Larsen

i am not a fan of this book.

contrary to the other texts that we have read for this course, this one seems completely depressing and unsympathetic. helga so blatantly criticizes those around her, when she too is separated from the majority of society being of mixed race.  who is she to contradict in her situation? lets refer to blacks as “jungle creatures” and hate every city that we are graciously able to encounter. i thought that larsens lack of intricate imagery and awkward sentencing made the novel extremely hard to read.  when the writer is not engaged with the main character is becomes extremely difficult to connect to the text. this is what bothered me the most.  “She had ruined her life, made it impossible ever again to do the things that she wanted, have the things that she loved, mingle with the people she liked. She had been a fool”  Give me something to work with. Please

countdown to midnight. to 20 years old. no cupcakes. no party dresses. no pink champagne. only tears. and mango tango and burger king crowns.

poem from class

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?

caring is creepy drenched in lies and cold underwear.

a better person in the light of an earthquake or a hurricane.

sin versus a wintery mix

im scared of not saying goodbye

of kissing you without weights

extremely loud and incredibly close

meet me at lunchtime in february

red and fat

drinking more, smoking more, dying more

youre lost in saints wearing flannel

ready to scream

im a collage of your grandfather

whiskey, not gin

alone

WHAT IF I DON’T HAVE ALL THE ANSWERS?

o’hara

my parents wanted me to write lines for fortune cookies. they used to call me and read off their lines and then imitate what i may have said. i never wanted to write lines for fortune cookies. so i read frank o’hara’s instead. “You will meet a tall beautiful blonde stranger, and you will not say hello.” “You will eat cake.” “You will marry the first person who tells you your eyes look like scrambled egg” He has an endless supply of new forms of poetry. I think we need to make cookies with these inside. I’m sick of getting the same fortune, the same ideas of everything. Gimme the new. Gimme the croissant factories and the Jackie Kennedy babies. I’m ready for the moon.

edna johns

heres to greenville, texas. the city of holiday memories and horrible experiences. the city of my grandmother, my fathers mother. its not a city of gold, or even a city to talk about. its not phenomenal or extravagant. heres to the middle of no where and empty cigarette cartons on the back porch. lets get burgers at cbs, and get lost trying to find goodwill. lets go to the crooked house on 4th street and dream of redoing the infamous house on 5th. heres to living on a street named after you. and your fathers high school, and your parents first kiss. the sweet tea is always better. the hugs are always tighter. the smiles bigger and more proud. the accent is always thicker. as soon as you arrive, you want to leave. but my dragon lives there. my grandmother who wont wake up. so this is for greenville. my holiday home.

whitehead

i kind of like Colson’s new york. maybe its negative. maybe its ridiculous but the way he puts somethings into words hits home. the Broadway chapter was my favorite, along with the Brooklyn bridge. I could visualize myself as the person. relive their thoughts and steps. mimicking. “the light changing and he has that wish again: that every step he ever took left a neon footprint.” there is room for interpretation and inspiration and mind for what your reality is. because according to whitehead we can’t listen to a goddamn thing anyone tells us about new york because it is our own, and that is true in some senses but not all. no one can feel the exact same way you do about this city. the way you feel when you first set foot off that airplane, or figure yourself out on a late night adventure, or get your heart broken by the city. its all you. its all yours. but we are all in this together. we are all living in this city making it. rebuilding and refurnishing it. tearing it apart. i want to look out my window and see that girl walking across the Brooklyn bridge and I am going to start asking about what used to be where i am right now. history amongst my new york. i didn’t expect much from this book from everything that i heard people say in class. i wouldn’t say its the perfect book, but who am i to judge someone else’s new york?

girlcrush

when you look at a face in a portrait, your first instinct is not necessary to think of who they are now. that arbus’ twins would end up being white trash, or exactly where those little boys in Hine’s “newsies” are now. their faces show who they are going to be before they ever had a chance. and i wonder if it is the same with my writing. that my characters, who all carry a piece of myself within them are going to grow up into something out of control or if, like a photographer, it is in my control. i really enjoyed this class. Dominica’s passion for photography and romantic new york made an impact as i walked down the windy streets with a grumbling stomach. art is in the artists control. a photographer can manipulate the viewer just as a writer manipulates its readers. one blurred heel in the middle of new york city can make you feel poetic and apart of that moment. and just as she said in class when you create something is it to point or evoke something? what am i trying to get a viewer or reader or listening to feel or get out of my creations. everything is moving so fast.
i feel all over the place. i can’t control my thoughts. and im starting to like it. i want to buy a camera. i want to make it the 40s again like Dominica did in her senior project of portraits. i want to respark the romance of this city and stop questioning everything. i keep dreaming of these old photographs, and one morning i am going to wake up in one of the them.

so many of the photographs got to me. i can’t pick just one.

punchdrunk st. marks

new to the city but you are what i first heard about. one long street of possibilities. were holding hands to get there. grace is on my side. walk down the stairs and you find a world of multi-colored denim. bleached frazzled hair provides a friendly smile as he leans over the changing room to make sure they fit just right. rows of sunglasses and fake glasses and glasses to wear when your drunk. the book store is my favorite. long and skinny and filled with words screaming to its inhabitants. we can’t help but browse and not want to leave. the hipsters are here, though “the bishops” claim the street as their own. pink stores and blue stores and stores you can’t see in the window. dumpling man gets my stomach in knots. what i would give for that seared chicken everyday. borris, oh borris sells you shoes. shoes that you can buy and he will design them and paint them exactly how you please. a box of a shoe store. a man with a big heart. im getting closer to 1st now and im seeing red and white. millions of santa clauses with beer bellies and stripper heels. we take too many pictures. i look like a tourist with my suitcase. i am a tourist in some way i suppose. i want to walk backwards and do it all again but my bags are real heavy and i dont want to ruin the first time around.

the street is packed with history with wonder, just knowing who has walked down this street exactly where you were. lived in homes that are now converted to stores. you hear all these stories of the way new york city once was and i can’t help but wish i was living there too. getting high in the st. marks theater or mingling in the Negro ensemble theater upstairs. now its a gap. this century keeps getting depressing. i wish i could have witnessed the gay bathhouse or been walking down the street when Keith Richards and Mick Jagger were filming a music video. home for the everyday anarchist and the mixed cultures. one address would have brought you the Jewish gangs and another the Italian mobs. Race meets religion meets orientation meets the beginning of the mafia. history is embedded in the st. marks sidewalks. im retracing history in my steps and too often i don’t take the time to even notice.

my city is having trouble sleeping right now. its binging on purple and gold and green. it’s drinking its’ hand grenades and kissing strangers. i am not there. my family is not there. lots of people escape, but my city is still alive more vibrant than ever. its not about showing your tits or catching enough beads, it becomes about the smiles and running into people you haven’t seen in years and are too scared to contact. my city is all together right now. littering themselves on the street. littering themselves in the trees.but im not there. im here. right now is the only time i wish i was home.