- Music:YACHT - Psychic City (Voodoo City) | Powered by Last.fm
It’s been
Ask-my-math-teacher-how-many-months
Since I’ve written a poem.
And now it’s 12 am on a Saturday and I’m
Painfully, surprisingly, irritatingly Sober.
It’s snowing outside
And for the first time in a long time it’s quiet enough to hear the snow fall.
I can actually hear the snow fall
Against my bedroom window
It is knocking,
Like tiny ice fists, challenging me to prove myself.
Tell us what you’re worth.
We only have 3 minutes to listen
So speak quickly.
I can’t do it.
I knew there was good reasoning behind my hatred of winter.
Before the ceremony, I wrap them in linens. This is to keep the smell of their rotting flesh from overpowering our residence. Many of the families that visit us do not own white cloth, and bring the bodies of their dead dressed in regular clothing. In these cases I drape them in white, cotton fabrics, because such is the custom. This is my personal task. I have chosen it myself. Sometimes a few of the others, noticing my fatigue from the previous day’s workload, will volunteer to help me; but typically I work in solitude. For the most part, the others understand this. “Narayan, you are so good at draping their cloaks. You make them look so fashionable,” they often joke at meal times. None of the men ever take their tasks seriously. This is a custom. By the time the dead arrive to us, their bodies are empty anyway. Whatever ghosts had once resided in their flesh are finally free to roam. Our laughter only guides them. We understand this, so we make sure to laugh often, and as loudly as possible.
In the mornings Anil, Kamala and I always wake early before the sun begins to peek over the brim of the earth. We walk barefoot, in silence, out into the cold. We process toward the grand cliff. Here we pray for several hours; we meditate upon our thoughts. We wait for the sun to greet us with its wisdom. It is always important to center one’s self and to find inner peace, but it is absolutely essential to do so on the days when we have to dispose of the dead.
After the others and I have finished preparing ourselves, it is time to prepare the bodies. We carry them out on stretchers. According to tradition we must pause, pray and bless the ceremony before we proceed up the mountain with the corpse and its family. Some of them do not have families. Some of them are dropped off at our doorsteps by passing wanderers who salvage the bodies from nearby caves. Many of them die alone; they commonly freeze to death in the middle of the night. They arrive to us, in various stages of decomposition, as innocent offerings for good karma. Few men visit us on our mountain for reasons other than death.
Once we arrive at the burial sight, silence momentarily swallows all those that are present. While this is not a particular tradition or custom, I have found it to simply be the way of the human race. In the moment when the procession transitions into the ceremony, there is always a pause. Perhaps this is the moment in which the living suddenly realize their proximity to death, and all collectively hold their breath as if in an attempt to fool the universe. Perhaps the silence is just a natural result of anticipation. Even still, perhaps the silence is the unconscious human reaction to the arrival of Death, itself. In the silent moment, only the surrounding prayer flags and the smoldering juniper whisper softly to each other. The rest of us quietly chime in with our mantras, chanting them aloud, offering our voices to the aether.
We finish our song and the heaviness breaks with the last note. I smile at Anil and Kamala as the three of us lay the bodies on the ground and begin to emancipate their limbs from the tightly draped linens. They are often naked and swollen. Many of them are covered in dark lesions and bruises which are either the cause of death or result from the long, rough journey up the mountain. Some of them have broken bones which have stiffened in their unnatural positions. They are ugly to look at, but we are used to the sight of them.
As Kamala pulls back and plunges a sharpened cleaver just above the right ankle, Anil looks over at me, smiles and opens his mouth to speak. “It is not so cold today. Yesterday was much worse. The winds have died down a bit.” I nod my head in agreement, as I dig my fingers into the cavernous chest, prying out the heart, lungs, and other various organs. The vultures begin to swarm all around us, but Anil fends them off with a large stick. It is not time yet, but these bird are beasts that know no patience. They screech and fight one another for easy access to the remains, while Kamala and I hurriedly finish up the customary dismemberment. With a few final slices and cracks of the tibia, I signal to the others and we step quickly away from the pieces.
