Restless Nights

So I have struggled to rest this weekend, and I am still waiting for sleep which somehow eludes me. Thoughts of the summer, of IMPACT, of Prayer, of Korea, of A Song for Second Avenue,  urgent business, of classes, of friends, of music and beauty, all flood my mind at once...  Images and sounds... Thoughts of Blogs and Logs... and songs and poems... And .... all the dilemmas secret and public that tease the human spirit ... All the temptations and fantasies... all that confounds us and conspires to sleepless nights...

But even so ... I will go in and try to transform this desperate state into something productive. There are those in my life that inspire me to transcend the way of all flesh...

Summer has been an avalanche of ideas and activity... all of it positive and promising.  I have been buried in the debris of summer, a rich composite of lives and conscious awareness that now call for a reflective production of new material... some of it waiting... urgently in need of expression. 

I have been absent from myself for so long... and there are thoughts and ideas waiting for words... these words started as an email and started to take on a larger life... one can get so busy that he stumbles through the night forgetting all that really matters, caught up in the dancing trivialities of virtual realities.

The Past is Present

Woody got it right, but the past doesn't only erupt at midnight.  The past is a seething tsunami overrunning the seamless present. I have tried to avoid the vapors that seep through the crusting surface of moments as they become the shimmering crystals of reality, facets that glisten in the light of a shifting awareness. But the present is just as unavoidable as it is inevitable. It is all we have, even though the future seems irresistible and relentless.

I realize how much I have tried to avoid the contradictions of myself. The long intervals of silence where I let the present pass unnoticed... the sad marking of time with obituaries of restaurant reviews and other irrelevant nonsense... our FaceBook sensibility where all that matters is "hello and goodbye" and" see where I am now" or "where I was a few moments ago"... my ephemeral pathway through the present which disappears in the nondescript passing of inglorious, insignificant moments. All that matters is to twitter the present.

Yet the richness of the present is the past, if we embrace it or allow it to engage us. The new social technologies are basically tools of avoidance. We are isolated by clicks and metal surfaces that are meant for tapping and texting. Images are meant to be captured and substituted for tasting and and touching. Everything is for the eye filtered through screens meant to seduce through the illusions of imaginary worlds.

Yet the only moments that seem filled with the luster of reality, with a tangible essence of something that will last through memory and linger in the fine filters of the mind, are those vividly present through engagement in the nowness of awareness alone, or in the presence of others so engaged in the moment. This conscious engagement is the poetics of making ourselves.

So it is with deep regret that I note the passing of Now unnoticed. Such moments are undistinguished because they are unnoticed. I am saddened by my neglect of Now so often that many of my past moments are vast deserts filled with nothingness or the blurred mirages of wishful thinking. I regret those moments of absence with no tangible presence of those who have noticed me and the emptiness of my failure to seek them out, to relish the reality of their being.

Our simple joy is the noticing of Time passing and to relish how it passes, and to add to its passing. Our simple joy is to notice each other, to appreciate the unique qualities each adds to our passing moments. Within that singular appreciation is the quality of loving and hating, of regretting and celebrating... appreciating those who have touched us profoundly, loved us, changed us, and made us become someone and something different.

Everything's Organic

Everything's organic at Bareburger.  It has been open on LaGuardia place for awhile, but somehow I thought the angle was more of a gimmick than substance, so I passed it by, always lingering for a moment or two and scanning the menu, but then going on my way.

Recently I decided to give it a try and went in on a Friday night. I was surprised by the lively friendly atmosphere and the the apparent enthusiasm of the customers for the fare. It is mostly burgers, beer, and milkshakes, but these categories defy conventional description.  Not only is everything organic, but Bareburger has redefined these categories in a comprehensive context.  I had the Jalapeno Express burger for which Barebuger recommended Elk. I thought I knew about burgers, but this beat everything I've had in the past. The Elk has a great texture and the taste was beyond beef or bison, a deep rich meaty taste and mellow, which made it perfect for the jalapeno touch. I ordered an organic raspberry milkshake that was the thickest and richest I gave ever tasted. Once again, Bareburger has redefined the genre.  The burger arrived at the table impaled on an elegant metal shaft, almost suggesting that it had been hunted down in the wild and speared. The condiments and spices are all organic as are the sweeteners for the organic coffee.  Maybe we should not be so impressed by organic, which is returning to the natural state of our habitat. But in a world that is laden with additives and over processing, Bareburger has successfully provided the staples of simplicity with a sense of elegant naturalness.

