The Life and Art of Jean-Paul Niko
Cold and wet in the city I love to hate
GD Star Rating
loading...
loading...
I’ve been a victim of my own success. I’ve gone to Boston to get some peace and quiet. I left New York with V. and Q. We rode up on the Chinese bus and checked into the Intercontinental on the waterfront. We had a fine time the three of us, arm in arm in arm, striding around, drinking sometimes, but I remember being high for no reason and I liked it about as much as the solitude I’m enjoying now at my hostel in the Back Bay. Yesterday I found an unoccupied room next to where I’m living on the second floor. In the mornings I’ll use it for exercise, and in the evenings, who knows…
There was a young Austrian here named Hiro that seemed to have fallen on hard times. He spoke carefully and with an accent that could only come from parents with money and a good education. He told me that he’d been kicked out of three schools in Dubai and flunked out of a fourth in Austria. He was here to try again, but he desperately needed some cash that his mom had wired him. It got held up at the bank over that great American holiday, Thanksgiving. He was living on credit at the hostel and had overstayed his welcome. My eyes kept wandering to a whitish stain on the lapel of his peacoat. I’d been watching him over the last three days and I was perplexed that he hadn’t bothered to clean the stain in all that time. I pulled sixty bucks from my wallet and made him accept it in spite of his shock. He gave it back to me a few hours later during Thanksgiving dinner.
I felt like a homeless man in a shelter, eating a communal turkey dinner with seventy-five other people, all strangers except for Q., who was sitting next to me, and Hiro, who sat across from us. Every time I talk to him now, his whole body shakes out of some combination of nervousness and excitement. He likes to ask me about anarchism and healthcare. I know a fair bit about the first thing but I don’t want to talk politics. I smoke my pipe and try to fire him up with different ideas. He hangs on every word so I suggest that he come work with me at my shop in Downtown Crossing the next morning. He never showed up and now I don’t even see him at the hostel anymore.
There are too many older people here and even a few seniors, but my biggest complaint with this place is that they’ve installed energy saving bulbs in every light fixture. It’s murder on the eyes, especially when I’m here reading and writing most of the time.
I had a girlfriend that told me seven years ago that my middle toes looked funny. I didn’t think so, but now every time I take off my socks I glance at them.
Cold and wet in the city I love to hate. Always this sense that I’m running out of time. Chasing experience, trying to stay relevant, like a child clutching his mother’s skirts. I gave her up a long time ago. I gave up everything to experience freedom.
Cold and wet in the city I love to hate, 4.0 out of 5 based on 2 ratingsRelated posts:
| Print article | This entry was posted by Niko on November 28, 2009 at 01:10, and is filed under Stories. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site. |
No trackbacks yet.
Red and Black
about 7 months ago - No comments
I never wanted to overcome obstacles. It found it easier to try to co-exist with them and toughen up where they touched me, like a callous. One of the hardest things, coming from someone who grew up in New York City, is learning to be friendly and inviting with other people instead of feeling defensive.
Breakfast in Bedlam
about 7 months ago - No comments
The hostel started coming down for breakfast at 8am. The Japanese lady in the jumpsuit and sun visor sat down next to me. I was scared. Yesterday morning I had watched C., the hilarious but disturbed kid bent on self destruction, who everyone compared to a younger version of me, drink what was left of
Let’s talk about dirt
about 9 months ago - No comments
It’s Saturday night in New York City, and the Upper East Side is empty. Where are all the pretty people? All that’s left are the rich and the very poor. I saw an old lady waiting for the subway. She had liver spots covering her arms, many rings on her fingers, a big fur around
I may as well be a sex tourist in Siberia
about 11 months ago - 3 comments
I may as well be a sex tourist in Siberia where pregnant girls will come up to you, trying to fuck for a few bucks. There’s no difference between that and what I’m doing now, living my flesh fetish. I have been pursuing the experiences of the senses my whole life but always under a
Bottles of Pacifico are what our tongues yearn for
about 1 year ago - No comments
We play poker late, late into the night. In the hostel on the beach, the atmosphere is thick with Italian. I put on Bijou’s Brazilian Nuggets from the 60′s and the cigarettes start coming out of pockets and packs, and from behind ears. I think of the many nights I spent with Ingrid in the
Everyone gets down with The Ultimate Meal
about 1 year ago - No comments
We got to Ontario at around midnight. Out sister was there to pick us up and drive us to the hostel on Venice Beach. Naturally, we started smoking chronic and wandered into the water in the dark. We went to sleep at 4am in the dorm but got back up at 6:20 to go to
about 9 months ago
First thought Best thought School of Kerouac and the Beats Also elements of Henry Miller. And some of your poetry has that unbridled edge reminding me of Norman Mailer's. Check out his poems and drawings Modest Gifts. And his Death for the Ladies (and other disasters). Shockers.
about 9 months ago
I've read Kerouac, but I can't say that I'm a big fan. Henry Miller I like. I'm reading both Tropics now. I didn't realize that Norman Mailer might be as interesting to me as you suggested. Shockers? I'm curious. Hard to find online though. I don't want to read books on paper anymore. I need ebooks or PDFs if I'm going to read at all.
about 9 months ago
Why do they keep comparing us to Kerouac? At some point I might want to read that… good post! Got to sleep now, it's been a long night.
about 9 months ago
Please do [read that], then maybe you'll understand why…
about 9 months ago
Hey N.
I wonder for how long I can resist drinking the cool-aid by reading Kerouac. It is quite tempting, and there better be a Nirvana, if I will.
