Wednesday, May 13, 2015

Lon-done. (a poogene fairytale)



hm.  not sure why i'm so overcome with emoji right about now. 

at first it was all glorious...

i remember the first day i arrived in london april 22nd, 2013.  i was walkin around and it was the first sunny spring day in london. 11 degrees centipede (that's 4 stone and 12 quid for all you uncultured americans) and i looked around in astonishment as everyone was walkin around practically nekkid. hm- i had no doubts that i was going to thoroughly relish this town.  i would love to go for a run (ok, i would hate to go for a run but it turned out to be a beautiful method to explore the new frontier) i would run in a new direction for 15 minutes and get lost in the dickensian, cobbled, london passageways thinking i could find my way back to shoreditch by just following the thames.  6 hours later i would return home on a night bus that could have got me home earlier had i taken it in the right direction.  i marveled at the architecture and buildings- for an american whose country is not even 250 years old, running into 11th century monuments like the tower of london less than a mile from my crib is as unbelievable as seeing a pterodactyl traversing the wild blue yonder.  mythical shit.  st. paul's cathedral, royal courts of justice, just to name of they few epic structures i was fortunate enough to pass on my daily commute.  random meanderings and closer inspection, i came across into gems like woven wooden structures inspired by chaucer and a florence nightengale statue whom until i read the plaque i thought was the tooth fairy.  i would go into an "oriental restaurant" and discuss with the waiter why he shouldn't use the word oriental to describe himself.  he looked at me bewildered as he handed me the menu which bore the name "Kung Food"  i surrendered and ordered the "authentic sichuan curry chips"..   overwhelmed with the novelty and the excitement that comes with it, life couldn't have been more beautiful and full of enthooze..

then something happened about two months in.  the whole time, i was also looking forward to seeing this girl i fell for a week before leaving NYC.  she came about to visit and although still special, it was completely different than what i had thought it was going to be.  we ended up not sleeping together and it had a strange affect on me which may have marked the beginning of the realization that i was not a tourist- that i had flown the coop fer reals.  she left and with her, my last tether to new york was gone and reality had set in.  coming from new york, where i have at least 100 friends that i can hang out with on any given night.  a city that i felt loved me as much as i loved it.  i now had no one...  

one of my biggest fears in life is being completely alone.  i mean i love living by myself, and i am usually at my happiest when not in a relationship- but i need my friends, homies, family.  i even think i've padded myself from this fear because all my life, i've collected people.  more and more and more friends everywhere to ensure i'd never be alone.  and now here i was, more alone than ever.  and at fucking 40.  not the easiest age to start over and make friends all over town.  especially in a city where i don't drink and the whole social culture revolves around pubs.  if not that, then the people i would meet out on the music/dance scene taking ketamine til 7am onna toozedee. 

it was one of the most difficult transitions of my life...  becoming- well, a loser in london.  i   never really thought i was good at anything in life except being good with people.  and i actually praised myself for that for, i thought of all the different forms of intelligence and wisdom- i thought that the navigation of human relation is one of the highest and most relevant in the day to day.  but this theory lie in stubborn opposition to what i was experiencing for months in london.  i tried to go out to parties alone to meet people.  i would go out to clubs alone, and the bouncer always teased "no friends?".  their inside...  "sure they are buddy"  was i just getting dissed by some pimply 23 year old going to a warehouse party?   i did meet some wonderful souls- they just never matured into a level of homie-ness that i longed for.  friday nights soon turned into watching "east enders" whilst clipping my toenails and manicuring my dead jasmine tree that i never watered.  except for my roommate.  my godsend co-worker roommate, friend, and sister whom i owe my sanity to for being the type of person to stay home every night and watch the same episode of family guy to keep me company.  also thank you pineapple-  5 classes a week.  5 hours of guaranteed happiness, escape, and solace every week to look forward too.  thank you work- for being the most beautiful people in london and making some of the working days some of the best days of my entire stay

a year went by and my visa was up and i couldn't wait to get back to new york.  i remember it exactly when i was booking my ticket and then i felt a rumbling deep inside my gut  and i knew it wasn't just the saag paneer i had consumed from the best chef of brick lane 2008 restaurant.  i knew there was something special about this city-  there had to be.  so many of my freak heroes come from this small concentrated island- jagger, bowie, shaun ryder, aldous huxley, peter sellers, vivienne westwood, alexander mcqueen.  deciding to follow my heart and not listen to my head, i decided right then and there to stay.  i learned that when going down a path and you reach a fork- your head knows to go one way but your heart tells you to go the other- most of the time if you follow your head you will make it safely to the comfort of your nest and all will be good as you know it and have always known it. if you follow your heart, you will run the risk of running into some thorny shrubs or a patch of poison oak.  however! there is that small chance that you will run into an isolated waterfall gloriously cascading into crystal pools of elation with naked nymphs that have like three boobs or some shit showering you with adulation on your hair and abs.

