked and had phone cameras pointed at the march, with raised arms, echoing chants. “Say his name.” “George Floyd!“ “Say her name.” “Breonna Taylor.” Also there was a “How do you spell racist? N-Y-P-D,” chant. The march paused at Dyckman briefly before turning east, taking up one lane of traffic. It paused again at the Broadway, Dyckman, Riverside Drive intersection, holding up traffic, before turning south, taking away the north and south bound lanes of Dyckman from vehicle traffic. I left the march at a Nagle Avenue, 195th street equivalent. A few clusters of what looked like grapes were hanging from a plant over a stonewall in Fort Tryon Park. A group of young people’s attention drifted away from the march and they inspected the grapes.

Prayerful March, Bronx, NY, June 10th 2020
I learned about this one from a link Willis shared on Twitter. Around 5:45pm, I biked east down 207th Street and crossed the Harlem River on the University Heights Bridge pedaling on the sidewalk.  It’s a hot humid evening. Pumping up W Fordham Road, a young man without a shirt came bobbing down the road in the opposite direction on one rear tile, while the front fork of his frame stuck out in front of him, wheelless. A half block later, a white convertible Bentley with read leather interior pulled up next to me. The young man driving had two French braids on each side of his head and a large stock of money in hand. He was dancing and singing for a DSLR camera held on a gimbal in the passenger seat. Two men were in the back seats, one had his phone out, recording video of the man in the driver seat. The driver seat person was not wearing a seatbelt and stood up in the car before the light changed. He quickly sat down and accelerated through the intersection. I turned onto a paved section of the Croton aqueduct trail and pedaled north on a pedestrian path cutting between adjacent rear building lots. The trail only lasted one block and I biked north for three more blocks on a narrow street until I reached Kingsbridge Avenue. The protest as assembling below the two towering turrets of the giant red brick armory building, which is visible from the Bronx Lookout in Inwood Hill Park. Police officers, Lieutenants and patrol cars and a van or two held a soft perimeter on the protest, a few hundred in number. The man talking through the megaphone was talking about not resisting arrest, the right to disagree with someone’s sign and ask them to remove their sign and that there were only three chants and they each involved prayer. People were passing around snacks in the crowd. A woman in a pin-striped apron, dirty from kitchen work, reluctantly investigated the crowd. When riding by on a lime green painted moped, she felt compelled to stop and leave the vehicle temporarily unattended behind where I stood. The paint was wearing away on the dented and scraped body of the vehicle that gave it the intentionally worn look of a movie set prop. Her arms revealed by the rolled up sleeves of her white shirt, looked swollen and tanned with kitchen dirt. Her face was wrinkled in a pleasant way and her confused expression seemed suspiciously innocent. She clumsily worked her way between young people in matching black shirts holding their arms and signs up in prayer. I worried she might bump someone. Her mind appeared concerned with something more serious than a racial protest. As she turned back her bewildered and lost look had not been satisfied by her inspection. She stood face to face with a young man holding a large sign. Neither of them budged for a few seconds. When she made it back to her moped a digital alarm spilled out of the vehicle. In a seeming response, the crowds voice rose with an amen. A white woman in front of me had a two or three year old child strapped to her back. The child’s blue eyes were pleasantly engaged in the sky, building edges and unfamiliar faces beside his mother’s exposed shoulders. One man arrived with a rainbow flag tied into one of his neatly hanging dreadlocks. He was the only other person I saw with a bike at their side beside me. A woman wearing a sleeveless black shirt with a priest collar approached him as if they had been searching for each other. Continuously while I observed these crowd members a woman preached a passionate, musical sermon. All in the crowd raised up both hands, in prayer. Then I noticed a woman with her hair in a pepper gray ponytail and reflective aviator sunglasses hurriedly cross Reservoir Avenue and reveal her folded laminated sign over her head. It said “Black Trans Lives Matter” on one side and in multi-colored font on the other side, “Silence = Violence.“ An officer standing close to me took a phone call from a friend or family member. They talked causally about immediate plans for dinner or socializing. Then they said, “Alright this protest is about to start marching, I have to go.” Protest organizers in with megaphones tried to explain for everyone to line up behind a banner. There was no banner in my sight. Eventually the march swept into the east bound lanes of Kingsbridge Avenue. A woman in front of me thanked a female officer who was standing in the intersection. A chant involving the word prayer emanated rather weakly from somewhere in the front of the march. As I carefully rolled my bike along with the crowd I notice a beautiful red-tailed hawk joined a flock of pigeons which had been circling in the sky. Among the urban birds two red brick towers with conical roofs rose above the long edifice of the armory. The structure built in the 1910s to house the New York National Guard burned in the light of the low and unobstructed sun of the western sky.

