Porter's Notebook

One week from tonight, Noir at the Bar NYC is in full effect....

Sun, 19 May 2013 23:43:18 -0400

One week from tonight, Noir at the Bar NYC is in full effect. Reading will be a stellar cast of the bards of bastards, the troubadours of trouble, the chroniclers of… Shit the only word that comes to mind is cocksuckers, but I so hate using that as an insult.

Ah, fuck it. It’s crime fiction being read by writers. Come through, it’s a good time had by all except the easily offended. Don’t bring the kids.

It’s that time again. Noir at the Bar NYC, held at Shade...

Fri, 17 May 2013 20:43:16 -0400

It’s that time again.

Noir at the Bar NYC, held at Shade on the corner of Third Street and Sullivan in the heart of Greenwich Village, a neighborhood with a deep literary and musical history that now mostly functions as a place for children on their first drunk to vomit in the gutters and for young men with overabundant of testosterone and lacking social skills to shove each other and scream because no self-respecting woman would let them near the vaginas.

So it’s a perfect place for this event, attended by scumbags and rousabouts of the highest level, some of them reading, some of them listening and ALL of them drinking.

Come one, come all. I’ll be reading from my story “One More Day Can’t Hurt,” now available in Issue Five of Thuglit, the web’s most awarded crime fiction website.

A Lost Note, a Red Scarf

Fri, 17 May 2013 14:41:00 -0400

Even when it was still open my feet sometimes left tracks in the dust between the shelves of that little used bookstore downtown. It’s gone now, don’t bother looking for it, but before it closed I found what follows written on a piece of notebook paper. It fell from the pages of a heavy book I as looking at, I don’t remember the title, something about gardening or cooking, and at first I took it for a page come loose from the binding. I opened the book to put it back, looked at the top of the piece of paper for a page number and instead saw blue lines and handwriting.

Dear Susie,

Do your collarbones still taste like the stars?

Has anyone ever told you that? Because it’s true and has been for all the empty years in between here and there. I wonder if you even still live in that big house at the end of Sparrow Lane, its white sides and lattice guarded by a line of oak trees. Those hours spent slicked with sweat and ignoring mosquitoes in your room, summer hours between noon and three in the afternoon. Your mother left for tea at noon, your father got home from the office at three and you tied that red scarf to the rail of the balcony outside your room to let me know the coast was clear.

I still have the scar on my knee from when I spilled racing to you on a backway street. You gathered me inside and cleaned it with something from the medicine cabinet and I tried not to wince. We fell upon each other afterward, my still-bleeding knee staining your bedspread, clumsy and eager and younger than I can imagine looking back now.

I hid my bike in the bushes behind your house and you balanced a heavy book on the edge of a table by the door with a teacup on top of it.

An early warning system. We thought we were very clever.

Today when I visited my knuckles fell shy of the door. I am not a boy any longer like I was the day when the door opened and the book fell and the cup shattered on the kitchen floor. You flew into your clothes, I flew out to the balcony and over the side, landing rough and tumbled toward my Schwinn.

I never saw your red scarf again that summer or any after.

Are those sheets still stained with my blood?

At a bookstore in town I bought a heavy book, tucked this note between its pages and left it on the porch of your house. Susie did you find it? Did you read it? Will I ever see you again?

I could find my old bike, you could find that red scarf and we could do our damndest to charm away the afternoons and make three hours seem like a blink.

Love,
Aaron.

I slipped the note back between the pages and put the book back on the shelf. Maybe Susie found it.