I went there thinking I would try it out as a novelty, but this is a serious venture and a place to come back to again and again. The variety of burgers and selection of meat will astound you. It is enough to make a vegetarian reconsider a chosen lifestyle.  Next time I'll try the organic beer and the coffee, just to see if the same excellence prevails. The only puzzling aspect to the evening were the large monitors tuned to the Flintstones. Maybe the message was a return to primitive times before civilization managed to isolate us from nature. But it didn't work for me. This restaurant is not a place for the eyes, anyway. It is something of an art form for taste, a gallery of organic inventiveness.

Choga: A Cozy Haven

Choga is a cozy friendly haven at the end of the Bleecker Street business district in the West Village. It is a place where the atmosphere is warm and friendly and the food and drink is served with excellent attention to detail. In addition to authentic Korean food, there is a fine sushi bar where the combinations are fresh and inventive. BimBimBap in their new hotpots come out sizzling, and when several are ordered the dishes are popping around the tables like a stereo rhythm section. When the owner is there, her Seafood Pajun is unrivaled in this hemisphere. I would go there just for that.  The restaurant reflects the warmth and graciousness of an owner who has transformed Choga into a memorable experience. Go there more than once, and you begin to feel like you are at the kind of establishment where "everybody knows your name."

I go there to catch up on things and relax. With my iPhone I can bother all my friends or check out FB, while I often use the notepad to write a poem or two, or just sit long hours and listen to the music tapes put together by singer/composer C. J. from Korea who performed at The Bitter End while he waited tables at Choga. He has a great ear for music, and if you sit there long enough, you are bound to hear some of your favorites. I like the Soju, O.B., and the side dishes. Every entree is tempting and all ranges of spicy and non-spicy treats can make every visit distinctive. I often bring along some book of poems to enjoy at a quiet table in the corner. Sometimes, if I'm lucky, a friend will pop in and we have a go at it... almost instant partying...  Truth be known, I get lots of work done while there, generating lyrics, ideas for music, researching... all of it in the end is research...

Choga is especially great when it is snowing, and you can sit in the quiet warmth and look at the snow through the window.

One of my most recent visits was populated by visitors from Korea where one of them sang a version of Arirang on the spot that almost made me feel like I was in Korea. This was in counterpoint to the music playing up at the front of Choga... yet at the end, the owner and staff applauded the impromptu charming performance.  Choga changes with the seasons, there are seasonal dishes, and in summer it serves as a refuge from the heat with cool air, cold noodle treats, and icy drinks.  For now, it is winter and usually we are greeted with hot tea to warm our hands on the cups.

          CHOGA
Winter evening settling
Outside Choga
Speaks of snow
Dotting the dusk
As I sit with my Nabe Udon,
Reluctantly approaching
My inevitable departure
As a dreaded return
To some awesome emptiness
That has plagued me for days.
Sounds of music hover
Near the front window,
A vacant drone
As evening dissolves
Into night.
I cannot delay
Any longer...
Still unsure of a destination,
I descend the steps
To Bleecker
And look up
Into the swirling snow
Of night.

The Architecture of Snow

The "architecture of snow" seems to be first iterated by Emerson in a poem called "The Snow-Storm." I later ran into this imagery in a set of poems by Chris Banks, The Cold Panes of Surfaces. He quotes a line from a Wallace Stevens' poem:

"... Can all men, together, avenge
One of the leaves that have fallen in autumn?
But the wise man avenges by building his city in snow.''
Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)

For Chris Banks, city in snow becomes the foundation for his poem "Winter Is The Only Afterlife" as he borrows Emerson 's line in "The Snow-Storm" to begin his own elaborate metaphor.