To Adirondack Peeks editors,

I felt disappointed when I read the poem Deprivation by David Crews in your Spring 2020 edition. To read a poem titled Deprivation, comprised of complaints of minor discomforts and an image of animal slaughter, in a hiking magazine as a global pandemic cause mass death and exposes systemic racism in our country, felt strange. The insensitive treatment of suffering exposes PEEKS’ seeming desire to celebrate the journey in New York’s 46 highest peaks to self-inflicted challenges. His opening lines, "[…] not having / shelter from rain, from nature’s elements,” I must assume occurs when the author has intentionally exposed himself to a calculated risk. He mentions Seymour mountain. I’d argue that most people, especially those marginalized by race and poverty, are denied the health, economic and cultural benefits that come with access to a place like Seymour Mountain. Yet if they were to find a copy of PEEKS and read David’s poem they will perhaps recognize some of their own voices in his lines. Is this the best way for us to communicate our vastly different experiences in New York? I have debated with myself over my reaction to his poem. However, each time I read it everything the poem fails to say screams in my face. Not everything has to be topical. More simply, the poem does not even attempt to explore its own title. Still, true deprivation left by the pandemic will reach the Adirondack Park. Systemic racism, which has recently drawn people across the world out in massive protest, risking further spread of a deadly disease, must currently exists in the Adirondack Park. In a place of unparalleled peace and beauty, diversity remains absent. That is a deprivation. As long as that is the case, the park will also lack understanding. I understand Crews may not have set out to address such issues. I do think the poems placement in PEEKS does show a mentionable lack awareness. David’s inability to “turn off humidity,” as his legs, “always climbing,” carrying out the irksome peak-bagger trope, instead offering a form of solidarity with those who have no choice but suffer humidity and fruitless labor, highlights our lack of engagement with humanity as lovers of the environment. He worries he might “scrape his arm up”. Reportedly 8.5% of our population has no health insurance. Since it is Mr Crew’s birthday I wish for him that out of “a thousand oppressive thoughts” one key realization “coronates” him. His complaining about mosquitoes on Seymour severely understates the power our public places hold. As the redemptive value of wilderness goes untraced for multitudes of disenfranchised citizens, David can simply satisfies his deprivation with a purgation shower, a relish of tangy beer and a carnivorous oral engagement with tender steer flesh. The latter image says a lot about David’s presence of mind in our mountains. As he leans in to a kiss a steer, Crews is attempting another calculated risk, presenting an image of anticipated violence and fetishistic satisfaction. Animals have no feelings and David pays very little attention to what actually happens inside a slaughterhouse. The artist’s true deprivation, or sense of it, seems to be a complete lack of compassion. I’m not fooled that there are any romantic moments. Workers in slaughterhouses across the country experience some of the worst working conditions our society has to offer. Crews’ description of pain, unpleasant smells and mud are just a blatant heist of emotion. I hope everyone’s journey through the High Peaks is less challenged by the natural community which David seems to claim. The High Peaks Wilderness, a place exemplified on a global stage for preservation and conservation methods, provides an easier path to celebrate inclusivity and freedom from the deprived inequalities our civilized minds create. Maybe David intended to lead us somewhere else. Those of us who have bagged all the peaks might feel a duty to protect the environment around them. We can also allow that environment a chance to enrich the society which surrounds and supports it. Sharing our discomforts after a challenging hike can inspire us. The names listed on the 46er roster may continue to challenge themselves again and again each new season until they grow old and wise along with the character of wild places. That’s the beginning of the journey. Contextualizing these wilderness experiences threads each of our journeys into the societal fabrics where pandemics and racism extoll true deprivation. Am I self-righteously posturing or providing unsolicited workshop advice, virtue signaling? Probably. As I read PEEKS and feel cautious about visiting a park that I’ve visited every summer of my entire life, I am more compelled to plan ahead and prepare for the burdens our societal issues present.

