]]> http://www.iteratix.com/2010/08/23/empire-state-building/feed/ 0 http://www.iteratix.com/2010/08/18/untitled-document/ http://www.iteratix.com/2010/08/18/untitled-document/#comments Wed, 18 Aug 2010 05:26:45 +0000 Bobby http://www.iteratix.com/?p=316 This is an untitled document.  I need to Lorem Ipsum it, fill it with filler text, fill it with something that expresses 2.1 witticisms per minute.  Something that tells you something.

I could start it by writing what I usually write at the beginning of a document, of what could become a blog or a story or something that I toss in the virtual corner of my computer and read it again on March 23, 2034 as I’m transferring my files from a new computer to another.

But this is an untitled document, so it must be filled with something singularly untitled, something that can’t properly be titled with anything yet, because it is only a formless white, untitled document.

But as soon as you write about this hockey rink, this smooth white ice of an untitled document, you leave skate marks, fine ice shaved in neat rows and paths.  Then you’ve written in it and can’t call it an untitled document anymore?  Or can you?  Is it possible to write something that actually merits the title, the titular title of “Untitled Document?”

Untitled documents by their very nature are an endangered species, because a document that is untitled will not remain one for long.  And those that remain untitled are usually banished in the cold, dark emptiness that lies behind the computer screen, the place where dying light photons gather around warm orange fires in rusty barrels.

Then when untitled documents stay Untitled they gain a new respect among their brethren, for doing the impossible, for doing the wondrous, for growing up without growing up.  While everyone else has an adult job as some other kind of document.  Some have tattoos, some have wedded, and some have even had little templates running around, offspring of a mad night with Normal.dot.

But not the intrepid Untitled Document, no.  It would remain that way until it’s closing day, the day where it passes into nothingness, the file pointer that was God’s light shining on it, would turn its eyes elsewhere and everything would be blissfully black once more.

bang

bang it out she said
so i did and so i did
later that day i did
bang it out she said

so then later we did
bang against the did
i wanted to he said
oh so did i she said

across desk we slid
do write it bang did
insert it in the said
ohh its done she said

So it was with all kinds of pleasure I hit up two museums here in New York City.  One of them, the Whitney Museum of American Art, had an exhibit by Charles Burchfield that I really enjoyed.

His art was bold and stunning.  A lot of the time, especially at the MoMA, I just walk through the galleries and not really feeling it.  I’m finding my groove, and Charles Burchfield fits quite nicely in it.

What’s your groove?  I like bold paintings that have a surreal touch, like these and Vincent Van Gogh’s work.  In fact, this next painting reminds me of Van Gogh:

There’s nothing like watching a master at work, to evoke an incredible sense of FEELING about a place versus a photograph or a book.

Then there is real life art, the soft curve of a woman’s neck or the strong lines of a male figure.  Sculpture tries to capture this, but there’s nothing like sitting in a busy plaza, piazza, square, or intersection and watching life imitate art.

These thoughts also walk a City of their own, a City full with possibilities, dripping with potentials.  One step, a loud step on a metal door (that leads downward under a Chinese restaurant, where bright rows of dingy shelves hold chickens and white packages) is all it takes.  Another step takes you on the stairs (serious, gravelly steps that shoulder many burdens and work tirelessly through the night) into the subway and into other places with their own metal doors in the ground and more thoughts.

Everything and nothing is possible, you will not get laid but you will sleep with someone every night even though you are alone.  Your mind will be full but you will feel empty.  Taking another step down the street towards the bar, subway behind you, your mind reels at the dizzying skyscrapers of human thought, only to be brought back to earth by a pint of organic beer and pizza.

Writing back and forth with strangers in the night, communicating in the space around you that there are two, three, four people and they are talking, but they do not know each other, and will never know each other, yet they know each other in a way that nobody else ever will–for they shared that moment together.

Jumping off the building of thought and landing on the pavement below never felt so good, and the ride on the subway, shaking with everyone else with each brake, playing solitaire and being solitary, I joined the City and the city joined me.

The blue air is fragrant with the arid desertlike air that permeates you, a soft Iberian massage.  As we ascend further, we get glimpses of the lit Granada cityscape in between cacti strands, cacti whose limbs and appendages resemble meaty hands and feet, almost dancing along with us, hiding, blocking, revealing the truths of the city we are meant to see.

Finally, we reach the top, near the Alhambra, and plunge ourselves again into the dark, following a dirt road near the cemetery.  It leads us into the warm dark, twisting upward among orderly quiet rows of olive trees but not before a brief dalliance with a dark wood.  In those woods, the expectant silence was only broken by the crunch of our feet on the gravel below.

As a car passed by us, we briefly entertained the idea of scaring the passerby with outlandish costumes and weird prayer-like poses, rising out at them, phantoms in the dark, ancient Moors returned to reclaim the caliphate.  Instead we stood quietly by and watched the red taillights creep down the road, briefly illuminating the solemn olive trees that had watched over us like sentinels.

We were surprised and pleased to discover the rich soft sand-like soil of the earth around cushioned falls nicely, as we both fell trying to climb a slippery hill for a better view of the dark landscape.  Retreat was the next logical option and we crossed the fields, bypassing the winding road, back to the cemetery and the hidden presence of the Alhambra, the red fortress and the living place of the Nasrids.  In their alcazabra they prayed enclosed by fortfied walls.

Veering off to the side and down a long ravine that contained a well-worn path, we inadvertently bypassed the Alhambra and instead passed into the old part of the city, penetrating that which we had only seen from afar.  White walls and small houses surrounded us, smooth black cobblestones pushed us forth, ever forward and back again upward into an ancient place from which we have yet to return from, for our timeless souls remain lost in wonder, wandering the twisting streets.