The birds rush in with great determination. For the next few minutes there is no sound but that of flapping prayer flags, tearing flesh and the occasional cautionary screech. The bodies of the dead and all of their pieces disappear beneath the huge, black, feathered mass. We look on in silent, empty anticipation. After a few of the birds have gone, Kamala helps me collect what is left of the dead. Most of the time this consists of nothing more than a few bloody skeletons. We place the bones in a heap, pound them to small pieces with our mallets, mix them with barley flour and feed this to the smaller birds that have also come out to celebrate with us. Feeling the nearing end of our ceremony, Anil begins to crack jokes about the birds. Sometimes he can be mean but he is often very sad, so we have learned to look past his words and just enjoy his smile. “Look at that big ugly one over there. He looks like Shamar’s sister, Bayarmaa! See how his feathers look like patches of strange hair?” Anil often sees familiar faces in the vultures. He has a special bond with them, or perhaps he just has a keen eye for those types of details. The other monks talk jovially amongst themselves, as they collect what’s left of the ceremonial items. After we finish, we process back to the Monastery for our afternoon meal. I hope the cooks prepare soup. It has been weeks since I’ve had any. Today, I think, some soup would be nice.
New York City:
They are shipped to us in thick, black body-bags. The state policy on unclaimed bodies is one month. If after one month no one turns up to claim the deceased, then his/her remains are handed over to our bureau. A few years ago, these bodies used to be cremated and placed somewhere on file, but the storage facilities began to overflow and large-scale expansion became inevitable. With real estate being such a precious commodity in the city, the good mayor conceived a different way of dealing with the problem of unclaimed body disposal. That’s where the SBB (Sky Burial Bureau) comes in. Operating out of the observatory deck of the Empire State Building, our department specializes in the permanent disposal of the dead. We are the nation’s first, successful federal agency of Deceased Resident Recycling. As a fully functional program of the U.S. government, our actions and procedures are simple, yet detailed and formal.
Most mornings start off the same way and generally run smoothly, depending on how much coffee I have before arriving to work. “Hey Nathan, did you hear about the six car pileup on the West Side Drive this morning? Sounds like it’s going to be a hectic day.” Cameron jokes, rushing past me with a stack of freshly photo copied paperwork. Around here, paperwork is dreaded but inevitable. For every body we dispose of there is an entire folder detailing that body’s entire medical, toxic, and geographic history. Where it was discovered; what drugs/chemicals were in it; and what the cause of death was. This is all for legal purposes. Though rare, occasionally we do get a visit from some disgruntled family coming to claim their son or daughter a week too late. The paperwork is what insures our asses are not liable for any glitches in the system.
Preparation of the bodies is usually done by our Chief of Postmortem Medicine, Andrew. His job title sounds fancy, like it would require one to possess vast amounts of textbook knowledge about stages of decomposition and such, but in reality Andrew just makes sure all the paperwork has cleared before he sends the bodies up to the observatory floor for their final stage of recycling. All of the bodies that come through our office doors are unclaimed. Generally they once belonged to the homeless. Most of these people are discovered dead on park benches and under bridges. Lots of times they freeze to death or die of drug overdoses only to be found the next morning by cops on patrol. Rarely do they have any families. Most of the time, the only people to stop into our offices are EMS workers that cart the bodies in from their ambulances.
Once a body arrives to the observatory floor, it is set to rest in the waiting room- a giant refrigerated storage compartment- to await its turn for disposal. Statistically the waiting room often ironically fills to maximum capacity around the holidays. There is something about the period from November to January that makes people die in greater numbers. In the event that the waiting room overcrowds, the bodies are then stacked atop one another and extra ice is added. Using this method, about 400 bodies can be squeezed into the room, sometimes more if a few of the bodies are children or little people. We have petitioned City Hall for a bigger budget in order to expand our facilities, but as with all other things, it takes months to get anyone’s attention over in the Mayor’s office.
A body is typically in the waiting stage anywhere from a few hours to three days maximum. Once it is brought out, Cameron and I (aided, out of office tradition, by the melodious sounds of AC/DC or Led Zeppelin) work together to dismember it. There is no pretty way to describe this, except to say that the torso, head, and limbs are separated from one another. The reason for dismemberment is simple: it grants the birds easier access to the remains and makes the entire process of feeding a lot simpler. The birds are our main worry for the final stages of corpse recycling. We have taken several measures to ensure their safety and protection. In 2007, under the Sacred Bird Protection Act, the state of New York acknowledged that any intention to kill or harm a vulture was unlawful and punishable by up to 50 years in a federal prison. Today over fourteen thousand vultures inhabit New York City and its surrounding boroughs (not including the few kept, out of tradition, at the Bronx Zoo.)
