two of five

Across the street from third street music school there is a church wherein I saw a man, a magician, strap himself into a strait jacket in front of the organ under jesus's crucifixion, in front of a church full of screaming kids and their parents and siblings and cousins at lunch time on a saturday between a piano lesson and soccer practice. It was in this church too where patti smith, at 29, recites some poetry or something like it about egyptian women smothered in drug tincture oils to tell the histories of the universe. It was in this church's courtyard where we had lunch everyday one summer when my hair was above my shoulders and my neck was cooled by breezes, at least when it was mentioned. Within the gates of the churchyard there are headstones and bodies buried underground: Peter Stuyvesant, maybe Benjamin Franklin. Names known around the city, recognized even by kids under ten. In that time, the skyline was the same as I'll keep it in memory; the twin towers punctuating Manhattan's skyline. My neighborhood was just fine.

Last night my friends projected Zizek's Pervert's Guide to Ideology on their living room wall. I came in late and watched the second half with them. There was footage of the day manhattan's skyline changed and my bedroom window made it into the foreground of footage of history. My love imitates me later, saying that he knew I was upset by how furiously I scratched my head and shifted my hands over my face, putting hair in front of my eyes, realizing that I cant stand to watch footage of recent history.

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The sky tonight was dark and white, a painter lost and without work puts his mark on the sky instead. Lightening inside clouds illuminates the puffs into yellow candy. Streaks of lightening are bright and vanish and leave nothing behind. There are people on the street and it is too loud to hear thunder.