the point is- you can deal with some thorns in your underwear every now and then for a brief glimpse of paradise.

and so i stayed and things started to turn the corner.  i decided to look at london with a different set of eyes, and that's prolly all it was all along.  i finally met a homie who actually made repeated efforts to keep in contact with me and whom i absolutely cherished as well.  he left a few months later, but his push gave me the confidence to swim out from the shore a little further than what i thought was previously safe.  i stand eternally grateful for this and will love him forever.   as i explored east london further, i could feel myself start to fall in love.   i embraced dirty ass dalston, the filthy wick, getting up to no good in gillet square, cracking nitrous in allen gardens at 5am.  even that hot mess of the essex immigrants to sloppy shoreditch on a saturday became endearing to me.  then outwards and onwards from boogeying in brixton to traipsing in the wild bawdy heath.  i sojourned the world class museums such as my now all time favorite the V&A museum where upon entering to the right in the sculpture hall, you are greeted by an epic statue of samson about to strike down a fatal blow to his opponenet.  stepping out of south ken and up and over to hyde park where i would smell the fragrant meticulously manicured gardens in hyde park, then back to the east where the best open air gallery of street are the world is displayed all over my doorstep. 

and the sunshine days.  the not-as-rare-as-one-would-think days of sunshine splashed across the city which draws all its denizens to burst outside covered in stingy amounts of fabric and celebrate life itself.  these days are treated as absolute treasures and are never taken for granted as the british mayans pay their respects to the sun god.  indeed my favorite memories of london will be in these outstretched days of summer when dusk falls a little later than the rest of the universe and embraces the city in a contemplative light, and the people  retreat to the green spaces that carpet the city.  the glow sets a unifying temperament across the masses as they  laugh and dance in camaraderie, taking in their last sips of a bottle or a balloon depending on what park you are in.

but of course in the end what makes a city great is always the people.  and once i got past the stodgy imagery endowed upon the brits -built up in my own judgmental mind - they are some of the most beautiful freaks around.  new york will have my head, but in terms of edginess, east london is second to none. their colors, their hair, their kicks, blended with a history of impeccable tailoring. royal grace is worn proudly as a badge of eccentricity.  as glorified in the ghettos as it is with the fashion elite in the genius darlings of mcqueen and westwood- it is an expression of individuality i haven't seen since the glory days of my youth in san francisco. it was absolutely magical to see it exist again right on my doorstep.

and lastly i fucking fell in love...  madly.  with someone i never would have considered dating in the first place had i lived forever in the shallow perception of what i thought love is in new york.  with someone who was originally supposed to start out as a london tryst.  and now i'm leaving this country still in love with her.  as an aged, jaded romantic- i still find it remarkable that whilst in love, maybe the most special i've felt in all my life- i am leaving it to come home.  never in my life would i think i would walk away from it and yet here i go.  and i'm scared shitless i might lose it forever.

and now london- as you sing to me like a siren, softly crooning for my continued stay, i gotsta git awn home.  home to the city that has shown me as much love as much as i it.  

but i thank you so much, london.  i have never been this humbled and humiliated, or gained this much perspective, since i flew from the safety of my family’s nest.  you have shown and taught me so much about life that my soul will be connected to you forever, and I am beyond grateful to have called this place home for a part of my life.  and most importantly to all you axiomites around the globe i met along the way-  you've no idea what a lifeline you were to this korean monkey that may saunter around with a flair of confidence and surefootedness, but deep inside is scared of everything.  forever lost and just bumbling about as best he can, thank you for holding my hand and helping me stumble along this crazy rocky path called life and above all validating that one should follow their hearts.