The vultures can rip about 90% of the flesh off a body in under twenty minutes. Gathering in large, black, looming swarms they settle atop the observatory’s second and third balconies where the body pieces are laid out. After a feeding, Cameron, Andrew and I collect what is left of the skeletons, grind up the bones with some barley flour and the resulting paste, which is completely edible, is also fed to the other city birds. Some is actually canned and shipped to neighboring zoos and pet shops. One can typically sells for about $5 but our offices offer bulk sales pricing as well.
The field of Deceased Resident Recycling is quickly becoming a popular, largely in-demand profession, with our annual intern application numbers often exceeding those of Teen Vogue and The New York Times. The Sky Burial business itself, is also a busy one. In a typical morning, if Cameron, Andrew and I are all present, we can generally recycle up to ten bodies between the hours of 8A.M.-12P.M. The work itself is a little gruesome at first, but for most it surprisingly comes very naturally. Incidentally none of us are psycho murderers. As far as I know only Andrew is medicated for Depression, and this has nothing to do with his choice of profession.
After a busy day of corpse disposal, we often head out to the bar or grab some dinner. All of the guys that work in the office are normal, stereotypical people. Many of us are fathers and husbands that clock out and go home to our families. We do average things like help our daughters with math homework, fix leaky faucets for our wives, and, as a timeless tradition, we all get together for poker nights on Fridays. Tonight, I believe we have plans to head over to Souen, a great vegan restaurant down in SoHo. I’ve heard that the place gets great reviews. I hope they have soup. Today, I think some soup would be lovely.
I eat and eat and nothing fills me. Nothing even has a taste. This great emptiness inside of me is still there. This desire to experience any one of my five senses burns like wildfire in the pit of my being.
I want someone to explain to me this reality.
I want spinach and cheese ravioli.
It kind of makes you think about what we expect from happiness, doesn't it?
We don't even realize how naturally we just assume that one can only be happy with a 9-4, 401-K job.
We forget how much joy the simple act of existance can bring us.
- Music:Santogold - My Superman | Powered by Last.fm
I fell asleep on the bus
whilst sitting next to a stranger.
I awoke to find myself biting into the hot dog I was dreaming about.
That night I fell asleep laughing at the ridiculousness of my reality.
Tonight, I realized...
... I'm still laughing.
I'm going to write a goddamn good story.
- Music:"More Than a Woman" - Aaliyah
It seems like my life only teeters between extremes, and never finds a happy medium.
My eye has been twitching for four days from all the stress.
I can not sleep.
Food? What's that?
cartoon courtesy of:
http://www.picturesforsadchildren.com/
http://www.picturesforsadchildren.com/
http://www.picturesforsadchildren.com/
- Music:Shadow Dancer - Dirt Box | Powered by Last.fm
"Wild, dark times are rumbling toward us, and the prophet who wishes to write a new apocalypse will have to invent entirely new beasts, and beasts so terrible that the ancient animal symbols of St. John will seem like cooing doves and cupids in comparison."
- HEINRICH HEINE, "Lutetia; or, Paris," Augsberg Gazette, 1842
Everyone keeps telling me that the world is ending. They keep talking about how the Earth will crumble away beneath us. Everyone's positive that one day they'll wake up to legions of beasts that will enslave them. The holy texts have become compasses for the masses of blind believers. Everyone's really well versed in Mayan history all of a sudden. It's like being back in 7th grade when everyone decided to read Tolkien and suddenly kids at recess were speaking Elfish to me. I feel like I missed the boat on this apocalyptic obsession. Actually, I feel like everyone else might be missing the boat on the reality of this apocalyptic obsession.
