NYC Notebook

Added here, most recent first, when the mood strikes:

He tells me, indicating the woman next to him, We're in a committed relationship.

The guy who came on the A train announcing, Hey guys! I'm sorry to bother anyone – and then exited through the next door.

The guy wearing the beret with the Scottish sweater. The woman from the Bronx, exhausted, asks him, Where do you live? He says, I live where you live! No you don't, she says, and I'm going home.

Imagine the contrast between your bourgeois story and my Wednesday night.

A couple from Boston sits next to me. All they talk about is sports.

Things bearable in life become unbearable in memory.

The blind man with the beautiful watch.

Their story would be unacceptable if it weren't true.

It's all blurred into come spectacular realm of indifference but for her neck.

The best thing I can say about capitalism is that even if you're not a rockstar, it let's you dress like one.

The final stage of grief isn't acceptance but gratitude.

You have to be crazy to not be irrelevant.

The guy running the leaf blower outside the Ghanian church at midnight in January.

There are two Gods: Yes and No. And in your life you must worship both of them. The challenge is to be clear about which one you're worshipping, when. Life or Death. Light or Shadow. The Word of the Void. The great difficulties of our lives arise when we think we're worshipping one when in fact we're worshipping the other.

Woman on the subway: "Whose asshole do have to lick to have some peace and quiet! Stop violating me. I want to go and please myself. Because I'm unhappy and I'm being abused."

Everyday I come to The Strand to look for you. Until I remember what you've done with your life, the detour you've taken into drunkenness. That being at your bar, it is not possible for you to be here. And I realize that I'm not looking for you but for myself.

Oedipus does not become blind: with his blinding, his blindness ends, and he condemns himself to see forever what he saw when finally he could seen.

He was the kind of man who bought too many books.

Woman walking down Lenox, saging the sidewalk. Stopping at the entrance to each business, including the mobile barbershop. Man walks by, says, Oh yes sister. The whole neighborhood needs that. The whole neighborhood needs that.

How to Hold a Wild Animal. Title.

A good question to ask of any work of art: Does it believe in love?

She thought, At some point I'll get tired of destroying men's lives. But not before I've decided they don't deserve it.

She had the refreshing absence of taste that perhaps characterizes true youth.

Their sex videos are sacred because no one would understand them. And no one understanding – isn't that the definition of the sacred?

We're coming to the end of something, hence the temptation to violence.

By her side as she learned to place contact lenses in her eyes. Of such moments is a story made.

If I can't live by my religious philosophy, is it my religious philosophy?

Sugar Monk. How even the places you most love change, fade, disappear. As if they were lovers.

She lives her life as if she were already dead.

The guy outside the bodega asking for money to buy diapers because, he says, he has pissed and shit himself in his wheelchair.

Woman sitting on the street, asking for money: "I've got Venmo."

Somewhere inside this disorientation is a song you'll never hear and that is the horizon of my heartbreak.

"The the train is delayed because we have a customer running on the tracks."

Mobs are sometimes right about the problem. They are almost always wrong about the solution.

 

It’s possible that by not providing you with a religion, we deprived you of a defense against the power of the State.

I’ve discovered in recent weeks that it’s possible – that it’s easy – to change your life.

Perhaps I’ve chosen to write to you because doing so will prevent me from sharing my secrets.

We want a nation, a world, as vast as our self-loathing, as vast as our fear. Maybe, we imagine, that by making real the worst of ourselves, finally we can move beyond what we’ve become.

The only thing worth attempting is the impossible.

Finding a space between the madness of ambition and the disappearance/collapse of detachment. That space must be called love.

The secret is the thing that I cannot communicate: my love for you. To say that no word, no image, no insight will permit anyone, including you, to understand that secret. It is the mystery of my life, of all life, the mystery around which we organize the universe.

It’s wise to remember that the samurai carried two swords: one for attack and defense and one for self-destruction. We should all do the same. There are always aspects of ourselves that need to be destroyed. 

It’s important that I not make sense, that I not be reasonable, that I avoid logic. A voice of misunderstandings and confusion.

Detachment, withdrawal – these are legitimate ethical options for anyone.