Concerto for Turntable, Laptop and Moustache

Last night Chicky was strutting his smooth and less smooth bits of lounge lizard punk, up in the cavernous music room of the Third Ear. His act was followed by an acoustic Russian reggae band called "Los Caparos". Tomorrow Flashky will be the Eid al-Fitr DJ at the RiffRaff (Gruzenberg on Nahlat Binyamin, starting at 23:00), expect rock at its most juicy.

In between, I'm sitting here listening to Haydn's trumpet concerto as if the Hammond organ was never invented. What I love about concertos is that they are people. They recreate a human voice so vividly. the solo instrument is a living entity that comes in touch with an environment or a society of sorts (the orchestral backdrop) and communicates with it. I can identify my friends in concertos. in fact, I can even find many of them in Mozart's Concertos alone: Flashky would be the piano in Mozart's 9th piano concerto, butting in just as the exposition has begun, wonderfully self confident and creative. Itka is Mozart's clarinet. David Rapp is the harp in the flute and harp concerto. Efros, though she may protest, being such an Arabic music enthusiast, is the freewheeling piano of the 17th.

As for me, I'd love to identify with the piano in the 23rd concerto, but that would be vanity. It's the one pre-Requiem piece in which Wolfgang really lets loose emotionally. I'll leave it to even greater romantics and share instead this litle old bit of Groucho Marx. Trust me, watch it. It's a piece of television that's as good as Mozart.

Dawn

Instead of "shana tova" (happy new Jewish year) I'd like to wish you all "boker tov" (good morning), or rather, wish that the times ahead will greet you like sunrise. The following is from the "Illuminations" by Jean Arthur Rimbaud. Its translations - a mix and match English one and an on the spot Hebrew one, are my new years' gift to you.

Dawn

I kissed the summer dawn.

Before the palaces, nothing yet moved. The water was dead. Battalions of shadows have not yet left the forest road.

I walked, waking warm and vital breath, while precious stones watched, and wings rose without sound.

The first adventure, on the path already full of cool pale gleams, was a flower that told me its name.

I smiled at the blond waterfall that spread its hair amongst the pines: on the silvered peak I recognised the Goddess.

Then I lifted the veils one by one. In the lane, waving my arms. On the plain where I denounced her to the cockerel. In the city, she fled among bell-towers and domes, and, running like a beggar across the marble quays, I chased after her.

At the top of the road, near a laurel wood, I surrounded her with her gathered veils, and felt her vast body a little. Dawn and the child fell down at the foot of the wood.

When I awoke, it was noon


שחר

נישקתי את שחר הקיץ.

דבר עוד לא זע בחזית הארמון, המים היו מתים. צבאות הצל לא נטשו עוד את דרך היער.

פסעתי, מעורר הבל פה חם וחי, והסלעים הביטו בי, והכנפים נסקו בדממה.

ההרפתקה הראשונה, במשעול המלא כבר ריצודים חוורים, היה פרח שסיפר לי את שמו.

צחקתי אל המפל שסתר שיערו הזהוב בין האשוחים. בשיאו הכסוף זיהיתי את האלה.

בזה אחר זה הסרתי את צעיפיה, במשעול, מנופף בזרועותי, בממישור, שם הסגרתי אותה לתרנגול, בעיר הגדולה, שם היא נסה בין צריחים וכיפות, ואני, רץ כקבצן בין רציפי השיש, רדפתי אחריה.

במעלה הדרך, ליד חורש דפנה, הקפתי אותה בצעיפיה האסופים וחשתי במעט את גופה העצום. שחר והנער צנחו למרגלות היער.

כשהתעוררתי, היה צהרים.


Aube

J'ai embrassé l'aube d'été.

Rien ne bougeait encore au front des palais. L'eau était morte. Les camps d'ombre ne quittaient pas la route du bois. J'ai marché, réveillant les haleines vives et tièdes, et les pierreries regardèrent, et les ailes se levèrent sans bruit.

La première entreprise fut, dans le sentier déjà empli de frais et blêmes éclats, une fleur qui me dit son nom.

Je ris au wasserfall blond qui s'échevela à travers les sapins : à la cime argentée je reconnus la déesse.

Alors je levai un à un les voiles. Dans l'allée, en agitant les bras. Par la plaine, où je l'ai dénoncée au coq. A la grand'ville elle fuyait parmi les clochers et les dômes, et courant comme un mendiant sur les quais de marbre, je la chassais.

