Philly Daze

A slight return

Tomorrow is the last full day of a two week visit to my roots. Who knows if I’ll have any more reflections to record, most likely I will. I’ve been asked, “why do you write?” Usually this is a reaction to something, a mirror perhaps, where the reader doesn’t want to look at their own reflection maybe. Here’s an answer to that question; I write to record what I’ve seen and gleaned. It’s not always up to date in the grand enlightenment sense but it’s where I’ve arrived at the point of the recording. It’s a living history. There is always something personal and political involved. Sometimes its subtle and sometimes overt. A lot of my writing and a lot of my being makes some people uncomfortable. I’ve decided that’s okay. Sometimes I reveal things from my own perspective and I don’t see any other way through. All I can say to those who question my intentions is, don’t read my shit. I also enjoy meeting those who understand that my intentions are pure. Some people like to talk about boundaries. Well, I’m not all in for boundaries. I can see the use of boundaries when raising kids, for example. I like the word no a lot. No is a full sentence as they say in program. All in all I write to record and attempt to write what I see. There are better writers than me who are transmitters. I’m not sure I’m that but I aspire to be. I listen to the ether but I hardly ever hear much aside from the wind. I have been known to have lucid dreams on occasion but mostly I’m an earthbound air sign.

I’ve had some wild dreams here in Philadelphia.

The other night, after sending transmissions for change (aka prayers), I dreamt of impossibly tall women with noble hounds at their feet. That felt like a good omen. Another night I dreamt of surveillance drones scanning faces. I was sitting on a bench in the park with a small boy. The machine slithered through the trees like a sentient being. It scanned both our faces and hurtled off toward a young man on a rooftop smoking. Everyone in the park was nonplussed. Seems our dreams are becoming porous like everything else.

Saw The Odyssey while I was here. The Calypso scenes stuck with me. I would have stayed with her rather than head back to Ithaca and Penelope. I need to find some lotus flowers. The Circe scenes were powerful but too short. Samantha Morton can do no wrong. I was worried that Matt Damon would annoy the shit out of me but he was wonderfully understated, bless him. John Bernthal’s urban accent and overt masculinity could have been averted with a better more nuanced choice. Maybe he’s from Philadelphia and can’t help it. Robert Pattinson was an effective villain but his story felt too black and white and ended nice and tidy. Mia Goth was totally under utilized. What a great beginning of something that may or may not have been more realized in the lengthy script. As a sap I loved John Leguizamo. It was maybe one of the best things I’ve seen him do. And finally it was great to see Elliot Page again. Overall the film felt true to the story but I wonder if much of it might be lost on anyone who isn’t familiar. I personally prefer Oh Brother Where Art Thou but this one has some merit too. Don’t get too excited though, it’s still Hollywood slop and aside from my kind words, I don’t support what’s happening in my industry. Late stage capitalism run rampant.

Every morning, Chico and I walked to a coffee shop about fifteen minutes away. I was told by my siblings that the nearer cafe has the worst coffee and my brother recommended Mount Airy Coffee Company. He wasn’t wrong about their coffee.

PHILLY DOODLE

The coffee is good but the joint charges for honey

The air quality is awful, sun blood orange, smells like apocalypse

Temperance talk last night with dear Sharon with a surprising twist at the end

Did karaoke in my dreams, something sing songy emerging, I admit mostly Beatles

Its purity and sweetness I’m after along with fierce take no prisoners truth telling

I’m dressed in white in honor of my Yoruba bestie now with ancestors but always with me

I’ll leave the last bite of my spinach feta croissant for him before we head back to screen hell

Chico holding court at the corner of Mt. Pleasant and some other street, awww what a noble beast

A stop sign staring us down with the loud din of two way traffic doesn’t phase us

The toxicity in the air does though

Thursday morning in Mt. Airy

We’d also take walks in Wissahickon Park. I read Rumi while Chico swam in the Wissahickon Creek.

There are flowers blooming all over. The lawns are impressive.

