We Have Need for Strong Hands, for Spirits who are Willing to Give Up the Ghost and Put on the Flesh…

— Tropic of Cancer

Sometimes Henry Miller’s words cause a restless stir and leave me a bit breathless, like a punch in the gut. He rambles for pages and pages and irritates for the most part, but then there’s that one sentence or paragraph that just hits the nail on the head and knocks you down with introspection for a few minutes. At least long enough to get out your pencil and underline the passage, in case memory fails our life’s work of documentation and the need to collect trophies that prove “i was there”, “i felt that”…

I’m ecstatic that the Pink Bear sign has a new home (from the woods of hunting season in New Jersey, only to be stolen in the middle of the night by the over-active imaginations of spooky music influenced pranksters, to a corner in my room with a view in Greenpoint, and now on to Aik’s apartment in Bushwick). Pink Bears have a new place to congregate in order to discuss, create, socialize… cocktail hour is still on schedule just the coordinates have changed; they are always changing. I’m ok with this sometimes painful truth; in fact, at the moment, I’m really excited about the future and tired of being stagnant. “Home is just a pair of slippers, anyways” is my motto. We learned long ago to keep our belongings minimal (maybe it’s because of my romanticized view of immigrant roots and the Diaspora that keep life in small, compartmentalized doses?)… only a few postcards here and there, a couple of notebooks, a device to take a few snapshots, a LAMY pen for the things that need to be written in bold ink, a pencil for the things that can change, on a whim.

The narrative continues, even though I know full well that it is extremely unhealthy to see the whole thing as a novel, separated by chapters and injected with dramatic foreshadowing, and… of course, a momentum building soundtrack.

so, Mr. Miller, you and your disgust for Americana and appreciation for the crisp and magical Big Sur winds, I happily and anxiously accept your call to arms… to “put on the flesh”… but I unfortunately don’t have time to read Tropic of Capricorn right now…

“Once you have given up the ghost, everything follows with dead certainty, even in the midst of chaos.”  — Henry Miller, Tropic of Capricorn, 1.

Notes for Young Ladies

nevver:

1. leave the english accents to the english
2. alcohol is a depressant
3. if you are 25, you are too old to start ballet

Itchy Banquet