The Castle of Sand

Mon, 13 May 2013 17:24:28 -0400

The knight’s path to the castle on the rock spire was long, twisted like the branches of dead trees that hung over the road supporting a gray and swollen belly of sky. His lance fought to drag in the ground, the heavy plate about his shoulders and hips grew heavier by the mile, his horse would collapse at any moment, he was sure. He might never reach the castle that he could see in a distance that seemed to grow with every step and had dropped his clarity of purpose by the side of the road like ash knocked from his pipe. He no longer felt sure of what he would do when he reached the castle, but it seemed to happen between blinks that he found himself at the base of the spire and a narrow trail. He dismounted and dropped his lance, patting his horse on the neck and started up without bothering to hitch the animal to anything. He walked against the height and the weight of his armor, against his sword that banged into his legs, the stupid weight of his armored greaves and boots.

The door of the castle was tall and made of scarred wood. A declaration that John loves Stacy existed forever on the door in the center of a carved heart next to the dents from the battering rams of barbarians, black streaks where fire had tried and failed to consume it.

The knight laid a hand against the door and it swung open. There would be a dragon or a demon, a beast in the basement on a horde of gold and a maiden in the highest tower. That was why he had come, wasn’t it? He could not remember anymore.

The castle’s hall was empty and silent. Sand gritted under his steps and piles of it sat in the corners of the room. In one pile was a pail and shovel, baby blue and child-sized. Shaking his head the knight walked past them and chose a corridor at random, and then a set of stairs. Days passed as he searched and he was not hungry, thirsty or tired. He found neither beast nor bounty, no smiling and grateful maiden.

Back in the main hall, he laid down his sword and sat against a pillar. There must be something, he thought, nowhere has nothing. He again noticed the pail and shovel and picked them up, scooping sand into it and then dumping it back onto the floor. He built small piles of sand, making hills and reconstructing from memory the land of his boyhood. Here was his father’s home and here was the hill from which you could look down on the whole province. There was the church spire which was taller than everything else. Consumed with his building, he removed his helmet so that he might see better and his armored gauntlets so that he might carve the suggestions of windows with his fingernails. The skirt of mail and the plates hinged by his hips prevented him from sitting comfortably so he removed them too, followed by his cuirass and backplate because they made it hard to balance. Soon he was without armor, his sword laying some feet away as he began to create worlds that he had never seen, built houses he would like to live in one day. Spreading the sand thin upon the ground he drew the face of a woman that he hoped would love him even though he didn’t know her name.

Time had no meaning absorbed as he was, but it passed and a day arrived when he looked up and saw something outside of the window. Getting to his feet he left his armor and sword where they lay, walking out of the tower in nothing but his rust-stained tunic and leather trousers. A sliver of daylight was visible between the doors as they closed behind him, a bright sliver of breeze and sunlight that carried a hint of spring.

A Dream Before Dawn

Sat, 11 May 2013 12:51:38 -0400

The wash of dawn just made the nightmares seem worse, and before he opened his eyes he’d dropped somebody’s throat on a lot of broken glass and stared into the red yawn of their neck.

A woman. When before all his dream adversaries had been men or monsters.

The ceiling was a smudge in the early morning, out of the window the sun was turning the space above the skyline blue like a brush of lavender across a pretty girl’s heavy lids or a cool hand on his brow. The dawn seemed to say, ‘no more sleep for you tonight, but that’s okay, I am here.’

The main avenue near the apartment was empty, just a few men selling roasted chestnuts and circles of bread crusted with sesame seeds. He buys one and a bottle of water, some cigarettes and the bread tastes good mixed with the water and smoke. He exhales long, empties his lungs and expects to see the rest of the black nightmare wash out with his last puff, but daylight has softened the shadows, made them sleepy, even the ones in his heart.

On the other side of the bridge, past a dozen men and birds fishing in the waters far below, three mosques call the faithful. Haunting, that song, beautiful even to a heathen.

“I wonder if I walked inside and whispered please, would you take the dreams away?” He asked the cool morning air, the wailing and lilting song washing around him indistinguishable from the wind.

We’re doing it again, cats and kittens. Noir at the Bar in...