How does one write a poem in one’s right mind? How does one love correctly? There’s a slogan here in Mt. Airy, “believe in science”. It’s on a liberal wish list, stamped on placards. I laugh every time I see those words strung together sandwiched between Black Lives Matter and Stand With Ukraine. Believe in Science. Think about those three words for a moment. What’s the intention? Seems like a pysop gone south, a Madison Avenue MK Ultra focus group spitballing. Or maybe a fine line of, how far can we push the threshold of accepted doublespeak, 2+2=5 type science. Ugh. Well. Here we are. Roaming the halls of idiocracy. Yesterday I read something that stopped me cold. A litany of truth exposing the lies and once again reminding us of what got us into this mess. I’ve read similar treatises, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Zinn’s People’s History, Murder Inc. by local hero / villain Mumia Abu Jamal, so many more. Yesterday’s read, by a poet named Pretty Thunder, was another wake up call and can be added to anyone’s list of must reads. I had just finished watching a documentary about Jim Thorpe and the Carlisle School when her pointed words arrived in my inbox. The poem sliced and diced through time and there was nothing to believe, it was all exposed blood, flesh and nerves. It wasn’t a placard on a freshly cut lawn in the burbs, it was raw, in your face poetry and love and rage. So how does one write poetry in one’s right mind? One doesn’t. One writes with full access to the great nest of being. How does one love “correctly”? One doesn’t, one loves and rages from a place of standing in truth and seeing what’s under the surface. This is someone who knows how to receive transmissions. Sharing…

Happy Birthday ‘merikkka

When I first arrived, my brother sent me this article . I learned Bill Curry died. Bill hired me at Paper Moon when I was 13. I worked at Cafe Nola where I decided I wanted to be a chef. I loved Copabanana’s burgers and margaritas. My ma painted signs and murals for his businesses on South Street. He was one of my rare champions.

Bill Curry is dead

Isaiah Zagar is dead

My ma, Andy Durning is dead

South Street as I knew it is dead

Philly is a ghost town to me

I’m drinking coffee in Mt. Airy

It’s okay, medium roast liberal

“I Stand With” banners on lawns

White people jogging

Young men asking for work

No trash cans to deposit dog shit

Chico sniffing designer dog piss

Temperatures about to soar

Last day of shooting on Gilded Age cannot come soon enough

Bessie the cat spotted on a stone wall, a black and white blur

Surviving feral like we all may have to soon

As system collapses

Gotta get back to the garden

Philadelphia’s sophisticated advances in surveillance technology.

This week I wrote three reflections.

1. Tuesday Morning in Philly

You know, sometimes I take a little bit more weed cookie than I should. Sometimes I take a little bit less. Last night was a little bit more. Feeling extremely groggy. The air quality is heavy walking down the streets of Mount Airy. Another sojourn to the Mount Airy Coffee Company. My friend Chris is here, still charging me for honey. If she appears, maybe I’ll have a chat with Terry Lynn, who lives next door. She likes to come out and talk to me about the Catskills and how she wishes that she could move there, but she’s not ready yet because she likes the city too much. Oh, well, you’ll figure it out, Terry Lynn. Chris likes to ask me how the coffee is. I usually say it’s goddamn great. The other day he asked me how my egg sandwich was. I’ll never get another egg sandwich here because to be honest it was terrible. Got about four more days here in Philadelphia. I think the hardest thing about being in the city sometimes is having a dog, actually. You got to walk the dog. You gotta time your shit around your dog. Can’t take your dog to restaurants, can’t take them to the coffee shop even though I do and I sit outside in the thick air while the other patrons inside enjoy the AC. Some places like dogs, downtown there are a few places that let you bring your dog inside. Not here in Mount Airy though. At least not that I know of so far. Anyway, one thing that I do here, which is controversial, even though nobody really knows about it, is that when Chico takes a shit I bag it up and throw it onto the lawn of somebody who’s got an “I stand with Israel” sign prominently displayed. And there are a few. And I know where they are. And it gives me a kind of satisfaction. And it makes me feel mischievous, like I was 13 again, throwing eggs at buses or something bad like that. Although throwing shit on Zionist lawns is a good cause for this kind of adolescent mischief in my humble opinion. Earlier, as I was picking up shit, I almost got run over by a suburban mom, maybe some kind of instant karma? Could have sued her I suppose. I stand with the people who Israel murders.