Respectfully,
Miles Ross
#8377

Dear Adirondack Peeks Editors,

I was disappointed when I read David Crews’s poem Deprivation in the PEEKS Spring 2020 edition. I feel the poem exposes PEEKS’ desire to celebrate the journey to New York’s 46 High Peaks, to challenges of insensitivity. Current events pertaining to the pandemic and systemic racism in our country do and will affect the Adirondack Park. The poems descriptions of the sport of hiking and indulgences in the rewarding comforts afterwards, appear harmless on the whole. I’ve debated with myself over sharing my reaction to the poem. Each time I read Deprivation I am left feeling more uneasy and confused. Maybe because the ideas in the poem hardly explore it’s own title and the dislocation seems unintentional. Deprivation, or loss, seems to me to come by very little fault of one’s own. For example: personal loss or hardship, extreme poverty, mass incarceration or experiences of those directly affected by COVID-19 or systemic racism. All the while I know that the author of deliberately chose for himself to be exposed to those conditions on Seymour that day. David may not have set out to address such societal issues by writing the poem. I sense that in his phrasing however, he is certainly aware… “There’s something about it – not having / shelter form rain…” I agree, there is. I wonder if our homeless and migrant worker populations also agree. Mr. Crews lets us know he finds the bugs to be bad, the humidity inescapable, his legs tired, and the potential of scraping his arm unsettling. What else can we learn about deprivation from him? All the while, for over 100 years environmentalists and activists have fought to protect our wilderness from development and pollution, so that the citizens of our state, country and neighboring countries can benefit from the economic, health and cultural value of a natural ecosystem. In a technology driven economy, access and diversity in the Adirondack Park remains far behind. Poor and marginalized people are proportionately oblivious to the High Peaks. They suffer everyday in their daily lives much worse than us peak-baggers. David goes home, takes a “purgation shower,” drinks tangy beer and fetishizes slaughtering animals. Sharing the discomfort of an adventure can be inspiring. Understanding the context of these challenges is what makes it a journey. We owe aspiring 46ers the journey aspect as is so eloquently put in the President’s Report. I’m proud to find myself on the roster (not far ahead of David Crews, who I’m sure is a fine person) but I’m more proud to know and understand firsthand the value of natural space on Seymour, in the High Peaks, and all around New York as a resource that can benefit everyone, and not only deprive some.

Sincerely,
Miles Ross
#8733
only deprive some. 

