L'Shanah Tovah

i have quite a many quality friend from amongst the Chosen, so i need to give them a shout out, as in, may they be sealed in the book of the Righteous.  i really want that for them.  according to Jewish tradition, and i hope i'm not mistaken, it's during these days that God decides who lives and who dies in the coming year, and also, we eat pomegranates, which is indeed a very sexy fruit.  

what do I know about Jews?  i know a whole lot of anti-Semitism, real strong putrid hatred from people that really creep me out.  my therapist says that all of our discomforts come from a projection of something that we wish to displace from within our own selves, so i'd really love to take some xray glasses to that shit.  i mean, am i perfect with complete, adoring, pan-accepting Jesus love for everyone? obviously not, so obviously i need to take some xray glasses to my own discomposures as well.  i could start with my deep discomfiture towards white men of certain substance, or maybe my skepticism towards recycling in New York, but now i think i'm headed into Yom Kippur territory.        

i was asking some children where they thought our English language came from and one answered, "Moses?"

oh Moses, Moses.  40 years on the parched earth.  which way's out here??

all ye need to know

the greatest poem ever was written by a kid who died when he was 25.  if someone went around talking like this (see below) today, i'd probably consider him the biggest asshole i ever laid eyes on.  today, i watched a 25ish year old prick not clean up after his dog.

ODE ON A GRECIAN URN THOU still unravish’d bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fring’d legend haunts about thy shape	5
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?	10
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave	15
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!	20
Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,
For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!	25
For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d,
For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy’d,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.	30
Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea shore,	35
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e’er return.	40
O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!	45
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,”—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. I mean, seriously???  Marry  me. (Keats, if you really don't know.)

"suppose you were an idiot"

you know who i've been, like, kinda obsessed with lately?  Samuel L. Clemens.  yes, I've known all along that he's considered the grandgodpappy of American literature, and who doesn't love the "travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness" line from Innocents Abroad, but who can take any of that seriously when they shove Tom Sawyer down your throat in a - i would venture to say - most unfashionable fashion in yonder parts north where someone may just have happened to have spent the 6th or 9th grade.

there's a question i like to ask people (as you should ask yourself): if you could have any three people (living now, or having already passed) to dinner, who would they be?  in general, i always think my three are Maria Callas, Mozart and Dostoevsky, but i think i'm going to have to recalibrate in this here Year of Our Lord 2011.  i actually don't think i want any women there, so, i'm sorry Maria, i continue to love your voice, but you know it would be all me me me me, so you are herein officially disinvited.  also, Dostoevsky...you may continue to be my favorite wordsmith, no doubt, but i feel like the evening might take on a morose turn which i reeeeally need to stay away from these days, so, with that i officially invite Christ, Jesus, and the ever-illustrious Mark Twain.  Mozart remains.

THAT would be a pretty fucking awesome amazing dinner.  what would i serve, what would i wear??

the rest of that Clemens quote ("Suppose you were an idiot.") goes "And suppose you were a member of Congress.  But I repeat myself."

here Twain is with one of his best buds, someone else who i'd really like to have over for dinner: Nikola Tesla, inventor of the iPad.

pfft!

THE greatest strip since bloom county:
http://gynostar.wordpress.com/

honk honk if you hear me

i can't stand the Today Show. i can't stand it, but i watch it almost every single day.  i can't help it.  i like to hear 2 minutes of quasi-real news, know whether or not i should grab an umbrella on my way out, and then be completely transfixed by mostly 20-minute segments on cute youtube videos of dogs that sing "i love you".

FUCK YOU, MATT LAUER.  there's, i think, at least 17 wars that we're currently involved in with young men getting maimed or killed, people starving around the world and in Pittsburg, the Earth is basically melting, our children are statistically illiterate, and there is probably a very large meteor headed our way, but this goose in England that follows its owner around is just so fucking cute that the Today show sends a special correspondent out to get a live, exclusive interview.  i mean............granted, he really was such a cute littl' bugger, the way he all waddled around after his master.............................................why why why why do i have a tv, whyyyyy????

i'm so sad about this.  i might go down to Rockefeller center and stand around with all those blithering idiots from Idaho that bounce around there every morning hoping to get a shout-out from Al Roker, and i'm gonna hold a sign saying "you dumb assholes, GE sucks your life plasma for breakfast", but i guess where would that get us, and who wants to go to midtown anyhow.  

i take it back, Matt.  you might actually have a soul.  i may have left mine on the L train. 

