Forty Four

Forty Four Self Portrait by vagabond ©

A few things you should know about me…

i want to be an artist… i am an artist but being an artist is to be in a constant state of creation… being in a constant state of creation is to be in a state of desire, so i want to be an artist… i don’t want a career… i don’t even know what a career is… i heard it has something to do with money… but i hate money, money can go fuck itself… it’s a waste of fucken time… it’s a hamster wheel… a greyhound chasing a mechanical rabbit while the big boys place bets… a merry-go-round they won’t let you get off and the dj only has one record and he keeps playing it over and over… besides i want to be good and the hate of all money is the root of all good…

i fear, fear…

if i wasn’t so talented i would have killed somebody or a few somebodies long ago… someone important, someone who has it coming, someone who knows they should die for the shit they’ve done, someone who went out of the way to make the world worse than it already is because they’re better off for it, that kind of somebody, the kind of somebody that when they’re killed the other somebodies start to get scared but not scared enough to stop making life a misery for everyone else… ok, maybe not scared but at least nervous… it’s a long list i keep and someday i’m going to write it down… (it’s not safe to do so now you can be arrested for that kind of thing and me and authority had a bad break up years ago and prison would only bring us back together – but not in a good way)

art is the process of me trying to figure something out…

i’m not that smart but i try… i only finished high school and only on the advice of my parents who love me. but i didn’t let it stick… i took m. twain’s advice and didn’t let my schooling interfere with my eduction… i stay restless, do my best not to respect borders between nations, claim no destination, although i have been known to check my baggage and claim it later… curiosity has corrupted the better of me. the other parts are wanted by the cops and the tax department but i’m doing my best and leading by example by ignoring them… hopefully they’ll get the message and give up one day… there are few floors that i will not sleep on for a sunset in another part of the world or to see the moon from another angle on this blue-green marble. what i’m trying to say is that i like to travel… my chosen name is vagabond – no it’s not legal and if i had it my way nothing about me would be legal, legality is for those who don’t know better. i’m not smart but i know better and i try… schooling is a building with walls and doors and floors and windows and labs and gym and cafeteria and an auditorium and a principals offices… education is an open road and you learn something every time you’re on foreign ground… sometimes you’re asked to show your papers or your passport or your identification… sometimes you get lucky and they treat you like a human being and they just leave you alone to wander and wonder… and without a set destination the journey can take you… as opposed to you trying to take it…

when i die play the mix tape i made just for the occasion…

i want a jazz funeral and a second line parade with um-ber-ellas and hired professional mourners to make it look good, to fill the street, but don’t get a permit, just take over the streets, encourage others to join in as you pass them by, invite them to partake in the joyful defiance of traffic regulations, but for god’s sake don’t tell them it’s a funeral, it’ll only confuse the proceedings… scatter my ashes off the coast of coney island, let me become a part of the ocean, let the riptide take me to places unknown… then take three rides ride on the cyclone. once to shake the sadness from your bones, a second to shake the melancholy from your souls and a third time just to shake the happiness of living back in… and remember me only when you ride deno’s wonder wheel at that magic hour when the street lights come up but the sun hasn’t dipped below the ocean just yet and the orange at the horizon fades to light blue and then to ink blue and when you reach the apex of deno’s wonder wheel look out toward the atlantic…

you may see me in silhouette dancing on the razor blade that divides the sea from the sky…
- vagabond

Shortlink: http://wp.me/p1eniL-Qe

A Good Night

Drive by bridge shot by vagabond ©

One of those beautiful nights with nothing but this exquisite pain of living as I drive around really listening to the music speak to me…—
vagabond (@vgbnd) May 12, 2012

Good driving tonight windows down feeling the cool night air & my dog defying speed with her head out the window & the music moving thru me.—
vagabond (@vgbnd) May 12, 2012

The cop with the flashing lights can't stop me. I'm in sync with the pain & beauty of things as I keep a steady 65. I'm untouchable tonight.—
vagabond (@vgbnd) May 12, 2012

 

Ol’ School Williamsburg Brooklyn Summer Night Score

Williamsburg Brooklyn dream by vagabond ©

My grandparents are from a small mountain town in the center of Puerto Rico so high up into the mountains that they used to say the only way to get closer to God in heaven was to die. The Spanish colonizers called it Aibonito, (‘Oh how beautiful’) but some say the original name of the town came from a Taino cacique named Jatibonicu. A long way from Puerto Rico they came to the united states, my grandfather to work in a silver factory and my grandmother to clean houses for the rich. With money they saved they bought a brownstone on Penn Street in Williamsburg Brooklyn. My uncle lived upstairs and my cousins and i would play on the stairs between the first and second floor or in the modest backyard or in the front. Then they sold that building and bought one on Manhattan Avenue between Montrose & Meserole.

i remember when my grandparents rented the first floor store at 139 Manhattan Avenue to a free lunch program and me and my cousins would steal pineapple juice in wide-mouthed plastic cups with foil covers that you peeled off to drink and ate white bread sandwiches that had a single slice of meat and a single slice of cheese right out of the cellophane wrappers they were in. Years later the store was converted to a ground floor apartment so my grandparents didn’t need to climb the stairs to the second floor.

