So... I guess I have a lot of explaining to do.

Let me start of by saying, I'm sorry.

Before i explain what i am sorry for exactly, let me just tell all of you how much i appreciated your emails and the fact that you guys actually missed me, it felt really to see that my words were missed and that when i was keeping up with this blog consistently, it was a positive comforting escape for all of you. It was my escape as well.

Right now I am currently at the end of my 4 month long jail sentence here on the Jersey Shore, So I haven't been doing much worrying in Brooklyn as i should be. But good news me and all my weird problems will be back in Greenpoint January 1st, worrying a little less....

I started a new blog & I didn't have the courage to tell any of you about that new blog because to me this blog represented hope, insight and incentive for those such as myself to keep going in this world, no matter how bad things might get, there is a reason why you are here. You owe it to yourself to make mistakes, learn from your mistakes and listen to only THE best of the BEST music while doing so.

Emotions were never my thing, communicating my feelings without sarcasm has always been a huge issue for me, thats where music always came in and saved the day. Like i have mentioned in several entries before "If you can't find the words to say, don't worry you'll find the lyrics that will".

I started this blog during a very hard time period in my life, i was dead broke, struggling to make ends meets, blisters on my feet, dark circles under my eyes and I was barely surviving physically and mentally. This blog as well as some good music kept me alive, got me to bed at night through hunger pains and tears. Soothed my lonely soul. This laptop was my drinking buddy, my down ass friend that sat beside me at the Mark Bar every night while i poured my heart out almost daily.

I thought if i could make it through it, so could everyone else.

I also gained a lot of followers when i revealed my struggle in dealing with my baby brother's drug addiction, through my efforts to understand him, what he was going through and what it was like to be addicted to heroin i found several amazing poets, musicians and authors who were able to help me along my journey to relate. My last post was about my baby brother's graduation. He made it to graduation he looked adorable. It was one of the best days of my family's life.

I must admit the first time i actually read my emails from this blog or even took a look at this blog was probably the last time i updated it, which was in July. After hearing that i had inspired so many people and offered them hope while battling the addiction of a loved one, i couldnt bare to tell all of you that i had lost the fight.

Unfortunately fellow blog fam,
On August 30th around 5:30 pm I opened the door to Casey's bedroom and found that he had passed away. All my hope and intentions fell to the floor and I didn't want any of you to give up the fight, because i never did. As long as you know you did everything that you could have possibly done you can't fault yourself. I know my brother passed away knowing how much I loved him and how much I will always love him.
I started a blog on tumblr: "Cause for Casey Low" your welcome to check it out, maybe read some of my entries to your loved ones that are struggling with addiction, my point in creating that blog was to reveal my experience and pain with others with the hope that even if it were just one person out of a million, someone might think about their older sister or family and how their death might effect them.
Casey would have never wanted me to find him that way, we loved each other very much. We never fought, we never wanted to hurt each other.

Whatever it's a good read, as per usual its honest and right the point. It's a little toned down though because a lot of parents read it.

I have been writing a lot again recently, which is why i forced myself to revisit this blog and all my entries. I have an amazing therapist who has really helped me through my grieving process, i had mentioned to her that I was able to view this blog for the first time in months last night and how it made me realize a lot of things.

Life was a shit show before Casey passed away, I was not perfect. I was no where near it. I kinda hope I never even get close to being perfect. Since Casey's passing i have felt all responsible for owning up and becoming this goody goody, but I am not. I really am not, that is not what i am about and it isn't what i want to project. I don't sell drugs, i don't do hard drugs .. but I'm a bit of a lush that has an undying love and loyalty to my local bar in Greenpoint.

I don't think i can remain pg13 because life isn't pg13 it's rated RRRRR, look you can try and put the child controls on life all you want but eventually everyone is faced with cruel harsh reality, I think a lot of kids these days have the problems they do because the world has adapted this whole passive parenting technique. Don't hit your kids, don't tell your kids they are wrong, get a chicken pox vaccination.

KIDS NEED CHICKEN POX, THEY NEED THAT EXPERIENCE.
KIDS NEED TO BE BULLIED A LITTLE BIT.

In the game of life, no one is a crowd pleaser. Not everyone is going to like you, infact sometimes people hate you by just looking at you, out of your control. (keep it going)
You can't be good at everything, impossible.
But you can find the things you are good at and keep perfecting them until you are the master of your own kraft.
But in the mean time "go cry about it really".

Life isn't comfortable and it's not PG13 and either am I. My therapist told me today i need to combine Casey back into my writing, along side the rest of my problems. Because Casey is not seperate from me because he died, he's still very much a part of me and well my problems. I don't want to come off as "preachy" or "conservative" because i'm not and i would never want to be.

So that's why I am going to merge my blog readers.
Some of this content might be a tad bit more "Real" than my blog about my grieving process, but this is me, merging who i was with who i am now.

Sorry I kept you all hanging.......... come back, i got a lot of other weird things i need to talk about and also a lot of new songs i NEED to share.

Love always,
Dara


it has taken much strength and rebuilding emotionally but i have begun writing again and I will be returning to my life once again in January.

Celebrating Jim Carroll, Basketball Diaries and one DOPE Soundtrack that will survive the ages.

Basketball Diaries

When a person you love becomes addicted to drugs, his/her pain, struggle, sickness tends to cause a "ripple effect".

Meaning, all those around that individual suffer.

Growing up on the Jersey Shore, I felt just that. 

 Basketball Diaries, Jim Carroll Poetry & A timeless Soundtrack

Finding out my younger brother had become addicted to drugs three summer's ago, I then found myself .... well, I hadn't quite found myself yet either.