Before 2017 I had not much exposure to the rapper Future. In February of that year he released two albums within two weeks. I listened to them both repeatedly. Future seemed to be reaching the height of his popularity. I even used him as a topic in flirtation with a coworker. Then a close friend who tweeted a then recent Future line died from drugs. The flirtation with my coworker became starkly unsuccessful and awkward. A year later, things were back at an okay level. For about the fourth or fifth time in my life I picked up running regularly again. I lived close to Maria Hernandez Park and Future's newest project Beast Mode 2 became a fitting soundtrack to match my medium effort runs to the park and back. More importantly the energy fit my running style, slow and brooding often painful on joints. Skip ahead almost two years, I'm living in a different apartment. On March 25th I'm told to stay home from work indefinitely until management declares it safe to return. The frequency of my runs increased. After each run my synthetic clothes return to an exponentially stinking unwashed heap on the radiator in my bedroom, as every other day I burn through Lil Uzi Vert's two new projects, running the perimeter of upper Manhattan's northern-most waterfront. Then on April 15th I'm bird watching at a meadow and three eagles arrive screeching in an enormous cottonwood tree. One of them devours a fish. Scales and guts fall on the dead leaves below. I sneak through the poison ivy for a close-up. The same day, a mixtape Future released in 2016, Purple Reign, was released for the first time on Apple Music's platform. I add the mixtape to my library and the songs Purple Reign and Perkys Calling to a playlist and listen to them on occasion. But these two songs I had heard once or twice in the past. They have stars next to them in the app. I remember speeding through the center of the Adirondack forest in a friend's BMW on our way to a trail-head in the High Peaks. Hearing Future rap that late summer day seemed as dark and sweetly alluring as the impenetrable spruce and fir lining the snaky bends of unpaved road. Presently, the stay at home order slowly wears the exciting energy of Uzi's new projects thin. Waiting patiently at the top of my recently-added library is the entire mixtape Purple Reign.