En haut de la route, près d'un bois de lauriers, je l'ai entourée avec ses voiles amassés, et j'ai senti un peu son immense corps. L'aube et l'enfant tombèrent au bas du bois.

Au réveil il était midi.

International Salad Day

International Salad Day is an ancient rite that was first celebrated in 1999, when I lived in Neve Tzedek. Lin and I later developed it into a proper holiday to rival christmas. It takes place the day after the first autumnal rain falls in Jerusalem.

That was yesterday, and that rain washed out a couple of great residents of Jerusalem through the wadis and down to my place on the coast. Some of these are old friends, some new, none is a native of the city: Ora is from Nottingham, Elisabeth from Toronto, Lev is from Ljubliana. Naomi from New York, and Juanpa from Santiago de Chile. We began the festivities by playing the holiday's traditional game: "the name game", a pleasent way of humiliating oneself.

Everyone stayed over.

The morning was rainier than the one before. Religious festivals aside, there is something about the first rains of the season that stirs the profound spiritual core of an Israeli. We become all nostrils, all moistened scalp, all dialing fingers,

all chopping hands,

The festive breakfast went beyond salad (we are not that deeply observant), there was Black Forest schinken from Germany (Elisabeth gave up keeping kosher in order to try it!) coffee from "Paul's" and smoked salmon from "Rusky Delikates", my favorite Jaffoite salami and kvas emporium. The conversation went places where only rainy day conversations go. We ate enough to keep us going till November, when "International day of the Returner" (time of returning things that were borrowed and borrowing new stuff) will be celebrated in great pomp.

New Deal

People keep telling me FDR was a putz. While that's as may be, the night in 1933 on which he privatized America's banks was the night leadership was invented (oddly, it was on the same year that cowerdice was invented, by Von-Hindenburg).

Last night ignorance was invented. When Henry Paulson dramatically pleaded Nancy Pelosi not to knock down the recovery plan, he was as oblivious to his actual foes as a man kicking his pillow in the midst of a violent dream. It's the republicans, stupid! They would rather see the world's poorest starve and the dreams of all the rest of us crashed than give up their Ayn Randian aloofness.

I just hope this is the last bit of harm they will cause. This morning, as I walked down Yeffet Street, the rain came down in a torrent for the first time since May. This autumn should be the time of true renewal, in Washington, in Jerusalem, wherever renewal is needed. I attach an autumn song and a socialist song as rainy day gifts. Both are unusual versions of familiar tunes, showcasing once more how artists are gutsy where politicians should be.

Not Going to McCa

My friend Ori spent 1000 sheqels last night, buying tickets for himself and his sister to the Paul McCartney concert. "I've always been a Paul guy", he told me.

Fourteen years of friendship that borders on a marriage were about to go down the drain. Ori? Mr. Stylish jacket? a fan of the Cheesy Beatle? "Maybe I'm amazed of the way you fell for the baby faced melodist", I told him, "and maybe I'm afraid of the way you just killed John a second time over. Maybe I'm amazed of the way you hand a billionaire 1000 sheqels to hear old 'Wings' songs, to see him stand there with his dyed hair and wave like the queen, maybe I'm amazed doubly because you're wearing a pink shirt today. What's wrong with you?"

Then today I was offered a ticket to myself. My Viennese friend Erika stood atypically in line at the gritty Hod passage, and made it possible for her friends here in Israel to catch the show.

I got to thinking, it's true that the magic of the Beatles was in the tension between John and Paul, neither of them could recreate it on his own. It's true that Paul is chewing his cud since the 70s, but it's pretty fine cud. He did write "Blackbird", "Golden Slumbers", and "Mull of Kintyre" to which I've dedicated a post on this very blog.

But I won't go. I gave my place up to someone else who wants it more. There's living art being created in the city at these very moments. The Art TLV events fill the city with art that is, above all, contemporary - and that's a great thing. at 6:30 tonight, on 4 ahad Ha'am St, I will be taking part in composing a joint poem with other writers. This event is created and coordinated by Liat Levy and Avia Ben-David, who breath such special life into Tel-Aviv's poetry. Later there's more art to see and parties to attend, I may whistle some oldie or another while walking among them.

Mi Alma

A night that began with slices of raw scallops in truffle oil and crushed pistachios, will inevitably end in a conversation about Alma Mahler.

Miryam, who owns a gallery in Vienna and another in Berlin, just spoke about the morbidity of current Viennese art. Now she's somehow moved on to Oskar Kokoschka, one of Mahler's esteemed lovers: "He was an ugly man, I am not surprised at all she left him. You know, when she left him, he didn't take it well at all. Do you know this story?"