If the end of the world is upon us (which it might very well be) I don't see it coming in the form of a rainbow colored quad-cavalry, or a meteor the size of the Sun, or even the death of the Sun itself. If the end of the world is coming at all, I feel like it will ride in on the wings of the Twilight Saga. It will approach holding hands with Brangelina, and Oprah riding piggyback. The epicenter of the apocalypse will probably be Hollywood, not Mecca or Vatican City. We probably won't die kicking and screaming or be dragged out by some multi-headed monster. Quite realistically, majority of us probably won't even notice the arrival of the apocalypse at all. It will just be another Millennium fad like Y2K, hating Bush, or the entire Mac corporation.
I don't know why people always just naturally expect these life-altering, radical changes to ensue. (Hey, everyone expected Jesus to be a King or a Military leader, right?) Maybe we're all just naturally melodramatic. Maybe we're all just starved for excitement, even in it's most masochistic forms. Maybe we're all downright crazy or bored or stupid; and this is exactly why we probably wouldn't recognize Armageddon if it slapped us across the face with a pimp glove. That's because nobody thinks anymore. It has become 'un-cool' to engage one's mind in anything other than the memorization of really shitty radio music. (What the fuck is Lady GaGa even saying in that new song?) Everyone's an expert on the intricacies (or lack there of) of Edward Cullen and his relationship to Bella, but no one has the slightest clue who Trujillo Molina was (and he was a real vampire with a far more interesting relationship to women.)
The apocalypse probably won't be the mass slaughter of the human race, it might just be the slow eradication of the human brain. A devolution of sorts. One that leaves us crying at night about the divorce of Jon & Kate, while 18 year old G.I.s point guns at 12 year old terrorists. Everyone knows about the Kanye and Taylor Swift trauma, but how many people stop to think about the reality that there are far worse things being done to 19 year old girls than the stealing of their VMA thunder? What about the stealing of their virginities, their families, their lives? While people argue over whether the Octomom should have been legally allowed to have an abortion, there are 16 year old girls performing their own wire-hangar abortions in the back rooms of brothels while on 15 minute breaks from her 40 clients a day. No politics involved. And people are seriously anticipating the arrival of Dooms Day to be ushered in with all the Earth's volcanoes erupting in perfect harmony? I am baffled.
There are a dozen (give or take) dead at Fort Hood and we've declared a National State of Mourning. When did we ever fly our flag at half mast for the Cambodian or Rwandan genocides? Being a vegan who eats only locally grown produce has become a must for all the Indie kids, because you know, it's more important to picket for the rights of chickens than donate money to purchase a cow or a goat for some Podunk little village in the hills of the Andes. The swollen-bellied Nigerians need to understand that fish have feelings too! We blindly protest (dressed, of course, in our h&m skinny jeans stitched together by 8 year olds in Taiwan) Wal*Mart as being the sole beacon of the conservative movement, but our protest rallies won't offer new jobs to the teenage single mothers cleaning up aisle 4, nor will they reach deep enough to affect the politics of China that fuel the fire of the slave shop ovens. We prefer to vote on Oprah's karaoke contest or American idol than on our own Presidential Elections. If you even know who Nicolas Sarkozy is, you're probably a bigger expert on his sexual affairs than his political ones. We all knew who Michelle Obama was wearing on Inauguration day because as "artists" we have to be well versed in fashion's top dogs; but less than 2% of us really understood Elizabeth Alexander's Poem (or even knew there was a poem.) That wasn't on the front cover of the Times for some reason.
I don't doubt for a second that an apocalypse is threatening the entire human race. I don't doubt the Mayans or the Christians or the Muslims. I trust all the prophets, both ancient and contemporary. What I don't trust is our blind acceptance of everything around us. From Lil Wayne lyrics to Bukowski poems, from the South Bronx to the Bel-Air; everyone is slowly settling into this vegetative state of existence. We function solely in mobs. Our default thought process is defined by group mentality. If an apocalypse is upon us, it will simply be the annihilation of the individual; and once the individual is gone, then the essence of humanity has died away. I'm not afraid of the Biblical apocalypse. I'm not afraid that the beasts will come and mark us, or that the Earth will collide with a black hole and we'll all be torn in half by polar gravitational forces, or that the oceans will flood our cities, or that the Sun will die and we'll collectively freeze to death in minutes. What I truly do fear, is that by the time all of these things start to happen there won't even be anything left of us that will be worth saving.
