"... time is already being, all being is already time ..."
Dogen, come back from the dead and teach me.
The weather is getting nicer and therefore this city more livable... and seeming a lot less dismal.
Oh, I found a bike on the streets of Chinatown! An old Raleigh! The front chainring was bent up to shit and the rusted chain left hanging. I looked at in in bewilderment for a time wondering whose it was. After standing there staring at it and around for an owner I decided to claim it and promptly bent things back into place and rode off. It is pretty rickety but overall a pleasant bike. What a great day. That was yesterday...
Today I bought a u-lock for it, so it wasn't all free I guess. After that I went to visit the guy that sells "my kind of books" on his little card table. 5th avenue and 22nd? What a cooky old bastard, he is "my kind of guy", faked-toothed, load-mouthed and all. A few days before I saw he was selling a shambala pocket edition of Letters to a Young Poet by Rilke, but he had sold it. Also he had sold a copy of the Upanishads that I had wanted. He gave me shit for not buying it then, but I had no money at the time. Funny old bastard. Instead I bought a book of The Age of Belief: Medieval Philosophers Writings and The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches by BASHO. $5 each. Nice old copies too, with that nice old book smell to them. He had a copy of Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! underneath the table but he refused to sell anything that wasn't on the table, a very stubborn bastard on this point. I guess it has to do with permit laws, he can sell books on a table without a permit... something to do with the first amendment I think? I don't know, I am a public school graduate, and a disenchanted one at that. I'll check back tomorrow, the bastard.
The rest of my afternoon I was at my Chinatown Spot: Columbus Park. Spent my last $5 on a pack of bali shag and smoked some while reading Warlock by Oakley Hall on a big rock. Rather relaxing...
Lao Ma, who has appointed himself my father, showed up fairly late and I got out of him between his broken english and my broken cantonese that he was working most of the day. He called me an asshole and I told him to fuck off, all in cantonese. This is how our usual happy encounters proceed. He disappeared after I feigned kicking him in the face and he punching me in the throat. I suppose as my father he sees it his duty to teach me how to swear in his mothertongue and teach me HK Policeman style kung fu (I have learned through various translators that he was a cop in HK a long time ago). He disappeared for a while and came back with two tall cans of arizona sweet tea and two long straws to match. I called him an asshole in cantonese and tried to steal both of them and run, but he wouldn't have it. So we sat there for a while and drank the teas. I yelled at him for throwing his straw paper on the ground and called him a dumbass sack of shit and he said I looked like a bag of garbage so that's why he threw it on the ground in front of me. He then giggled like a little boy and did his best one liner: "Oh Ho!" with his shit eating, mostly toothless grin. He then proceeded to make fun of my new free bike calling is shitty and old and I told him he was old and it was free. This made him like the bike a lot more and approve of it.
After watching a few games of xiangqi and playing a few I rode my bike home.
I feel often the desire to leave this city and go somewhere more "real" in my mind but I know it is my daydreaming bullshit. I romanticize the past, and imbue perfection on cities I don't even know, only having vague senses of what they are actually like.
I keep telling myself that I keep telling myself...
How can I move when I know people like Lao Ma? I love him dearly.
Why do I get wrapped up in things I don't want to and dream about the things I do.
Can't figure out that fear. It seems harmless and is totally silent, but has paralyzed me my whole life.
This is dumb, sorry. I drank way too much cough syrup...
Let's end with a song...
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