I went thru a shit ton of emotions, 

Anger

Empathy

Anger (again)

I found,

Blame in other's

Blame in myself

Blame in my parents

Everyday i was on a mission to find what caused his addiction and beat it into the ground until it felt the wrath of my "ripple effect".

So afraid to be alone on this earth, without having any connection to my birth.

I searched for the meaning of drug addiction.

I wanted to feel what he felt, when he felt it. Desperate to get inside of my 18 year old brother's head, i did the only thing i have done since a child, i found the answers in poetry and music lyrics.

I found Jim Carroll.

Jim Carroll the author of Basketball Diaries and many more.. Through his documented experiences living as a drug addict in NYC, I found a reason to let go of my anger, a new hope for the furture and a new appreciation of my life.

An excert from Downtown Diaries:

At the beginning of the book, Carroll feels trapped in a cage of his own design, swaying between total apathy and exhilaration:

I inhabit a different body now. Each day, it seems, another self wakes up and heats the coffee. I can distinguish, even gauge, the passage from a disturbed youth to a disturbed adult by the subtle aggressiveness in my anxiety. Sometimes I catch myself sitting on the edge of the sofa, staring into the flickering glare of the television, like a deer on some highway transfixed by the headlights of a car. As these images pass, I can feel them feeding on my own inertia. Other times, I am overloaded with a smooth, graceful energy, filled with an almost incomprehensible joy.

On Love: This is my favorite poem by Jim Carroll, I feel as though i live this poem every single day from start to finish, except for maybe the chewing of pubic hairs, because I can say that it hasn't gotten that extreme and i keep a pretty clean bed.

While She's Gone

It’s too late to change you with language
Your boundaries are always too narrow, and you bury
Yourself beneath a shallow grave of artifice, flesh and perfection

Look up above the mountain, to the right
Of the castle’s turret, that’s not a gull
That’s a heart.
And of course it’s tattered
Swooping too low crossing
The Atlantic to find you, its stomach
Was slit open on the horns of a caribou in Greenland.
Many species of birds have feasted on its eyes. 
So, having come this far, I can now barely see you

It’s two weeks since you’ve gone
The fragrance you left
Still remains in this apartment
As if it were bracketed to the wall like a shelf

It remains sweet yet somehow stale
The pressuring scent of expedience

How I hunger to devour it to devour you
Slowly, gently, vicious.

I chew on the pubic hairs you left on the sheet
Like a country boy chews a blade of grass as he walks
Near a pond, skimming flat rocks across the water.

If the angels knew, were kind,
That is where I’d be.

Instead, I have been been sitting down by the Hudson
At the end of the Gansevoort St. Pier
Reading Schiller on the sentimental and naive

Melville was a customs clerk there
The streets are still cobblestone

I’m hoping for an experience that pre-dates you.
For example, being chased by a dragonfly. 
What is not perfect, you deign to destroy.
When you find your idea of perfection
You relax on well-cut grass leading down to the stream.

You make a stranger a lover and a lover a stranger
You isolate the curve of longing
Then accelerate the flow.

It becomes the curve of binding energy.

Under different circumstances,
I could admire that.

I keep finding your long straight hairs
In the blankets in the carpet on the arm
Of the chair where you were working
Perfecting your calligraphy
The lavish tyranny of words
Now I watch the red in each long strand shine, twisted
Between my thumb and forefinger in the window light
I tied one around the neck of an alabaster bear
The rest I just continue to drape across the roses
In the wine bottle beside the kitchen window
It’s beginning to look like a spider’s web. It seems
That each symbol possible, in time, finds its way back to me. 
I put my faith in I put my I put mine in I put my faith in you

While it rains outside through the night
Through the twilight of the gods
I want to watch the rain falling with you inside
Inside you I want the rain to fall inside you
Lap the drops that drain
Lost, I remain inside you

When I took off to swim the river last week
I left the wine glass on the table beside my bed
The one you drank from here
Near full with bottled water, as you asked 
The capricious symbols are turning cliche and wet

When I got home it was five days later, the humidity
In the city heavy that week but still
When I held it up there was something left, just enough drops
To wash down a pill to fall asleep
Then I filled it again and left it to the sun and defiance
There are times I hate you there is no question
But an unforced grace remains. Your generous silence
Listen,
With our tongues we could tie the laces of angels,
Light or fallen, no matter
Your thighs moved smoothly as Latino gangsters

It’s hard to walk from a love that never ended
The fury is deadly, as if I were locked forever
In a room with movies of bridges collapsing
Too rigid for the quick wind

You see, your leaving occurred without
The foreplay of anxiety which is essential
Before one flies through the window of a car
Out of control

Unprepared, only a certain yet vague prescience which didn’t
Seem to concern me much I left it in your hands
As I took you at your word. Now I see the only means
I had to heal the burn was to replay again and again each permutation
In all its bitterness, and illusion.

It becomes tedious
As the tedious becomes essential apparently

Cassandra: that’s you incarnate
Sweating the details of a future bliss
As if you could control it 
The angels are more confused than ever

For once they call out, and there is no one to listen

You called from a phone by a lake
Deep in the canopy of black forests
The entire country deciduous, leaves rotting
Among the fresh angel skin a heart flown so far, it’s fallen
It’s grey among the leaves like a dying frog
And, seeing it, you step away, glad you avoided it
I found another of your hairs on the floor
This time I just threw it away it’s becoming old 
Gravity
It keeps us from floating away.
yet presses down. We stumble and fall.

