Obama in the Village

I have never, ever, ever, in my short time in this world, seen anything quite like last night.

Amongst the people, dancing in the streets, more powerful than the men in blue uniforms, it felt like some unseen giant was ladeling hope over our heads. Another helping? Take two more. Flags waved, anthems sung, arms in the air. I climbed onto a trashcan to watch the bedlam and was swept away on the current of pure joy. After the unbearable tension of the past weeks, last night was the breaking of a severely backed up dam. It was the orgasm we all needed after a chaste 8 years. I have only known adulthood under the dangerous farce that was the Bush Administration. I look forward to knowing something other than facist, racist, sexist ideology in the White House.

I look forward to a new America.

To the one I can't have.

Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things
To yield with a grace to reason
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?

-- Reluctance, Robert Frost

She didn't know if their love would ever end, but she tried to understand that it had to. They'd tortured each other enough over the years. They built desire like fires all over their bodies. They kissed in the rain under the bridge. She had to stand on her tiptoes to reach his lips, and he would hold her close with strong arms. They smoked cigarettes together, and drank wine in the afternoon, and sang at the tops of their lungs. When she was around him she was enveloped in a warm haze of something beautiful. No one else mattered. He looked at her with a hunger that grew sharper over time, and wanted to take her away from everything dark. In those moments that were perfect, their passion seemed invincible.

A Brief Study: Gustav Klimt & Kattaca in One

Not quite the real thing, but a damn good approximation and a work of art in it's own right. Check out more brilliance from Klimt and also master stylists/art directors Kattaca.


"The most important element of his fame is his reputation as a master of eroticism."

-Gottfried Fleidel, "Gustav Klimt 1862-1918 The World in Female Form"

Lunar Masturbation

The other night, I was heading home in a rather foul mood. I don't really remember what caused it, and that probably speaks to how unimportant it actually was, but I do recall that I felt empty. I don't like feeling empty. I doubt anyone does.

In any case, it was a foul mood. I sat on the train absorbed in the electronic toys of my life: I listened to music, I played games on my phone, I ignored the humanity around me. My stop. I threw the phone into whatever bag I was wearing that night, I zipped it up, I stood. Trudged up the stairs. Foulfoulfoul. If that motherfucker who started to hiss at me had continued after I gave him a death stare, I would have clawed his beady eyes out of his tiny little head. Top of the stairs. Annoyed by the always slightly dangerous walk home ahead of me. The song I was listening to ended. A new song began. I took a deep breath, stepped onto the sidewalk, and looked up.

Oh.

The moon. Round, and almost full, clear, and so bright it was surrounded by the most perfectly giant halo of light I'd ever seen. A perfect circle of moonlight. I almost laughed aloud for surprise. I'd never seen anything like it. And in this polluted city, no less? I looked to one side to see if anyone was there reveling with me. I looked to the other side. No one walked next to me. I was alone, so I enjoyed the beauty for myself.

More Ruminations on Fall

Remember the smell of cold lunch? The peanut butter and jelly sandwich would combine with the apple and the brown paper bag to create this utterly unique scent, a perfume unlike any other. Your mom packed it at like 7am, so by the time lunch rolled around (which was, what, 5pm or something that seemed just as excruciatingly late)the smell would be especially strong. And you'd reach into your backpack, and the smell would hit you, and you would know that for 30 minutes you didn't have to pay attention to Social Studies or Island of the Blue Dolphins. For 30 minutes in the middle of the day, your time belonged to you.

There's been a sharpness to the air since last week. Gone are the dull-edges of summer, the circular days with blurred beginnings and endings. Gone are the hazy afternoons spent sipping cool drinks and blotting brows. October has brought everything into focus and heralded the return of the triangular 24-hours; days have a specific starting point, a peak, and a decidedly steep denouement.

Even though the crisp sunshine means that winter's bitterly bracing sunshine must follow, even though fall means the death of things which previously thrived, I'm happy. I'm happy! I can feel it in every step I take. The change of seasons always brings a certain excitement, a constant awareness of the beauty of living.

Now I wake up in the morning next to his warm body. Instead of pushing each other away in a sweaty attempt to keep cool, we curl towards each other, a tangle of limbs and hot lips buried under blankets. He smells of autumn all the time - that inexplicably sweet male scent. I'll stop in the street sometimes and put my nose to his scratchy cheek just to breathe him in, when we're walking together in the cool morning from his apartment to mine, or to the train, or to get a hot black coffee (me) and a cappuccino (him).

My head is clear and my heart is on a pedestal. I'm floating through fall, and I'm happy.

I had a fantasy about my future the other day that was unlike any I've had before. It occurred to me on a trip upstate with three of the most wonderful friends I know. To be precise, it actually occurred on our way back downstate (can you say downstate?), in the little town of Phoenicia, while standing outside of a real estate office. The office was closed, it being Sunday in small-town America and all, but there were pictures up in its window of the properties it had for sale. One in particular caught my eye. They were selling an old hotel on a vast amount of acreage for the unthinkably low price of $150,000.

The hotel needed work of course, lots and lots of work, but it was a beautiful, historic, white-washed, romantic 19th century building, and I saw the potential in it immediately. In that moment, for a fleeting second, I set aside the notion of big city living that I've had my entire life. I set aside visions of myself at 30, 40, 50 years old, hosting cocktail parties for fabulous people in increasingly larger and more expensively furnished apartments located in the various urban meccas of the world. I set aside the (admittedly vague, hazy and ever-changing) concept of a Career with a capital "C," one that I would possibly log 65 hour weeks for, taking public transportation home at the end of long days with the masses of other humans pursuing Careers. I let all of that go for one moment, and I imagined myself purchasing this old hotel and throwing my entire being into it. I imagined renovating, gardening, painting and sanding, giving my all to making it habitable. And instead of hunkering down in a dank subway car at the end of each day, I imagined stretching out on my wrap-around porch. Next to me, perhaps, would sit my lover, my soulmate; he would be strong with capable hands, himself a carpenter. Our bodies would ache synchronously from the day's labor, and we would drink a glass of wine together and listen to the trees.

I realized then, more fully than ever, that the only limits in our lives are the ones we impose upon ourselves.