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4/24/2020: I went to CTown around 11:30am. I was listening to the Brian Lehrer Show on Powerbeats. I spent around 58 dollars on baking ingredients, pasta and mushrooms. An author tells Brian Shakespeare wrote two plays during a cushy plague quarantine. In the current economy artists have it hard. No pressure. As soon as I began loading the basket onto the conveyor belt, I realized I forgot vanilla for the cookies. There's a line outside. Too late to go back. I walk next-door to Duane Reade and pick up things like hair conditioner and ramen noodles. On my third lap through the "food" aisle I find a tiny broken box inside of which was a small plastic bottle of vanilla. I think it cost over 6 dollars. When I got home I unloaded everything. I pulled up the BLS segments I missed earlier in the morning. It was the ask the mayor segment. Someone called in and asked him to rethink suspension of the teenager summer employment program. Made coffee and worked out in my living room. Squats under a thick black resistance band. Backward lunges off a yoga block. Pendulum leg swings kick off the yoga block. A bunch of squats and planks. I was sweating all over the mat. As part rest I practiced flipping up into a handstand. I did this about three or four times. When I felt I had worked out enough I put a tab of LSD on my tongue, around 2:08 pm. A few more sets of crunches on a yoga ball, one more handstand. As I waited for the shower water to warm I put on Purple Reign through a bluetooth Bose speaker. I started cleaning the toilet and sink. Yesterday I had to use scissors to cut off most of my beard and hair all over the place, stuck in the grout and around the sink fixture. When I'm out of the shower I drop my running clothes in the tub and soak them along with Gain detergent. The LSD has been in me 1hr. The Northern Cardinals chirping in the courtyard sound like delivery bike alarms. It's enjoyably confusing. Waves of exhaustion and delirium for me to sit on the couch briefly. An hour ago I was working out. Standing upside down against the wall. I really can’t follow Future’s raps. The dissociation asks swiftly and new associations pile up. There’s a sense they’re seeping in somehow. I drain the tub and soak the clothes in clean water twice, squeezing each item until the soap bubbles diminish. I start on some dishes in the kitchen sink. Vicious cycles soaking hands, drying, moisturizing, they are mad wrinkled. 3:22 full absorbed in LSD fueled bathroom disinfection to Purple Reign. How many other trippy jogger types have been here, watching days of dirt and perspiration swirl down the drain in a brown hallucinatory vortex? The trip wasn’t very visual yet though. Every little detail about the bathroom or the kitchen or the living room begins unlocking preconceived notions of the outside world. I was unable to keep up]. The water is unbelievably brown, I thought. That came out of my body or off the ground into my clothes? The brightness of the living room is blurry, hazy. My synthetic shorts, pull-over and quick dry shirt drip dry on a rack in the tub now. It's not hazy in there, like the living room. The bathroom window glass is frosted. Rick Ross is in there, the bathroom talking about the 12th grade. I love the way your ass looks reflecting in my Lysol shining floors. Rick Ross doesn't say that. [Here I mistake Future’s voice on the track Never Forget for Rick Ross’s]. I wipe behind the toilet with one of those Swiffer Sweeper Wet things. Wish I had a girl to clean floors for. The bright green balsam fir incense box in the corner looks like my phone with new message notifications. Frasier kept Future out of Seattle? I’m having trouble keeping up with my own thoughts. My phone case looks pale green, not black. If anyone is showing the long strange years it’s the weather-worn grumpy cat who's been soaked by street rains and dried on many a radiator in his day, their day. Once the radiator melted the plastic furs a little. What messages did the poets have when they weren’t needed to carry stories over the mountains anymore? Chemicals smell good when you’re cleaning. What happens when the chemicals run out? What other solutions do we have? VInegar? DIY home detergents? There's two cardinals in the courtyard courting. When is the termite hatch? WHen am I just goint o research the termite hatch for myself?i gotta spend more time in the ktichen,,,., 4:03pm. Purple reign 3rd time? I gotta psend more time in the kitchen. Tonight i’m going to recreate the reese’s chips ahoy but vegan but not vegan. Not quite vegan vegan. This would be vegan with better recipes. Also t;his would vegan vut with bernie as president. Make it easier for yourslf in the future. Just make the ice now. In a time lapse of building front doors for every address in ny you'll see a blur of the disenfranchised. What’s this postal worker in the rainy courtyard through on the phone right now. He’s got his molded sun helmet on. I need to sit on the couch again. 