Neutral Milk Hotel's "Ghost" on repeat.
I haven't listened to Neutral Milk for a while - I always associate In the Aeroplane Over The Sea with the days immediately after my high school graduation, which isn't necessarily a time I want to revisit.
But the other night I hitched a ride to Dollar Scoops with Ally, and she was blasting the album. When we reached this song, I said something to the effect of "This might be my favorite song on this album" despite not listening to it for over a year. And so, facing a red-eye from San Francisco back to New York, I started repeating the song, and since, haven't stopped.
It rained through the ten days I spent in California, including the entirety of my sister's high school graduation. Now safely back on the East Coast, it's humid and in the 90s. Our apartment in Bushwick is nice, very nice, except it doesn't have air conditioning, or fans, or air circulation at all, really...
I cooked a Class 2 Breakfast with Vincent and Yonit (Class 2 denotes home-cooked breakfast with multiple courses and friends) and after some brief puttering set off to find air conditioned places to sit.
I ended up spending the afternoon in Bobst reading Diane Di Prima's memoir, one of the many books left in my apartment by wayward friends (no complaints, I've always wanted a house full of books). Words cannot express how closely this woman speaks to me. By the time I'd reached the end of her high school career, I'd moved across the street to Starbucks, where I've been alternately laughing (quietly) and weeping (discreetly) my way through her brief college years. Part of me wants to call my sister & friends in California and cry her name until they are driven in frenzy to the closest bookstore to buy the book. I think instead I'll hunt down like eight copies and tie them with ribbons and present them to the ladies next time I see them.
Then I did what I often do when obsessed with something - call Barbara.
("BARBARA, THIS BOOK. IT'S US." "I know, Amy!" "I LOVE IT SO MUCH." "Yes, me too!" "IT'S ALL OF US. WE ARE ALL IN THIS BOOK.")
The secret gnosticism of Dante, of my grandfather, who so claimed the here and now in his politics, passed through the hysteria and grief of my mother, and arrived at the message “this world is intolerable”. Translated by me, age two or three, to “This world is not real. Does not take precedence.” Skill at astral travel, at “seeing” other worlds, not separate from the inability to see my own face.
("IT'S SO GOOD, BARBARA. IT'S JUST SO GOOD.")
One thing about reading Di Prima - it makes me happy, much happier than before, to be setting out on the adventure of a New York summer, living (mostly) on my own. (Unfortunately, no, I don't pay my own rent. I also have roommates, so I'm not entirely isolated. We're in Bushwick.) I read of Di Prima, wandering the streets of New York City with her high school posse, The Branded, as she studies the Romantics and writes poetry from Village coffeeshops, and I'm compelled, magnetically, to do the same.
OK, Faye's At the Square (the fancy name for NYU Starbucks) isn't really a Village coffeeshop, though it is in the Village and there is coffee. But I do suffer an appropriate amount of indie/anarchic/anti-corporate/liberal/hipster guilt for pretending it is. I should despise and avoid Starbucks on principle, but several factors, including the abundance of NYU internet and the gift card I stole from one of my wayward friends (I use the term endearingly to describe the people who sometimes stay in our apartment) keep me coming back.
As I type all of this, the summer day has disappeared and now a gale blows outside. I have work tonight, then hopefully a reprise of our new post-work tradition, tea & pasta & books on the BALCONY (as I said, we have a great apartment). This tradition is a new one - so far it only stretches so far as last night and whenever Vince & Hollis managed it while I was in California. Last night, Vincent and I were counting the stray cats when a RACCOON walked down Jefferson Avenue.
I HAD NO IDEA THERE WERE RACCOONS IN BROOKLYN.
With that, I leave were I began!
Ghost, ghost I know you live within me
Feel as you fly
In thunderclouds above the city
Into one that I
Loved with all that was left within me
Until we tore in two
Now wings and rings and there's so many
Waiting here for you
And one day in New York City baby
A girl fell from the sky
From the top of a burning apartment building
Fourteen stories high
And when her spirit left her body
How it split the sun
I know that she will live forever
All goes on and on and on and
She goes and now she knows she'll never be afraid
To watch the morning paper blow
Into a hole where no one can escape.
<3
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