Wed, 08 May 2013 17:52:00 -0400

We’re doing it again, cats and kittens. Noir at the Bar in New York City at Shade on the corner of 3rd street and Sullivan. Don’t know the official roster yet, but there will no doubt be a fine grouping of ruffians, ne’re do wells, roustabouts, thugs, drunks and scoundrels.

I’ll be reading from my story “One More Day Can’t Hurt,” available in the current issue of Thuglit that you can purchase here.

It’s always a good time and hey, if you aren’t having fun just start drinking. Why do you think we hold the thing in a fucking bar?

Come and press your face against the musky, sweaty odor of New York noir.

Radios and Ghosts

Wed, 08 May 2013 17:40:27 -0400

It’s a fancy Japanese restaurant now, some kind of fusion cuisine where diners kneel at the low tables that make dinner an endurance exercise. When I was a boy in 1986 it was an empty storefront with rails and diamond relief metal for steps. That homeless man, he slept on those rusty diamonds and turned his coke bottle glasses to sunlight that crept in between the buildings at certain hours of the day. He was always so grave, so watchful and would salute me when I passed with my step-mother, holding onto her with one hand and returning his greeting with the other. The homeless in New York City are often ignored or feared, but they entertain us on our subway rides and call to us during our commutes like ghosts in the corners of our eyes. They laugh at the air and speak to people we can’t see, share their smells with us on hot subway cars in August or March. Poke at our guilt and privilege, giving us a chance to soothe both with a bright coin in a dirty palm.

George Orwell wrote that beggars are despised not for being indigent, but for choosing a trade at which they make no money.

TriBeCa was almost empty then except for two bars and a ragtag bunch of lost boy artists, some now trying their hands at raising children. Nearby a hardware store had bins of random junk you could buy for a dollar and I rummaged there for hours, finding treasures in bits of stove and car parts, once a mild burn from some mild acid that had leaked all over everything.

He never asked for anything, just lay wrapped in his sleeping bag with an ear turned toward a radio that was always silent. Once after we greeted each other I asked my step-mother why he couldn’t afford batteries for his radio.

“Some of these guys, the real crazies, they have rolls of money in their pockets. The radio probably works fine.”

It’s strange how different a reply is from an answer.

Behind him the empty storefront sat like a cave with a glass door. Open sesame or even a key would reveal a hidden wealth of dust, copper wire and silence.

And one day he was gone.

“Where did he go, mom?”

“Probably just wandered off.”

The landscape of a child’s world is made of many strange things, some of which become the ghosts of adulthood. Every time I pass that Japanese restaurant, now full of light and rice paper, I imagine him reclining still and listening on his radio for a song I’d never hear. I remember his coke-bottle glasses and ragged sleeping bag, the way he never smiled. I will remember him and that New York City forever, no matter how many times they pave it over with boutiques, restaurants and strollers. My fingertips will always recall the difference between a subway token and a nickel from the way they felt in my pocket.

Ridiculous Personal Post that you Absolutely Shouldn’t Fucking Read.

Tue, 07 May 2013 18:02:00 -0400

What did I just say? You people don’t fucking listen.

Sigh.

Five years ago I had to stop boxing because I broke my eye socket for the second time and they installed a little silicon ramp held in place by a screw. My doctor very gently and slowly, because he must think I’m defective for this to be my idea of fun, explained that perhaps I wasn’t designed for this sport and perhaps knitting would be more appropriate. Kinda funny, I literally might have a screw loose, but probably not because every once in a while I jump up and down to see if I can feel anything rattling around in there. So far all is well. A year after that I tore something in my left shoulder and had to give up Brazilian jiujitsu because I couldn’t even lift a glass of water.

Bummer. Ow.

Spent two years trying to rehab the fucking thing with weights and in the process learned the proper way of strength training, learned to squat and deadlift and all that is good and useful about picking heavy shit up off the floor. I still missed fight sports, but I had to make due.

But the shoulder never really got any better and I couldn’t even do a push-up without serious pain that I couldn’t push through.