36 year-old strong man. Two hours of chores about to break me? Stop before you do anything? Do the plants have enough water? You just refilled the ice trays. Back to the kitchen. Rinse the mouse turds out of the dish drain. The weathering of the 1920 bricks of the building is in higher contrast? Is the black on the cement window sills from carbon pollution or fire damage? ARe there cats in the windows or just curtains blowing back and forth? The tan bricks can be sunny or deep and sad from moment to moment. Scrubbing grease out of a pan or wiping I should say, about to start the Purple Reign for the 4th time? Filomena. Thinking about the people I saw at the store today. THe people I see more frequently than I realize. I can’t run from them anymore. What am I doing every day with my life? What am I working towards? Am I goign to actually bake later? I feeling smaller and more matrix-y. Am I just waiting to go back to work as an old normal? YOu told yourself abut the ICE and you failed. Water is on the floor but it doesn’t matter. Do we need more bird eyes to witness this stuff? How many cardinals are nesting in the courtyard. I just saw at least a small family. They cool with the House sparrow dudes? Is it harder for them each year to bring it home to the courtyard because they’re getting squeezed somewhere else. It’s going to be a sunny day? How do you take advantage of that? I’m dripping on them now, how do they like it though? The cardinals' lives are dependent on this… my life is too. Is this what Future’s going on about? [In Inside the Mattress Future says “came from the trenches and turned into art”]. All the bad he had to do to make it out of the streets. The story of it all in the courtyard. Purple reign on repeat we still are making up the internet for people. Would I have been about to arrive at the same conclusion looking out the window into the courtyard, without depending on CTown, without the drugs? It’s stressful. The grey sky makes all kinds of shades in the courtyard. The bricks have the sunny warmth from brighter days baked in. I really bought 80 clean ounces of aunt jemima self-rising flour. My coworker is in labor today. Run Up. can you imagine being in labor to this song. The spring metaphor is ripe. I’m purple reign no one cares how high you are get your ass to the kitchen sink. David, Diane, Peter and Judy the four pillars or knowledge. Logic, philospy art, science? Where are we in the metaphor? The [mixtape] is over. Press play on Alright. What would DJ esco fucking do? Go outisde? Finish tthe dishe and start dinner? More drugs? I have to breathe in that spring day. Reign never stops though. 5:38p Introduced marijuana. [C]an I succefffly get mysefl to the lookout and back befreo the sun goes down? So much citrus was about to go to waste and I saved it from itself. Think about all those clouwn ass characters you can save from themselvesThere’s a lot these silly nuggets out here looking sad in their skin. In this half ass spring day. SOme of them might hav to go. Up to the freezer. I will have to lock them up with that ice. Sad really. Dying in their own skin. [citrus] Who fucked up their skin? THe packaging? Why does it need that packaging? Life is definitely in the fast lane, cross-eyed. Skateboards. Where will I be when the tower of babel finally falls? What kind of story teller am I then? The pressure to love is massaged into the bread of that npr shit man! Each leg futher in the trip unravels the trash on NPR. true saturation to the message! People even participate in that crap! Birding. Science. Exercise. Art. What am I usspoed to be doing? Theyre paying me. [I'm] Recieveing a paycheck to stay home? How long am I just more [pulp] in the gears? Am i just the graffitti washing back you can kind of see it if you unfocused your eyes 5:51 i’ve never stoped listengint ot purple reign. Did my feiends arleady fall into this trap. One rap album over and over for days on end while the drugs and gas in the car lasts you…. Until finally at the end of you in the shell of a house withn broken banjos [hanging on the walls] and Run Up mixing up in the wreckage of it. Where the fuck is Rocco?>? You gotta eat it up and grieve with it. In every meal. I finally learned my lesson with the icy or the ice just froze on me, not spilling when the freezer door opens. I have to learn movre about these cardinals that live in the courtyard. When is that termite hatch info coming? Ij ust pressed enter like, “ok, send.” But nothing happened. Did they put the bricks in the courtyard like that purpsoefly so it looks sunny when it’s not? Are we sad for a dishwasher? iS the courtyard built like this so the pople always in the kitchens in the 1920s didn’t kill themselves. JUst want to dance and wash and press send. Mikes on and I’m not listening.. THe first real decision of the day. 6:01pm do I break from routine? Mayb e colve’s still just listening to that purple reign… he’s teh painful lesson. I smell the beef cooking through the walls of the other kitchn. I need to leave again for the day. Almost an hour left of daylight in another day gone. 6:08 perupe reighn still on repeate. No Francesa. I can play him later. Will i be beyond fro another night of the cheers? Am I part of the problem or the solution. We need a pause of this shit. As purple reign repeates again we’re getting ready for the night. Another day with the new reality. Let it sink in. no day will ever be the same as his same old day. I listened to a recording from four years ago repeatedly for three hours to come up with that last line. See what us artists are worth. We are essential look at us we are essential too! When business and storytelling rose out fo the ashes I was born the water is filtered i have to rinse my arms of the dried citrus. How many more nice womens lives do we choose to ruin as part of business as usual who are the women in my life i need to continue protecting what;s the result of the disastrous spring of pandemic to actually come out on the other side of this the person you need when you need someone. WOuld they rather me do somethig else? I’ll find out at some point i’m sure. Wasn’t prepared for the for whom do you break quarantine for question to so heavily interesect with my family heritige today but thatnks acid trip in the pandemic NO pete actually found a document ath said he knows where in italy his grandfather signed his paper of