"Bits."

"He went to a special workshop where they make the best dolls and asked for a big doll, a mannequin, that would be made to look exactly like her. He desrcibed the lips, the skin, everything about the shape of her body..."

"He wanted to be a Pygmalion," someone at the table interrupts.

"Yes, but when he came to pick it up, he was disappointed. It wasn't her. So he went home and painted for her instead, the "Bride of the Wind", but she was already far away."

"Went on to Franz Werfel," I contribute a piece of random knowledge.

"That's only eventually, after she left Gropius. You know, Werfel was even uglier than Kokoschka, and she effected his creative powers very interestingly. She was so independent for her time, very wild in a way. She didn't want men to come and sort things out for her. In my eyes she was herself a very special artist."

I lean back, taking one last precious swig of the Grand Castel. I would love to meet someone like that.

(Note: it would be sacriligious to put "Bride of the Wind" on a blog, so I'm posting what seems to be only its background. This Kokoschka Dalamite lanscape also looks very cool somehow next to my "Sri Lankan Rivers are Elephantine".)

Begin North

Bus #31 climbs up from Jerusalem's Malcha shopping mall (incredibly the most visited site in the city after the wailing wall), to its western outskirts, through neighborhoods of agressive commie-blocks and sunstruck gravel plots. On board, Hassidic men are doing their best to avoid looking at loud teenaged girls in tank tops. I'd take this moment to vanish from this world for a while, but Leonard Cohen just came on the radio.

Beer Sheva, WTF?

Eating shakshuka in a pita on a dusty street of a Beer Sheva slum, I pass by the headquarters of the local cricket club. Beer Sheva, WTF?

Crossing the street to the central bus depot I walk over a rifle bullet, complete and unshot. Multitudes have obviously already stepped on it. Beer Sheva, WTF?

That depot features one of Israel's biggest junk food emporiums, with numerous different flavores of slurpies ("barrad"). One of them, sandwiched between "chocolate" and "cherries" is "lambada". Beer Sheva, uuurghh!

Ok, but with all due respect to the periphery, I have a little Tel-Avivian WTF to share. This was overheard yesterday at an art opening in Jaffa:

Girl #1: "Wow, I haven't seen you in so long, have you grown taller?"
Girl #2: "Yes, it happened yesterday."

Later the first girl said: "You know I was only asking this because I'm growing shorter." How beautiful life is. When I run out of bizzarness, that's when I'll be ready to roll into the grave. have a surreal day and check out this site (courtesy of Bianca) for more healthy eavesdropping.

One night at Itka's and the World's Forgotten

This post contains no politics, no philosphy, no reflections on life nor the afterlife, it's all about my friends and how I love them to death.

My friend Osnat, also known as Itka, is now my neighbor. She got into a gorgeous flat on Le Martin St, that actually has Corynthian columns holding up the ceiling. Yesterday a bunch of us came for dinner.

and were greeted with an incredible burgul and pomegranate seeds casserole.

Put a bunch of Tel-Avivians in a room together and there's always intrigue. Since downtown lover and I fell apart, there's been rumors that I've hooked up with Sari. We took a photo demonstrating this is not the case (Sari is dating a hip Jerusalemite at the moment).

Itka was looking wonderful, as did her dog Misha,

who was also on her best behaviour despite evidence to the contrary.

Dinner parties like this are not typical of this city. We think of homes as the haunt of Jerusalemites. So it was good to go out and meet Jerusalemites: Mustafa, Maya and Gom'e. We rolled in proper Tel-Avivian fashion from the Saloona to the Barzilay to the Champa, admiring the great outdoors as we did the Jaffoite indoors, but missing that burgul all along.

Strange place, that Germany

While sorting my photos from Germany for the different articles I wrote there, I was struck by how many of them were bizzare or just plain funny. Germany may not be stranger than anywhere else. It's the fact the camera is in the hand that draws attention to peculiar details, but this little feast of surrealism is my best way to bid that land farewell for now.

What You Did Today, That Was Love.

1. When the novel "Adam Ressurected" (Hebrew: Adam son of Dog) came out in the early Sixties, it was met with grave misunderstanding and hostility by the Israeli public. Its protagonist was not palatable to Israelis: Here was a Holocaust survivor battling severe PTSD, who also happened to be a human being in the full sense of the word: worldly, passionate, a whisky lover, a womanizer, a hot temepred man and a professional clown, no less.