So shoulder surgery, which was by far the most painful surgery I’ve ever had and I’ve had a few. I’d have preferred to break an eye socket again that go through the pain of rehabbing my shoulder. But I kept going, listened to my physical therapist even though I was chomping at the bit to get back to the iron and one day jiujitsu. Eventually I did and a year after shoulder surgery I worked my way to a 475lb one rep deadlift without any grip aids other than chalk.

In the words of Bill and Ted, excellent. If you don’t get this reference it’s fine, I’ll be shopping for a walker and adult diapers tomorrow.

Then my neck started to hurt. A lot. Okay. Round the clock headaches, pain I couldn’t push through and not sleeping more than two hours at a time without waking up in pain. More physical therapy, a year of being stubborn and finally I make plans to get an MRI.

Four herniated discs in my neck alone.

Bummer. Ow.

Steroid injections, more physical therapy, fired one physical therapist and literally an entire office of doctors before I managed to get somebody used to working with athletes. My physical therapist’s exact words:

“You’re kinda stupid. I can work with that provided you listen.”

Okay. Five months of physical therapy. Five months away from the gym and I can feel my strength flowing away, my manliness diminishing, any minute now I shall buy some skinny jeans, grow an ironic mustache and be slightly effete and oh so cool. I shall pass myself in the mirror and my reflection shall laugh, point and ask:

Now after another five month break I’m working my way back to my previous numbers, but carefully and calmly, understanding now that the world of physical culture is not a series of tests or levels, that it’s a constant stream from birth to death and to treat it as a series of levels to be passed is to treat oneself to the feeling of constant failure, the gym becomes a chore and a goal in the ever-increasing distance. I have found this to be true with writing, with love, with everything that you run across in this thing called life. What you choose to fill your time with, it’s all life and life is to be experienced and enjoyed. This does not mean do not struggle and this does not mean do not fight to achieve.

Fight. Struggle. Work. Challenge yourself. Live.

But I was looking at this all wrong. If I just do this one more thing than all will fall into place. One day I will “get it.” And every day that I didn’t “get it,” was another day in which I had failed myself.

Obviously, it doesn’t work like that. But I need to pound myself against that immovable object until I began to understand this. And I’ll get it wrong again, I’m sure, before they nail me into that pine box. Or shoot my ashes into space strapped to a rocket that has “deez nuts,” written on the side.

I haven’t decided yet.

Make sure that you dare to fail, fail often and fail better. But you never fail yourself. That’s bullshit. Each failure I have broken my teeth against and bled on while I caught my breath has led me to a lesson that I will take to my grave. Or space. I haven’t decided yet.

And I’m probably not saying anything that anybody doesn’t already know if you haven’t picked up a copy of Chicken Soup for the Soul. That’s why I told you not to read this nonsense. But since you did, I threw in a bunch of swear words because I’m macho as fuck.

Thuglit Issue Five Hey folks, The good people at Thuglit have...

Wed, 01 May 2013 18:41:32 -0400

Thuglit Issue Five

Hey folks,

The good people at Thuglit have been ~~foolish~~ generous enough to publish my story “One More Day Can’t Hurt,” which takes place in the 1950’s in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen. The main character Ralphie is a man struggling, with junk, with dreams, with life and love.

He’s losing.

I’m honored to be in such company for this issue, you’ll find stories by:

A GOOD MARRIAGE by Ed Kurtz
HAPPY ENDING by Rob W. Hart
GATO NEGRO by Chris Murphy
WITH ONE STONE by Brian Leopold
KILLER, DUCK AND THE BOYS by Shannon Barber
VIDALIA by Edward Hagelstein
JERRY’S DEAD WIFE by Chris Mattix

For this piece I returned to my roots of writing, the world of noir. I hope I’ve done it justice, but that’s not for me to decide. Here’s an excerpt and a link where you can purchase the collection if you so desire.