OMG guess what!.....
I HAVE A NEW BLOG!
(Filled with Daily Stream of Consciousness Writing Excercizes)
sleepingairplanepilot.blogspot.com/
sleepingairplanepilot.blogspot.com/
sleepingairplanepilot.blogspot.com/
1. No No No. Stop worrying. I'm not leaving LiveJournal. This will still contain my (not- so) regular poetry/prose posts.
2. Yep. Yep. Yep. That's a picture of me. I know you're jealous of my shoes. It's okay. I don't really blame you at all ;]
- Music:Cold War Kids - Rubidoux | Powered by Last.fm
I’ve been listening to Bob Marley all day. There’s something exceptionally beautiful in the simplicity of his words, and of the seriousness of his message. Sometimes I wish I loved more than I do. Sometimes I wish I could just hug a stranger or two because I think people need hugs a lot more often than they are willing to admit. I wish I was a child. Children understand things. They speak the language of kindness fluently. The small boy on the bus understood that. This is why he smiled and waved goodbye to the man that kept him from losing his balance when the driver stopped short at a light. Children understand a lot more than we are willing to admit. I don’t understand why everyone is so afraid to admit things. Why the essence of being human is slowly becoming a taboo. I don’t understand much, but I think about a whole lot. I get tired of thinking. Sometimes in my sleep I can hear my thoughts. They are the background music to my dreams. They are alive inside of me. They are just like children. Sometimes I think they, too, understand much more than I give them credit for. I wonder if they will make it in this world. I wonder if I will make it in this world. Most of the time I can feel death breathing down my neck; but then there are days where Bob Marley is on replay and I remember that there is such a thing as love. On these days I feel at peace. On these days I feel like a child with a plethora of knowledge that I, myself, don’t quite understand. One day I might, but for now my belly is filled with love, and for now that is just enough for me to make it to tomorrow.
- Music:"No Woman Don't Cry" - Bob Marley
Just Luck
the Human Body
a
n
i
p
u
l
a
t
i
n
g
the World
is a Happy Accident.
the Blind Genius is Cancer;
a Language Disease.
Abstract Animal.
You don't learn to love yourself by hating everyone else.
Different people bring out different parts of your character.
Different parts of your character define the choices you make.
Sometimes you really should talk to strangers.
Sometimes strangers are a lot like drugs or god.
They can offer you perspectives about the world that you don't normally experience.
You should make the effort to get lost somewhere at least once a year.
Sometimes getting lost is the only way to get you to be proactive.
Sometimes getting lost is the only way to keep you from acting.
When someone tells you that they want to die
It's never a good idea to list reasons why life is worth living, because this is an opinion
But always a good idea to remind them that they're already in the process of dying, because this is a fact.
- Music:"Music When The Lights Go Out" - The Libertines
Upon stepping out of the train, it was brought to my attention almost immediately that suddenly I was cold...
Posted via LiveJournal.app.
Once We Were Mice
We sat together, trembling in the corner like Church mice.
Outside the thunder rumbled so hard, it shook my bones.
I was nine. She was seven. God was one and a half.
We hugged our skinned knees close to our hour-glass chests,
pressed our crimson ears against the cold bathroom door,
and tried to ration our breaths, praying the eye of the storm wouldn’t spot us.
This is my oldest memory of the two of us.
Back when we listened to Aaliyah and both had pet mice.
Back when life was simple and every heart was an open door.
Back when we picked at our scabs and didn’t care about broken bones.
We played freeze tag and collected lost teeth in plastic treasure chests.
We whittled the lunch table barter down to one formula: half for half.
We ate Halloween candy in pounds, only to regurgitate half.
Nothing intimidated or frightened the two of us,
except maybe the dark. But we learned to fill our chests
with air, close our eyes and run. Wild as bats, blind as mice.
As children we trusted our bodies to deliver us. We had faith in our bones.
We didn’t understand maps but somehow always made it to the front door.
Home was always just a bike ride away. We never locked the front door.
We knew all the words to the Lord’s Prayer, but understood only half.
The cold never bothered us. We used storybook pages to insulate our bones.
Failure, heartbreak, and tragedy were foreign to us.
