So, the Santa Ana winds are burning Southern California to smithereens. I just found this out–as I don’t have access to a television, and I haven’t been reading the paper, save for our lunchtime crossword puzzle, I have little to no idea what is going on, anywhere. There are thousands of people camped out in parking lots and sleeping on stadium floors, who have no home, and are cooking dinners on hot plates, or not having dinner, and are just thinking, “What the hell are we going to do?”

At work, I read Time over a faux-chicken salad sandwich. An extension of the California fire article, was another one about the objects people grabbed upon fleeing the inferno. There was a boy who brought his sax, a woman who grabbed her children and her jewelry box, and another who grabbed a bible, a curling iron, and pink stilettos.

For a community Halloween shindig, Allie and I are gathering TRUE freaky-scary lore from around campus & the neighborhood to present in a bone-chilling, ball-dropping storytelling. And also we will have candy. To give.

In our investigation, we found out that there were subterranean tunnels running from building to building.

The think-tank for the writing program was exhilarating. About ten of us crowded around a table, all ladies, notebooks and pencils standing to attention, and we hashed it out: the general disorganization of the administration, our lack of resources and the disorganization of our existing ones–namely the writing & tutorial center, of which no one was educated of its uses, and is often overseen by equally hazy employees. The lack of communication between teachers–some of which has resulted in certain professors not being clear what they are supposed to teach & that they were taking this job to teach writing students and not visual artists. We talked about the Mary Gaitskill lectures cutting into our studio time, and also, not being given a sufficient amount or structure of studio time to progress–unlike the visual art students who are given six-hour chunks.

There were many smaller details, as well, and for those of your interested, we will be meeting next Thursday, the 1st, at 4pm in the cafeteria around one of those large, circular tables. This second meeting’s intention is to: solidify our fundamental qualms, discuss solutions, and begin collectively writing some sort of proposal we can bring to the administration.

This is not an attack! This is about consciously improving your circumstances.

Monumental occasion.

I got my first cell phone today. It was a little overwhelming.

We made nice.

I’ve spent a fortnight riding above and below the radar of my generation. Really–I held out for years! To what avail, I’m not sure. My hope is that those years provided the world with a plethora of letters, notes on the doorsteps, and other face-to-face communication that wouldn’t have happened otherwise. I looked at myself in the mirror, the phone held to my face, and became nostalgic for simpler times.

So we made a fort.

Over dinner this evening, I said: Yesterday I worked eight hours for the first time in months. My boss needed help. But it made me remember why I promised myself I’d never live like that again–you know, by an eight-hour day job.”

Alisdair said: “I understand, but I have issues with establishing myself as solely an artist. Guys like Wallace Stevens and Williams Carlos Williams, they wrote amazing stuff without having to become what they created. Williams was a pediatrician–”

“Yeah, and Stevens was an insurance collector,” I said.

There is something to be said about marrying trade and art, being plugged into society for service and creation. It’s not that I don’t like working, it’s that I don’t like working shit jobs. I ate my pineapple fried rice (with tofu, avacado, yams) and watched the rain. There’s a stretch of Bedford Ave., a stone’s throw above Broadway, that is straight out of Portland, and I watched it skate by. We were at a restaurant called Wild Ginger.

Today I felt like I was living by the seat of my pants. I read mouthfuls of stories and wrote a six page paper in an hour and a half. It felt horrible, really. When I do homework, I have to shut myself away and keep hot coffee or dark chocolate on hand. Drugs! It’s like I need drugs to pull me through each critical essay, reading response, note-taking session. I rode my bike in the rain without a helmet. Twice! I brought my bike onto the subway, damming a platform of bodies, unable to get by my wheels.

Oh, Fritzy.

I stood under an awning and listened to people go by. Tobasco sauce. Confessions of love. Plans to write on a white board. There are so many people. Glorious.

Dustin is coming on Sunday! It’ll be like a honeymoon on at least three different levels: Me, Dusty, and the city.

There’s this bed and breakfast on the Oregon coast called The Sylvia Beach Hotel where every room is themed after a famous writer (get it, Sylvia Beach? Brilliant!) The building is so old that the second floor shakes during rain storms, and it sits on stilts above the ocean. I stayed there on a long weekend one Winter with my mom and my sister. We got the Meridel LeSeur room. Meridel Le-who? The room was decorated like a Midwest farm house, sleigh trundle-bed et al. There were sunflowers, pictures of LeSeur’s family, her books, a big oak desk.