One More Day Can’t Hurt
By Justin Porter

He played his fingers across the mother-of-pearl inlaid arabesque of the wooden box. These old twigs, he thought, old twigs across the surface of something lovely. Had they ever been good fingers or were they always just old twigs?

Always have an exit strategy. An older soldier’s advice while they shared a raw potato during a break in shelling, the last two men in a trench of bodies, the harsh bite of the tuber and the flash of the knife as they cut it into tiny pieces to make it last. The moonlight overhead seemed like a blasphemy and the cold had sharp teeth, but at least it masked the tang of the dead. Always have an exit strategy, Ralphie, the old soldier said and laughed, handing him the last of the potato as they waited for daylight and for a rescue they both knew was not coming.

Now, all these years later and alone in his single room, he opened the box and looked at the nickel fittings of an old syringe nestled in the velvet lining like a viper in a feather bed.

“Exit strategy.” He whispered before closing the box and picking up his proper rig. 1941 was a long time ago, he reminded himself as he tied off with his belt, one more day can’t hurt. Warmth washed over him while he rolled down his sleeve and lit a cigarette, holding it in his teeth while he slipped his coat on.

A Traveler's Shanty

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 17:06:23 -0400

I should have trusted the drift,
for every time I’ve driven in my oar the boat has turned on its own ripple and carved a path unseen and chiseled in the clear surface.

Is resignation the same as trust in the end?

I only know where I am when I cup a hand and dip, either salt or sweet upon my tongue.

Do I judge the heading true by the bitter or the sweet?

The stars overhead are as strange as the signs, green with white letters and as much a mystery as any augury of feathers, entrails or leaves.

Am I truly as lost as I am found?

I can decide until the sweat beads on my brow and every lie sounds like gospel, sureness will continue to elude me.

As long as there is another horizon I’ll never have to admit a thing, not to you or any of my reflections.

Wandering Home 2 and 3

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 09:14:38 -0400

Parts two and three are now live and direct on Narratively. If you enjoyed the first, here are the rest and if you haven’t been keeping up with my posts the last three weeks, then here’s a more concise breakdown. Thank you for reading.

Wandering Home

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 15:46:38 -0400

The lovely folks at Narratively are running a three part narrative from my recent trip to Istanbul and Athens. The first installment is live now.

If you’ve been reading the last couple of weeks there probably won’t be anything in it that you haven’t seen, but I hope you’ll take a look anyway if for nothing else than for their impressive array of work from some very talented people.

Special thanks to Rebecca White for the invitation to participate in this rad project and to Vinnie Rotondaro for his deft editing of the scrambled mess of words that I sent him.

Thanks guys and thank you for reading.

-Justin

The Pink Bicycle

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 17:22:21 -0400

A man wheels a pink Barbie bicycle with sparkled tassles and white training wheels across the gray platform of the L train, heading back toward his apartment off Knickerbocker near the DeKalb stop. He leans over to hold it by one white handlebar, white like his hair, as if it were a toddler and not a toy. He wheels it between late-night commuters, drunks and shrieking gutterkids. Somewhere else on the platform buskers play accoustic guitars and conga drums while a woman slams poetry about mind expansion and positivity.

“Emil, you can’t leave that here. I don’t want her riding in the street.” His daughter had said before he left.

“But she loves it.”

“Take it with you when you go.”

Only two hours later he’d walked next to his peddling granddaughter, one hand on her back as she bounced over the uneven sidewalk, giggling as the cracks in the pavement of 32nd Street and 37th avenue rumbled under the wheels. Her mother had bought her the helmet, black and practical with a high rating for safety.

“Do you like it?” He asked as they took a break for ice cream.

“I love it, granpa. Can I keep it here?”

“We’ll see what your mother says.”

Near dusk he took her back home and read her a story by the yellow glow of a bedside lamp covered with bears. She fell asleep just as the fair maiden collapsed into the hero’s arms, the foul dragon already forgotten. Kissing her hair he stood up to leave.