Catazana. [my dad texts me pictures of a US Military document from 1919 found among my grandmother’s old belonging]. That seemd to make a lot of sense in my mind. Immediately is that who I want to be? Old people from m past? Just the immediate thoughts for an old paper i’m glad exists. A peace of the spice that made it from the one old italian fruit into the post pandemic new normal. SHould I go outside and enjoy the drugs or stay in and just outlast this and the cheers at 77:39 tgeb wgat tune will it be when you get back and you’ll have more you can type about. My dad wanted to be free. He wanted to stay out west forever. SOmetihng told him to turn back? Was it the Reign? Preparting to go outside there’s no other way to do it with weed and the medicine bottle like is so fitting for the neighborhood. Why did my earbuds cut out? Why do we need the drugs to see clearly what's in front of us all day long. Transferred Purple Reign into my bluetooth earbuds successfully. I’m back from the walk. iT’s 8:51. I have to remember what conor said to me on the fphone as we were walking along there. WHen I left for the park around 6:20 or something Purple Reign was playing in my earbuds and I had my face covered and ears covered. Something made me press pause on the music but it seemed at the time the bluetooth lost connnection. I think I had to say excuse me to someone in the courtyard or at the laundromat street corner. Somewhere on Seaman or Beak street I started thinking are my headphones broken. But before that I was thinking we are really going to have to rely on the essential workers who are the oppressed people for our economy to start again can they hold this all up until their demands are met. But then I was thinking my bluetooth was messed up and I wasn’t going to be able to focus and fix it. So I’m really just ready to cross Payson and be inside the wooded park. Kind of as a surprise to me Siri says, “Conor says, Thanks BB.” I have my earbuds set up to read text messages to me as they are received by my phone. I’m not sure why this is or how to turn it off. It’s something the bluetooth earbuds do. Hearing conors message read to me made me smile though. He heard about that guy who was trying to get rich off everyone who thought they needed to buy silver. And there's people int he hospital who are turningup the 5G to control the human population stuff. Then the sky was very beatiful. THe leaves werew all wet and the south ridge had dozens of sparrows going in song. Then the cheers and stuff around 7pm rising up into the woods. THe whole beautiful sunset thing and after that the owl overhead in the pitch black branches. [It rained most of the day and I wasn’t expecting any of the sky to be visible.] As I walk north on the ridge the cliffside on the opposite shore of the river appears through the tree spaces. I walk to the meadow overlook. The sky above the palisade cliffs and the river below are a matchig shade of pink-grey. Just above the cliffs the clouds stop at a perfectly straight hard grey ceiling. In a space between the cliff top trees and the cloud edge the sun burns behind wisps of deep orange that looks like boiling or flames inside a furnace glass. Looking north up the river the entire long thin block of cliffs looks like it’s floating in the sky. To the north, beyond the abrupt end of the miles long cliff block in the north that ends the cliff the pink and pale blue sky joins in an illusion to turn the body of water into a sky world. Even when the sun was gone the light refused to leave the upper atmosphere and an orange slit persisted in the deepening shade of the forest. The tree tops had green blue highlights and then the night sky came alive with a few planets and its usual urban light pollution. I stop to wait for the highway swooshing to fall flat. In a brief moment of silence an owl whinnies out of the bushes and becomes a small shadow in a vine drooping over my head darker than all the black branches surrounding the oval form. A complete absence of light. I walk south on the ridge and notice a small light glowing inside an old foundation rock wall in the woods. And then the light inside the cave was glowing. I walk out of the clove to the east ridge. As I approach the ridge crest bright lights of upper manhattan and the bronx glow like the dazzling metropolises they are not. I am eye level with cozy family living rooms filled with white eople of all ages 6 stories above payson ave. Can I end up baking these cookies>? Jit was the mission of the entire day. It’s going to be pleasant weather tomorrow. How do we avoid contributing to the crowds? 9:12pm I’m home. Purple Reign falling again. DJ ESco beckons me. A few more of those sad citrus boys’re still out all night. Who are the kids who hang out on the benches as it gets dark? Who was the guy who was kind of following me from Beak to Seaman. I just made the creamiest looking guacamole. And tried to bake vegan chocolate chip cookies. The cookies came out so bad. 11:26pm. Listening to Dear April and Cayendo now. My legs are becoming extremely sore. 12:33 I can almost relax and maybe sleep. My legs are so heavy and warm. The apartment is too warm. Turn down the dam heat, man. I was lying there in bed thinking about the width of the paths in the park and how clean they keep them. They shovel the dirt off the paths. A city law ensuring access for disabled? When does the outdoors become the new classroom? How long will it take to walk the entire public school population two by two through the urban wild forest? THe Henry Hudson Bridge needs to come down reroute the highway. In bed. Read a little of I Love Dick. Ate ramens around 1am. Still awake after 2pm, watching King of the Hill.