one last story i'll share.  if you are a citizen of the law, i am making this up- but my last day in london, i had a triumphant romp in the heath on acid and it was absolutely beautiful.  i walked back enveloped in a general warm embrace that london was giving me on my final night.  i did wanna ciggy tho.  it was dark along regents canal and i saw some dood smoking.  i fished out a pound and walked up to him, and upon getting closer- i realized he was some homeless dood.  anyways he was smoking and i asked if i could buy a cigarette off him.  he was like, "i just get off the streets- i wish i could give you sumfin, but you could smoke a bit of this joint i scrambled together"  i called over gnocchi and introduced her to him, and then i introduced myself and shook his clammy, dirty hands firmly and i gave him the pound and we all enjoyed some tokes and enjoyed each others company.  when i departed, i took out some piece of paper from my wallet and told him that life has put me in a more fortunate situation for right now so here's this.  i had no idea what denomination it was because my ass was still tripping ballz, but i sincerely hope it was a twenny or some shit.  i walked down the path for about 15minutes contemplating how any of us could be put in that position at any time and i wonder when the last time he had a conversation with anyone- as he was extremely grateful for just giving him some time.  then we hear a hootin and hollerin from behind and we're bolth all spaced and thinkin that we were paranoid that someone might be chasin us...  indeed we turned around and he chased us all the way down to give us the remainder of his joint.  we embraced and i told him thank you and i love you and i wished him the best of luck in life.

it was the most beautiful human interaction that happened to me in a lawnnnggg ass time.

thank you london.

poo!

Sunday, April 07, 2013

an american poogene in london


dearest beautiful ones,

as many of you know, i am migrating to london for a little bit in a coupla weeks… apologies if this is the first you are hearing of it, but i was hoping the NY Times would cover it. when they didn’t approach me, i called them and offered to write it for them. when they hung up on me, i called back and asked how much it would cost to take out a small ad. when they told me how much it costs per letter- i beamed and now am proud to admit that my move is being covered in the NEW YORK TIMES people!!!! the headlines in tomorrow’s NEW YORK TIMES (in the classifieds under the “handyman wanted” section) reads very clearly:

“POOs mvn 2 LDN!”

knowing that i’m prolly gunna get all famous tomorrow from the press and such- i felt a responsibility to distance myself from the throes of americans with a repugnant knowledge of global geography. as such, i took it upon myself to dig up some intel on this little known region called great britain. so i went and looked at a map and... OmyG.- i don’t know if they covered this during one of the 1384 days I cut class to go to the bathroom and look at myself in the mirror- but i’ma drop some enlightenment on that ass. ya see, according to this here map, great britain (get this!) great britain… is a freakin ISLAND!!!!!! you’ll hafta accept my apologies if i just dislocated your jaw by causing it to drop to the floor, but I mean… are you kidding me? i know i promised some of you that i would be good about keeping in touch and i’d always be there for you, but - palm trees, coconuts, surf?!? i mean honestly dudes- good luck gettin’ a hold of me... i’ll be knockin back virgin pina coladas whilst knockin boots with virgin hula girls at the nearest luau because i mean- I can’t promise you they got paved roads much less innanet...

new york: although my stay in london is ephemeral as i will be on loan for a little over a year, as i was biking around this past weekend i was reminded of why i love this city so much and of all the things i will miss. i biked over the manhattan bridge to see the stunning skyline of lower manhattan set behind the brooklyn bridge. rolling along, a biggie song randomly popped up on my ipod and I coincidentally realize I’m in bed-stuy, where he’s from. i make my way to bushwick to fall asleep to a friends reading of bad new play in great new art space then zoom off to queens to eat at one of the best thai restaurants in the country for 10 bucks. across to harlem where i see beautiful children pour out of church spectacularly dressed in pastel spring suits, dresses, and bonnets. pass lincoln center where i once had my mind blown at the met opera by a million dollar production of verdi’s nabucco. only to have my mind blown even further later that night watching a singer belt her soul out to an audience of four in some downtown lounge i couldn’t even tell you the name of. continue on through strawberry fields in gorgeous central park where a buncha peeps are playing guitar and singing “a day in the life” and everyone passing by knows the lyrics and stops to sing along. and it’s not cheesy at all because it’s fucking beautiful. i passed by the metropolitan museum of art where during sandy I might have (depending on if your name begins with officer...) eaten some mushrooms and ended up having a deep conversation with the bronze bust of artemis for an hour as her face was melting. stopped at the whitney to inhale the american legends exhibit. took a breather at sutton place and looked across the 59th street bridge while scarfing down a bag of central park nutz, raced down to washington square park where some acrobatic kids were putting on a show in the foutnain that’s better than 80% of what’s in theaters. sat down across from a bench where two doods are making out next to an old chinese couple holding hands. raced down to soho where i bought some goji berries for 9 bucks. cruise down a couple more blocks to chinatown where i see the same goji berries in less fancy packaging for like 2 bucks. take a yoga class in the lower east side and look around think "yeah- i would probably sleep with just about everyone in this class" then finally retreating back to my beloved east village in tompkins square where the first tulips and daffodils are just peeping through the earth yearning to kiss the sunshine in the forthcoming weeks telling me spring is finally here…