“Don’t forget.” She sleep-mumbled from the coverlet.

“I won’t.”

“Gnight, granpa.”

“Good night, sweetheart.”

Before he turned out the light and left her room, he opened the closet to make sure there weren’t any monsters. Lifting one of the stuffed bears from her bed, he sat the plush creature between the door and her bed. “You keep watch now.” He told it.

Out in the living room he had coffee with his daughter and she made him promise to take the bike with him.

“I’m…” There was a weight on his chest, pushing his mouth closed and snuffing the words.

“Don’t, dad. It’s too late to get into all that alright.”

“I wish I could see you and her more.”

“Maybe someday.”

He nodded and finished his coffee. He tried to leave without the bike but his daughter caught him at the door.

“I mean it. Take it with you.”

He sighed and took the bicycle by one of its handles and wheeled it past the threshold.

“I love you.” He said before she closed the door.

His daughter sighed. “Goodnight, dad.”

He was halfway to the train station at 36th Avenue before he realized she’d called him dad. How long had it been since she’d done that? A warm smile carried him home.

Cormorant and Gull

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 17:36:57 -0400

Near the Karaköy Fish Market the Bosphorus is ruled by birds.

In the air above float the gulls, venturing on land to steal scraps of dropped fish guts, to shake the scales and road dirt from the scraps of skin and flesh, sharp beaks tearing at the meat not yet begun to rot in the head of day.

Cormorants dip below the glittering surface of the water, hunting for what has sunken below the surface. They look up at the gulls while the gulls look down, each perhaps jealous of the domain the other commands but neither venturing into it. The cormorants with their dark, oily feathers slicked and beaded with water, the dingy gulls crying into the noise of the market above the voices of sellers and buyers.

In a city where even the doves seem to speak a different language, the gulls sound no different than those haunting the Jersey shore that I played on as a child. But these cormorants, these slick, black birds that swim and fish as deep as the men on the bridge above with their rods and lines, these are new sights to me and I recognize them only from stories I was told as a child about how men harnessed them to their will. Fishermen in Asia would bind the birds’ necks with a loop of metal, constricting their throats and forcing them to bring their catch back to the boat to be fed scraps small enough to swallow.

Bondage, not symbiosis.

The cormorants here have broken free of that old arrangement, now fishing for what lives in the Bosphorus or what the gulls drop as they fly overhead. Theirs is the silent blue below, leaving the noisy blue above to their white, raucous cousins.

Athens 04-12-13

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 11:34:00 -0400

My travels draw to a close, tomorrow I board an early flight back to the States and say goodbye to Athens, hopefully not for good. That being said, I’m looking forward to coming home. I’m tired of being a tourist and have tried to set the bar high by seeing as much of what makes this city famous as possible, even knowing as well as I do that you do not know a city’s beating heart by its popular sights. Even in my own home of New York I’d never been to the top of the Empire State Building until a visiting friend dragged me along. I’ve never been to the Statue of Liberty and I try whenever possible to avoid places where the city teems even thicker than normal. I’ve met New York City in a junkie on a stoop scratching bloody the sores on his hand and a kiss shared, the bare bricks of the wall behind digging into my shoulders. A city shows its soul in the life you live while there and something short of bravery prevented me finding much of that in Athens or Istanbul or maybe it’s just the language barrier.

Even after all this time I’m still not sure how one knows a city, or even if it’s possible. It’s like claiming you know a person, a trifle insulting even at its tenderest possible meaning.

I had a plan for this trip, to go places utterly unfamiliar where I would be potentially stranded by lack of language. I wanted to submerge myself in the internal silence that creates. I haven’t had a single conversation during this trip that was not written before hitting send, and now I’m returning home back to the noise of understanding ambient conversation, screams and swears and a beast of a city that sweats itself out in fevered half-dreams.

I will miss Athens.

