i'm not different from when i was 12, just twisted from those roots, built on that ground. i'm defined by the structures of those years, by my bent teeth like sinkholes, by my fluctuating friends like population density. but then the city's changed these days.


was looking at the sky before, it's amazing how buildings bite chunks out of it. one doesn't even LOOK at the sky in a city for how fixated we are on buildings, but when you do it all looks like so much tetris, so much gobbling at the precious blue above.

funniest thing in the world: someone came to this blog by searching "my vagaina leeks something" because of the thing i wrote about cooking leeks and seeing the vagina monologues for the first time. oh my god that is so fucking amazing.

since i can't find any books about begging i figure i'll just go ask homeless people what it's like. what do you say? "spare some change?" what about reaching the dollar threshold? is a rattling cup useful or a hand more poignant? are you familiar with the islamic looking people in paris who sit silently with their faces cast down with a simple cup in front of them? dyou think that's an effective tactic? does it make you angry to think that people really don't give a shit about you and your poverty? what do you think of beggars with dogs? have you ever feigned insanity or tried to be elaborately wretched, like fake fake limbs or something? are people more charitable in one season or another? how are tourists? what's the first thing you notice about a person? is someone with a grocery bag apt to give you something from it? have you ever seen some chump counting money as they walked past you? if so, dyou think they gave a shit that their wealth, that the potential for raising you out of abjection here on the street, had been so close at hand and therefore more poignantly denied than usual? is it better to look sad or happy or somewhere in between? i always want to look at beggars, to read their signs and marvel at their misery, but i try to avert my eyes unless i can and do give something, and even then i only allow myself a very short glance. do people ever stare at you without giving? do people stare at you when they do give? does anyone make eye contact with you at all?

i'd just like to marvel at the dynamic between the haves and have nots at its most lopsided and freak show-esque, where fly by sympathy (or is it just guilt, isn't it always just guilt?) is the currency of survival. i guess giving money to beggars is like shaking off sadness, loosing the ballast of not-yet-performed charity to continue on lighter. it's fundamentally something that doesn't stay with you; the ones that give take off in their hot air balloons, gone until their righteousness cools.

even beyond their physical privation, beggars are very unfortunate people, vague relations of the private investigator, because they have too much to do with the private ugliness of the people who interact with them. They're vessels for the things people feel insecure about, like their jealousy over their spouse or their indifference to other people's suffering. We don't like to look at them, so the beggar on his patch of sidewalk or the investigator behind his anonymous door are appropriately disposable, quickly walked past, anchored to their obscure spots. It's irritating when a beggar stakes out a subway entrance because they then intrude regularly and entrench themselves and their guilty implications into your daily schedule, a signpost of your shitty characteristics.