Hammock Under

hammock under

rain drops hitting

a blue tarp

branches reach

under the gentle lift
and fall and crinkle

is there a mouse on the line

after three am arrives
i'm finally sleepy

late morning next to the pinksters
on top of a cliff
watching it all bake
lightly salted

the night comes
again

with the night in it

pulsing as if

from a light on a house
in the distance

i’ve observed the hudson river from different angles

passing over bridges

a train car rolling along the shore

a jagged cliff

floating in a canoe 

standing on a little hook of beach

a dock

someone’s backyard 

inside a restaurant at night

from inside a ferry

from inside a bus

sweet tooth

when i was 12 years old and in the 6th grade

i made a cassette copy from a compact 

of portrait of an american family

by the band Marilyn Manson

inside the plastic case of the cassette

i listed the title of each track 

using a blue pen

kerry hall who was in the 8th grade at the time

was the recipient of the cassette

and when i handed it to her she immediately

studied the track list i had tried to write carefully

she said “sweat tooth?” 

her short hair would hang in front of half her face
like claire danes in my so-called life

as she bent her head towards the globby ink

new reefer

plywood foot paths around
the freezer truck
lauren and miles trailer

stained with mud
make a right every house
gutted sitting abandoned

i flicked the joint in the grass
and in the morning can't find it

not a big deal but i still have
a few more days here

please leave the key

grandpa rarely cooked for my brother and i
though i remember the many times grandma
said grandpa was a better cook than her

grandma only never cooks unless
a different obligation restricts her from cooking
at least once grandpa cooked in her stead

he cooked elbow pasta
with salt and butter with some parmesan cheese
it was good and maybe even better

since he let us have a little more butter
but what i saw happen to him before
he boiled the water

i never saw happen when grandma cooked
he pulled down a box of the elbow pasta
from the cabinet and found tiny worms

crawling in the edges of the box
and cooked only half the pound

melanoma

Rocky thought the singer at the service was terrible and that you could hardly hear the words. The funeral seemed less sad because grandpa had Alzheimer's for so long.

Every time I went to the bar for wine Benny said something about me having GPS for wine.

Cousin Al timed the Cloud City scene in Empire because the website stream was buffering, he said. 

Grandma doesn't like or is not interested in the excitement of football. She also thinks women should not report on sporting events because they don't know what they are talking about.

march 2016

biked home. showered. drank fiber mix. read about historical landmarks in bushwick. meserole st and near english kills properties. colored school on union. took melatonin before shower. woke up to sound of skateboarders on ramp to rail downstairs. dinging the rail. skateboard deck bouncing off the sidewalk. wheels rolling up the run-up, uphill, to launch off the ramp. put on pants and fleece and black hat to buy bagel from bagel brothers. also yellow vitamin water. never went back to sleep. group text w/ mike, ben, isaac. mike changed number and ben at nova / ND second round ncaa men's bball tourney at barclays. watched king of the hill via playlist. watched crackle, Sunset Park. had a headache. read some of Desert Solitaire while in bed. Abbey critiques the national parks system. provides his own automobile-less vision for parks. Friended Ranger vanLear on FB. talked to Chris on FB chat. Overheard old roommate moving out and new roommate helping him move in. when new roommate left I went out to make a salad. made salad and then went downstairs to buy coffee at 7:45pm before Cup closed at 8pm. awarded a free scone. watched Maryland / Hawai'i and some other game. Hot shower, listened to Amy Winehouse. Practiced Battle Hymn on banjo. Saw a scooter on the subway platform. Lightly snowing when I left for work. Listened to Untitled Unmastered on subway. Transferred at 14th to N train, Northbound. Walked against traffic of Knick fans, just getting out of the game. Talked to Andrew on Gchat at work. Went to pizza Suprema. a girl in front of me at the counter had rolling luggage. Xavier lost.