Chris Banks : Winter is the Only Afterlife
The wise man avenges by building his city in snow.
-Wallace Stevens

The architecture of snow was quietly rebuilding January
when a young woman arrived, seeming to float down
the white sidewalks while the rest of us huddled inside
our mortgaged houses. I had been staring out my windows
watching snow fall from the invisible eaves. Passing cars
were churning up a slurry in the streets, a wet papier mâché
of burnt-out stars. She wore a red scarf and had carefully
cinched her wings beneath a cashmere navy waistcoat.
When she turned to look at me, the world was all whirlwind
and white ash, and the words, Winter is the only afterlife.
It gives back everything it takes from us, blazed for a moment
across my brain, like a lantern shining out in all directions,
which is when I knew for certain it was her, and only
for that moment, the white light of snow falling across
her shoulders, itself, a kind of blessing, as she stepped
lightly between this world and the hereafter, one minute
smiling at me and the next vanishing into an apocalypse
of snow, each flake's white galaxy, her grace her own.

Anyone who has spent any time with me knows that snow is almost an obsession with me, which is why this poem bears so much meaning for me. This is a complex poem, full of a richness that explores the universal metaphor as winter as the end of life, and snow as the apocalypse that is an exquisite and grand demise of the beauty we have known and celebrated throughout life, dissolving into the flakes of snow swirling like some distant galaxy of oblivion.

Nabeyaki Udon at Zen on 31 St. Mark's Place

What many of my friends don't realize is that I am something of a connoisseur of Nabeyaki Udon. There is one other area in which my culinary connoisseurship shines and that is the Peach Melba. For years I would sample and keep notes on Peach Melbas around the world. I noted the cultural variances in the presentation and savored every object of my research of this dessert art-form. Actually I became very well-known for this research in an informal way and was consulted by many friends. I notice that this delicacy is really rare these days, and I have wondered if my dwindling interest in Peach Melbas contributed to the demise of its popularity.

About 20 years ago I was introduced to Nabeyaki Udon by a Korean friend. Although the dish has Japanese origins, I was told that the addition of a raw egg into the mix was a Korean variation which apparently became popular. In the area that I lived in at that time, I could find Nabeyaki Udon in a number of Asian restaurants, and I began to compare the texture, the ingredients, the care of preparation, the taste, the longevity (the amount of time the brew can last on the table and continue to accrue deliciousness and spicy presence), and the serving utensil, essential in maintaining a good temperature and allowing the mixture to continue to mature in taste and texture after it is served. A really good Nabeyaki Udon is consumed as though you are performing a musical work. There is an introduction, thematic ideas, and adding of nuances (dynamics) through the ground red pepper, which melds with the dish to create incredible variations of taste as you perform the act of consuming the various items. A good serving bowl extends the life of this dish so that you as the performer of this consumptive act can have an extended coda. This is an especially appropriate dish for the winter... really great in a major storm as you watch the blizzard rage outside and bask in the aroma of your Nabeyaki Udon.

But as the years progressed, I noticed fewer restaurants carrying this dish. Worse still, I would find instead Nabe Udon (often without the egg!) as I find at Choga, or a misplaced zeal for all sorts of Ramen, which although I like, I find do not deserved to be mentioned in the same sentence with a masterpiece like Nabeyaki Udon.

On some Saturdays I am given to exploring and was wandering around the East Village researching aspects as I prepare my new MoviOp, A Song for Second Avenue. I was checking all the little restaurants on St. Marks Place that are nested beneath the stairs of almost every building. This time I was reading their menus and trying to decide which one I might try. The menus were all pretty much the same. I was moving from Third Avenue toward Second Avenue on the north side of the street. Then, a little past midway, I came upon Zen Restaurant, and the first thing that caught my eye was Nabeyaki Udon.

The Nabeyaki Udon more than lived up to my expectations. It was a masterful concoction that was in the best of settings. The atmosphere inside was friendly, convivial, and outside, a light snow was punctuating the afternoon. Before me was the main attraction in a beautiful bowl that was also functional, designed to keep the broth nice and hot for quite some time. I began with a light sprinkling of the ground red pepper which is not spicy but adds several layers of taste as the broth marinates. Let it marinate and savor the moment.

Some day, I know there is a poem that will come of this rendezvous with Nabeyaki Udon. In the meantime, if food be the music of love, eat on!