Let me tell you about Meridel. We’re reading her in class right now. She was blacklisted during the post-WWII slump, writing about women who wore pants, and what’s more–women who still weren’t satisfied with that! Women who wanted to claim their sexual desires, submit to men, and still be able to order peanut butter sandwiches and beer at weigh stations! The men were home from overseas and Rosie the Riveter was being shoved into the American basement. LeSeur went with her.

Read, “The Girl.”

I had brunch on a rooftop last Sunday. Apparently there is something called the Slow Foods Movement, and there are people out there on the forefront of it, making meals intended for people to enjoy with each other, like the French, or like once upon a time. Course by course, word by word.

I biked to an industrial section of Williamsburg, paint and metal flaking into the wind, and climbed to the fifth floor of a warehouse-cum-apartment building where the light spilled in like daisies, and Violeta stood behind a counter, stirring vanilla-strawberry compote.

She said, “Go up to the roof, and someone will bring your food up.”

So I climbed the fire escape and, as though pushed from an urban womb, I was under a blindingly blue sky and an expanse of rooftop, peppered with tables and cloths, fluttering in the breeze, pillows and picnic sheets, and people sitting, eating, drinking coffee and mimosas, chewing the fat. I paid three dollars (that’s all they ask–just to break even) and sat down with them. A few minutes later, someone brought me a plate of walnut pancakes covered in home-simmered strawberry and peach sauce. I talked to someone from the Midwest, someone who works for Aperture magazine. And the breeze blew. And we ate, cross-legged on the smooth, white roof.

I had met Violeta the night before, in an Italian pastry shop somewhere in the East Village. After a series of chance meetings, one friend to another and another, I found myself with Lily and Emma, and two men Emma knew, in the way-back this pastry shop, being serenaded by two violinists who finished their set with “This Land is Your Land.” We sat talked for hours, over octagon-shaped cups of espresso. Violeta showed up, in a knitted shawl and a cane. She knew someone there, but I know not how. The first thing I heard her talking about was the peril of “the meal” lacking a role in our society, and I clutched her arm and said, “Yes, yes!”

“I have a brunch at my place this Sunday. Come.”

The other two guys we were with, Alisdair and Mario, were from who-knows-where–Florida, Philly, Williamsburg. They were story spinners and artists and drag queens. Alisdair was in a band called Jessie Diamond and the Thousands, he was an academic adviser and he designed projects like “10,000 Roses a Day” and “Sweater Betterment.” We talked about community and polar bear swims and open relationships until the elderly Italian men shut the lights out on us.

We all moved onto cafe Pick Me Up because the day and the night do not end here, they mesh. Alisdair and I spoke of movement, my story bus dream, community. He’s part Filipino, and has Lyme disease from a blind and stealthy tick, and went to The New College in Florida (who’s sister school is Evergreen) and said: “The federal government gave us more way more money than we needed. College was free, and the rest essentially paid for our drugs and travels.”

We walked back to Brooklyn together, arm in arm.

Allie and I slopped in the rain like Ghost Writer, gathering Pratt ghost stories for our Halloween party. Virgil and I read “The Ascent of Mt. Ventoux” aloud like maniacs, because there was no other way to read it. I worked with the other owner at The Carrot, Carlos, and he told me about the measures he’d taken, wooing his wife to marry him nineteen years ago. She’s a fierce, duck-footed, beautiful Dominican woman who only recently started acknowledging me. You have to earn her attention. It took Carlos years of five-page-letters and dozens of roses before she let him speak, horse drawn carriages and plays and declarations before she said, “For Christ’s sake, let’s just get eggs and toast at the diner.”

Carlos looked at me and cupped his hands over his mouth: “They don’ make ‘em like that anymore!” And I almost wept.

I ordered my first cell phone yesterday from a T-Mobil representative who recognized my shipping zip code:

“Sounds like Brooklyn,” he said. “Oh what I wouldn’t do to come back! I lived on Cortelyou for eighteen years, and now I’m in Couer d’Lane, and I just got my first cell phone seven months ago.”

“Just got a cell phone, and you’re working for T-Mobil?” I said.

“Yeah, funny, huh?”