My mother defined tragedy when she dropped a suitcase on one of my mice.
That day I cried so hard, I lit a fire big enough to fill both of our chests.
That day we sat on my steps and heaved sob prayers from our chests.
I buried his small, furry body by the back door.
I turned seventeen. She turned fifteen. God was dead, so were the mice.
I stayed in New York. She moved farther east. Fifty three and a half
miles of concrete interstate and double yellow line separated us.
Our bodies grew thicker, wider in the hip bones.
Our bodies grew thinner, so the boys could count our rib bones.
The muscles of our hearts began to fill out our chests.
Leaden with memories. Memory is what became of us.
We left home. Wandered from door to door,
Wandered empty and hollow. We became half
the children we had once been. Lost mice.
The day the thunder rattled our bones, we locked the bathroom door.
The clocks in our chests split time down the middle, perfectly in half.
The storm passed over us blindly. By then, we were nothing but dead mice.
"You know, I feel like in the city, I spend 70% of my day walking somewhere."
"Yeah, but when I'm in Westchester I spend 70% of my day driving somewhere."
'Round here, we spend our entire lives in transit. We burn like Bibles, existing like nothing but storybook mixtures of fiction and history. Stitched together by spines that break all too easily, we live according to the contract articles of consolidation. Always squeezing lives into over-priced flats. Always squeezing lifetimes into ten year intervals. Mad hatter Manhattanites, we speak in riddles. Tongues laden with speech thicker than rush hour traffic. Confuddled yet profound. We work this city, shake it dry, drink it down in Grande sized Starbuck's cups. We are filleal strangers, we are foreign relatives. Quick tempered, we are always mad, in all the best of ways.
- Music:"Birthday, For Jenn" - Andrea Gibson
I haven't posted in a while & i have no new art to give to you; so I'm going to borrow from
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
andacameralenseand use other people's art right now. *Turns on shuffle* Here are some lyrics. Guess who:
1. "If I let you know you can't tell nobody. I'm talkin' bout nobody. Are you responsible? Boy I gotta watch my back, cause I'm not just anybody."
2. "Maybe I think you're cute and funny? Maybe I wanna do what bunnies do with you, if you know what I mean."
3. "And do you know why she will break down and cry? She says: adioses, adio-o-os. Goodbye."
4. "Confessedly this is the first time I've loved you; and God, I mean it. God I mean it. I hope that I mean it."
5. "Drive faster, boy."
6. "She gave me the Queen. She gave me the King. She was wheelin' & dealin', just doin' her thing."
7. "Show me how you stole away my heart, all over again."8. "Hold my hand inside your hands. I need someone who understands. I need someone, someone who hears. For you I've waited all these years." 'Till Kingdom Come' - Coldplaydayalives
9. "Music is your only friend until the end."10. "I am not your friend. I am just a man who knows how it feels. I am not your friend. I'm not your lover. I'm not you family, yeah!" 'Sowing Season (Yeah)' - Brand Newarsonist_
11. "I want to steal your innoncence. To me, my life, it don't make no sense. Just $5 won't get me far. Last resort is to steal your car."
12. "You're too young to be this empty girl. I'll prepare you for this sick, dark world. Know that you will be my downfall, but I call & I call & I call"13. "I'm alright in bed but I'm better with a pen." 'Fame < Infamy' - Fall Out Boyandacameralense
14. "All the lonley people- where do they all come from? All the lonley people- where do they all belong?" 'Eleanor Rigby' - The Beatleshomgsh
15. "My friends, they understand me better but they don't whisper goodnight. I want a loverand a sister but we know that's not right"
16. "Believe in me. Help me believe in anything. Cause I wanna be someone who believes."
17. "I don't mean to seem like I care about material things (like a social status) I just want 4 walls & adobe slats for my girls. woo!"
18. "She says: 'if i leave before you, darling, don't you waste me in the ground.'" 'Naked As We Came' - Iron and Winesavage_daz
19. "You walk up the stairs, see the French kids by the door. Up one more flight, see the Buddah on the second floor."
20. "Oh I'll be the one who'll break my heart. I'll be the one to hold the gun. I know more than I knew before."
- Music:"I'm Scared" - Duffy