I thought dusk was the moment dividing
Night and day, all things possible.
Yet, tonight looking out from this terrace
Twilight is filled only
With red taillights moving away, to bridges or tunnels

Yet always water, above or below, red taillights
And the mercurial sadness of another darkness descending
A thicker gravity. So many lost loves
Your boundaries were too narrow
Everything planned assiduously
Within surgical thin perimeters.

Now and then you would test the borders you defined
But never too far, inside the fear of finding yourself
Even for a moment lost. At times you did
Step beyond, paler slightly from the risk,
To burn in the wilder sun, yet always returning
In time for the mail and the certainty and the phone perhaps

Inside those boundaries assurance and fantasy blur and merge
Inside those boundaries, thought and action become one
Without distinction. Those outside
Get spun, unravel. Your arms shrink in the cause of embrace
What you try to comfort you can no longer reach.

And I’ve done everything I’m accusing you of. 
All the while I was staring straight
Into a wavering blue flame

Among the flaws, I watched
Your necessity bloom

Like careless crawling orchids

So imperceptible
I didn’t really notice until the first petal fell
And a strange arboreal wind blew it away

I was always seeing you on the move
As if passing in airport after airport
The smell of jet fuel, vanilla, fancy soap and ambivalence
Without an hour hand, a minute hand emblazoned
On its heat and glow, I could have
Watched the dew in these days reveal you as you opened

Perhaps I could have unveiled my own hesitations, washed the poison
From my lips, held you down by your wrists and watered you
In all resistance. Once again build myself a thirst and drink your overflow

I could have taken you to the dark gods
Still getting us back home on time
To sleep with the anorexic angel
Who I would pin motionless, radiant
Between your breast and my hand
My hand unyielding
Extended outward as light, the light

You learned as you lost it in a single moment

It’s months now since you’ve been gone
And what I feel I’ll tell you what’s it’s like
It’s like a last glass of Spanish Champagne slipping from my hand
Taking months to reach the carpet

It’s like a slow hanging
This city is a scaffold my room’s a trapdoor beneath
Not rope but a long red scarf a silk noose
Tightening slightly more day after day

Even now as I type
My feet are dangling a foot or two above the floor
Breathing only through vanity and my fingertips

The time hasn’t changed since you left
That moment in front of my building throwing your suitcase
Into the trunk of the cab, a Hindu driver. I check the airport route
He has planned for you. We kiss long and sad and I
Watch you drive slowly off, your head craned back at me
I watched until you turned at 19th St. and were out of sight
Leaning my head to the side and feeling the cool of a marble pillar
Against my cheeks making one last wave one last

I went upstairs, called her, and slept
Forcing myself not to wake until daylight the next day.

You’re in Amsterdam.
You know,
If they took those reinforcing beams away
From the old wooden houses along the canals in Holland
They would most likely have fallen into the water by now. 
That is your art form
Creating vestiges
Out of lace and lashes.
Everything just fell away.

The bridges over the canal
They’re quaint and banal
Tourist boats pass beneath.

I was a tourist 
To your body.

Why do you smile so widely in every picture I have of you?
Sometimes it makes me feel like slapping you

In this room everything comes as a whisper.
So what did you say?
Why do I want to know? 
Because that’s the way it is for me, and always has:
To be amused, bewildered, bemused, and fucked
Without the slightest aspect left out.

I thought I had been floating with the tide easily
These last three years, not looking ahead yet waiting
For some small island
Even a rock would have done
To land on and survey how far I had come
And if it was worth going on

And all the while I now learn you had somehow fixed, shifted the natural flow
And I have been swimming upstream against those vacuumed years.

Salmon are an endangered species
Man, and the paws of black bears

I’m tired too tired for conjunctions.
Having reached land,
Are you worth love in any form?
An old story getting older
You may not possess irony, but you carry it like a silk purse
Now the mute fog rolls in off the river
And I can’t speak.
It makes me listen too hard
With an urge to believe. 
Why couldn’t we find a love in that too-American exhaustion
Melt into each other as the hour that moans

In Europe how you have reached a mountaintop
Whose scent is things dead a thousand years
That is the fragrance of betrayal.
A cologne you took years to create
A chemical pun you mailed me in a white envelope
A white wedding envelope
The chemical wedding of C.R.
Child bride antelope
Collide and elope

This cologne is what you would have me press
In two subtle drops around my neck
Like a noose of splintering tears.

I flew straight through that car window
Without the essential anxiety
And the only way to recover
Is to play it over and over
On a screen too small
For the curve of time in this ward where I have been waiting

It makes everyone a fool, awake and in dreams,. I wound up
Loving something I was forced to reinvent, deconstruct
Though I know you so well now
Come to understand your meaning

That’s the worth of a lifetime
Everything else collapses
Or repeats often enough to forget

Conscience is no more than the dead speaking to us
It’s hard to find comfort
In this world.

You brought that to me
That’s hard to let go.
Only you and I know only you & I

See

You have always been so far away
You have always
Been right here

--Jim Carroll

 

 

 

The Basketball Diaries is a soundtrack for the Jim Carrol semi-autobiographical movie of the same name.  This soundtrack was released by Island Records on April 4, 1995.  Dave Navarro appears on Flea’s track I’ve Been Down (I Could Have Floated), which is exclusive to this release.