We like our Holocaust survivors as unhuman as the candles we light in memory of the victims. Yoram Kaniuk's Adam is a man who goes very credibly to the two extremes of the human existance: On one hand he is perhaps the most fully complex man of modern Hebrew literature, on the other hand, he's a dog. The chief officer at the concentration camp kept Adam as his dog for an entire year, forcing him to eat and act like a canine, while coordinating the murder of his family. Sometimes that memory overtakes him, then he barks and bites and becomes ever more human.

It was a strange book to read, and the new Paul Schrader film based on it is just as strange (which is an artistic achievment). The imagery is truly difficult to stomach, the experience of loss and humiliation penetrates more powerfully than it should in a Hollywood film and Adam, portrayed by Jeff Goldblum, is exactly that impossibly surreal and therefore real being. Goldblum gives one of the most beautifully human performances I have witnessed, breathing life into a rare tale that is truly humanist.

2. The first complements given to my novel "I'll Meet You Halfway" come from Roy Chicky Arad, a gentleman who truly deserves many complements himself for his diverse activities, and has received them on this blog before. What I like especially is that he calls this blog "One of Israel's finest". Dude! I feel special now for writing it and I hope you do for reading it.

3. No man in his right mind would admit this, but I got emotional watching the final episode of Sex and the City. I wrote about it for Haaretz at the time, and described it as being made up of four very different statements about love. After Miranda washes her demented mother in law and cares for her, her child's nanny tells her: "What you did today, that was love". Samantha's lover returns early from filming in Canada to mend her post-cancer self confidence crisis and make her orgasm madly and beautifully. Charlotte and her husband lovingly give up on adopting the baby of parents who are unsure of the sacrifice, and Carrie distances herself from the man who is ignorant of her needs, finding her way back to the one who is willing to invest in her.

Four lessons in love.

It would make a wonderful, albeit cheesy habit to end each day by asking oneself: what have I learned about love today? I am doing so tonight. I've learned many things I did not know.

Immaculate Confection

This one chunk of music totally belongs to Y the Spy. No one will ever take it away from her.

She looks at Tom Waits on the screen, saying: "I'm a total groupy. Look at his every movement. Every movement is perfect."

"He's a little bit of a hunchback of Notre Dame," I comment, "but in a good way."

"He's God," concludes Y the Spy.

There's very little to add to that.

Tamales

I haven´t had a tamal since leaving Boston, over three years ago. I certainly haven´t had a good tamal since my last visit to Utah. I love tamales to death. With all due respect to the Middle Eastern Kubbe, there´s something about having your polenta dumpling arrive wrapped in a tropical leaf that turns it from a dish into a party.

Last night I needed a party. I was moody in the afternoon, done with work and completely alone in a city that knows how to to seem elianating. My friend Bianca was staying the night in Wittenberg, my friend Anna is vacationing in Austria. My parents are actually in Berlin at the moment, but I wanted to give them a sense of honeymoon peace and let them be.

So I went to Prenzlauerberg and walked off the street to an art opening (unique and exquisite video works by Belorussian Alexander Komorov), Had some red wine and got talking to a young Colombian named Juan. He invited me to a farewell party, thrown for a friend of his who is traveling back to Latin America, where exactly - I forgot. We walked through streets alight with Saturday night crowds and jittery with the impact of passing el-trains, to buy a cake for the bash and drop Juan´s bike by his place, then headed to the shabbier streets of Neukölln, to an old apartment building topped with a flat full of Nicaraguans, of Colombians, of Uruguayans, of Brazilians and of Germans from all parts of the country. The music was pure south of the Panama Canal fare and there was so much beer in the fridge that people were taking photos of it. On the table were two tamales, their flavour - utter heaven. Life tasted good too at that moment. I was in love with Berlin, in Berlove, if you will, enamorado con la geist der stadt, y la geist der welt, and not at all hungry anymore.

Cities at Night

"Cities at night, I feel, contain men who cry in their sleep and then say nothing, it´s nothing, just sad dreams, or something like that... Swing low in your weep ship, with your tear scans and your sob probes, and you would mark them."

These are the first lines of "The Information", a novel by Martin Amis. I know where I had first read them: on a ship at night, crossing the Channel. It was one of very few books available beside the beer crates and the jumbo bags of licorice candy. I had just left London, a city at night. Was it full of crying men? I try to imagine a Brit weeping in bed and become overcome with compassion. Them Brits, we´re so used to them as comics.

