“We are in this life to enlarge the soul, liberate the spirit, and light up the brain.” – Tom Robbins

"Are You Ready for New Urban Fragrances?


Yeah, I guess I’m ready, but listen:

Perfume is a disguise. Since the middle ages, we have worn masks of fruit and flowers in order to conceal from ourselves the meaty essence of our humanity. We appreciate the sexual attractant of the rose, the ripeness of the orange, more than we honor our own ripe carnality.

Now today we want to perfume our cities, as well; to replace their stinging fumes of disturbed fossils’ sleep with the scent of gardens and orchards. Yet, humans are not bees any more than they are blossoms. If we must pull an olfactory hood over our urban environment, let it be of a different nature.

I want to travel on a train that smells like snowflakes.

I want to sip in cafes that smell like comets.

Under the pressure of my step, I want the streets to emit the precise odor of a diamond necklace.

I want the newspapers I read to smell like the violins left in pawnshops by weeping hobos on Christmas Eve.

I want to carry luggage that reeks of the neurons in Einstein’s brain.

I want a city’s gases to smell like the golden belly hairs of the gods.

And when I gaze at a televised picture of the moon, I want to detect, from a distance of 239,000 miles, the aroma of fresh mozzarella.”

- Wild Ducks Flying Backward

From below, as a Neighbor

If I were not me and overheard me from below, as a neighbor, talking to him, I would say to myself how glad I was not to be her, not to be sounding the way she is sounding, with a voice like her voice and an opinion like her opinion. But I cannot hear myself from below, as a neighbor, I cannot hear how I ought not to sound, I cannot be glad I am not her, as I would be if I could hear her. Then again, since I am her, I am not sorry to be here, up above, where I cannot hear her as a neighbor, where I cannot say to myself, as I would have to from below,  how glad I am not to be her. 

when...

When I haven’t been kissed

in a long time, I create civil disturbances,


then insult the cops who show up,

till one of them grabs me 
and hurls me up against the wall

just so I can remember, 

at least for a moment,


what it’s like to be touched.

for you

 I rest in reason and move in passion. for you I would write a million love letters every day. for you I'd scar and without you everywhere I go is another place with out you. without you somedays I look out the window and wonder what doesn't feel so right.

you ask what you mean to me

you my love are the cigar after a steak meal. A toxic addiction.  

A Guide to Swallowing your feelings.

Swallow your feelings. Scoop them neatly and don’t let them spill or leave a stain. Chew them quickly – don’t savor them – just long enough to make them an unrecognizable mush before pushing them down to be dissolved in the acid below. Start small, just the ones you can handle: sadness when someone dies in a movie, anger at tech support. Those are the ones that make sense, that go down smooth.

Others are harder to swallow, the complex, multi-course meals made of layer after layer of uncertainty and guilt, warring flavors of disbelief and longing to believe, fear of getting what you want and fear of losing what you never had. It’s okay if you can’t choke them down right away, if they get stuck halfway and leave a lump in your throat, if they make you sick and some of them leak out through your eyes and nose or burst out of your mouth when you least expect it. It happens to the best of us. You just have to build up a tolerance. Consume them little by little, and before you know it, you’ll have room on your plate for something else, something better.

Just as you can’t remember the time before you ate solid food, soon it will become second nature. One day you’ll wonder when the last time you cried was, and find you can’t remember. That’s great, you’ll think, no one can hurt you now. No one can touch you. You are a pristine and impenetrable fortress of stoicism. Everything is blank and immaculate.

Carry on and don’t give it another thought. Not until someone asks you how you feel and you don’t have an answer because you just don’t know. Not until something happens and you laugh when you were supposed to cry because somewhere along the way the wires got crossed. Not until someone is sitting in front of you, spewing their feelings and begging for yours and all you can think is what a mess they’ve made in the place you’ve worked so hard to keep so tidy. 

You have the gentlest hands and when your words touch me, they do so in whispers.

Each time you pass me in the hallways of cyberspace and brush your arm against mine,
I stop and wait for my beating heart to steady itself.

You will never be mine. 
And you will never not be… 

“I’ve never met someone who can match up to you—and I don’t think I ever will. 

I can assure you that none of them take my breath away like you do.

And you really do.

People say it all the time: ”you took my breath away”

But you actually do.

I often forget to breathe around you.”