Track Listing:

1. Catholic Boy Jim Carroll w/ Pearl Jam
2. Devil’s Toe Graeme Revell w/ Jim Carroll
3. Down by the Water PJ Harvey
4. What A Life Rockers HiFi
5. I Am Alone Graeme Revell w/ Jim Carroll
6. People Who Died The Jim Carroll Band
7. Riders On The Storm The Doors
8. Dizzy Green Apple Quickstep
9. It’s Been Hard Graeme Revell w/ Jim Carroll
10. Coming Right Along The Posies
11. Strawbery Wine Massive Internal Complications
12. Star The Cult
13. Dream Massacre Graeme Revell
14. I’ve Been Down (I Could Have Floated) Flea (feat. Dave Navarro)
15. Blind Dogs Soundgarden

 

Super Geek Status, Made a Tumblr account in extension to this blog, STICTLY Music/ Poetry

Thats the address, I am trying to stick with a theme.
1. Great music collaborations and what linked two artist's together way before they actually linked up. Lyrical similarities <3 EXPOSED ..
2. The origin's of a song, who sang it first, who covered it and why ...


Follow, I'm digging the format and the theme in a major way.

To all my single white Brooklyn females, addicted to Retail...

Some words of wisdom & an inspiring play list...

I can't tell you that my word's can actually be described as being "wise" considering I am still living in what some might refer to as "the prime" years of a human being's life. Perhaps to few, I may not be considered old enough to spit out such wisdom, but at most i can offer some reassurance for those who can relate.

However, I am arriving at the general idea lately that most young people cannot relate to my situation... but for the one's that can..

..Lighter's in the Air style..

"This one is for you"

Here i sit in my Greenpoint loft apartment, without wireless service.

That sentence should have already given 75% of my reading audience heart burn, "What does she mean no wireless service?" .. "Did she turn her phone off temporarily?" "Will she get this service back tomorrow!?" 

"Who stole her phone at the bodega while she was reaching for a new carton of half and half and left her phone laying beside a few scraps of opened splenda packages and does she know who made the mad dash with her life?"

Phone didn't get Stolen.

Recently, I made the choice to walk on one of my three clients that i have for what i guess i can call, the itty bitty self made, PR firms i have attempted to start on my own.

They were half of my weekly revenue, then after quitting this client, based on my personal emotions concerning the months of intense devaluation and under appreciated devotion made on my part, to their business. I felt slightly euphoric for a little over a week, until i realized the type of cut i was actually taking in pay.

At the end of the day, my pride remains intact, but with a bare pocket to show for it. 

My wireless service got shut off for the for time the other day, based on a week to week pay period i assumed i was going to receive my pay from one of my clients, as per usual. So instead of paying my wireless bill the week before, i called and made a payment arrangement with at&t because it was my birthday and i wanted a little extra spending money.

What i really wanted was to buy myself the first new bathing suit I have been able to afford in almost three years, which i might add was 50% of American Apparel.

Not too shabby....

Well, payment arrangements are apparently a rather final deal, after hanging up with my one client Thursday and being informed that she wasn't going to be at the showroom to pay me until the following Tuesday, i felt an immediate feeling of anxiety concerning the fact i wouldn't be able to pay my bill. So, here i sit, dis connected.

It is not so much the feeling of being disconnected from the world, as much as it is the feeling of being at the mercy of people and being once again let down.

She owed me around $275.00

I now in return owe at&t 300.00 in place of the 77.00 payment i had promised to make to ensure my services wouldn't be cut off. 

So, yeah... 

I mean, I don't really know at this point, i still am able to listen to spotify from my phone so life isn't completely terrible, but I'm definitely feeling the hit right now of utter (temporary) disconnection.

This feeling is still better than the following:

1. Joining one of those sugar daddy websites and having some disgusting old man pay for my mistakes, verses me having to wait it out long enough to pay for my own mistakes.

Alot of girls these days in NYC and other places would rather rock red bottom's soles than be able to age gracefully, mentally .. and know that although life wasn't exactly easy, their had paid their own dues and learned from their own mistakes, as one should.

You wouldn't catch me even the slightest bit conscious, with some bitter 60 year old midtown married business mans dick in me for a few purses, shoes and the promise of staying fully connected to this world, in which sometimes i totally just, don't get to begin with.

Even when i am fully connected. 

So let me sit inside myself momentarily and reflect on all the things THAT ARE WORSE than temporarily being disconnected.

2. Calling my mom and dealing with fifteen minutes of insult just to tell me that because of my younger sibling i can no longer rely on them to be of any assistance. That's just always the tip of the iceberg, i have made one call to my parents over the course of the last six months regarding any type of financial aid and the $40.00 pay out wasn't worth my while.

I don't necessarily find this a terrible thing that my parents can no longer afford to fund my immature choices made financially. 

It's temporarily inconvenient but it's not the worse, fifteen minutes of my mom repeating the same over exaggerated, dramatic lines .. is way worse.

I'd rather disconnect some limb in all honesty.

3. I'm not dying, going to jail and no one in my immediate family has suffered any untimely death or terrible misfortune in which they weren't the main causer of. 

(Side note) 

This is another thing, although this one is a tad dramatic,

 (one time for your mind)

 i think people at my age (26) should really start including this is most of their thoughts, seriously. If you have both parents alive, all siblings mostly intact .. you have won half the battle. Seeing so many people recently burying their own siblings and or parent's has really made me think how bad is "bad"?

No seriously, really.

Discovering that i could still listen to my music via my shattered screen authenticated, iPhone 4 has totally changed my general feeling of being disconnected because normally i am rather disconnected but music plays a huge role in that, it wasn't human interaction i was missing per say, rather than just the sound of.

Last, but not to be completely over looked,

4. You choose to live in NYC, you choose to struggle.

Had i never left the suburbs would i have ever known the true meaning behind feeling "disconnected" or would i have adopted some sort of defense against such intrusive thoughts, the thoughts that crept in late night, at my bedside. These thoughts, that only emerged after I was left alone in thought, pondering my existence for only 1/3 rd of the amount of time i ponder my existence in New York City. Would it have been any better, had i not ever lost wireless connection at all? Would it have been better to have never felt the burden of inconvenience whatsoever? 

