Grapeshot of birdshit splattered in my bike basket, from a turning metro bus a silver haired woman blew kisses to me, the baker on second ave cleans the window in sweeping arcs, the fresh baked bread heaving, breathing, on the shelf, in jest I try to escape, ready to play, the golden sphere chased me to Crosby street, hello spring, we’ve been waiting for you. 

Today at 8:30am I woke to the beating of rain on my window. Drew the blinds greeted with solemn grayish white clouds crawling in the sky. The American Elm, a sentinel standing guard, soaked luscious brown-black jutting into a ghostly daylight. Peered down East 7th street ending in a hazy stalemate, a swollen river its boundary. Sat at my desk with a jagged grin and read these befitting words to set my mind right for this forlorn New York day.

You tell yourself: I’ll be gone
To some other land, some other sea,
To a city lovelier far than this
Could ever have been or hoped to be
Where every step now tightens the noose:
A heart in a body buried and out of use: 
How long, how long must I be here
Confined among these dreary purlieus
Of the common mind? Wherever now I look
Black ruins of my life rise into view.
So many years have I been here
Spending and squandering, and nothing gained.
There’s no new land, my friend, no
New sea; for the city will follow you, 
In the same streets you’ll wander endlessly,
The same mental suburbs slip from youth to age,
In the same house go white at last -
The city is a cage
No other places, always this
Your earthly landfall, and no ship exists
To take you away from yourself Ah! don’t you see
Just as you ruined your life in this 
One plot of ground you’ve ruined its worth 
Everywhere now — over the whole earth?

- Constantine Cavafy: “The City”

derkreisel:

cafeparaacordarosmortos:

Fernando Pessoa descendo o Chiado (Lisboa) com Augusto Ferreira Gomes.

Fernando Pessoa strolling down Chiado Square (Lisbon), with his friend, journalist Augusto Ferreira Gomes

c. 1925

Almost makes you feel in his shoes

"I do think many writers have what you might call a demonic nature. They are always in trouble, you know, and not only while they’re writing or because they’re writing, but in every aspect of their lives, with marriage, love, business, money, everything. It’s all tied together, all part and parcel of the same thing. It’s an aspect of the creative personality. Not all creative personalities are this way, but some are."

http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4597/the-art-of-fiction-no-28-henry-miller

Short films at the Anthology Film Archives, cursing nyc can drivers that encroach on the cross walk when you have the green light, walking at breakneck speed while balancing a paper cup filled to the brim with piping hot coffee, the sky burnt orange at dusk, all equates bliss on a wintery New York City eve.
(at Anthology Film Archives)

"J’ai été bon quelquefois. Je ne m’en félicite pas. J’ai été méchant souvent; je ne m’en repens pas."

I am a pirate’s daughter

They call me the buccaneer lass

I love the wind

I love the swell

I Slice through the sea as through a throng

A throng, a throng

Quickly, quickly my pretty ship

We will give ‘em all the slip

And sail to San Francisco

Going by Valparaiso

To the Aleutian Isles

Across the Indian Sea

I want to go to the end of the world

To see if the earth is round.

Christmas day waning as dusk descends upon Tompkins Square Park.

O, I did come across the passage. You’re an eagle. 

“Where are we really going? Always home!” ~ Novalis

livelymorgue:

The weather was hazy and mild the Sunday after Thanksgiving in 1960, reaching 61.8 degrees in Manhattan. The Monday newspaper reported pleasant weather and rush-hour crowding on the rail and bus terminals. Photo: Robert Walker/The New York Times

Walking home in the eerie gleam of midnight and first snowfall in the East Village.