A TRAVELER'S JOURNEY IN BABEL: Mar 17, 2009

KALI'S DAY excerpt

"Candice hears the sounds of birds. The last traces of light stain the cave’s entrance far from where she sits in full lotus covered only in the ashes of the dead. She drifts in and out, sometimes jolted from a vast emptiness by the grumbling of her stomach. So far she can silence hunger by simply focusing and re-focusing on her breath. But the stomach is a dumb animal and its indifference to “mind over matter” is becoming more apparent in the increasing volume of its complaint. It clenches itself like a fist and it’s all she can do to keep her eye closed, though she hears something scratching along the ground somewhere to her left. She’s conquered fear, never feared the dark until right before she conquered it. In another lifetime, there was a longing that she barely remembers. So it’s not fear or need that distracts her now. It’s the knowledge that, other than herself, something animate, something alive is within reach. Most likely it’s one of those large succulent beetles, thickly armored against what she is now in most danger of becoming—a predator, since she hasn’t really conquered appetite, has only concealed it, and despite having risen above the desire for even the simplest bowl of rice, is about to succumb to defeat for the taste of something that until now has been far from tempting or even remotely relevant to the satisfaction of any desire, let alone hunger—especially hunger.

She doesn’t open her eye. But she imagines it crawling heavily over the various obstacles in its way: pebbles and clumps of damp earth, a random search for whatever nourishment, dirt, dead insects, bits of excrement, it might stumble upon."

KALI'S DAY available from

Amazon U.S.:http://www.amazon.com/Kalis-Day-BonnyFinberg/dp/1570272816

UK, NZ, Australia & Europe:http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kalis-Day-Bonny-Finberg/dp/1570272816

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Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Still Alive In The Western Lands
March 16, 2009

Sitting in La Café Cave or La Cave Café listening to Johnny Cash, a demi and McCarthy novel on the wooden table in front of me feeling life to be so painfully sweet and familiar so far from home, those I love most, precious time, I think about the impulse moments, “Meet at the Bean?” “What are you up to-want to meet?” R, L, sisters, lover, friends, the state of things impermanent—that particular constellation of person time and space so fleeting and me over here lonely for them all and it, yes if I were there lonely for this? But who? P, S, N, B and N, the only ones I don’t have to hunt down for company but still—only these, while in NY there are countless places I can go to see countless people who know my name my face even if they care very little, though some are glad to see me even if in my neurotic way I still wonder—no matter where I am—like here—where some generic rock is playing, quasi-Rolling Stones, and no one’s brought the free popcorn to my table—maybe if I have a second beer and on and on and on…but what I really wanted to say was that the exquisite pleasure of life, these perfect moments of beer and music and book among the voices, soft in conversation, rising and falling the sound of a chair pulled along the floor, the tattooed waiter with the rock t-shirt loving his American look, now Echo and the Bunnymen, maybe, la la la la, and human creation has made all this meaningless beauty like the smell of warm popcorn and beer and the velvet voice speaking French to the woman sitting across from him, smiling back, her cheek resting on her knuckled fist, perfect white teeth, as the street corner ignites with the reflected light of pink sunset and green neon pharmacy cross above—I don’t know where I am in this bar of American music and little French dogs, Belgian beer and gloves made in China, but no loud Ha ha ha like on the LES, the tones more intimate and tremulous, there used to be a pinball machine in the corner where the couple sits and the guy knew how I liked my coffee and there were usually only 2 or 3 people in here at this hour but now the bar is almost full and the old men are gone—where? I keep trying to go west as the day progresses, follow the sun, that’s my mantra, makes the day last longer.