Stream of Self-Awareness

I am typing these words on an enormous television screen.  I have never done this before.  Beyond the word document I can see trees that I planted.  Actually, I planted them with my father.  It was his idea.  If I recall, I wanted to watch the basketball playoffs, and he dragged me out in the sprinkling rain to plant dozens of evergreen trees so that the world would be a healthier more beautiful place to be and I would learn the value of hard work and sacrifice at the same time.  The Knicks beat the Heat anyway.  I think they were big underdogs that year.  An 8 seed beating a 1^st seed in the first round.  That doesn’t happen too often.  Allan Houston hit this amazing running shot at the buzzer, on the road, and it bounced around forever, and then went in, and New York advanced.

Anyway, the reason I am typing these words on a television screen is that I just moved back to New York City after about, oh, I don’t know, four and a half years of going here and there and then back to New York to say hi and then go somewhere else.  Maybe I will do that again.  Although this time, unlike all the other times, I have a job.

I have to write a book.

Oh wait, I already knew that.  Also, I got a paying job.  Just the other day.  I think I got here Wednesday (life on the road is becoming a blur), and interviewed at one terrible place on Thursday, and then interviewed at a better place Friday.  They sent me up to the Bronx to meet the boss, and then this morning I had to go back to observe some lessons.  They’ll have me teaching mornings and I’ll be able to write the whole rest of the day.  I’m also waiting on a friend’s tutoring company, which might help.

That should leave me plenty of time to write the book and get around the city to explore and keep the positive energy and inspiration flowing.  I chose this place for many reasons, but one of them is that the atmosphere (especially in winter) is closer to what I’m trying to express with my story.

Meanwhile, this enormous television screen comes in because I am staying at my friend’s place, in Astoria, Queens, until I earn a few pay checks and can move somewhere.  Maybe Harlem.  It’s closer to the Bronx.  The interviewer made a big deal about the job being in “ooooh, spooky, THE BRONX” but she didn’t know who she was talking to.  It’s amazing I got hired, because I showed up half an hour late by mixing up the meeting time with the one from the day before, and I totally drew a blank when she asked me a grammar question.  Clearly I wasn’t destined to be an English teacher.

Even so, I think I can handle it.  The classes, although “advanced”, are much lower level than what I just left in San Francisco.  This location specializes in immigrants, most of whom are working hard all the time and may have never even finished elementary school.  Others might be diplomats at the UN, supposedly, according to my supervisor.  Whatever it is, I’ll be there and spread them the best energy I can and knowledge of the language that I am supposed to, although they are using the same text book that I used with my junior and high school students in Japan.  It can’t be that bad.  The last time I used this text book, it was with the 14 year old swimming enthusiast who had a pronounced stutter, regardless of the language.  Every Friday at 7 pm I ended my week by teaching him one on one, which was hard because his people worked him like a dog and it was all he could do to keep his head up.  Every week I asked him what he did in the past week, and he said, “I went to school, and I played video games.”  It all sounded  boring to me, but then I remembered that I was the same as he when I was 14, except I played basketball instead of swimming.  One day he surprised me like no other by telling me that his father was going to drop him off in the woods alone for one night on the weekend, during the winter, when there was snow.  I asked him why.  I never did anything like that when I was 14.  He said he liked stargazing in the winter.  I learned this about him after teaching him for nine months, and with one month left I realized I had more in common with this dorky little stuttering kid than I ever could have imagined, and not just because I used to be a dorky little kid.  Even though he was engulfed in vicarious virtual reality all the time, he still had the heart to brave the cold and love the starlight.  Anyway, maybe one of the new students will surprise me.

I can’t lie though.  I don’t want to teach.  I want to write this book.  I want it to get out there and turn people on and make them smile and furrow their eyebrows and gasp and laugh and get worried and then realize it’s actually amazing and then smile again.  If I didn’t have to teach introductory language another day, that would be plenty okay.  But I’m a human, and this world is a gift, so I’ll take what it gives me based on the input I give.

Speaking of inputs, this TV is enormous.  I can’t get over it.  One of the common talks with foreign travelers is the old “I could have bought a huge TV, but I traveled instead.”  The irony is I have spent way more on travel the past four years than this TV costs, and it’s huge.  Now I can see the whole world on it, because I’ve been there.

Anyway, even though I’m exhausted from going to the Bronx this morning, I’ve been making myself take walks around the neighborhood every three hours just so I can get the stimulation from all the faces and places and remember how beautiful space is.

Last night was the Hunter’s Moon, so I hopped on a train to Union Square and took a photo of the pyramids, because that’s what I do.  I saw so many faces and people.  What a glorious place to be.  So much of humanity, mixed together in front of me on my eye’s television screen.  Sorry, I’ve been looking at this TV.