Two of my aunts and uncles bought buildings on that same block and i spent my summers in Williamsburg with my cousins but i slept in my grandmothers house. i remember those hot summer nights with a fan that moved hot air around the room “porque no tienen aire” with the window open and the gentlest of breezes barely blowing open the see-thru curtains, as i lay on a 50-50 blend of cool polyester cotton sheets that covered over my grandmother’s plastic slipcovered couch to keep my sweat and my skin from sticking. Laying on an old flat lumpy pillow with a pillowcase that didn’t match the sheets and everything smelled of fabric softener from Grand Street. i remember the amber street light cascading into the window and casting odd shadows from the ornate fake antique lamps and the elephant statue figurines on the coffee table and the shelf my grandmother kept the tv on surrounded by graduation pictures and wedding portraits of her children and grandchildren in large frames.

i remember listening to the sounds of Williamsburg outside that first floor window. The hushed soft tones of gentle late night conversations murmured by junkies excited because they had just copped. Willie’s trombone and Hector’s vocals blaring from a car with the windows rolled down. The silence and the rustle of the blowing curtains. Then the rising wail of a distant fire engine and subsequent fading. Then the ambulance siren that suddenly went silent pulling into the Emergency Room at Woodhull Hospital. Then it was just the silence and knowing the fan was on its way to turn back to you from the sound of the blades against the air. Then a police car came speeding down Manhattan Avenue with no siren and it ran the light at Montrose with lights flashing cutting through shadows in my grandmother’s living room with the sound of the revving engine pushing the quiet aside as they tried to sneak up on a crime in progress, by taking the light at Meserole without slowing down.

Listening to the stillness of the quiet as the circulator on the freezer in the kitchen kicked in and then my attention shifted to a broken wine bottle that comes in a twist cap as two stumbling winos carry each other down the block grumbling in a language only they understand. Followed by another silence that has me adjusting the pillow and the sheet with the plastic on the sofa rubbing up against itself. Then from around the corner on Montrose the brothers come with a boombox blaring out a tape of the WBLS Mr.Magic rap-attack master-mix from earlier in the night. From the opposite end on Meserole the boyfriend whistling for ‘Cookie’ and Cookie’s harsh reply from down the block in front of PS 250 – ‘WHA? I WAS JUST OVER THERE!’. Then more silence that’s punctured by the sitck-up kid who ran past the window in silence but stepped hard on the sidewalk metal gates that opened to the basement.

Then the silence punctuated by the ticking clock on the wall. Then the lovers quarrel on the corner that no one can make out until it gets closer and even though the story is in the middle for me it begins with her crying ‘WHY DO YOU ALWAYS HAVE TO BE LIKE THAT?’ and him saying ‘CAUSE YOU DON’T KNOW HOW TO ACT!’ and he walks away telling her ‘GO BACK TO THE HOUSE!’ as he feigns concern to conceal frustration ‘PLEASE JUST GO HOME! JUST GO BACK TO THE HOUSE!’ and it ends with her sobbing and her girlfriend and her sister comforting her as they pass the window. Then it gets quiet and i can clearly hear my uncle walking across the floor upstairs to get a glass of water from the kitchen followed by rummaging rats under the window knocking over a metal garbage can cover that spins three times on the concrete before it stops. Then it’s cats from Lindsey Projects bragging about runnin’ some niggas shit as they split the profits, unaware that i am lying on the couch in the dark and in order to not be a witness i roll over and pretend to sleep as they argue over who should keep the gold chain. Then the silence builds again and falls away with the distant dialogue of gunshots from Gra-han and the sporadic outburst reply that leaves you wondering when the silence will come. And then it comes suddenly that awkward silence afterwards that always seems to lasts longer than usual while you try and shake the dread of the potential outcome while the lack of a police siren to follow speaks volumes in the silence. i fill in the gaps to all these stories with a movie that plays in my head while the J train screeches over Broadway around that curve in the tracks over by Manhattan Avenue above where you caught the double G.

Williamsburg Brooklyn was a dangerous place in those days. But i felt safe in my grandfather’s house lying on my grandmother’s plastic slipcover protected couch on cool clean sheets with only a brick wall and a window to protect me from the movie that accompanied the Williamsburg Brooklyn summer night score. Watching headlights from cars creep in the window and crawl across the wall and up to the ceiling and down the other wall and then out the window again. Then the alley cat silhouette jumping up on the window sill and walking regally across the window and stretching out before lying down in vigilance. When sleep finally came the movie in my head kept playing to become a dream while the noise of the world outside my grandparents living room first floor window provided the score and i dreamed of Williamsburg Brooklyn because it was not possible to dream anything else.

