mementos

today a journalist asked me:

HER: so XXXX, when you travel, do you like to take a lot of pictures?

ME: (pause)

HER: (pause) do you like to-

ME: yes. well - yes. i do. but not for me. for my family and friends. i think it's kind of an attempt to get them to feel, you know, to share the essence of a place with them. a gorgeous mosque, a moment in a festival, you know, whatever. uh, i remember once i was walking through the muslim part of granada and i got to this amazing lookout point at this ancient plaza full of pigeons and old people, uh, and it had this view of the alhambra rising from a million completely white little houses. like this sea of houses, and forest, with the alhambra sitting there like... a fucking god. i looked at my camera, and i had no film left. my film was done, i used like three rolls while i was in la alhambra itself, and the rest of it was in guadix, which is like an hour's drive away. so, this experience, which was this completely transcendent experience, where i was like, you know, jules winfield, i felt the touch of god, i had no way of sharing what that felt like with my mother or my father or my brother. do you know what i mean? i don't know. but anyway yeah, that's why i like to take pictures. i mean i honestly don't even know. my memory isn't too good, maybe it's for myself. what was the question?

forget that answer. i should have said yes, i do like to take pictures, things are beautiful and i want to have them, to own them. i guess that makes me a hypocrite.

nuts and bolts

albatross - street corner
bacon - not there
garbage truck - bball clang

let me explain what these cracked out tidbits mean.

this morning i was again walking back to quincy at the crack of dawn when i warily looked up to the skies. lo, there was the same(?) enormous seagull. i guess he just camps out on that street corner all the time like a drug dealer. what a frightening fowl.

at breakfast i waited for them to bring out bacon - i made myself some perfectly done toast with peanut butter in the meantime - but in the end they didn't bring out any bacon at all, just some "sausage patties" - in other words, those circular slices of sausage egg mcmuffin sausage. they probably buy the shipments from mafiosos who hijacked a mcdonalds truck.

i sat at my desk with the sunrise and dewolfe street in front of me. the garbage truck that drives by makes a very distinctive sound - exactly the noise a basketball makes when it clangs the rim of a hoop with a chain net. sitting at my desk in morningside heights, i hear that noise every now and then when other kids are downstairs playing basketball. it's a noise that has always gotten me excited, but especially now because we are all in college and spread across the northeast.

last night at lamont during an unproductive break i wandered through the morse media collection and rented three dvds: run lola run, todo sobre mi madre, and toy story. i haven't seen run lola run, and i really look forward to it. the other two are classics.

birds

this morning i was walking back to quincy. i walked past the art galleries that were formerly bow street flowers when i happened to glance up at the periwinkle sky and SWOOP a big fucking seagull flew by. i mean HUGE - i've seen seagulls on steroids all up and down the new south wales coast and this one was massive. to be honest it was quite possibly an albatross. or a condor. good god.

clipse - ride around shining

"all i want to do is ride around shining while i can afford it
plenty ice on my neck so i don't get nauseous
float around in the greatest of porsches
feel like a chuck wagon cause i'm on twelve horses"

health

had a thought (it was bound to happen). i hate being sick. smoking causes cancer, which is like a decades-long flu. screw that.

sunday

i had a vanilla sky moment this morning walking back to quincy. the streets were completely empty and i didn't encounter a single person. the sky looked surreally blue and cloudless, much like it did for leonardo dicaprio as howard hughes in the aviator - by the way, martin scorcese won his first academy award tonight for directing "the departed". he deserved one, maybe not for this movie, but he's made much better movies (raging bull, goodfellas, the aviator) so whatever.
after my early morning stroll i went to eliot to watch peerless chelsea play arsenal in the carling cup final. it was an amazing time - didier drogba inspires me like few other people on the planet. when i watch him play, i feel the struggle.



god bless him.

rising sun

the window in my dorm room faces east. on some days boston has one of the reddest sunrises i've ever seen. they are some of the most surreal five-minute spans.

the wonder years

"we never really talked about it afterward. but i think about the events of that day again and again and somehow i know winnie does too. whenever some blowhard starts talking about the anonymity of the suburbs, or the mindlessness of the TV generation. because we know that inside each one of those identical boxes, with its dodge parked out front, and its white bread on the table, and its TV set glowing blue in the falling dusk, there were people with stories. there were families bound together in the pain and the struggle of love. there were moments that made us cry with laughter. and there were moments, like that one, of sorrow and wonder."
- the wonder years. what a great show.

my morning

oh man. my field trip was awesome. we drove out to the sri lakshmi temple in ashland, mass. the temple itself is very impressive. inside were several shrines to different gods. each shrine was recessed and kind of self-enclosed. i watched a ritual puja (i think a kind of service) for the god venkateswara. the statue was a gorgeous black stone four-armed statue with a yellow cloth around his waist and a gold chain draped around his neck. "venkateswara (as i read from the guide) is believed to be one of the many forms of incarnations of vishnu, who is in charge of preserving the universe... the left hand is in the katyavilambitha mudra. this gesture signifies that the ocean of samsara is only knee deep and can easily be crossed over with faith in god."

so i stood around and watched a fat shirtless priest and his apprentice perform rituals for the statue. the priest would pour cup after cup of milk onto the statue, giving it a gorgeous ghostly appearance, before washing it off with water. this was repeated with cup after cup of cream, and then a thick paste which he spread over venkateswara's chest, and then honey, and then a white dust/grain which made the statue look amazing, and then a dusty orange paste. at first i thought "boy this is out there" but for some reason it felt kind of right.

i also met a professor from BU medical school who chatted with me about sanskrit and atman, paramatman, and mahatma. he was surprised to find that i'm already a pro at that stuff. later on when i was watching a puja for ganesa, i found myself in line for devotion and a priest dabbed a little white paste onto my forehead. the temple also has a cafeteria (for some reason most temples do) that serves great lemon rice and yogurt rice.

naptime.

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here are some photos of the outside of the temple - they don't allow you to take photos inside.

passage

how do lives unfold? sometimes i feel like it is nothing more than person sitting on a big conveyor belt sliding from room to room. one room for new york, one room for boston, hammering away here and there, fiery blazes that temper you like a carframe.

this very moment i'm reading a book by my professor and mathilda's godmother diana eck:

darsan: seeing the divine image in india

having held onto the concept of traveling around india seeing cool stuff after graduation, this class swam up to me like "hey XXXX. take me, i'm right for you." so i did and it is. another thing that strikes me about this book (in addition to its world-expanding analysis of siva representation) is the awesome design of the book. check it out:



booyah. it looks amazing sitting here on my desk. i love it. i love diana, who i chatted with at lowell house tea this afternoon.

more thoughts later.