The reason I was wandering on my own last night is that my host is visiting friends in the city of brotherly love, and I love to wander around on my own with my camera, iPod, smile, eyes, ears and conquered fears.  New York is so unintimidating when you can see the entire world spread beyond it.  Not to say life isn’t intimidating or challenging.  But life is so much bigger than New York.  I’m a New Yorker, I can say that.

In fact, I’m writing this from the same island where I was born.  Awesome!  My dad says “awesome” is overused, but I mean to say “Awesome!” about that, because I realized it earlier as I was walking around on the street with my feet and it made me very happy to realize that even though I’m in Queens, I’m on Long Island, where I grew up, my father grew up, and the rest of that family tree grew up for a long time.  Enough about British white people.

You know who just came on after Hiromi’s MOVE?  That is, I’ve been writing with a playlist incredibly improvised by the universe, and the song “Move” by Hiromi was just playing.  And now one of my favorite poets is spreading the verbal joy: Nas.  I used to wander on these long walks where I would find myself going through Queensbridge on my own, which is a very unpredictable place to be.  Once angry humans called me “white nigger."  Norman Mailer once said hipsters were the“white nigger.”  He said that in the 1950s.  My hipster friend said Norman Mailer is an asshole.  Either way, Nas is from Queensbridge, and I love him.  He’s the best rapper ever, and the first thing he did after becoming successful was move his mom to a mansion outside the projects, before he even got himself a new home.  My random playlist walk’s first selection after “Big Country” by Bela Fleck and the Flecktones was “Memory Lane.”  I always loved accidentally wandering down through the Queensbridge projects by myself listening to that song.  Okay, maybe not always, but three times.  The first time I was walking home from the same friend whose TV I now use to write this, and five angry teenagers called me a White Nigger over and over again, and I got confused.  So later that year when I was writing a novel in the winter at night I decided that I didn’t want to be inside anymore so I walked along the river, beyond the hell’s gate bridge, and eventually I was in the projects, but nobody seemed to care.  The same thing a year later when I was about to move away to go on adventures to places like India and China and Egypt and Mexico.  New York City made me tough, that’s for sure.  I checked my journal of my last week in NYC, and all I could think about were these two girls I was involved with.  That is, one of them would eventually seriously break my heart, and the other already had and had just come back into the picture unexpectedly, and as I read this later I decided I didn’t care about any of that and wished I hadn’t spent so much time worrying about it.  I take that back.  My heart beat and grew.  It was great and terrible and great excellent that’s how life happens to everybody so just enjoy that it happened and will happen again but much better the next time.  Anyway, nobody cared about me walking through the projects that time either, both in the afternoon and evening.  They just wanted to live life.

Hey “Venice Queen” just came on!  (1724 word count!)  And now the background is all of these smiley faces, because I have it changing every three minutes.  I took a picture of all these smiley faces in some window in Japan.  They appear to be hand knit.  Good for them.  That was in Saitama.  The people were beautiful, but the town wasn’t so exciting.  New York City is very exciting.   That’s why I’ve jumped on trains around 8 or 10 pm the last two evenings so I could explore Manhattan.  Most of my friends are free next week, because I only told three of them that I was coming, and only one of them (the great one with a big TV and very comfortable couch) exactly when.  Now I am starting to spread the word, and fun is coming, although they all have their own lives and I’m still crazy and poetic and wandering and wowed by the world as always.  I’ll try to tone it down for them in person.  That’s what this web space is for.  An outlet for the awe.  It’s always better in person, but sometimes people can’t handle it and you have to filter it.

For example, I was just walking around, and I thought of approaching everyone I saw and just asking them just what they thought they were doing, but of course that would be confusing to some, and most of them were drunk anyway, so I doubted they were interested in having profound things to say.  Not to say that the words don’t flow after a few beers.  I look forward to that.  I’m just in a very different state of mind from most.  I’m more happy and excited and amazed by the poetry I constantly see flowing around me more often than not (sometimes I’m tired or hungry or in love and it’s hard to concentrate), and sometimes alcohol excites that but more often it numbs it.  Ultimate excitement!  LIFE!  11:11.

I can live wherever I want as long as I can talk to people and I can hear what they are saying.  That’s what a girl on drugs told me at a party one evening when I was celebrating the completion of my first year working and living in NEW York City.  Did you know the lead singer of Radiohead is named Thom Yorke?  He said, “Everything in its right place.”  That’s what the girl said too.  She said that I could talk to people, and I’d always be fine.  WOW!  I don’t think I’m ever even going to do that drug she was on, but she was right.  You gotta listen to people.  Forget the prejudices.  BE HUNGRY TO LEARN!

Paul Simon’s telling the truth now.  He says these are the days of miracle and wonder.  Graceland album.  My mom played that on road trips all the time when I was a kid.  Once my friend Russ played it when my friend Dave was doing his best to make me think he was going to drive us all off a cliff, and I was really happy he did.  Enough “Boy in the Bubble.”  Please play “Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes!”  That was my sister and mother’s favorite.  I didn’t like it, but now I do.  “Homeless” is also great.  And “Under African Skies.”  Pyramids.  Oh yeah!