Being left with only one main inconvenience in my life, "having not been inconvenienced at all"

I ask myself this question a lot, I think back to 2006 and my second time ever riding the subway, having a 40 once chugged directly at my face and having it miss me by just a mere inch or two, if i left a week after this incident, would i have found myself content in having only experiencing the feeling of being inconvenienced or temporarily detached from just that one incident? 

"Had a chance to turn back ... but look, that was then....."

I had to laugh tonight, thinking about how i was so caught up in the moment earlier today after having read a brief article on Freewilliamsburg.com over the excitement of Mccarren Park Pool to be opening on the 28th, I was totally hypnotized by the flawless pictures displayed of the pool's  new and improved look.
 Being a sucker for all things corny concerning Brooklyn's history, I was most moved by the promise of new interior siding that was made up of the real coney island scattered remains that washed up shore after the aftermath of hurricane Sandy. 

It is weird how i almost view "New York City" as not only being a real human being, but almost as a finite being, as if he or she should be praised and highly regarded despite it's ability to display so many real, humanistic flaws.

Why do i treat New York City like my Irish grandfather did, by displaying his picture proudly in the kitchen of the home he worked for and will die for?

I treat New York City like my grandma treated things that predated the Clinton Administration, nothing worth reading into. She was convinced she had seen the best and the idea of something better would never truthfully be entertained.

#LCDSOUNDSYSTEM

I mean, sometimes it's just like .. "fuck this place", what's it really worth anyways? If i were forced to cross over the great barrier line's that separate New York City from a state in which i was born and raised, would it really be so bad at this point?

How much longer can i keep convincing myself that the pro's might someday out weigh the con's.

Had i not felt some burning desire to flee from all things concerning my existence at the age of sixteen, would really would have been "saved" about who i really feel that i am.

Had i not spent a grueling summer working for a ridiculous Jewish man out on Coney Island in a hot, rather "questionable" smelling office would i have been forced to live without ever knowing that Coney Island looked better as it disappeared, Manhattan bound on the F train, more so than it ever would look as the F train came barreling towards it? Had it not seen the dark clouds moving in on the wonder wheel and the sudden flash of lightning strike shortly after the dark clouds emerged on the F train, Manhattan Bound on the day in which i finally quit that terrible office job. 

I most likely would have just admired Coney Island from the highest point of the jetty on the over privileged beach i spent almost every single summer of my human life at on the Jersey Shore. Would i have been content with just knowing it existed and seeing it from a distance, on a particularly clear summer day?

An actual picture i took myself last year, souped about being on the same pier that the cast of Requiem for Dream had once been on, it was super amateur hour of me, i admit this.

Had I just continued to spend all of my beloved summer days at that very same beach club private beach club that i had been a member of since before conception on the Jersey Shore, with all  those very same individuals I see every summer would i have ever found it within myself to be excited about the opening of a public pool in Brooklyn?
 which offered me no choice but to strip down and enter, forcing me to surrender my cover up, my music and all reading materials just to sit amongst the masses.

Just to be forced to listen to those who qualified as being in my class level, those who could afford a three dollar lock?

Lined up, stripped down and felt up like new inmates
 we all gather and swell the public pools, looking for some temporary distraction from the hot summer swelter & the lingering body odor of a bum that passed by you ten blocks before.

Although, New York magazine is available for purchase at several bodega's and new stands in and around where a lot of where, NYC's "Sorry People" live, we must never look to fulfill an inner fantasy of our's formed from starring directly at some Absolut Vodka summer ad that graces the pages of New York magazine, but we should be reminded rather consistently and accept the harsh reality that at the end of the day, we may just be forced to live a life, being apart of, but standing rather far from the sun that sets over the Manhattan Skyline. 

Another one of those sunsets, this photo was taken by yours truly ..  finding myself in the middle of serious instagram opportunity

With no distractions, I am only forced to understand my accumulated worth here in New York City, which at this moment is in the negative.

All these inconveniences brought on by myself and my unconditional love for a place that has essentially offered me nothing in the past three years but a dozen beautiful sunsets and a shit ton of hard life lessons.

Being out here alone and having to deal with such inconveniences all alone, something like feeling disconnected via wireless service is small potatoes compared to the ways in which New York City has made me feel disconnected in these past 7 years.

After spending a few months taking piping cold showers and being able to see my own hot breath as it emerged from my mouth, as it emerged in the comfort of my own living room, verses only being offered this same opportunity on the walk to the subway during the coldest winter days, It is now that i can endure such minor inconveniences. 

We all love to hate it, but hate to love it at the end of the day, knowing life would be much easier some place else, anywhere in the United States..... 

So yeah, "said" Play list...


1. LCD Sound System - I love you New York but you're bringing me down (#1 for a reason)

2. Depeche Mode - Enjoy the Silence

3. Supertramp - The logical song

4. Sbtrkt - Trials of the Past feat. Sampha
5. Summer in the City - The lovin Spoonful'
6. Sbtrkt - Pharaohs feat Roses Gabor
7. Thieves like us - Stay blue
8. Washed out - Eyes be Closed
9. Take on Me - Aha
10. Pet Shop Boys - West End Girls
11. Joan Osborne - One of us
12. Aretha Franklin - Say a little prayer for you
13. Diplo - Summer's gunna hurt you
14. The Killers - All these things that iv done
15.  Imogen Heap - Hide and Seek
16.  A tribe called quest - Buggin out'
17. Deadmau5 - Raise Your Weopan
18. OMBRE - Tormentas
19. Nas & Damian - As we Enter
20. Santigold - The keepers
21. Aluna George - You know you like it
22. Teen Daze - Brooklyn Sunburn
23. Heart - These Dreams
24. Physical Therapy feat Jamie Krasner - Drone on
25. Empire of the Sun God's - Standing on the Shore
26. J. Dilla - Workin on it
27.  Bobby Byrd - I know you got soul (if you didn't.. you wouldn't be out here)
28. Jewel - Hands
29. Ice Cube - It was a good day
30. Memphis Bleek - Dear Summer

Another Memorial Day on the Shore, Navigating through the Nonsense & A NEW PLAYLIST

"Came like forty nights of rain
To replenish my adolescent brain...."

