Oh

It is so difficult to understand the human condition. What we covet from afar, we idolize. What we actually get, we feel we don't quite deserve and fuck it up, or after a time, no longer appreciate.
We long for times past, and forget how then, we desperately longed for better days. We wish for a future we might already have in our hands. The present, is too beautiful, too fragile, too much to bear, so we never look into its eyes head on...

Dogs in sweaters rock!!!

One of the best thing about fall and winter, has to be dogs in sweaters. I have to admit, I always find myself  grinning at these sweater clad "fluffians" strutting the streets with their human companions danging on the end of deliberate color-coordinated leashes.

Long ago in the suburbs, I saw an occasionally well dressed canine, but Downtown Brooklyn, where I currently reside, is a veritable 'dogwalk', with every second dog sporting a fall/winter wardrobe.

It is not just designer clad Chihuhuas, looking like miniature versions of James dean with shrunken heads, their rhinestone studded leather jackets and booties wrapped around the arms of bored, blonde socialites.
Instead, it ranges from dogs of indeterminably mutt heritage wearing sweaters of equally dubious fabric content, to obviously pedigree Saint Bernhards in massive pseudo-burberry patterns. You can spot the organic or hemp dog sweaters a mile away. They are usually reminiscent of a fishermans jersey in lumpily cozy neutral knits.  

I glance at the owners of course. Spotting the hand knitter types (their dogs advertising what degree of skill their craft-humans are now on and if they are still dropping stitches along the way), or the hipsters who frequent vintage flea markets or upscale consignment stores looking for authentic 50's dog couture. I have to wonder what those dogs think of wearing a sweater with another dogs scent on it. Do they wonder what the other dog who wore it before was like? The affable way dogs explore others scent, I think they must consider all of that.

Have you noticed how dogs and owners coordinate not only their colors but their whole general demeanor? For example, there is one narrow greyhound from Park Slope, who looks like he is wearing a sturdy blanket, strapped on like a racehorse. He, elegantly floating along the block, with his equally long and lean jogger companion, she of course, wearing black leggings, which may as well be jodhpurs.
A little black and white french poodle with fringed bangs, peers up at me, wearing a red sweater and looking like a mod 80's french cafe.  

No matter their attire, dogs on walks are very similar. I love watching them in street sweeper mode, nose down they move forward, snuffling right and left methodically along the block, stopping with a jerk whenever they approach something interesting.

I love komondor dogs, especially those wearing clothing. They seem to always end up wearing something that looks like a buckled on placemat, due to the sheer vivacity of their swinging dreads.

I most love those colorful cable sweaters, especially the wooly ones which look broken in and in need of sweater shaving. Those dogs look like they should be lounging around in cafes, reading poetry or short stories by unknown (as of yet) authors and drinking tea long since gone cold.
Then you see immaculate groomed pedigreed pooches, wearing obvious designer sweaters, in the latest fall colors, both walker and walkee gambolling along fashionably under the apple skin shaded leaves.
You can spot the old money dogs, those sweaters that are classic, ageless and obviously high quality, but are sleek and as subtle as their owners who can be identified by their Italian.
Other dogs are outfitted according to theme, like the scotty dog, probably feeling incredibly cheesy,  kitted out in traditional tartan, down to the socks.
     
Some dogs seem rather menacing. Their girth, breadth and otherwise general massiveness, absence of lolling tongue, and glinty, glossy fang exhibit, possibly a grin, but equally possibly a perpetual rapper snarl.
These fearsome fluff-bearers make me giggle the most. Their owners, most of them wide shouldered and slightly uncoordinated, sometimes puts the most incongruous apparel on these beasts. Fleece pastel overcoats, tutu's, or better yet, reindeer sweaters with bobbly hats. I imagine not just any sweater comes in their size, and it usually looks absurd in the most delicious way possible.
I notice, the ones waiting outside stores for their owners are usually not wearing sweaters at all, their sad, melting eyes trained on the door, waiting to continue a walk that has suddenly, awfully turned into a dreaded errand.
Have you noticed all those 'new on store shelves' -but actually really old 80's sweater blends like modal, acrylic and viscose- we as consumers have been (re)introduced to lately?
I imagine doggy sweaters have been hit by the same revolution. I bet dogs also are aware that good old fashioned natural fabrics like wool, feel warmest-albeit itchies. Cotton is just soft and comfortable, even when it starts unravelling and losing its shape after one short season. So, maybe I can concede, a little bit of lycra does a sweater good.

Ahhh, dogs in sweaters. One of lifes little pleasures.

 

Eyes on the skies

Brooklyn, a vaguely satisfying incongruence of a place. Avant-garde careful anon-bodies, in horned rimmed frames and organic cotton undies, abiding smugly amongst ancient mortar and flagstone, 200 odd years in the making. Mere sojourners though, on massive trees and rocks which carry in their threads and grooves the adage of the sage Rashi, spoken over 3000 years ago. “There is nothing new under the sun!” 
Obscure bands be damned, fashion styles no matter how mod, have been cycled, let alone recycled, radical ideas spoken, re-spoken, be-spoken.
It has all always been here from the beginning and we in our arrogance, overlook it all until we are ready to discover it, or lose it, then rediscover it too little and too late.
The primordial laughs without mockery.  