2. Wednesday Morning in Philly

I had just sat down at my usual outdoor table with a chocolate croissant and a large coffee and was about to write something about personal responsibility when Terry Lynn walked around the corner. After a few light exchanges about the weather and coffee and what a noble beast Chico is, we launched into a discussion about patriarchy. I decided to try out what was emerging for me as I was walking down Lincoln Drive a few moments earlier, something to the effect of what later became this… awareness must also include complicity and a question, “how have I caused harm to others?” Without that element, whatever is said is meaningless and the suffering remains hiding in plain sight. That prompt got us talking for almost an hour. She told me about how her ex husband gaslit her and I listened but I did throw in a couple of subtle curveballs that I’m sure she’ll think about later and decide I’m an asshole but it was really only this… I wondered aloud about the whole lack of awareness conundrum. Like, I’m aware of all the problems in the world, but I’m not really aware of my own complicity kinda thing. Yeah I know, I took a risk. So I’m sitting there and she’s talking about her dude and what an asshole he was and she laughed and told me that’s why she moved back to Philadelphia, using the gaslighting word a lot and how he made her feel this or that and I’m listening and then I say, “Did you know today is the feast day of Mary Magdalene?” And I attempted to talk about the symbolic meaning of how Mary Magdalene was somebody who understood her true sovereignty and was later symbolically burned at the stake by the Catholic Church who at some point decided she was a prostitute even though it’s not backed up by any scripture whatsoever. So we riffed on that for a bit and I said, seems like it’s really just about feeling empowered within yourself and standing in your truth and everyone else can fuck off. And we laughed and suddenly she was looking at me like who the fuck is this guy and ultimately she said she had to go to work so we said later and that was it. I had finished my coffee at that point so I walked back down Lincoln Drive so I could get to work too. Chico was auspiciously silent through the whole thing. Three more days until I head back to the Catskills.

3. Thursday Morning in Philly

Chico willingly shat on a lawn where I would have deposited his shit anyway. He’s a good dog. The air is clean and crisp this morning, we can breathe again! Terry Lynn had a bad night and is going back to bed. No chatting today. Ruminating she said. I empathized. I ordered a coffee and a cherry scone, fed half to Chico for his revolutionary efforts. My friend in London texted that she watched all my Law and Order episodes recently. I remembered a couple of lines; “I have one of his gloves!”, and “the meter maids are out to get me”. Good times. I bonded with Ben Bratt and Jesse Martin the most. Getting those acting gigs was a beautiful respite from reality. Always fun. Two more days here and homeward bound. Best part for me was bonding with my sister and learning some of the details of her life. I’m sixteen years older and there was a long stretch where we weren’t close. I stood up at her Quaker style wedding back in 2013 and stated my intention for us to get closer and so things shifted from there. Now we own a property together and I’m Uncle Josh to her kids, who I adore. I love how things can take a turn for the better. I still have this strange relationship to the city of Philadelphia though. I find there’s an arrogance here, something unfriendly about the place. Even Terry Lynn, who clearly wants to connect on some level, walks away when things get too deep. I remember walking down the street as a kid with an innate understanding that if I looked a stranger in the eye there was every chance that he’d punch me in the face. There are remnants of that here and there. I’d call it more of a defensiveness, a posturing. There’s armoring that’s learned. I know because I notice it in myself too. I was a street kid who was hustled out of here by my mom at the age of 14 perhaps before things took a turn for the worse. I found some redemption in Maine and elsewhere but there’s residue in me and I feel it when I’m here. There are mirrors everywhere I walk.

And finally…

An Ode to Chico

I have a full time companion who I rarely call by his given name. This morning I called him Sir Stinksalot. Mostly I call him Buck. Or Duck. Sometimes Monk or Monkey. I’ve called him Nick, Nicky, Binky, Bunk, Stinky, Binky, Dinky, Stunk, Itchy, Cheeky P, Bee, Pickle, Monkle, Poopoo Face, Bunky Farts and Dingie Dog. I used to do this with my kids when they were little. Can’t help to think that it’s a little endearing, a little silly and perhaps a little weird. What’s in a name? Chico is my main man. I’m his. We don’t really use names most of the time anyway. With us, it’s physical and energetic. He likes when I scratch his nose with my whiskers and I like when he gets his paws up on my shoulders and gives me a hug.

Philly daze… 2026.