RIPPLES RUN ACROSS THE PUDDLES, as I am walking down Flushing Avenue in Brookland, Tuesday after my brief excursion to Philly. I’ve sassily occupied the couch at Metropolitan House, expert at irreverent self-invitation that I’ve become. Also, there was no other way, so I had to ask, it’s the best way, a thief asking thieves on a hangover afternoon, all out front.
Da, said Macha when I called her on the telephone later on, but then she was half asleep, toasting her bread in the pan in a living room without windows. This splendid creamy state of a transient mind. She only speaks Russian in her dreams and thought it was her father calling. Which might be true after all, at half my age it’s scary to witness how much she knows. Eventually, I hope, she’s the last of the news sisters in this global village of fine lines and close misses.
In New York, you can walk the streets all day, as Allen Ginsberg said, but it will turn night before you start crying. “Or dat you zee da soul of da hauzes”, as the Belgian Kid would put it in her unmistakable chopped accent.
It’s a complex thought and EXTREMELY DIFFICULT to explain, and you probably need to walk up some unedited metropolitan jungle trance yourself. But I’m going to try nevertheless, using easy words. This thought sits at the very core of creation and may serve as proof of my incorporation of the discipline of do easy.
The hippies will tell you that life consists of what keeps flashing by while you are waiting to live according to your – usually heteronomous – plans. The crying toddler, that keeps your fragile soul from genuine self-expression.
As true as this view may be, recognition and acceptance of life as it is presenting itself in the mundane shape is only the basic, founding practice of a much more comprehensive transfigurational process. All-including and poly-dimensional.
It is the universalistic perception of your immediate environment – space and time alike – that is revealing the very core nerve of creation itself.
The smell of dog piss on the stoops of a house in Joralemon Street, Brooklyn Heights will be able to tell you every little detail about yourself and the progress of chaos. From day one to the end of all streets, and back again. The full and unconditional embrace of tedious mundane tasks is only the diligence that will eventually let you tap into the grand vein of creation.
Right at centre, here Sir, very nice.
(I am almost sure that you don’t get it, it is some more mad rambling, no doubt, but then, you just have to walk my friend.)