Hey...Dr. Jay...where you got those moves?
Was it gettin high in the school? Can it be the shoes?

It's the politics of the sneaker pimps

Some days your mind clears and things feel good. What is this crazy-ass thing called motivation? It's a shame that there aren't deeper questions on my mind.

McCarthy (Cormac, not Eugene) talks about the slaughter of thousands for a flowerblossom. White Tiger writerman says people are slaves when they can't see life's beauty.
I say, what beauty?
Life is life: powerful and often less than expected. Some days I like to pretend that a moral code keeps my profession geared to good and my MN geared to nice. The truth is, for this--all this--I was programmed. Nothing more, nothingless, nothing less.

Sometimes I'm proud. Programmed.

There are those fleeting instances when the lights shine down, the air is clear, and the night is new. Sirens; muffled discontent: nothing is certian. People we care about die, approach death. We approach it too, insodoing approach life.

Politics.

I don't get addicted to much, but one of these days I gotta get hooked on living. Or at least something that isn't the internet.

Institutionalist

Good column here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/27/opinion/27brooks.html?hp

Who are the institutionalists? I see them at work, in various functions. There is something impressive about them. They seek to fill a role, to be someone--despite the fact that that someone has already existed.

This relates to Plato's forms: the idea that there is an essential essence to everything: for every woman an ideal woman, for every table, a perfect table. These forms, of course, limit themselves to the realm of mind. There is no ideal table, or basketball player, or woman for that matter. Yet the institutionalist can see the ideal. World record holding runners see it. Overachieving teachers see it.

The existential path is more immediately attractive. What is the purpose of seeking an ideal when meaning only exists where you make it? If you can't find your own bearings in this world, what use is there in finding excellence in the bearings of others?

Brooks is too smart to be republican.

Did the G-train kill Gotham?

I lie puzzled as I backtrack to earlier times
nothing's equivalent
to the New York state of mind

It is a state of mind: the rattle beneath the corner store, C train commotion, yells and gusts, clocktower--skybeam--sunset, the burned out buildingfront on top of the park. The fear and excitement, the purple hightops, big glasses and scarves. It is the bigness and the badness, the madness and the sadness.

The mind-state: why gentrification matters, the loss of that impervious grit. And yet, poverty is still real, class-clown favorites stabbed on the block: the grit lives on. "You know he'll call ACS, that's why I don't say shit," paranoia, etc: the grit lives, never what it seems. Perceptions are what change, mind-states might die. Flashes of crazy, flashes of love: mind-state. But, then, nothing is really any different except that you thought it was.

Back to the old days, but mind-states live there too because what was remembered is different than what was. 4th ave bustle, the app now, down 32nd, townhouses falling to peices, California...knows how to party, even if we'd never been there: different than what was.

Life is what gets in the way. New York is a place where you just want to be.

Taxidermy

I'd like to go back to when we played as kids.
Things change.
That's just the way it is.

Something beautiful in the unfulfilled: the potential of every moment to be great or terrible or never to happen at all.

Life is made up of these fleeting connections, ephemeral relationships that would be worthless were they permanent. And yet that's what gives life meaning. Of course longevity is valuable in itself, but things are in constant flux. People from the past lose significance in the present, only to regain it in the future. The necessities of the person you are today, different than who you were yesterday, create new connections and destroy old, and then you fucking die.

This is starting to sound really positive.

Can you imagine being Obama? Every friendship you develop as president is colored by the fact that everyone you meet has wrapped your face up in the threads of an historical narrative. Every friendship you developed before you were president is locked into the state it was before it became colored by the arc of history. What happens if you're one of the people rotating into the whitehouse to keep Obama company--one of his friends--and you realize that you and Obama really aren't that close? I guess you shut up.

David Brooks has me worried about the stumulus package. Krugman says it's not enough money. Brooks says it's too much money to spend effectively. It seems both might be right. The republicans are wrong: buisiness tax cuts won't stimulate employment in this environment. What about bailing out state governments? What about bailing out Halliburton? Can we still do that?

Focus on the art. It's sure as fuck not going to focus on you.

There's something wild about living in any particular era, like in Malcolm X when Joe Louis wins the fight and the streets fill and the train workers can't stay mad; personal struggles become wrapped in the overarching narrative of collective experience. History is wild like that. When people like Obama conduct the thoughts of millions, those thoughts become palpable--like a living and concious entity. It's the same power that drove MLK to madness and depression.

Being there is strange because of the particularity of the experience. It's always so mundane, and so much a part of your everyday life. And yet there is something bigger.

I think God works in history. Does that conflict with the idea that God works through self discovery? I guess not, as long as it's moral and not technological/scientific discovery that is comprised by the God of history.

Make a highway, Barack.

Firm disbeliever in your punch clock promise...

He walked quickly down Fulton Street, past the train stop and on past the deli. The wind felt warm as he chattered on his phone: "Spicy Tuna, Yellowtail...30 min? Cool."
Past the Elk's church-house monstrosity, the warm wind whipped.
She walked quickly towards him, suspecting, recognizing.
He saw her underneath the bill of his hat, eyes darting quickly, giving nothing, staring off, away, washed out in the shadows.
All the neglect, the history, the past revelry and emptiness reflected in her surprised glare: surprised for her friend, not quite angry, not yet.
And she passed.
And he went to wait on his food.
And it's already Monday.

What's love got to do

When Im rippin all through your whole crew?

-BIG

Cold nights feed tension and a delusion

that somewhere

there's a pretty ass street where people pluck apples

from carts

and think deep thoughts and smoke

and live

interestingly.

Is that a poem?