A despatch from Madrid at 4:30 AM, when you can look at the city, it with half-lidded eyes and walking with us down Calle Gran Via.  The night is relentless here, pulsing with energy and bonhomie.

Recipe for Spanish Experience Cookie:

• One part getting lost in the center of Old Madrid
• One part getting lost in the Metro
• 1/2 part visiting the Palace
• 1/2 part walking
• 1/4 part gumption

It is not long after I retreat from the City Alive until I return to the streets in search for a Coke and a snack.  The wan hotel guard shrugs when I ask if anything is open around.  He says, “Try down the street,” indicating the street in front of the hotel.

So I do, walking down the street alone, accompanied only by newly withdrawn euros burning a hole in my pocket.  The night presses on me as I walk down, towards nowhere because I know not where I am, but thataway.  I pass by a couple hidden in the shadows around a makeshift bench, slouching, eating something that looks like thin pizza.  After a few quiet blocks, I encounter a white island, lit windows indicating a 24 hour convenience store.

Drawn to it like a moth, I bang up against the glass doors that didn’t open.  Confused, I glance around inside the store and notice a security guard waving at me.  He is holding one hand up, in the universal gesture to *wait*.  He then points at the crowd inside the store.

After a few minutes, two people exit the store after the guard presses a key on a remote to open the doors and I was then able to enter.  This singularly odd experience left an impression on me and I wandered the tiny store aimelessly, feeling the one-minded Spaniards watching me; the security guard with his powerful remote, the crowd of aloof hipsters near the register waiting for something.

The crowd was not together, not a group, they were a loose collection of individuals, waiting, individually, with expectant eyes towards the back of the store–ahh, where they were heating up purchased pizzas, which were laying in tidy stacks in refrigerated shelves.  I thought to myself, “Perhaps I should check that out, pizza sounds good.”

I quickly decided against it after reading the various and disgusting toppings that these people thought were appropriate on pizza.  Note that I am a purist and anything other than cheese, herbs, and perhaps pepperoni gets voted off my pizza island.

After paying for my coke, waters, and potato chips (which took me 10 minutes to choose, as I had to study each bag and make sure I wasn’t buying bacon infused cheese chips) I tried to leave the store by walking up to the glass, forgetting that the security guard held the Power.  He then opened it for me and I was let out on the night.

On the way back to the hotel I passed by many discarded boxes of heated pizza from that convenience store, discarded in dark corners and on quiet benches, refugees from that endless bright place.

The people on the plane are a nice potpourri of various travelers–next to me sits a couple from South Africa, in their 40s.  They carefully sit, carefully eat, and carefully watch the inflight movie; with their gray hair and gray stares.

The young blonde girl two rows down from us is playing with her hair, getting the front of it back into a pinned twist, just so.  She is noticeable mostly because she is blonde, young, and good looking.  The boy with her is a lesser douchebag (as opposed to major) with only a few douchebaggy qualities:  (1) a permanent half scowl, (2) half-turned hat, and (3) a perfectly put-together clothing ensemble, complete with faux street graffiti tee shirt.  He has his training wheels on, soon he will remove them and move on to overly tanned skin, bluetooth earpieces, and white shoes.

A certain numbness, a kind of disbelief pervades me.  Perhaps I’m a jaded traveler now but it doesn’t feel like a vacation yet.  But I can smell it, just like I can smell the perfume of the gorgeous Spanish women on the plane, scattered around like impossible flowers in a meadow.

Me and my mate exchange jokes to melt frozen time, watching it drip away minute by minute.

Smells on the plane always come in cycles.

1. Stale baseline plane smell
2. Whiff of airplane food that always smells the same
3. Unknown bodily function smell (was that from the toilet?)
4. Actual smell of airplane food from cart or from tray
5. (Bonus) Smell of shit as someone changes their infant’s diapers right next to you, or behind you, with an apologetic air (too bad it doesn’t smell better).
6. See #1

At this time, 15 minutes before the flight lands, I am smelling #3, UNKNOWN BODILY FUNCTION SMELL.  When I smell this, I dart my eyes quickly around, almost as if to catch someone squirming in their seat, post-fart, with a guilty expression on their face.  I don’t see anyone.

When we touch down in Madrid, eight hours later and still carrying recycled air and smells from Washington DC, we will all exhale, the plane, the passengers, exhale and open to tumble down the concourse and into the land of bears.

Heisenberg-like, he was both near his friends and a besotted older man who simultaneously looked fit and old(er), a hanger-on that shuffled near him while retaining the imperturbable aloofness that only years gain you, and near us.

“My boy hates me,” he signs, spelling out an ancient love story writ between the flashes of Lady Gaga on the televisions and the condensation on our drink glasses.  ”He’s over at Cobalt, and I’m here.”  We all roll our eyes in shared disdain for the Boy, the Boy who is missing Everything and is Absent.

“You can find someone here,” my friend says, pointing to the many bodies in the bar, bodies that seemed to press upon us with their presence, in only the way that bodies press in gay bars, mostly just there but with a hint of directness and challenge.  Almost as if they say, “Here I am, and here you are, and are you going to do anything about it?”

“My boy hates me,” the eighteen year old repeats, while drinking the rest of the liquid in his cup and looking sideways.  ”Here is my best friend,” white arm encircling a black neck, both handsome and vibrating with youth. Lady Gaga’s cleavage mesmerizes me on ten screens as we awkwardly shuffle around to block the Older Man from being part of our Group.

“I don’t want him,” youth says, glancing at the old.  ”How do I get rid of him?”  Our suggestions, lame as they are, create shared camaraderie that is shattered as they bound off, sliding between bodies and people to their next lily-pad in the pond., where undoubtedly they will repeat their lives until they are too heavy and sink below the water, joining the rest of us solemn swimmers.