My last item of business was to visit the Temple of Zeus. It stands alone and fallen down in the middle of a field in the center of town, the largest temple in Athens. Zeus the great and jealous manipulator, the string-puller, the one who played favorites and set brother against brother for amusement and consolidation of power. The one who had a habit of turning himself into creatures with the aim of seducing young maidens.

Zeus, possibly the world’s first furry. Allow me a moment to sidestep possible thunderbolt.

As always we created dieties in our own image, it’s just that the Greeks and Romans were more honest about it than most.

The field has grown wild, only the square immediately around the temple is trampled flat, dust, dirt and gravel visible between the scraps of dying green worn down by so many curious steps. Everybody is looking up, but there are small bees with red in their jackets sipping from the tiny wildflowers that grow in the field.

I have had my fill of being a stranger, but I don’t miss home.

It’s a strange feeling.

Athens 04-11-13

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 16:36:00 -0400

I gave up on the map sometime after finding the Tower of the Wind locked away from me behind a rusted, flat-enamel painted fence leaned on by local, tourist and hustler alike with cigarettes and conversations gripped between teeth and fingers. I don’t do well with maps, guidance, direction and in searching for Fillipou Hill I had gotten turned around and found myself staring at the train tracks that run next to Ancient Agora twice. Twice I passed the same man selling sunglasses, twice he passed me over in favor of another tourist, twice I believed I was being followed and watched twice as another tourist as turned around as myself oriented off a piece of paper.

So I stowed mine and do what I always do, I wandered.

Wandering is something that should never be underestimated.

I know what it is to be truly lost. Three times in my life I have turned round and round in search of direction and have found only so much fog slipping between my grasp and the limits of my gaze, the more I strained the less I found and when I thought I had found true north what I found instead was something that tried to destroy me.

In wandering I find… Everything.

Today I found a steep cascade of stairs leading up, I found a nursery school playground next to a busy cafe, I found a brace of owls painted upon the wall of an alleyway, I found my last cigarette and I found the blaze of the evening sun in my eyes.

I also found Fillipou Hill. The hill is important because it is, I believe, the highest point in the city, higher even than the hill upon which the Akropolis sits ruined. On the slope of the hill is what’s left of Socrates’ prison. At the top is the monument to Fillipou, but chief among my reasons for visiting is the sanctuary of the muses.

What person afflicted with creativity could resist paying homage to that?

A hollowed out stone, a flat patch of ground and I could not even feel them in the air and so I climbed higher and found the stone monument at the top and a view of the spread of Athens whichever way I chose to turn and look and the Akropolis on a far hilltop.

In wandering I found what I had been looking for, in allowing myself to be lost without fear, I found what I needed on this drowsy day near the end of this particular journey. I sat in the cleft between two rocks and watched the sky.

I won’t say that the muses have fled from this place, what I’ll say instead is that they are more infinite than some stone, now covered, renamed and packaged with another’s name placed higher above than their own. I’ve hear their whisper in gutter, bottle and the echo chamber of my own soul for all the years during which I failed to listen.

Athens glitters from up there, the stone is warm from the sun.

So this is a litte… off-color I suppose the word is. Perhaps...

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 04:01:00 -0400

So this is a litte… off-color I suppose the word is. Perhaps this only stuck out to me because I’d just left a fairly conservative country, and now I’m back in Europe and things of this nature seem a bit more relaxed.

That being said, this is also odd because I’ve passed countless news stands in a few countries and there’s always the requisite examples of the local stroke books, but this is the first time that I’ve seen actual written pornography of this type with their garish covers that blatantly advertise what’s to be found within. Leather Madam screams in red letters while a woman waits below with bound eyes and upturned face and Fancy Boys is about what you’d expect.

Little Lord Fauntleroy’s all growns up, shaves regularly too judging from the picture on the cover. Man cleavage, check.

So here’s ALL THE PORNS. Enjoy.

other-wordly: pronunciation | le-THe (leh-theh) or lE-THE...

