there are years that ask questions, and years that answer.....-Zora Neale Hurston

i love when the little things finally start coming together to present a bigger picture....

as a huge fan of, and more often than not, a victim of, irony, sometimes when i find a common thread i can't help pulling it.....

quite frequently that means my rubbish is filled with strings and bits of thread from varying sources....sometimes, i wind up with good yarns, that i work on knitting into stories for you on my blog....and then there are days, like today, when i need some guidance from those wiser and more time tested than myself...that's right, there are days when i turn to william shakespeare's greatest book -- THE BIBLE.

here are the threads i pulled today as i was seeking...for what i can't really say...but what i found...i think maybe this could be considered proof that willy did indeed write the big book (no, not the yellow pages....)

the general overall takeaway learning was that the BIBLE is filled with people that are low-brow and a bit of a scourge on society...this was so intriguing that i actually forgot what i was seeking guidance about....here are some great examples (the characters are right out of shakespeare...come on, and the plot? how can you doubt me here....)

• noah was a drunk
• abraham was too old to be productive (anyone would be after the first 2 or 300 years)
• isaac was a daydreamer
• jacob was a liar
• joseph was a victim of abuse
• moses stuttered
• gideon was a chicken
• samson was a womanizer
• rahab was a hooker
• jeremiah was a bullfrog
• jeremiah (see above) was too young, so technically, was a tadpole
• david was an adulterer
• elisha was suicidal
• isiah was a proselytized in the nude
• jonah ran away from God
• naomi outlived her husband (wait, isn't that a blessing to many?)
• job went bankrupt in more ways than one
• john, the babtist, ate bugs
• peter denied christ (today he'd get coal in his stocking!)
• martha worried about everything
• all the disciples were bored to the point of falling asleep during prayer
• the samaritan woman couldn't hold a relationship together, despite many marriages
• zacchaeus was too tiny, which today would be considered disability, not a character flaw
• paul was a religious zealot, which today would make him a jehovah's witness
  
• timothy was too young (again with the discrimination) and he had ulcers (from being discriminated against by the big Guy, no doubt...)
• and my personal favorite: lazarus was dead

sure i forgot what i needed advice and guidance with, but i came away realizing that the BIG BOOK is still a great dramatic read if you're not afraid of a little discrimination and finding out how much you have in common with many of it's main participants.

wit and wisdom for today: everything works out in the end....if it hasn't worked out, it's not the end.....

ok, it turns out that this week is not just about searching for answers and inner peace.....

instead, i've found religion in a flower, salvation in the pattern of blocks used to lay sidewalk in the park, rest in running around with the masses, and on this late friday afternoon in mid-april, i've also found myself radiating some sort of peace and light because for all my faults and wicked wiles, today i saw the face of god....and then i saw that wrinkled little old man who heads up the christian faith for the planet which some consider divinity (to me, divinity is fudge, and i think i'm divine, so he's on his own for this adjective!)...that said...here are the actual photos of his holiness en route to his passover sader, which only stands to reason...after all, so far the pope has apologized to the sexually abused masses for making them millionaires many times over as well as for getting caught...and i respect him for addressing that...and i pity him, as we all know he's sexually abused since he's not allowed to ever lay with the man he loves yet alone marry a woman...and we all know that chastity and lack of interaction with another human being, whether man, woman or inflated is the worst kind of mental, physical and emotional cruelty that anyone should ever endure....so he knows the sins of which he speaks...what is the saying, hate the sin, but line up for the metal detector if you think you're going to throw stones at the sinner....." something like that....




this is crowd control as i sit and wait for some sort of revelation...i.e. when they're going to let me cross the street and start walking towards home again....it's been over an hour stuck in the crosswalk...thank goodness no crying babies, dogs or people on motorized chairs are around me in this throng...oh and thank goodness the woman in front of me is shorter and appears to have bathed and washed her hair today!





as they say, patience is a virtue....and i've always been a man of easy virtues!!!

thus the wait...the people...the bottle of diet pepsi with lime in my man-purse....all worth while when the security started zooming at us....damn, couldn't they slow down so we could see him waving maybe instead of flying.....