There was a huge gust of wind, and then a clap of rain. And we were all sitting by an open window when it hit. We ran outside, barefoot, and stripped off our clothes. We could barely see. The lawns were full of mud and we slipped onto our knees, spreading it on our faces and steam rolling through the grass. It was just crazy. We couldn’t stop until the rain stopped, and then there we were: a pile of half-naked students in the middle of campus, coming down from some primordial harvest ritual. This is not about being a hippie. Some of these girls were fashion majors–this is about being comfortable with everything that you are or love or resonate with: Nudity, downpours, stilettos and Marc Jacobs.

My father called me in the middle of the night, after reading a sentence in my blog that expressed discontent with the writing program.

It isn’t the individual teachers, the curriculum, or the students, it’s the lack of cohesiveness among them. The energetic potential of this program–based on the talent, the location, and the extremely small faculty–is huge, and I don’t feel like the right hand knows what the left is doing.

My father has worked for the American Federation of Musicians for twenty-five years, and the minute he hears dissatisfaction with an institution, well, you know:

“Get fifteen of you together,” he said, “Already, you’d represent $600,000, and that’s enough reason to listen.”

Thanks, dad.

So, I’ve been gathering a think-tank. Everyone wants their money’s worth.

I’ve been revisiting and getting one-on-one critiques from my teacher, Ellery Washington, on a story called “Plums” about the summer I was born. I read Dante’s Inferno at a tiny coffee bar on Vanderbilt Ave. called the Old Brooklyn Parlor. A poet named Dara Weir came to our Friday Forum yesterday and said, “Edgar Allen Poe is great because he teaches us about the dangerous places our rational mind can go–and in turn, he teaches us how to embrace the irrational. The irrational is essential, and often safer.”

A group of us went into the city the other night, still and humid, making everyone’s hair coil and spring, to see CocoRosie for free at a gallery. The venue reached capacity and a bouncer with a brash accent told everyone in line to: “Leave! Git goin,’ show’s ova’, come o-an, move out,” and so we ended up where New Yorkers often end up when they’re stranded: at Dunkin Doughnuts. We came back to Brooklyn and DJ’d and drank Woodchuck. And that’s when the downpour came.

I think I am exhausted.

As the event coordinators, Allie and I are also planning Halloween festivities, Naked Wednesdays, sleepovers and some sort of harvest dinner.

And Ron, the Pratt culinary rep, has sanctioned official posters going up around the cafeteria, encouraging people to bring their own plate and utensils. They also started featuring juices pressed from a farm upstate. And starting next week, they’ll be using local produce more often, and making note of that with posters, too.

i.e. “This week we’re using onions from the Fort Greene Farmers Market!”

When I’m waiting after hours on the L train platform, on most weekends, there is an old busker playing Van Morrisson and Simon & Garfunkle songs, but in his own, funny voice. He warps the melodies and yodels. Two Sundays ago he was playing, “I’ve Just Seen a Face,” though I really had to listen to know that’s what it was, and when he finished he said:

Any requests?

And some guy yelled, “Free Bird!”

Witty banter regarding that epic Lynard Skynard song ensued.

A young man standing next to me leaned in and said: “I watched them have this exact conversation at this exact same time last night.”

I was with Cait, and she looked stricken. “I feel duped,” she said.

And personally, I wasn’t sure whether to feel likewise, or on the contrary, to feel completely taken care of. There is a secret order of operations happening three levels underneath the city, underneath the thump of pedestrian feet. We wondered: does the stand-in get a small stipend for his nightly punchline? How does this work? He ended up boarding the train with us, leaving the busker behind without so much as a wink.

I’m working on a story called “Older Men,” and it’s about younger girls being the predators.

The season has descended. I ate pumpkin pie from Thursday to Sunday. Nina, a dark and slender fellow writer-ess, had some people over for harvest treats and sassy cider. She lives in a romantic flat in the middle of Greenpoint, warmly-lit, shelves of books, a 78-keyed spinette by her comforter-cloaked bed. She found the spinette for free, leaning against a brick facade. She had a stand-up secretary, a study, pets, a record library and no-frills surfaces–like early-70’s splintered coffee tables that had been to the space age and back. She had a kitchen with garlic and sherry above the stove. We played Apples-to-Apples and ate pumpkin muffins.