Grit under fingernails, the absolute french manicure. We have the grit of community gardens with crystal-rock deodorized hippies, Starbucks coffee ground grit, late night diner grit, posh pointy red framed Loboutin grit, hobbyist hipster grit and genuine, hard working, paycheck to paycheck blue collar worker grit who compose the central nervous system of our country. The blue collar humans whom both struggle and also truly exist by working with their hands...Those that labor a contrived desk existence, do envy the blue, no matter what they may say. Ask them how many cop, firefighter, cowboy and craftsman shows they watch?  
After all, we as people need to create. We need to see what we have wrought, and not simply on paper and backlit screen.
I have a little deck off my apartment. I can sit there and see red brick and vine, sky and a little bit of magic. I can glimpse neighbors, silhouettes in windows or clumps in yards, but there is depth and distance, and that is just right.
Next door to me, there used to be a symbol of suburban resistance, an overgrown forest of a garden. It was somewhat like the secret garden, without the key. Leaves woven within high grass, branches and twigs intertwined, a bouquet of shaded green. What a waste though, a gorgeous virgin in the midst of Beltane. She was romantic, but a fertile waste of a garden in Brooklyn, where a little patch is all the first floor dwellers are lucky to get, all others get is wistfulness.  Fireplaces, barbecue and just digging in the dirt is an exquisite luxury  in an apartment culture.
Then, one afternoon, it was gone, cleared, a war zone of landscaping or perhaps chemotherapy of a child.
She was cleared, and then the displaced spiders came to visit.
Its not that I don't love spiders. But its more like 'they are just not my type, sort of sensibility. They are fine in all their multi ocular, hirsute, venomous glory, I just have no desire whatsoever to ever hang out with any of them, though I feel bad they lost their habitat.
Spiders, you know the sort of people you can be friendly to, but it requires endless effort and careful maneuvering? The kind of effort that feels like studying for a History test with dates and places. The type that has you willing your phone to ring, to text, to anything. The type that drives one to drink, or go use the bathroom and pick your facial imperfections into disasters,  just for a bit of a break from the tedium and tension.
The people I love to relax with, do not require the peripheral  entertainment of those with hairy legs and an endless supply of hereditary venom.
I got some spider spray and crossed my fingers they found a lovely haven to web in.

Mostly on that deck though, I look upwards to the heavens.
The stars here, are often obscured by city soot but they pass through, luminaries on tour, a spark of the exotic, a plume of existential potential, then onwards.
As the flare passes, the grim returns. It all seems deep shadow for a moment, a black hole of silence out there on the deck in my plastic chair. 

......
A star is energy and light, held together by its own gravity.

The matter of a black hole is not understood, only that it is created by massive stars as they end their lives as supernova, then grow by sucking in all the energy around them. The stars implode due to their 'core- soul' which has become too weighty to support its own gravity.

Interestingly enough, long before 'black holes' were discovered, Greek mythology had an idea of chaos as a Goddess of sorts, often a snake, and she always wanted to oppose the Gods and destroy everything to return it all to void. This idea of chaos was described as vacuum or void created when heaven and earth were separated.

There is a term in the old testament to define this nothingness, as "tohu-uvohu- null and void." right before it added that the spirit of Godliness hovered over the 'face of the waters.' This was right before ultimate creation of light and dark, which did not even exist before the moment.

I do agree there are patterns in energy, woven nets of light, helix's, restless but orderly repeating forms and shapes and osmosis of energy until some sort of equilibrium occurs, only to shift back again like ripples. There is a religious thought that the world is being recreated every moment. I can believe that in this context...Those ripples are a constant hum.

In people too, there are those that are luminaries, they are in a constant state of emitting warmth and luminescence to others and to themselves. There are others, that are....well... the further level of quintessential ***hole. The actual black hole...

To explain, I use the term, to describe both soulless voids of people, and also in a much lesser sense, I use the term to describe "black holes of need", which are people who take and take from other people and never give anything back, because they are so self absorbed, they do not realize there is anything past the fringes of their blackness. They are the friends who suck people into negativity and drama and constantly pull energy from a person. You can give and give, but the bucket never gets full ,they are a vacuum because they are a 'non thing' and do not have that sense of self on their own and therefore need to constantly have others define their reality, which is not possible.

The more serious black hole, is of course the ones that actively damage others. They are the most toxic of spiders, the black widow, the violin spider, only compounded because they do not have eight hairy legs and warning markings on their thorax.

There is no doubt that evil, or soullessness is a terrible inversion of what was once good. The behavior itself is the most terrible betrayal simply because the most sacred trusts are violated, and the acts of abuse, are actual evil parodies of what should be acts of light, but in contexts are devastation.

The soulless black hole person, would be consistent with the idea of the massive star weighed down by its own gravity, flashing into destruction, then becoming utterly empty. There is also no doubt that evil and emptiness are both deeply attracted to light, and both wants desperately to own it and through it, somehow feel alive or clean again, and also wants to destroy and annihilate it because they despise it. This is true of the worst kind of abusers, especially those who seek out innocence to destroy. It is the very sacrilege of fracturing light, that they seek, possibly with the utterly wrong idea of some kind of hope to be touched by the light at the devastating cost to the one who they hurt, which is acceptable to them in their state of null and void.There is no doubt, the back hole in science is in a sense, a one way journey into darkness.

So what to do once this black hole has touched a person? How to stop the light, the dreams, the thoughts, the aspirations, the sense of self, from being sucked into the void? I would say, it is a question of gravity. The connection to the blackness would be severed, and the experience, slowly loses its own gravitational pull to the void, through the steady opposition of darkness, which is love and loyalty, healing and light. 

.......
That is really why I look up. It makes sense to seek the stars, look upwards to the luminaries, because they are there, no matter if you can see them through the smog or not.
Brooklyn, a place where we can keep our eyes on the heavens. Ultimately, a habitat, forever untouched like the spirit of an indomitable child no matter what happens to the topography...