Berlin at night needs no crying men. It cries on its own, especially the Ku´damm area, where I sit and write these words. It is the part of the city that seems to have the least heart. Decades of being an outpost of commercialism in the heart of Warsaw pact country turned the Ku´damm into a soulless shopping mall, but as men know well, seeming soullessness is always a wall behind which we hide who we are. The west is a Yang to the east´s Yin. In a way: here is man, there is woman.

The Ku´damm cries at night like a good man should, tears of currywurst sauce and cheap rail-station beer and fine French wine served in unhappy restaurants. It moans with the sound of train wheels and busses and taxis and the hum of cheesy clubs. Car lights wash over the streets leading away from the enormous destroyed church on Breitscheidplatz, like the light coming on in the bathroom - nothing´s the matter, honey, I´m just taking a leak.

I´ve seen photos of this place as a child. It looked dense and alive. It meant "city" to me for many years and city meant possibility, constant contact, endless rejuvination. All cities were a CERN of sorts: where particles were flying in different directions, waiting to collide and reveal something henceforth unknown, but sometimes they become too self indulged and weep to themselves rather than communicate. Damned men! I won´t even try and cheer West Berlin up just to be told that it´s only sad dreams. I´m heading east tonight, where tears are an acknowledged fact of life.

Berlin, Berlin, Ich fahr nach Berlin.

How can I describe what it feels like, hitching to Berlin?

I can show you the people I met on the way: Julia the hitcher, Ronen, the half French, tattooed, food lover, Justina and Marshall, who are in love, Alex and David, the most courteous drivers in history. (Alles ist geil!)



I guess it can all be described.

But Berlin cannot. the world capital of thoughts and of feelings, that ugly disaster of a city that is somehow the most interestingly spirited place on earth, I'll leave it for your imaginations, your memories and hopefully, one day, your lifted thumbs.

Sure it´s Lovely Here

Have a good man out in the country for too long, and he´ll start singing for city.

Satori

On a street corner in this little town along the Rhein, a stone crucifiction sticks out over a house's fence. I look at Jesus, touch his knee. It's dark already and his face looks extra suffering in the light of the street lamps.

On a similar street corner in Sri Lanka, for example, there would have been a stone Buddha, a man in a state of total, calm bliss. I'm wondering, when will they establish the religion that places statues of man in his natural form: not being tortured, not reaching Nirvana, just having a simple sandwich, a sandwich as sacred as life.

Intoxicating

In Rüdesheim they grow the grapes,

that turn into the wine,

That is distilled into the brandy,

That is mixed with the coffee,

that keeps me going through the tiny streets, pretty damned pleased.

Europe is

Europe is a whiff of moist air, somehow purple-tinted. It comes at you, the simplest a blessing that can be found, as the terminal doors slide sideways to let you out. The evening is rainy.

Europe is money, I`ve been put up in a serious five star hotel, then upgraded to the "executive tower" (I`m on the second floor, don`t get too excited). The design is cold but sharp and effective and the dress code is suits. Everybody here is so beautiful: slim, stylish, perfectly groomed. I quickly decide to do more workout and learn to invest wisely.

Europe is the silent S-bahn, then the nucturnal city opening before you: second empire rooftops, clowds obscuring the tops of towers. Muslim men are pouring out of a mosque, while nearby two businessmen in suits (my neighbors?) buy a beer from a down-and-out pizzeria along the Taunus Str. red light district. Thousends rock it out in a huge glass aquarium, and dark rimmed glasses are pushed over the nose at a classy bar by the theater, but the bridge leading over the river is quiet, whispering of the leafy suburbs that spread into the dark night.

Europe is having to cope with awful names of wonderful places. Last night I went to the neighborhood of Sachsenhousen (same name as the major WWII concentartion camp near Berlin) and hung out at a lovely old timer tavern named "Adolf Wagner", this may not move you at all if you`re neither Jewish nor German, but I found myself whistling "Tomorrow belongs to me" all the way back to the hotel.

Europe is a hopeful morning, a refreshing walk in the forest, I find a large piece of wood and use it as a weight (hey, that was my resolution), and think of another early morning in Frankfurt, eight years ago. I was alone downtown, just after sunrise. A woman was yelling "Dieb!" - "Theif!" a man was escaping accross Willy Brandt Platz. I chased him for a while, then lost track of him and returned to her empty handed.

She smiled bitter-sweetly over dark lipstic, a fake-fur coat and a minny skirt. "Alles Klar" she said, "Never mind, it`s fine."

