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Published: August 30th 2010
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I don't know what to title this one: Back to Life OR
How to Live Sanely in an Insane World
How to eat a Pink Lady apple with the most personal gain
How to carve a Turkey on Skype
How to take your heart and make it bigger and redder, in a metaphorical sense
How to do something productive without seeing in your mind's eye your face on some Barnes and Noble announcement headline for 7PM on Tuesday
How to be just like someone else other than you
How to be sad and convince everyone "don't be sad, it's OKAY!"
How to get angry like a thunderstorm and then be done when it's over (I stole that one from a spiritual master)
What to do when you see Superman crumbled at the bottom of your backpack
Any of these titles will do just fine.
Now that I have a title, what is my purpose?
To Achieve
To Grow
To Breathe
To Die
To Dance
To Float
To Pick my Nose
To Make Eggs (A Zen Koan)
Whatever it is it, MUST begin with "TO" and be followed by a verb or an action. This is what
I tell my SAT students when they are analyzing a reading passage after all, and I'd better walk my talk.
Ooh, two more:
To Walk
To Talk
When I was walking the Camino (which has evaporated as if it were a dream), my purpose was to walk. That was all. I did alot of talking too, but always walking. There is and was and will always be much outward and inward talking. By the way, it must be said once and for all for all the people of the world to know: Everyone talks to oneself. In shopping malls, in elevators, on the street, in the train, in the home, people are insane and talking to themselves, but they are not in fact insane at all. It only looks like they are. There is not much difference between the certifiably insane and the sane walkers of streets and riders of elevators. It's just a difference between straight lines and wobbly, winding ones.
Oh how brilliant that was!....
Brilliant as a brillow pad....
Oh, come now, don't put me down like that....
Well, don't prop yourself up like that and I won't have to put you down
then will I?
Sorry master.
I'm not your master.
Sorry whoever you are.
I'm Bill Walker. And I'm just tryin to walk on down along here, just tryin to keep on keepin on. 'Cept my teeth stink.
Oh, I suggest Tom's Organic Toothpaste; you can purchase it at Whole Foods. It tastes like Black Licorice. The worst taste in the world, but it is soap for your teeth after all. Shouldn't be too pleasurable.
As you can see I still haven't found my purpose.
Today I woke up and the window was still there and still made of glass. I put my feet down on the floor and I did not fall down through it. That would have been bad, as I'm living 9 floors closer to the sky these days. 9 was always my favorite number. Do you know why? Because the first time anyone asked me what my favorite number was, I was 9 years old and it felt right to say 9. I guess because I liked myself and my temporal situation. In any case, I lost the main narrative here. It shouldn't be hard to find, it's a straight line for heaven's sake. (Yuck
Yuck). No seriously folks, has anyone seen my main line? It is a fairly simple story. It cuts from the Upper West side, on yon down to the East Village where it stops at Scott and Robyn's apartment to fetch a couple of tutoring documents. Then it hops on a bus (it has headphones on at this point and it is starting to wonder if by wearing headphones it is missing out on some bona fide REAL reality) to 51st and near the UN building. It has to tutor a student there. Her parents work for the UN. Her dad appears in a suit after having left the room moments earlier in a bathrobe or pajamas. He must be ready to go UN at the UN. After a lovely tutoring session, replete with circle formulas, backsolving, parallelism, and the word "languid", it is back to the bus, back to Scott and Robyn's apartment to waddle in a stew of no direction for the next 1.5 hours. It does eat a chicken sandwich at this point and talks to a young film student in line at a cafe who is to be shooting a short film to help him get into
film school. It feels quite proud that it can say: "I am an actor in New York"......oh I lost the line again. Good riddance.
The insane have things to tell us.
Yesterday Liana and I were approached by a man in the North Woods of Central Park who was intent on giving us a black plastic bag with a tub of ice cream in it. He would not take no for an answer. We eventually fled. We fled from free ice cream. He just did it in such a creepy manner is all. If he would have asked nicely, un-creepily, well then we would have taken his ice cream from him and delivered it directly to the trash can, the bin marked, "suspicious food items.".... We saw something. Now I'm saying something.
Yesterday, two voices argued on the Subway speaker system. A man's voice said "Express" and a woman's said "Local". At each utterance, a crowd would get off the train and then back on again when the alternate voice chimed in. This happened over and over. Soon we were all smiling, laughing, wonderfully ashamed of ourselves for following these voices so dutifully. We would have followed
the voices back and forth, on and off the train all day long. Everybody was smiling and connecting. It was one of those delicious NY moments when the spell of automatism and private inner monologues is broken. Afterwards, we all hugged and kissed and exchanged facebook names.
Have I ever said that Peter Gabriel may be a living Saint? But like Celia, he does indeed shit, I'm pretty sure. You can't fool me Saint Peter.
Today I shaved my beard a bit. I made sure the sink was clear of all shavings because it wasn't my own sink. I was shaving as a guest. And the hostess gets mad when there are shavings in the sink. In fact, whenever I shave, wherever I am, I hear her voice and it could be getting mad, so I wipe away all my shavings now. I'm a changed man. And newly shaven.
Someone said to me that New York is raw, and that is why it's great.
I'm just living here now, keeping it real and raw.
Like a carrot,
DREW
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anonymous
non-member comment
A fucking carrot?you are so f'n ..............wow!I love you you crazy f.........