Stream of consciousness.  They should call it stream of awareness.  Being self-aware is better than being self-conscious.  That’s what the experts say.

Speaking of self-aware, my first “book” was really flowery and all those adjectives.  I meant it, because I feel it like that and that’s the best way, but the job is to make other people feel it through the journey of the story, especially if they’re not starting there in that state of awareness.  I know about that.  I didn’t start there.  I started the journey wandering through Queensbridge and India, and somehow a year later I found myself camping in one degree snow in Arizona and Utah, and a year after that I was taking pictures of knit smiles in store windows in Saitama and teaching a stuttering fourteen year old addicted to video games but still soulful enough to stare in awe at the stars on a Friday night.  I guess that’s why I don’t mind not having a crazy drunken Saturday my first weekend back in New York.  Time means little to me lately.  It’s only good for poetry and not missing interviews by too much.  And catching trains, I suppose.  That helps.  Okay, you win this one, time.

Wow!  The background just turned to the Bonnaroo Arch!  The one I walked through in 2007 to greet the one poem of the world with fresh new eyes.  Great timing, universe!

God?

GOOD!

LOVE!

LIFE!

YES!

Wait, how can I celebrate you?  I take from you all the time!  ALL THE TIME!  I eat your food and drink your water and look at you and feel you and speak you and hear you and love you and touch our self.  Tony Bennett just said ‘You better believe it, folks!” because ‘New York, New York’ just came on, which is a masturbatory song by a New York artist about how great New York is, but somehow many other people love it anyway, because instead of being jealous, sometimes people get inspired by greatness and become great themselves, like that Hiroshi kid I taught every Friday.  At first I was like, ‘You think you’re better than me just because you get your sleeping bag and your sense of wonder and brave the forest on your own in the snow just to see the beautiful stars that gave birth to you and YOU’RE ONLY FOURTEEN??? in between playing all those video games?  You think you’re all that, don’t you?  Well, you are, and then some, and because of that I’m going to plan an enormous adventure where I have to clap and scare off grizzlies bears to show the woman I (2,724) love how much I love her and how confident and brave I am, yet still reasonable with the ‘Hey Bear!’ clapping and shouting because that’s what they told me to do and I listened.  My Jones Soda bottle cap says I am a practical person with both feet on the ground.  It ain’t exactly the I Ching, but I’ll take it.  For example, sometimes I carry a woman’s love inside my heart and it gives me bravery and strength to do the most outrageous and beautiful endeavors imaginable.  And sometimes my seed gets backed up and I let the virtual screen show me some visible excitement.  Usually I let my mind do the treat, but variety is the spice of life.  That being said, if you’re in my heart, you’re in my heart, and you’re superior to any image anywhere, because you are unique irreplaceable joy.  Ain’t that right, stargazing Hiroshi?

Just like all of life.  Isn’t life so much better than all these words on the screen?  You really should get your eyes away from this thing and go look at the people around you.  Look at their eyes!  Look at their beautiful mouths and ears and knees and feet, and the way they’re all a little shy even if they seem confident, because none of them really knows why they’re here (my background says “Miracles, Supernatural intervention from God, June 2009” now because a homeless man gave that to me in Chicago three years ago when I was trying to win this girl for whom I purposely avoided screen women for many moons, and all she did was tell me my ego was out of control and that I needed help.  So I learned from the impoverished Indian children who have nothing.  They told me with their existence that I have everything and I should love it and share it and give it and make it greater and excellent and… just… so… so… oh yeah, I’m in a parenthetical again) even though they’re all miracles of supernatural intervention that is intervening right now as I write and you read and my love organ secretly plots the next time it’s going to get to release its seed, even if I’m focusing on something else completely, as the world wants seeds to plant more trees, as the case may be.  That’s how the universe keeps being infinity, whether we are free to choose our destiny or vessels of the synchronized poetry, spreading love providentially with you me.

Now it says, “Do the thing you think you cannot do.”  That was on her fridge.  I guess that excursion was worth something.

Do you know what I didn’t think I could do?

I didn’t think I could travel around the world and hike in the woods and drive wherever I wanted and meet people from everywhere and hear what they thought and tell them what I thought, all with the best music playing the whole time I played in the only world where you can play and explore and have more fun with the poetry of passionate people.

Now universe says, “God is Love.”

Great background!

Speaking from canals of Kerala, where we floated in a canoe and became reacquainted with two women I met in Varanasi one month earlier, when they gave me medicine because I was very ill.  They said I looked much better the next time.

God is Love, aren’t we?

“A Garden of Peace” is playing now.  BEAUTY!

God is a word.  Love is a word.  Garden is a word.  Peace is a word.  Beauty is (3326) a word.  Number is a word.  Word is a language.  Life is a language.

Yes. I expressed 3,345 chung fuse with you.