and now, after all that waiting, and trying to stand without sitting on the filthy sidewalk and getting arrested for doing what the police have told us not to do....and drinking all that diet pepsi with lime (don't you love that drink....) i have got to take the most wild pee in this lifetime...to make it worse, it's almost 80 degrees out here, i'm dressed in denim and wool to avoid getting sick, and i'm nearly 30 blocks from home and from the subway (but i am still not allowed to walk across the street so i can't go home anyway...




oh yeah, and then of course, i forgot that i was having a pee myself moment because his m&m's the pope is right there....nice car...i was thinking i'd be getting popemobile...only reference point for that was the south park episode with kathy-me gifford...will have to look it up online...thought it would be white for some reason....


and finally, home and drained of physical exhaustion, urine and religious longing, i find that i have inner peace...and here's a picture of me as i realized it's not inner peace that makes a body and mind comfortable in life....it's inner springs on a pillow top mattress...and this is divine....see how much happier i look...and i thought i needed to have tithes and offerings or the church approved souvenir pope-pop in one of five fruit flavors...nope...i had peace at home all along...i just needed to close my eyes and look underneath my mortal self....

is it sacrilage if i ask it outloud and it's kind of funny....?

so, in the movie "the adventures of priscilla, queen of the desert", there is a grotesquely humorous moment involving ABBA poop....if that is as good as a relic to a drag queen....

is the pope's poop considered holy shit?

what is the proper etiquette for being in the presence of a particularly cloying and clinging papal constitutional?

does one need genuflect while uttering a silent our father and trying to not exclaim in shock and awe a loud and inappropriate "HOLY SHIT!"....

see it's not life that's bad....it's just a lot of organized religion that stinks....

the pope has come to nyc and fans everywhere are seeing his aura....

somehow i think this is wrong and in very poor taste --i'm not sure if it's my innate inner spirituality and overall religious predilection....or if it's just common sense and enjoyment of a bargain.....(like anyone is going to pay full price after this week...um hello, once he's gone from nyc, isn't when all the stuff goes on discount? granted the church does want to bulk up sales while it has a draw for the gift shop, body bread and jesus juice are only really picked up en masse during high holy days versus regular shabat consumption for such things as manashevits and mazza for the jewish....you'll notice their both available at your local market, try asking for jesus juice at your local liquer purveyor, or better, ask the baker for body bread....see if you don't find yourself seeking new places to pick up holiday supplies....that said, i know i'm looking forward to next week when once again i'll be stocking up on pope on a rope soaps....but not before they're divinely discounted....)

duke ellington!!! i knew there was another famous black man in nyc who wore suits, played piano and lived near me in harlem ....

well, back when harlem was the trendy hotspot for blacks because the wealthy whites moved to westchester and the the city dwelling jews didn't move fast enough to overtake the entire northern end of manhattan island....thus causing the very high percentage of the population in the judaic arena to become isolated and later, even segregated, amongst the up and coming free blacks of nyc.

the newly visible black population of nyc enjoyed the wealth of beautifully built townhouses (built for the white collar whites from wall street and midtown), suddenly vacated, and on fire sale, by developers who'd overextended while developing the area, and the upscale white owners (originally intended inhabitants) -- who found they didn't like the element of society that was also attracted to the new and glamorous area -- thus leaving the jewish working and service class behind, as the every "evolving" aryans moved north, east and west of the island to the "country".

thus, circuituiously enough, an area that was originally a large single family's land grant from the king of england, and mostly orchards and fields, sparsely cut through with wagon ruts and foot paths, was denegrated into the hottest, hippest, most exlusive and luxurious, pre-planned, urban construction in the the brief history of america....suddenly, fields, trees, flowers, chickens and cows were replaced with the elevated high-line train (now underground, except along park avenue right near my apartment which still has 125th street train station stops on all trains into grand central station from points north of city), streets, pockets of public parks secluded like gems in a sunken treasure chest just waiting to be discovered, avenue after avenue of stately houses with the best quality work, inside and out, each telling a story of who built it, who would buy it (well, so they thought), and what the area was meant to be....well, everybody makes a mistake at one point or another right? so the generation of engineers and urban planners miscalculated the high-class white man's desire to live on top of his neighbor and seek out hidden treasure after working AS THE MAN all day....so what if they jews saw an opportunity and jumped but couldn't jump quite quickly enough to satisfy their desire to be the "other white meat", i think it's pretty damn cool that the blacks ironically induced terror in the hearts of those who remained here for esthetic or financial reasons, thus establishing black as the new white....