Favela Cubana

Out the window
Last week's snow
Sleeps a fitful winter nap
As leafless trees watch and wait.
Inside, infectious Brazilian rhythms
Punctuate Latin brass and vocals
From another world.
In spite of this,
There is a quietness in my mind
Listening for another song.
Words sound and then fall silent,
Waiting for the enchantment
Of discovery...
Life is too beautiful
To ever let a moment
Go unnoticed...
And yet, we do.
Slivers of Time
Slip into forgotten corridors
In the relentless push of the present...
Even when we pause
In the envelop of Now,
The past eludes us.
But this moment resonates
Because of all that was
And all that might have been.

Glenn Gould and My Own Retreat

In a recent recording session at NYU Dolan Studio, one of the artists brought up a description of Glenn Gould "playing" the recorded sound at the mixing console with the same detail that he brought to his performance at the keyboard. This was the first time I had thought about Glenn Gould for quite some time. By chance, I had picked up a book of poems, Everything Else in the World, by Stephen Dunn. To my surprise, I came upon a poem about Gould, "The Unrecorded Conversation" in this wonderful volume of poems. Surprising, because it came on the heels of our discussion about Gould and made me realize that elements of Gould's temperament resonated with my own experience. At the beginning of the poem, as an epitaph of sorts, Gould is quoted: "Isolation is the indispensable component of human happiness." Having made it this far in life as a loner, I find it something of a revelation to discover that my loneliness is the source of my satisfaction.

Of course I do not possess the genius of Gould, but I do understand the self imposed quarantine that may be necessary for contemplation and sustained fulfillment. Stephen Dunn creates a golden glimpse of Glenn Gould who disappeared into his private world of art and thrived in that secret, sequestered habitat:

Maybe genius is its own nourishment,
I wouldn't know.
Gould didn't need much more than Bach
whom he devoured
and so beautifully gave back
we forgave him his withdrawal from us.

...Gould retreated to his studio
at thirty-one, keeping his distance
from microphones and their germs.
He needed to control sound, edit out
imperfection. His were the only hands
that touched the keys, turned the dials.
(Stephen Dunn, "The Unrecorded Conversation" from Everything Else in the World)

The studio inside my head seems connected to some interior world that illuminates my muse. Retreating to my studio has been a refuge in time of doubt and when I have needed inspiration and spiritual sustenance. Somehow things have changed from the journey begun this past year that has taken me to this new place. There was no reason to believe things would continue on the same miraculous trajectory that launched this new adventure. Sometimes retreat represents a falling back. But a retreat is also a place of solitude for working through a dilemma. Somewhere in the isolation of this personal pause, is the spark of renewal.

An Astonishing Poet: Stephen Dunn

In a bookstore of forgotten books, I came across a book of poems, Everything Else in the World by Stephen Dunn, a poet that I didn't recognize but who has won a Pulitzer prize. I feel that in general we don't read enough poems. Poets have a way of noticing the world that enables us to calibrate our awareness of reality. Sometimes when I feel things spinning out of control I like to enter the world of some poet, preferably someone I have never read. I picked up Dunn's book with about five other volumes of poems.

I finally submersed myself in his poems this weekend and was astonished to discover that this poet was someone who seemed in tune with my own work. The very first poem was something I have thought and written about, but done with such elegance that I was energized and inspired. The first poem struck home:

A SMALL PART

The summer I discovered my heart
is at best an instrument of approximation
And the mind is asked to ratify
every blood rush sent its way

was the same summer I stared
at the slate gray sea well beyond dusk,
learning how exquisitely
I could feel sorry for myself.

It was personal---the receding tide,
the absent, arbitrary wind.
I had a small part in the great comedy,
and hardly knew it. No excuse,

but I was so young I believed
Ayn Rand had a handle on truth---
secular, heroically severe. Be a man
of unwavering principle, I told others,

and what happens to the poor
is entirely their fault. No wonder
that girl left me in August, a stillness
in the air. I was one of those lunatics

of a single idea, or maybe even worse---
I kissed wrong, or wasn't brave enough
to admit I was confused
Many summers later I learned to love

the shadows illumination creates.
But experience always occurs too late
to undo what's been done. The hint
of moon above an unperturbable sea,

and that young man, that poor me,
staring ahead---everything is as it was.
And of course has been changed.
I got over it. I've never been the same.

The only difference is that I never got over it.