Nas "Drunk By Myself" 

 

Banksy

 

Banksy

June 5th, I turn twenty six years old. I will be officially half way through my twenties, as in closer to being thirty than I am to being twenty. It is funny how i didn't think much about turning twenty five, but being on the verge of turning twenty six and knowing that turning twenty six will mean that I have passed the half way mark leaves an incredible amount of room for thought... 

Banksy

Officially rounding up, verses ... rounding down.

I can't say that i am where i want to be in life, i cant say that i could have imagined my life being as it is currently. Out of the (almost) 26 years i have been on earth, I believe that between the age of 25 and 26 is the time in which i grew the most. A lot of my growing i owe to nature..  it sorta came about naturally.. my overall change in emotion, my different outlook on life in general.

Family Values

Political Views & Last but not least, my general lust for life and my will to survive.

I don't have any more money than i did last year, I haven't traveled, I have just been kicking it on the east coast, walking my usual routes.. 

same old back drop, whole new appreciation for it.

I spent a lot of time inside myself, connecting the necessary wires and re routing others. A lot of deep questioning, I went to the depths of my memory index and i forced myself to re live certain parts of my life and see things for what they really were. It took a lot of mental sorting and organizing. 

I spent a lot of years re writing history and spitting on my own cupcake and telling myself it was frosting, just because it was easier for me to compartmentalize.

It is important to remember exactly how someone or something made you feel during any given circumstance, being aware is key. If you make yourself fully aware of how something made you feel the first time, you will be less likely to make the mistake a second time. Confusion only happens when your instincts clash with your brain waves...

I'm not fucking perfect, I will never be and I am okay with all of this. I'm never content and I hope it stays this way. 

I think it is okay to never be content just as long as you can find appreciation for the small things in life and never let your discontent get in the way of all the beautiful absolutes you have acquired.

Like, not having hot water during this period of my life will most definitely without a doubt in my mind will make me appreciate something even as basic as a hot shower, a lot more than i would have ever appreciated it if i hadn't been without.

Having met several horrible men, will make me recognize the rarity of a good man and if and when a situation arises that i encounter such a thing, I'll know how to treat this individual so that they stick around.

I am fully aware of the person that i am as of today, still a work in progress, but i know what i want out of this life. I have accepted certain things about myself that i can't change and i have actively set out in order to fix the things that i know that i can change.

I have a lot of great ideas, great execution of these said ideas, but a terrible follow through. I'm wishy washy and I get bored easily, I start a lot of things and finish none. I go through a lot of phases, i have learned a little bit of information about several different things. In other words, I have read a lot of cliff notes but never actually finished reading any novels. I always have the initial intent to do so, but terrible follow through on those intentions.

I have tried pretty much everything, I am constantly in search of ways to express myself. I have accepted this about myself, but i also go about expressing myself in a more mature, proactive way, verses doing so in a less mature way that comes across negative.

I traded short tube top dresses in for witty tank tops and obnoxious iphone covers.

I traded bleach blond hair in for my natural hair color and a few highlighted strands.

I traded in heavy concealer for a light powder.

I started wearing jeans and sneakers again verses short skirts and push up bra's.

I changed the tone of my voice and i try to curse less in general, but have not been completely successful at doing so yet.

I am not who i want to be, or who i thought i was going to be at twenty six years old, but i am still standing. I don't think it is a terrible thing, I'm not totally upset about where i am in life because i know even though i haven't made it yet, i am on my way.

If you are okay with it, others tend to be okay with it. 

Every summer of my life, since i have been alive i have spent on the beach, for the most part. Growing up on the jersey shore, that is just routine. I had a very privileged up bringing, where i was given everything i wanted, had everything i needed and a little extra. My family and i have been members of a private beach club, my whole life. 

I have seen the same people every summer, my whole life.

Creatures of habit.

Every Summer these people from memorial day on, sit in the same spot, with the same people, sipping on the same cocktail drink. Every one's behavior is completely predictable, gossip is steady and people are phony. 

No one is over weight, everyone has the perfect kids and the perfect marriage and every summer's introduction is as squeaky clean and impersonal as the last. Everyone has the same story, "My son and or daughter is marrying the GREATEST person ever, we LOVE their family, we couldn't have asked for a better person for our child to marry, THEY ARE VERY WELL OFF, We get along great with their parents and life is one big Spiegal catalogue. 

If anyone happened to have any sort of genetic slip up or obesity flair up in their offspring, that would be resolved with sleep away camp. Sleep away camp that would be described as being a "great opportunity", "gifted children's program" or a "rare honor" that was bestowed upon their family in which their child was selected over several other children to be apart of.

It is never any of the above. 

No one ever claims that their children are making any less than 65,000 a year, or that their child didn't find their DREAM job. No one is ever not EXTREMELY BLESSED. It is the same stories every single year, these people sound like broken records. If bullshit wore a bra, these people would be top heavy. 