so it is, sort of, even today, except that hispanic, particularly mexican and mostly puerto rican, are the new black which was the new white which leaves white as an utterly un-distinguishable shade of palsy gray nowadays....but once again, i've digressed, the point of this was to let you know that the larger than life black man in bronze a top the columns near the grand piano at central park north and fifth avenue is none-other than mr. duke ellington. and that's a man who does indeed deserve to immortalized in bronze for nothing other than his music and his human spirit...the fact that his black was actually high-yellow is an entirely different blog (and i'll probably not revisit this topic again since almost all blacks of slave ancestry in the u.s.a. are technically high yellow, and that in turn will set me off on how annoying it is for anyone to need be identified as african-american -- um, hello, you were born here, you were never a slave, hell, you've never had a job in the time i've known you, you're lucky to be a freakin' american....so technically, if someone needs an adjective to identify an ethnicity in america, i'd be irish-american --atleast i've been to visit the country --but more likely identafiable as pasty-american, where as all those annoying folks using african-american, sorry, haven't seen the place person, you'd best choose to be maybe black, or just high-yellow if you must, but i think african american should be reserved, with much respect intended, for the very hard working class of truly beautiful dark skinned people emigrating to nyc and elsewhere from third-world conditions of africa for betterment of their lives and those of their kids....these folks are african-american and every day they do the jobs no one else can bother or likes to do, without complaint or high wages...we're lucky that they don't ask to be called mexicans or canadians after all the bullshit that comes along with the mis-nomenclature given by the overall use of african-american as adjective."

when you first start submerging into the north end of central park...you turn and look back for the city and this is what warms your soul .....

it's of course merely an amuse bouche before the park serves up a veritable 5 course gourmet feast for all the senses, but right now, mostly the eyes, and happily, very little assault on the nose at the moment as the heats low and the meer hasn't begun to emit a rank or fishy odor as of yet....nice!

follow the belgian block road.....

you'll never get to kansas, but you will find wizards, witches, liars, bears and probably many a rusty old woodsmen somewhere in the bushes!!!

as i look across the meer, deeper into central park.....

i'm struck by the ravishing beauty that is my oh so natural yet totally man-tained and created woodland....merely several blocks from my current home....i love this picture....

this is the fantastic bronze statue of a man and his baby grand at the top of fifth avenue on central park....

of course i want it to be gershwin, but it's not, and for the life of me, i'm blanking out on famous black american pianists from the 1920's and 1930's (no, it's not jelly roll morton...yes, it's the other one, but who the hell is he....damn....)

notice how i accidentally caught the airplane perfectly centered overhead of the man? just saw it when i downloaded the picture, what a trip!

i love spring in new york city...the flowers are blooming just for me....the sun shines just for me....and the crowds scatter...

ok, they scatter around me if i make the right face or the right oddly timed noise in a crowded area....particularly a subway....but oh the flowers....they make me think of heaven and how maybe all there really is when we die is an absolute instant...you know, maybe heaven isn't all the flowers and streams and angels and crowds you'd be led to think by some extremists...no, somehow yesterday i've come to the absolute conclusion that heaven is truly for the living on earth and when we die...there is simply one pure instant, perhaps the white light we go into, and that instant is all there is....that perfect moment of light and lightness of being is not only slimming but very much all a person should ever need to endure of perfection and peace....i haven't figured out what transpires after you have that moment - perhaps we just vaporize or are again reborn, but yes, pass it along, i'm pretty much convinced that heaven is just that single moment of peace and beauty when you enter the light before phhhhhhtt!!! you're gone forever....

that said, these flowers and my corner of central park are heaven on earth at the moment and i spent hours in there last night photographing it as the sunfaded across the harlaam meer (old dutch for harlem lake - a natural 11 acre water feature on my side of the park...it's lovely!)

behold....