--I DON'T BELIEVE IT

…I hear horns and sirens and horns that are sort of fluted because the horn-honking truck is moving in reverse, and I hear shouting, someone telling someone else off, and I hear the fan in this hotel room running its fingers through everything and just naturally, there are workmen outside laying down tape and drilling into walls with a piercing shrillness reminiscent of a dentist, and the workers are saying things in Spanish and English and most of their talk is about women who've disappointed them or women that they want but, for whatever reason, can't get, and now I hear some little kid who's young but not little in stature because he bounds/pounds overhead on my ceiling, his floor, and a chair scrapes so loud it must be making a long scrape mark, and then next to me the guy coughs up something loudly, opens his door and lets it slam avalanche-hard as a woman calls out, "Room service!" and, well, I guess it's Wednesday in Manhattan.
Or maybe it's Tuesday.

…On Monday night a group of us met at Hudson Books, which is a very atmospheric bar, sort of a landmark on the Westside of NY near the meatpacking district. Ron Hubbard, founder of Beatrice.com was there and then afterward he got us into a party atop the Stanton Building which has one incredible, panoramic view of Manhattan, almost 360 but not quite. It was fairly foggy out but The Statute of Liberty was still visible, the entire financial district, midtown and New Jersey where Hackensack is. I was not on my best behavior and for that I am very sorry.

...Yesterday morning I finished Paula Bomer's book, "Baby" (hey, that's a lot of alliteration.) It was really good, filled with strong, flawed female characters, most all mothers, some mothers that don't like their children, don't like their spouse or their life or their lovers. It's good reading and I recommend it.

…I also finished Kim Addizinio's book, "Ordinary Genius." It's terrific, mainly about writing poetry, but there are great lessons about all kinds of art and life.

…I walked. I walked miles. To The Javits Center where the monolithic Book Expo is taking place. I walked to Chelsea afterward. Played pool at the Westside Tavern. Went to the Meat Packing District. Stopped by at Hogs and Heifers, a famous dive bar where, if you’re female, you toss your bra back of counter and they hook it on antlers along with a few thousand others. At one point the waitress got up and did a country shuffle dance atop the bar to Willie Nelson’s “Good Timin’ Woman.” She asked the other women customers to join her, but none took her up on it. There were walls and walls of celebrity photographs—Brad Pitt, Gwenyth Paltrow, Michael Douglas—who’d stopped by. The film “Coyote Ugly” is based on Hogs and Heifers.

…Last day in NY today.

…These are things that are good on a Wednesday:

"We should insist while there is still time. We must wade mouth-deep into love." Jack Gilbert

"There is a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in." Leonard Cohen

"Sometimes I to about weeping, and all the while I am being carried across the sky on a great wind." Chippewa song

"This world and all of the creatures in it are on fire and some of you know it." Nion McEvoy

"Women, like queens, keep nine-tenths of mankind in bondage." Leo Tolstoy, from "The Kruetzer Sonata"

"Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what's next or how. The moment you know how, you being to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark." Agnes de Mille

"Love is a dog from hell." Charles Bukowski