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 03:39:13 -0400

other-wordly:

pronunciation | le-THe (leh-theh) or lE-THE (lee-thee)

This seemed geographically appropriate.

Athens 04-10-13

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 16:19:41 -0400

Monastirakis is dirty and cramped, tourists as with everywhere I’ve been and I should stop with the shock at their pervasiveness, you know, especially since I am one. Just because I’m not walking around with my mouth open and a camera around my neck doesn’t lend me any inherent nobility.

The district is home to the flea market, Roman Agora, the Tower of the Winds and Ancient Agora which includes the Temple of Hephaestus.

It does not disappoint, but then if you’ve visited history such as this and you find yourself unmoved and unimpressed you’re far too wordly for your own good.

Ancient Agora sprawls and most of the sites would be just a handful of stones and expanses of grass if not for the plaques. Not so the Temple of Hephaestus with its columns in the doric style. I’m told its the most well-preserved in Greece. You can get quite close. Hephaestus made Athena’s spear and Poseidon’s trident, he forged Achilles’ armor and made Bujo for Clash of the Titans.

Okay, so that one was all Hollywood, but dammit he should have.

Athena was said to have burst fully-formed from the brow of Zeus, but the birth was more of a c-section. Hephaestus was on hand to strike Zeus between the eyes with his axe, thus bringing Athena into this world. Or so that’s probably what Hephaestus told Zeus when he wanted to know why he’d hauled off and hit him in the face with an axe. Wink, wink. Good save, dude. He was also known as the lame one, on account of his hunched back.

He made Pandora’s box. I’ll wait until the giggling subsides to continue.

Ahem.

Visiting him was a special goal of mine upon visiting the city, along with the Temple of Athena which unfortunately you can’t get close enough to for my liking. But the Temple of Hephaestus is right there for you to stare inside of to your heart’s content.

I’ve learned so much on this trip, about the present and the past. Not the least of which is a reminder that I carry the Porter nose with a vengeance, handed down to me from my father, brought to you by genetics and fist-fights.

I ate dinner near the Akroplis, moussaka and a giant glass of Mythos, a local beer. I smoked Greek cigarettes and watched a flute player put his instrument to another use, pretending to shoot back at the swarms of kids playing in the middle of the promenade.

Blam. Blam.

He shrivels and pretends to die, slumped against the side of the wall while the children shriek and delight. But they tire of the game before he does and go back to running around between the diners at the sidewalk cafes, punching each other and screaming like magpies.

The Archbishop Damaskinos

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 15:58:41 -0400

Damaskinos was appointed arch bishop of the Greek Orthodox church in 1941. Tumultuous times for the world and a problematic time to be a man of ethics, or principle amid one of the greatest horrors in human history and a massive failing that put the concept humanity between quote marks forever. Actually, that one was probably already in doubt. It’s not like Hitler invented being a murderous, psychopathic asshole with the gift of gab.

Greece had a thriving underground rebellion against the Nazis and their occupation and when the Jews of Greece were being rounded up and carted off to purgatory and death in the camps, Archbishop Damaskinos was outspokenly against it.

The statue honoring the archbishop sits across from the Athens Cathedral in Little Metropolis in the Monistiraki District. It’s under renovation at the moment but visitors can still go inside provided they’re respectful. I’m not a religious man, but this is a piece of history so I dropped a euro into the collection box.

On the back of Damaskinos statue is the following inscription.

“According to the traditions of the Greek Orthodox Church, our prelates are hanged, not shot. Please respect our traditions!”

This quote was in a letter that the archbishop wrote to a Nazi official, referring with bold sarcasm to the lynching and hanging of a patriarch by a Turkish mob in Constantinople in 1821. Damaskinos wrote the letter after he was ordered by that official to shut the fuck up and quit sticking up for the Jews and generally being a pain in the Nazi’s ass and if he didn’t, he’d have him shot.

Damaskinos published the letter. Because fuck that guy, am I right?