I met a girl there named Lucy who told me about her mis-diagnosed schizophrenic sister who, upon coming of age, ran away and became a Hasidic Jew. The women in the community that adopted her thought she was channeling the word of God, because of the voices. So they never asked questions.

She said that her sister never recognizes her when they run into each other.

Everyone’s parents were here this weekend. It’s very moving to see people against the backdrop of their roots–you can see repeating shapes in their faces, the tones in their voices no longer unique. The difficult part is when each member suddenly assumes their role, the daughter or son feeling eclipsed by their parent’s perception of them, and likewise, the parents becoming cardboard cut-outs. And they all become cardboard cut-outs even though they don’t have to be. Family is a tricky balance.

Lily said, “I just wanna take these people by the shoulders and say ‘Stop parenting!’”

Lily’s brother visited for a couple of days. Like Lily, he is warm and wry and earthy, raised by their father on trundle beds and Hondas. We went out for breakfast, chewed the fat in the evening, and I soaked in that knowing, verbal sibling dance–and it made me want to weep. And celebrate, too. I will be drawn to these kinds of relationships for the rest of my life.

I released a lifetime of sibling camaraderie after my brother joined the army. I’ve mourned that far more than his sanity.

In a throng of bellowing, Chinese women holding bundles of ten-dollar tickets, Lily and I got her brother safely onto a Chinatown bus. Those lines must be run by the mafia or something–one of the ladies tried to sneak him a ticket to Philly when he asked for one to Baltimore. Lily and I walked over the Brooklyn bridge, doughnuts and coffee in tow. She talked about wanting to run away and work on a farm, and we talked about home, Brooklyn, gynecology–she is a rich and grown-up writer.

We kept each other honest: Neither of us are wetting our pants over the program yet, and we’re sick of being babied. We walked back to Clinton Hill and found a cafe called Urban Spring. Upon entering, I said:

Do you have food food?

And the owner said, “Yes. We’re not strictly vegan or vegetarian, we’re not even opposed to eating meat–we’re just conscious. All the food here is conscious.”

Ninety-five percent organic & local ingredients. We got juice and sandwiches and then sat in the leaves as the sky deepened, mmm-ing and mmm-ing, full-mouthed. I remembered how concerned I was about not being able to find nourishing food in this city–and it’s done nothing but come at me from all angles since I arrived. I have my own personal nutritionist making sure I’m eating–”Look, you ever hungry, you come by the shop and eat. We got so much food! You ever need anything, stop by, and I will always help,” Radimus says, in his multi-lingual accent.

I lost my student ID card yesterday and have to get a new one: “You need the money?” Radimus says. “You need the money now?”

“No, no, I’m totally financially–”

“You sure?” He says.

Yesterday was hard. I locked myself out of my room and bought things that didn’t work and lost my ID card. I feel revved up, like a car being worked on in a shop with it’s wheels raised off the ground. Turning with no where to go. Caffeine is making my feet shake, and I started shouting in my frantic search for small things. And then I felt apologetic. I feel blocked, stunted, drank a root beer float on the floor at Nicole’s dress-in-black birthday party in the workroom. I miss physical intimacy as a regular part of life–words get so exhausting. Words get in the way.

We all need some time to just. Not. Think.

Last night I got a giant blackhead out of Robert’s ear, and afterwards he said, “Adrian, let’s make something fun happen; you, me, and our favorite writers.” Robert is from Springfield, Oregon, and had hair down to his waist until a few days ago. There is a girl on our floor giving out excellent hair cuts.

So yes, Robert. I wanna make stuff happen.

Lily quit smoking cigarettes, and this morning we drank coffee and bought tamales from a family on Myrtle Ave. We walked by the Ninety-Nine cent store, run by the couple from the Ivory Coast. Yesterday I bought a broom and a dust pan from them,  and as he totaled me, he said: “Un, deux…”

And I said, “…Trois, quatre, cinq, six, sept, huit, neuf.”

Nine. Now there is a language we all know.

I finally figured out how to upload these pictures.

A disconcerting night, cold, coasting home on my bike–but right as I drew the blinds, I got an email from Pratt’s non-fiction lit journal, The Prattler, and they want to hire me. I get paid minimum wage, for twenty-hour weeks, even though I’ll only be working about a tenth of of those hours. I just write and help assemble & edit each issue. Very exciting.