Guf B'Goof

Nefesh B'Nefesh (“Spirit in Spirit”) is an organization that assists Jewish youths, all born in English speaking countries, in immigrating to Israel. It gives them a stipend on top of the government one, arranges social activities for them, and provides general encouragement to "do the deed". All of this is lovely or revolting, depending on your views on Zionism.

My friend D. is a leftists with a capital L, which in this country means you're ususally not too staunchly Zionistic, but she's an open minded lass, not neccesarily too dogmatic and an American Jew who is sensative to the relevant world view. Her opposition to Nefesh B'nefish is mainly aesthetic: She attended one of their festive events with a friend who accepted their support, and couldn't stand the cheesy Yiddishkeit, the music, the aloof comments. D. is a first class party girl, and that was one unhip party.

This is why she started “Guf B'Guf” - “Body in Body”.

The first step in creating an organization in the cyber age is pretending it's a living fact and posting it on Wikipedia. Here is what you would have found on the Nefesh B'Nefesh Wikipedia page until yesterday, at section 14, entitled: “competition”.

Nefesh B'Nefesh has recently faced competition in recruiting olim from the rival Guf B'Guf organization. Based in Tel Aviv, rather than Jerusalem, Guf B'Guf solicits secular English-speaking olim looking to date virile Israelis. GBG events include pool parties, Hebrew-language speed dating and free condom distribution. As GBG was only recently founded, their inroads into the traditional NBN population remain unclear.

"What's 'Virile'?” I asked her.

"Kharmanim,” she explained.

Which is when I cracked up, but D.'s contribution to the page was not all comic material. She pointed out a very factual point made on an earlier section:

In January of 2007, Ambassador Danny Ayalon former Israeli Ambassador to the United States, joined Nefesh B'Nefesh as it's Co-Chairman. In August 2008, Ayalon joined the right-wing Yisrael Beitenu party and stated that the Palestinian citizens of Israel living in the Galilee constitute a fifth column:
"If the government of Israel does not act to have a Jewish majority in the North, then the Arab majority in the Galilee will declare independence and [demand] international recognition on the basis of the precedents of Kosovo, Abkhazia and [South Ossetia]."[1]

Which isn't cool. Since her friend's photo was featured in the article, smiling and waving her new Israeli ID card, D. added the caption: “Olim smile for the last time before diving into Israeli Bureaucracy, taxes and living expenses”, as service to those contemplating Nefesh B'Nefesh and Aliya in general.

Of course the real service we can provide to new olim is the actual, physical establishment of Guf B'Guf. I offered to appear bare-chested on all promotional material, and suddenly felt more connected to the Hebrew homeland than I ever did. If anyone else feels virile or Zionist enough to go Guf B'Guf with us, send us a message via Jdate.

Late Bloomer

My friend Y the spy is an expert in making people do things they never intended to do and tell their innermost secrets to the mass media. Last night she did a truly unbelievable thing: she got me to go on Facebook.

I've been Facebook resistant for years, now I'm going a little psycho, sitting overwhelmed, playing with little gadgets, trying to figure out the politics, the etiquiette and the technological quirks of the great cyberbash. So far I have 27 friends and nothing to say to any them. One ex-lover accepted my invitation, another declined, I defined my religious nature as being "Tinkerbell agnostic". Those who know me, know what this mean, those who don't - need not apply. (o, but do apply!)

Meanwhile, Y the Spy is hiding behind a bush in a northern city, spying on a real life murderer. She's been doing it since the early morning. it's her job, I'm not making this up. this woman lives in multiple virtual realities. I guess in this age it's a skill we must all posses.

When It Rains, It Pours.

New Orleans, I love you. Watching you go again and again under the surges is torture, like knowing that a loved one is at war.

New Orleans, in a couple of early spring nights, you taught me what music is, what food is, how darkness laughs. Your sorrowful trees were brilliant with left over mardi-gras beads and your cemetaries marked with mysterious red Xs, and your tinfoil slums, moist and deformed and pulsating like something from the set of a horror film, were waiting to be knocked down by the waves, by the governement, to be torn apart by the ghosts of St. Charles Ave. trollies.

Then, surrounded by Telleman's tafelmuzik at the Commender's Palace, you fed me turtle soup. Turtles are endangered, New Orleans! that's bad karma. You too are endangered, devoured again and again like baby turtles that have just hatched. How many of them make it safely to the sea? How many bewitched cities like yourself can survive the lashes of history? Perhaps none, we should let you go and learn to have do with Atlanta.