The Mountain Goats in NYC

Go see them.

Anyone out there go to those Pogues show?

For All My NY People

The friggin' Pogues on St. Paddy's Day!! You guys get everything out there. And Billy Bragg opening the Sunday show? Get right out of town...or rather, stay in town, because all the cool shit happens in New York.

And speaking of The Pogues and New York, here's one of, if not my favorite, Christmas songs. When you think of depressing Christmas-time ballads/scenes usually Tom Waits pops into the head first, right? Well, this gives any boozy-buying-a-prostitute-a-drink-on-Christmas-Eve-collect-calls-home-
only-to-hang-up-when-your-mother-answers state of mind Waits could ever dream up a run for its money:

Fairytale Of New York

It was christmas eve babe
In the drunk tank
An old man said to me, wont see another one
And then he sang a song
The rare old mountain dew
I turned my face away
And dreamed about you

Got on a lucky one
Came in eighteen to one
Ive got a feeling
This years for me and you
So happy christmas
I love you baby
I can see a better time
When all our dreams come true

Theyve got cars big as bars
Theyve got rivers of gold
But the wind goes right through you
Its no place for the old
When you first took my hand
On a cold christmas eve
You promised me
Broadway was waiting for me

You were handsome
You were pretty
Queen of new york city
When the band finished playing
They howled out for more
Sinatra was swinging,
All the drunks they were singing
We kissed on a corner
Then danced through the night

The boys of the nypd choir
Were singing galway bay
And the bells were ringing out
For christmas day

Youre a bum
Youre a punk
Youre an old slut on junk
Lying there almost dead on a drip in that bed
You scumbag, you maggot
You cheap lousy faggot
Happy christmas your arse
I pray God its our last

I could have been someone
Well so could anyone
You took my dreams from me
When I first found you
I kept them with me babe
I put them with my own
Cant make it all alone
Ive built my dreams around you

Always Moving Forward, Looking Back

As my time in New York comes to an end I am getting a little sentimental, as I do, and thinking of other travels I have been on, and how with most, even the ones that were hard at the time, I look back and remember with joy.

I am thinking this morning of the fact that any time I hear a song with even the slightest whimsy I think of lying among dandelions in Missoula, Montana with a girl who was always somewhat whimsical herself, carrying with her gypsy qualities, floating through this world to places I was not willing to follow, except for that short time when we lay, reading poetry on a hill in Missoula. Then I left again, drove farther west, and was not sure, even at the time, why I was leaving. I have heard that she kept moving, too, and is now a mother. I do not know her child (even if it’s a boy or a girl), and I do not know her anymore, but in moments like these, on mornings like this, I think of her.

And then there was the time in Ireland when I strolled atop the cliffs of the Aran Islands catching in a photograph a friend, legs near his chest, hugged by his arms, contemplating the Ocean below and stretching for an eternity before him. I had viewed and captured in another photograph this same friend in this same state of contemplation on a cliff overlooking Lake Superior within a year of our trip to Ireland. He has now seen more of and in this world than I ever will or would want to, and I’m sure on his subsequent travels he has pondered so much in this same manner.

And there was my time spent on another great lake—Lake Michigan, where the sound of water was omnipresent and constantly soothing. I have never been more at peace with everything around me than with that consistent roll of waves in my ear. On the first anniversary of September 11, 2001 I sat alone on a beach of Lake Michigan and watched it open up and pull the sun from its perch over the Chicago skyline into it in a warm, consoling embrace—the lake knowing the sun had seen too much.

And even on a miserable drive back from southern California, a drive that sunk me into the greatest depths of loneliness and awareness of being alone, I remember that the red hues of the dirt and rocks in Utah were beautiful. Even then I recognized something beyond myself, even if I could not see it in the present, I felt it somewhere. And the sense of comfort that filled me when I thought of once again being around my family and friends, to feel not alone, was a feeling so overwhelming that it almost warranted the depths I had sunk to. Almost.

As I look to the coming weeks I am once again filled with joy at seeing those faces absent for months now. But this time I will not be running from something toward their warm embrace. I will be leaving something I will miss. I am already looking back in fond remembrance. I am already missing New York.

Lists

Three Things I Taught Myself To Do With No Guidance From Others (Two While Staring At Mirrors In Department Stores As A Child While My Mother Was Shopping)

1) Raise both eyebrows individually.

2) Wink with both eyes.

3) Juggle (although not very well, & one of my uncles may have shown me tips on this as a kid. I can't say for sure.)



Four Things Frowned Upon In Most Places, But Seemingly Completely OK In New York

1) Honking at girls as you drive by.

2) Saying things like, "Damn, girl, you looking good today" or "How you doing?" as girls walk by.

3) Throwing whatever happens to be in your hand on the ground if you no longer wish to be holding it.

4) Swearing at your children.