- vagabond

Ol' School Williamsburg Brooklyn Summer Night Score on Nothing To Be Gained Here nothingtobegainedhere.wordpress.com #nothingtobegainedhere—
vagabond (@vgbnd) June 29, 2011

A Small But Irresponsible Role

vagabond’s hands up by Sam Lahoz

A Small But Irresponsible Role

Unlawful And Disorderly. Running time 55 minutes 10 seconds. Season six. Episode four. Countdown from ten seconds on the last commercial and fade from black into the show opener.

SCENE ONE
i refuse to go to court when summoned on the summons i get. i usually go when the warrant is used as an apb and the next time i’m stopped by the puh-leez they arrest me and they escort me to court like i’m Al fucken Capone. The judge will have an exasperated look on his face, the assistant da will feel satiated, the cop will get a pat on his head.

CUT TO:
The show opening credits theme music with a montage of the just-us shit-stem in full affect. (The show is about me but i am not in the opening credits.) Freeze frame zoom in of the judge, the assistant da and the cop on the steps of a court house with a superimposed american flag blowing over them and the title Unawful and Disorderly. Again i am nowhere to be found in the closing shot even though i came up with the title for the show.

COMMERCIAL BREAK. This part of the show is paid for by Tylenol, Chevrolet, McDonald’s, the Gap, the US Army, and Master Card because it’s for everything else.

SCENE TWO: FLASHBACK
Because they caught me flaunting their law, they caught me not giving a fuck. They caught me when i was headed east on first avenue making that left on twenty-third street to go north. It’s a new regulation. The sign had been there for a year (so they say). I have been driving on twenty-third street going east to first avenue for 23 years but not in the past year so i guess i never looked for it. Besides it didn’t make sense to make a no left turn on first avenue from east bound on twenty-third street. So fuck it.

COMMERCIAL BREAK. This time the preceding part of the show is paid for by Cialis, Ford, Burger King, Old Navy, the US Navy, American Airlines and Clean Coal.

SCENE THREE
The judge, the assistant da, the cop will all feel like something has been accomplished, like they’re straightening out something crooked. The world has been put to right by putting a foot in my ass with the enforcing of the misdemeanors that make the world go round.

It’s no effort on my part to feel disinterested by it all, no effort at all. The effort is all in the shaping of my rage into an aura of violence. i do this because they have not yet found a way to outlaw an aura of violence. i know this because if it were against the law i would have been charged, happily pled guilty and done the time. They have also not yet outlawed rage but then again those laws could be on the books and these judicial clowns may not know that and so i may be getting away with it based on their ignorance.

Either way i do my best to inflate my aura to let this violence fill the court room to let them sow the seed they planted. All the while i’m polite and outwardly compliant, the aura of my rage is blooming into a psychic violence. This is confusing for them and if the docket weren’t full with a long list of misdemeanor that need to be charged, they would figure it out, but who has time to prosecute anger? That should have been handled earlier with a beating by the cop for “resisting arrest”, but unfortunately, that ship, has sailed now.

COMMERCIAL BREAK. This portion of the show brought to you by a reality cop show, Citibank, a reality show about someone who got famous for being on a reality show, Verizion, a reality show about people who don’t get along as roommates and Pork, the other white meat.

SCENE FOUR
Because i’m a bit player in this badly written shit-com and this story is about me, it’s more than irksome to see the judge and the assistant da and the cop get all the shine. They all have starring roles despite their obvious lack of talent. Cue the fucken laugh track.

Three hours, twelve hours, twenty-six hours of life that i’ll never get back. i could have been illegally painting the side of a wall and watching it dry. i could have been reading Traffic Violations by Rev. Pedro Pietri. (They don’t let you read in court, if they catch you they reprimand you and if you do it again because you forgot because it’s sooooooo fucken boring in court then they take your book away and the bailiff burns it.) i could be at the movies. i could be eating a ham and cheese sandwich. i could be at home with my dog licking my face. i could be driving around NYC blissfully breaking more laws in an unaware state as i listen to RICANSTRUCTION. But nooooooo, i have to be in court with the seconds that make up my minutes that make up my hours that make up my days that make up my life. All wasted never to be seen or had again.

Forgot to go to a COMMERCIAL BREAK. This part of the show is brought to you by my fuck you to the state.