and yet even with all this magnificence, it is absolutely nothing compared to the people that i’ve come to know and love here- my theater family, my local restaurants and bodega family, my work family, my co-op family, my neighborhoods stalwarts, and of course my friends. i can’t believe how incredibly blessed i am to have all you. even though I’ll be back next year sometime which will go by in a new york minute (and I fully recognize that I’m a self-indulgent drama queen here) it’s hard to imagine leaving this support structure that I love with every ounce of my soul even for the shortest of whiles.

butt sometimes it’s important to leave what’s comfortable.

*sigh*

aaaaanushow— whereas my luggage was going to consist of mostly business stuff- y’know my laptop, 15 cowboy boots, balloons, glitter, hair product, and booty shorts- now that i know i’m going to an island, alls i’m bringin is “the island boy starter kit for city slickers– deluxe edition” which i got for 39.97 at target. comes with a matching loincloth/bone amulet set and a spear with modular tips for hunting fish vs. boar! and for only 5 dollars more, they’ll monogram it for me! lawd I miss america already

-eh I’ll bring the hair product too.

bye new yawk! last day is 4/20 (heyyyyy 4/20!)

hi london! tarzan is en route!

i love you!

poo!


Sunday, April 15, 2012

BBG

spent the day looped out of my head today in the brooklyn botanical gardens and it was one of the most epic days i've had in a very long long while. totes up to murphbone and crew... shit was absolutely beautiful and i can't believe how much beauty there is in this world (when yer trippin balls), butt it's so glorious. i wanna do it forever...

Friday, April 13, 2012

finnerton

today i went to the whitness biennial and got loopy and hung out with finnerton and it was so dope to go with her and have her 'splain all that shit and notice shit i wouldn't have noticed. like that tripped out heavyweight champion of the freak world forrest bess who did all sorts of self-surgical procedures and their stuff.... i have to stop now because i have to write about today and i left off on this, but finnerton is making me courageous again and i love her for it...

Thursday, March 15, 2012

i thought i got fat

because i was very rotund. and then i farted and i realized i was skinny again.

phew!

Wednesday, February 01, 2012

YO! Is Mario coming to work today, cuz i heard that boy is out 6!

there was once a time when I was the lone bear in the axiom technology cave. you might be asking yourself “how poogene? how could one person possibly support 6 users?” well… i think we all know the answer to that one. since i am half-man / half-amazing, i was able to deftly respond to the 4 problems a week we were having. but then over the course of the next 5 years something unexpected happened and jolted me out of my SPANX® for Men. we grew at an alarming rate and thus more problems needed to be resolved, more solutions needed to be provided and I was not ready to just up and stop googling myself all day.
something had to be done- somebody had to make up for my slack…
peering frantically across the room, mine eyes landed on a grinning knave busting away at excel spreadsheets. his name was Mario Browne and he was the new accounting temp. he extended his hand out to greet me and i traced his hand up his arm and at the end was a smile as wide as the world wide web. well, I mean- his mouth isn’t actually on his shoulder, it’s on his face. i don’t mean that his arm comes out of his mouth, I’m just trying to be poeti-

anyways. dude- that’s not the point.… he joined me 6 years ago and i showed him everything i knew. 12 minutes later he asked if i knew anything else. he has a learning curve that’s so steep, it’s like more like a vertical line. as he quickly came to speed on helping out with tech, order was restored. i could finally go back to spending the precious, necessary hours in the bathroom looking at myself in the mirror.

boy wonder has more patience than Bellevue, more smarts than an ass-whoopin, and our attorneys adore him. as do we. as do i… he’s a huge part of our family and our culture. how axiom played a huge part in his personal journey from barbados is one of our best stories. i’m so glad we took a chance on this lanky 19 year old bajan. i’ve no idea where i’d be without him

happy six years mb.

i love you homey,

poo!

Monday, January 23, 2012