It's all a Tommy Bahama, Lily Pulitzer, nautical themed .. crock of shit. 

All of these people treat their beach club membership as if it were some right of passage. As if the ocean we swim in isn't the same ocean others swim in divided by a rope and a jetty. 

Today was the first day of yet another, predictable summer.

It is more like Interrogation Day, rather than Memorial Day. In which everyone is fighting to talk over one another and everyone stops by to ask "how is everything, how was your winter?" just so that they can tell you about their winter or how they are doing ... and it's always FANTASTIC.

Well, I'll tell you what.

 I'm doing, "sub par" and my winter was bedlam. My parent's experiencing similar feelings, but more deep rooted, aged and unsettling. Everyone knows everyone and no one really needs to inquire about how someone is actually doing, because they already have such prior knowledge. 

Everyone knows how my family's winter was, they most likely gather that we must not be feeling GREAT, considering the circumstances but still we are expected to have something FANTASTIC to report. Kid's  i grew up with parent's want to cross examine me and inquire about my position in life so that they can compare it with the position their own child is in.

When people asked me today "What are you doing now? Where are you living? Do you have someone special in your life? Any engagement announcements? babies? Graduate School?

I had just this to say, "Life is sub par, it isn't what i thought it was going to be but it's alright, I support myself, but it is not easy and I am fighting daily to keep my above water. I live in Brooklyn, i wish i had more money to enjoy the perks of living in NYC, but i don't .. hopefully i will get there soon but I'm not dying, but rather ... coasting. I am actually getting progressively worse at understanding the opposite sex (chuckles) but i am hopeful. I think my new found social anxiety, will aid me in sifting out the "right one". I'm glad that (fill in the blank name of the person's son and or daughter) has found such success in such a short period of time, they must be very lucky, some people are meant to struggle and other's aren't. But i have to believe at this point that nothing good comes easy, so I'm pacing myself..."

No one ever expects someone to actually answer that question, but i did just that.

I'm doing the best i can and it isn't horrible, so that's that.

Banksy

My parent's don't make the money they had once made, my only sibling has a terrible, debilitating addiction to drugs and a shit ton of fines and lawyer bills to go along side of his addiction. Neither me or my parent's would have ever expected this, our hearts are broken and we have gone through the motion's and there isn't anything that we can do, but love him, pay his fines and live our lives.

We got dealt a hand of cards and we are going all in, we have nothing to hide at this point.

I'm not getting married any time soon, but I have recently decided that I'd like to try producing my own music or at least fuck around a bit with sound and use my love and knowledge for music to try and find my own sound. I can't say that i will actually pursue this in its entirety, but I'm going fuck with it a bit and see what happens.

Music is the only thing that has been a consistency in my life, Music is always there when i need it to be, Music explains the things I feel that i cannot and I want to see if i can entertain a crowd of human beings and get some sort of rise out of them. I want to see if i have the ability to move people, aside from this weird blog. 

I have been researching, getting my terms down and knowing that i have a track record of bad follow through, i am going to take it day by day and when i have a good idea, I'll write it down and i wont force it.

Some People are trying to buy homes, i am trying to finance some turn tables....

I'd like to know that i can hold onto costume jewelry before i try and hold onto a wedding ring..

I'm going to freelance and come and go when i feel it is necessary.

I hate setting alarms, running to the subway station and anxiously reaching around my purse to find my subway card while everything but my subway card falls out of my purse onto the ground.

I don't want to try and change a song, while holding a coffee cup in my arm pit and clenching my purse in between my knees holding onto the railing of the L train.

The Lorimer morning Rat Race is not for me.

Banksy

I have to just try all sorts of things out to find out what is going to work out for me. 

Not that there is anything wrong with the Rat Race, the L train commute or the ability to multi task without spilling. 

I am also never going to wear a patriotic j crew sweatshirt, any article of clothing that consists of any sort of nautical embroidered theme. Men that wear shorts with tiny embroidered lobsters, rock loafers without socks and own a at least one pair of nautical themed sterling silver cuff lings have ulterior modems.

I will always dig the beach, but I don't need to "belong" to enjoy it, I can share the same beach as everyone else because i don't care about what everyone else is doing, i don't care when your car lease is up, i don't care about the remodeling of your kitchen, I don't care whether or not what you tell me is true or false... I care that you don't get cocky after a few Seagram's vo and come at me hard with your Tory Birch beach totes, patriotic J CREW attire and judgement.

Banksy

Anyways, THE PLAYLIST 

as promised:

Love this playlist, strictly electronic beats.

Some new and some old, all equally amazing.

Even flow, a good morning commute mix and or "chilling out" background music.

1. "Animals" - Baths  ***favored

2. "Your Body" - Gigamesh / Kitsune AMERICA (Deluxe Edition)

3. "Psychedelic Stereo" - Mimosa

4. "It's all in Sound" - Bullion

5. "Get Lucky" - (Radio Edit) - Daft Punk >>>  NEW!

6. "Sofi needs a ladder" - Deadmau5

7. "Little People" (black city) - Mathew Dear

8. "Drive it like you stole it" - Glitch Mob

9. "Dunegeon Sound" - Gramatik

10. "Body Mod" - Pictureplane    ***favored

11. "Marriage" - Gold Panda

12. "Loner"- Burial ***favored

13. "Vortex" - Zomby

14. "Untitled" - Burial

15. "The best thing" - Electric Youth

16. "Love Scene" - Beni

17. "Love hate thing feat Sam Dew" - Wale >>>  NEW!