SCENE FIVE
i’m not worth the effort of a jail sentence. Even the judge and the assistant da are aware of the overcrowding situation in prison. The assistant da thinks i don’t see him when he writes a post it note to remind to himself to ask the governor to build another privatized prison upstate. Anyway my incarceration would cost the state too much, the better idea would be to make me pay for this privilege they call judicial prudence. So it’s $150 for the summons plus the $80 state surcharge. That state surcharge is weird to me. Isn’t the money already going to the state? i keep my mouth shut because it’s a world of hurt to get into those illogical reasonings. It’s like an invitation to your own beheading.

Just then i notice above the head of the judge the “o” in god we trust is missing this is too much. Just too much. Is that what the state surcharge is going to fill in?  The void of the  ”o” in God? Can i continue without falling to the floor holding my gut, laughing hysterically? Stay tuned.

COMMERCIAL BREAK. A drug for restless leg syndrome, Lockheed Martin protecting us from something and creating jobs in the US somewhere, Sunoco has gas that cleans your engine, Life insurance for non smokers for a dollar a month, and a new mop that squirts. i don’t know, i’m not paying attention anymore, i can’t afford it, i have $230 in fines to pay.

SCENE SIX
When can you pay the judge asks i say two weeks but i won’t pay for six because i can go six weeks without getting arrested after that it gets dicey. After that, it’s like a $8.99 all you eat buffet in Vegas but the house always wins.

This is not the worst part of it. The worst part is coming home listening to people who love you and who you love back tell you how much they agree with your resistance but want you to comply with the role that you were literally cuffed into, in this theater of absurdity, adapted for television and commonly known as a shit-com but shot like a game show and classified as an anti-drug Public Service Announcement. The announcer under a blinking applause sign, introduces the show “THIS IS YOUR LIFE – ON LAW ENFORCEMENT!” Cue the fucken laugh track.

COMMERCIAL BREAK. Mute button. i just watch the pretty images and add my own soundtrack. It’s an exercise in imagination. i just want to flex my creativity muscle. It’s difficult to do because i know that BP is talking about how quickly they are paying for the oil spill, i know that the Red Cross is looking for donations for Japanese tsunami victims, i know that the Marines are looking for a few good men, i know that Exxon-Mobil is talking about how much they are spending on renewable energy, i know that the Snuggle blanket will keep my girlfriend warm and help keep the ConEd gas bill down… i know this. All of this. But all i can think of is the assassinated hours and the $230 i owe. And it strangles my imagination and makes my creativity muscle weak.

SCENE SEVEN
This is where they win. In the division it creates between the people who love you and you love back. This where the judge and the assistant da and the cop get the last laugh. Cue the sad melody.

My girlfriend who has proved her love to me on a constant and consistent basis for these many many years will argue with me because i cannot contain the frustration of this shit-uation and she will pick up on the toxic bad vibe infection that the laughter of the judge, assistant da and the cop made airborne. We will argue about something completely unrelated to my adventures in the just-us shit-stem and this will be a wedge driven between us.

i can’t help but feel that theses attempts by the state to make it seem like i am a reckless fool with the woman i love are the real punishment that is administered for a no left turn on twenty-third street and first avenue. But that could just be my own paranoia. Or a sad attempt to place the blame elsewhere when it’s me at fault.

COMMERCIAL BREAK. Our supporters in this installment of our show brought to you by Ameritrade, Lending Tree, 1-800-LAWYERS, ProActiv, AARP Reverse Mortgage, the US Air Force, Budweiser and BMW.

IN NEXT WEEK’S EPISODE…

SPOLIER ALERT! This is how it ends.

SCENE EIGHT
This is where i’m caught acquiescing to the theater of absurdity that they call justice in an effort to ease the minds of the people who love me and who i love back. The people who worry that one day i’ll never make it to the precinct or the courthouse because a cop will shoot me for not assuming a position in which i can be more easily violated.

This is where the love for those who love me and worry for me, worry i will be murdered by a puh-leez officer for resisting authority for authorities sake because there is an “A” with a circle around it tattooed to my left wrist that frees me from such indignities. But i guess he didn’t get the memo at roll call.

The cop will admit to killing me saying that as i pulled my hands from my pocket he could see the threat of an equal symbol tattooed on my right wrist and that equality was just too much of a threat to his superiority so he shot first so that he didn’t need to ask questions later.

And so i will not add to my $230 bill with a funeral at Ortiz Funeral Home on Havemeyer in Williamsburg Brooklyn, that will have the ones who i love and who love me back crying over a closed casket. i will hold my end of the bargain and not give the state an excuse to kill me… just yet. i will find another way to resist. Maybe in a pom.

Cue the laugh track. Roll the credits. FADE TO BLACK.

- vagabond

Shortlink: http://wp.me/p1eniL-3I

PS Check out the photos of Sam Lahoz he’s a talented photographer…

A Small But Irresponsible Role – Fiction based fact on how i fight the law & they win. http://bit.ly/j1gLIh – From #nothingtobegainedhere—
vagabond (@vgbnd) June 14, 2011