We Know Good

I know some.
I don’t know most.

I know a little bit about a lot,
but nothing about most.

I know things I know I don’t know
and don’t know things I know I know.

There are things I think I don’t know,
but I know them if I sit still.

There are things I think I’ve missed
that are under my nose.

To know so little about what matters most,
yet presume priorities.
Silly boy.

You think you know good.

Fun With Homophones

I was in Central park today, and I twisted my ankle, and I learned something new - icy stairs are only marginally better than icy stares.

Five-Seven-Five

Admiring fools
they emulate their idols
in all the wrong ways.

A Lamp And Some Wheat Paste

Alexander the Great was reported to have said, "Had I not been Alexander, I should have liked to be Diogenes."

Once, while Diogenes was sunning himself, Alexander came up to him and offered to grant him any request.

"Stand out of my light," he replied.

When asked why he went about with a lamp in broad daylight, Diogenes professed, "I am looking for an honest man."

I saw an advertisement posted on a news box last night, and it struck me as part of a blessed breed - unintentionally honest. It said:

Injury Benefits Lawyers

Read it to yourelf; It's all in the inflection.

How true. I guess this is a salve to all my tort-reform friends.

I've Got My Valentine's Day Heart On

Damn. A fat little curly-haired dude in a diaper rolled up on me tonight with a bow and some arrows.

I had to fuck him up.

Film at 11.

Don't Sleep In The Subway

I’m walking to potluck tonight, heading west on 23rd street, hyped up on a grande and playing Chatty Cathy with my good friend CM when I see the day's award winner. There's usually one a day, minimum.

Wheelchairs hardly rate a glance on 23rd street. Over the years, this strip seems to have attracted a lion’s share of social and charitable services. There’s the Veteran’s hospital, United Cerebral Palsy, an apartment & service building for the blind (accompanied by audible 'walk/don’t walk' signals on the corner of Sixth Avenue), senior citizen housing, a school for the deaf, a homeless drop-in center and so forth.

And for the truly challenged, there’s an art school.

So, the “why-I-love-this-town-today” award goes to the guy in the major hemi-powered wheelchair, zipping down the block with a woman riding in the seat alongside him, a young man standing, riding on the back of the chair, the driver screaming angrily (and loudly) at his ride-hitching companions about god knows what. But his two fellow travellers ignored him, and took the free lift east.

My only question…how much horsepower does this thing have to carry three people? Who pimped that ride?

I swear – there’s more incidental entertainment here than I could ever absorb.

And lest I forget, there's a service for my own particular "tribe of the challenged". Musicians can always sleep on the lovely lawn in Madison Square Park.

Lepent

I don’t trust anything true to reveal itself in anything short of an instant, or define itself in less than a lifetime.

Moments assert themselves, and they file themselves as they fall. I like to wait for the important details to be winnowed out by time.

I'm born and raised in NYC, and my entire life is informed by these little city moments that, if used in a movie, would be thought unrealistic or contrived. Sometimes they scream for my attention, and other times the just barely brush my radar. These times are part of why I doubt I could ever leave here.

A few years back, a well-dressed Korean evangelist roamed Times Square. Bullhorn in hand, he presented an exaggerated unfamiliararity with the english pronunciation of the letter “R”.

This assured his imprecations to “Lepent” would fall in the forest.

I loved this guy. I thought he was kinda nutty, but I dug what I thought he had - my limited scope called it "resolve."

I was jealous of his faith - how cool he was, in his rumpled black suit. He gets to shout at the top of his lungs, on the most crowded streetcorner in the world; nobody even seems to register that he's there, and it doesn't seem to matter to him one bit.

This appeals to me.

Lepent!