18. "D. Song" - Yppah

19. "Kindred" - Burial ***favored

20. "Raise your weopan" - Deadmau5

Banksy & A Playlist for the Love Sick Individual Minus the Cheese

Banksy - "Love Sick"

“I mean, they say you die twice. One time when you stop breathing and a second time, a bit later on, when somebody says your name for the last time.”
#Banksy

Another favorite by my favorite "Banksy"

Banksy

Banksy is MY FAVORITE Graffiti 

Artist, a straight up rebel with a cause

& reason. His Stencil work is incredibly

unique, intelligent and a pleasure to see up
close and personal, which living in Greenpoint I have had the opportunity to a lot of his work up close, it's almost like an unexpected present on the walk home from Williamsburg, because you'll be casually walking your usual route home and all of a sudden you'll happen to notice new work you haven't seen before and it's pretty much Christmas Morning, because you know there is more from where that came from.

Well, Whatever so i promised this playlist...

This play list goes out to all the love sick, pathetic individuals out there that can't either 1. Let it fucking go or 2. Still have some sort of hope

I know that my heart has not belonged to me in quite some time now, so naturally I have a few songs in the stash.

There's time's where i find myself out and about, around a group of energetic human beings, laughing and mixed up in a moment of true bliss and contentment. Dancing, Spilling their drinks all over me, stepping on my feet to flag down the bartender...

"Shots, Shots, Shots"

So happy and so eager to foot the bill on shots, living in the moment, toasting and what have you..

 I haven't been involved in that sort of activity in a while.

I am usually the girl starring directly into her double of sailor Jerry and diet coke, with a dead stare. As if the answers to my future were floating amongst the remnants of the ice cubes in my glass.

Someone couldn't try to look more unapproachable if they tried, tried.. REAL HARD

This comes natural to me.

The Need to be alone and ponder.

I've started actually bringing my lap top and my headphones to the bar so i can take it an extra step further in being unapproachable. 

Then there's always.. THAT GUY,

who has to drop the, "Smile"

line on me & this always gets me absurdly enraged

 (not that i am saying this is a normal reaction)

But... 

Still..

Smiling takes EFFORT, Smiling requires the use of alot of muscles in your face, it isn't a natural expression, i once fake smiled for a whole one hour meeting and my jaw hurt for a good remainder of my day.

Then, I'm like .. "Who is this guy to reprimand me and tell me what to do, does he even think before he speaks.. or is he just so cheesy he assumes this is a classic "go to" line.

Or maybe, I'm over thinking this completely

Maybe, I'm just fucked up..

Maybe, i wished i was somewhere else with someone else and i cant wipe the stain of this person's memory off my fucking forehead.

"DAMAGED GOODS" in NEON fucking PAINT MARKERS

Maybe i am just avoiding the potential of making good memories that might not include him, because i can't image such a thing.

I can't focus on couples around me, holding each other, eembracing each other and sharing precious moments together.

I had that, i did.

Haven't had any moments since.

Not any good ones. 

There is a part of me that knows daily, I have already found the one i am supposed to be with and that we are wasting precious time everyday, holding a grudge, walking around the city alone and lonely. Seeking out other people from time to time but being left unsatisfied. 

Just because we feel like we should,

but we shouldn't.

I can't take shuffling through my picture library on my iphone with my glasses hanging half way off my face while walking with a drunk slant toward my apartment just so i can collapse on my bed and re stain my freshly cleaned pillow cases with eye liner, mascara and whatever else i use to clog my pores on a regular basis.

So this is for you lonely bar dwellers out there, hope this helps.

Death of my Insides Playlist:

1. "Keep you" - Class Actress

2. "Heartbeats" (i prefer the Live Version) - The Knife

3. "There is a light that never goes out" - The Smiths

4. "Unhappy Birthday" The Smiths   

5. "Do you really want to hurt me?" Violent Femmes

6. "You are all i see" - Active Child

7."Bruises" - Chairlift

8. "Pretty Boy" - Young Galaxy

9. "Hey Jelousy" - Gin Blossoms

10. "Deep inside of you" - Third eye Blind

11. "Love Has Gone" - Netsky

12. "Last Dance" - Rhye

13. "Open" - Rhye

14. "Dirt" - Phish

15. "Don't look back in Anger"- Oasis

16. "Yellow Ledbetter" - Pearl Jam

17. "Black" - Pearl Jam

18. "Beyond here lies nothing" - Bob Dylan

19. "Helpless" - Crosby Stills Nash & Young

20. "Happy Together" - The Turtles

21. "The wind cries Mary" - Jimi Hendrix

22. "She's not there" - The Zombies

23. "Angie" -The rolling stones

24. "Wild World" - Cat Stevens

25. "Lotus Flower" - Radiohead

26. "There, There" - Radiohead

27. "All i want" -LCD Soundsystem

28. "November Rain" - Guns and Roses

(whattttt a guitar solo)

29. "Little Red Corvette" - Prince

30. "Your going to miss me" - The 13th floor elevators

31. "The last time i saw Richard" - Joni Mitchell

32. "Case of you" - Joni Mitchell

33. "Rescue Me" - Fontella Bass  

34. "Wild Horses"- Rolling Stones

35. "Lola" - The Kinks

36. "Heart of Gold" - Neil Young

37. "Tracks of my tears" - Smokey Robinson

38. "Dosed" - Red Hot Chili peppers

39. "Howlin for you" - Black Keys

40. "You've got the love" - Florence and the Machine

41. "I would do anything for you" - Foster the People

42. "Sweetest Girl" - Wyclef Jean

43. "Anything, Anything [ I'll give you ]" - Dramarama

Bye. Go Cry Now

Jerk off with Sandpaper ect...