Here is, what a 65 year old friend who has like 10 books published wrote me in October:
"Anyway … please DO write more of these mails …
They will aid you – in the future – to write the contemporary 21st century version of Jack Kerouac's
On the Road and Dharma Bums …."
My reply:
"Thanks a lot for putting me in context with the beat generation. That's some nice compliment.
I have to admit, I haven't read a single book of them. I don't want to, never felt inclined to do so. I don't like Walt Whitman at all, I can go with Robert Frost, and I guess, if the roots aren't my thing, how can the plant be?
This could be an excuse though. From what I know about them, they are most likely very much like me. So that's a mirror I just don't want to look into. I don't want to read what I think and what I do, written years ago. I don't want to be tempted to compare myself. That's suicide right there. So ignorance is my artist's killer instinct. My ignorance for knowing, I am much better than all of them! Hehe. It's the ace up my sleeve for when I'm done producing.
My heroes still are Kafka for the language, the absurdities others actually did much better than him. And Hesse – for all. Then time hopping over to the Velvet Undergrounds and Warholism, touched up with some Bukowski, I know, I gotta make it all new.
We don't want to be where we are coming from. This is escapism galore. When the actor really fucks the system by jumping straight into life. Oh well, those meta-levels are quite dangerous, as in opposing the opposing the opposing for example. When it comes down to reality, that can really bite you in the ass :)."
Recently I accidentally read a single sentence of Kerouac on myspace in my current loves section of "Who I'd like to meet: "
"…the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a common place thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'AWWW!'" -Kerouac
That is truly beautiful.
about 9 months ago
Us!? In my firmament the night sky is mine without another star in sight. Before you project yourself into my space, take care that your sphere is know to mine. For I am a jealous god and if you spin with my celestial orb then perhaps you deserve pity as well as respect.
about 9 months ago
Muahaha, watch out, here I come! I'm not projecting myself into your space, I am in your space. Space invasion episode X.
Don't hide your light under a bushel assuming that anyone around you should be pitied, jealous God.
We created men, so that we can see ourselves. And we put so incredibly high amounts of energy into that, that we now sometimes prefer to wander around blindfolded – hence you don't see me in your orbit.
I however respect your space and thus will follow your request to make my sphere known to you – as if it wasn't.
Today was on of these grand days, a day of coming down gracefully still covered in filth. When you ponder about what the fuck just happened last night after a tiring day of work spiced with fungwah bus trips.
It was again! outrageousness beyond compare involving a random Time Square hotel room, techno trance, lots of scented skin and hundreds of naked limbs and bones, and black panties and ass. It's so worth a story, but not here and not now.
I woke up late forcing myself to get out of the house before sunset to catch my much needed daily dose of light.
All was peaceful and good when I took a sip out of my OST cafe mug and thought: I should write an extended comment on Nikos new website. I'd love to do that. How many characters allows his comment field? Who cares, I'll spread it out in 10 comments, if I have to.
He's going to hate me for the intruding, oh yeah, my fate, my beautiful beloved fate. I'm quite the uebermensch in my amor fati. Niko's gonna bitch about my first comment already. But I feed him like he feeds me, and mutually force fed we throw up on each other on a regular basis. How can the young artist not be pervert enough to love it?
Back home I found your comment, predictable and beautiful, and bam there it was, the nature of the beast, the instant knowledge about the nature of our relationship.
Once I understood my own nature to a sufficient degree, it became more interesting to me to understand the nature of what is not me. It certainly always involves me, how could I observe, if there was no observer? So it's always a relation. My relation to a pink stripped glove or a concept of God. All the same.
So bam, I'm the grain of sand in your shell. Take it! It's part of your nature to filter the deep oceans like a liver, toxic at its worst and at its best. Bam, it's part of my nature to float around as a stone, a star, a nothing at its best and at its worst. And bam did I get stuck in your guts.
It's not about what we want, need, love, hate, desire or dream of when it comes to the nature of things. All we can do is recognize it and then react. Aware, unconscious, instinctive or productive creative, whatever.
I came up with a good analogy, bastard! You can play the game all the way. Damn did you want to get rid of me. You digested me many times with your insults calling me a lover or a friend. I'm fucking stuck in you, you big slimy monster! I would have run, if my legs weren't those of water gently splashing right through you. Just never taking me away.
You're in the way, layering your beautiful nacre around me. And you don't stop. You're making me more beautiful and precious every day. And I'm the friggin best aggravation you ever had! See it! Your pain in the neck, your pain in the but, after your clumsy mussel muscles managed to maneuver me away from your heart.
So here we are with that type of relation, master-oyster motherfucker :).
You can decide, whether you want to be a slimy oceanic slurp tortured to death with lemon juice buried in some fat Upper Eastsider's stomach, leaving a salty after taste like snod. Fucking dead.
Or whether you want to produce precious pearls that don't necessarily have a better future, being cast before swine, or dangeling around the fat Upper Eastsiders wife's turkeylike wrinckeled neck. But also with a good chance of being pulled out of the enchanting burlesque dancer's pussy, when she puts on her obscure performances in an underground New York night club.
Here is what I want. I want my fate and I love it; love to love it, hate to love it, what matters it. You came a long way recognizing that living is your fate and dying only a mere fantasy of the easily troubled, randomly executed by the masses long before death. I'm sending you my deepest admiration in the name of all that is alive.
I want to pop up, show up, write away on your site, whenever I feel like it, uncensored, and treated with respect. Let's save our pities for ourselves, when we lick our wounds, the mourning after.
about 9 months ago
Bravo. Goddamn.