"i like thing"

:
cupcakes - cream cheese frosting
fam and friends - smiles till your face hurts
fresh air - hurts your lungs
a full night's rest - PAST 545
sex - take two.  oops - takeS two.
good words - thank you, thinkers
good art - thank you, lovers
good music- thank you, God
silence - i'm old now

meow

while i may only just now be warming up to the possibility of dogs being real cuties when considered completely outside of the realm of their owners, i have long held a deep love of cats.  those nasty little bitches don't mess around - they don't like you and they're not even going to waste their time pretending, so go get those tasty vittles right the fuck now and make it snappy or you might just very accidently trip and fall and break your neck when you're walking down the steps in the morning and something just happens to go twirling around your ankles oops and that will be the end of it, oh look a sunshine patch, time for a twelve hour nap!

my mom was recently adopted by a stray upstate.  that asshole literally gets pissed if someone stops petting him and you'll walk away with a whole inch of cat claw buried in your calf. when momzy walks the dogs, the cat runs around after them like ha ha look at me, i'm playing with your leash and your pissing on every other droopy flower like someone cares you dumb dogs.  honestly, i think he has more character than many many many many many people i know.  shit, even people i love.  Christ God, that is just the absolute truth, and THAT is just sad.

the charismatic cat in question, a rather handsome feller at that:

and now, a little self-loathing

not so far removed, yonder parts northern...

=

someone's in cahoots here, America

forget and forgive

prancing along a city street this morning, I saw a nun.  she wasn't prancing, I was, but boy did i fall in love.  she was tucked in a doorway, evidently waiting for the bus, and i couldn't take my eyes off her.  i just stared and stared as i walked on by.  she stared back, if you must know, probably because, in a recent attempt to let go of old, overaggressive inhibitions, i've shed some black (from my person...al wardrobe) of late, for the other side, that being white or whiteish, and it is very possible that she might have just thought i was an angel, all streaming super sexy down the street toward her.  she was so damn cute, one of those grandmommy faces, the jowels, the eye glasses, the white hair coming out from under her habit.  oh!  it was the perfect pressed habit, with a crisp black polyester jacket, her black skirt at midcalf and the finger-thick hose stuffed into her comfortable old lady hospital nurse nun shoes, and you know what happened???  she smiled!  she smiled at ME, and being all startled, i smiled back. hellooooo Magic!

the ONLY things i regret in life include NOT having accepted 5th row center tickets to a Prince concert at Madison Square Garden ("dumb------ass" does not come remotely near to serving this situation justice), and making a big HUGE devastating mistake a couple of years ago that just continues to eat my heart and soul right out.  being all estranged from God, i thought i could forgive myself, but it doesn't seem to be working.  who gives absolution these days?  i shoulda asked the nun.

what's in a name

tonight i ate at Best Pizza in Brooklyn, which i'm going to go ahead and say is a complete misnomer, but isn't that a problem we all probably have?

for entertainment purposes only

today, by chance, i met a local, no need to be named, leading representative of the Democratic party.  he was all sweaty and i found it weird that in our conversation he let me know that he had broken up with his girlfriend last week.  who cares, you dumb fuck, have you noticed the NATION lately????  i'm a Democratic, but i actually hate them, because they're a bunch of whiny pussies.  i hate the Republicans too, because they're a bunch of greasy hypocrites.  actually, they're both a bunch of shithead losers, since it's all a straight up farce anyway, so i don't know which is worse.

anyhow, i told this dude that education was important to me and that maybe i should start getting involved instead of just pissin and moanin on and on about it like a little ol loser, being that words are cheap and all that.  really, the state of American education seems to be pretty much deep in the potty, and therefore then, i would venture to say, the state of our nation, in analogous fashion.  so the guy gave me his card and said something about filling potholes, and i realized he was serious.  he'd help me get potholes filled on my block, because, let's be serious, do they even print books anymore?
    
yesterday was David Copperfield's birthday, which i meant to mention yesterday.  i happened to see him on the colbert report the other day talking about how we all love to live an illusion, that we all love and need to be deceived and that magicians/illusionists are honest deceivers, therein making it ok and just pretty much awesome.  where can i sign up?  oh wait, i forgot, who isn't a master illusionist, that is so fricking hilarious.  wow...now i'm getting myself all confused.  oh wait, it's not "illusional"...i believe the word i'm looking for is delusional.  yea, that's us. abracadabra.     

listen up

who doesn't want to be heard?  whether you're living in a cave or amongst the masses, it's really sad when you start to think that no one is listening.  i think most people live that way - no matter how unbecomingly ecstatic they may seem, it's just impossible that they're not all just a tad sad that absolutely no one, not a single soul on the face of the planet, is listening.  we probably all like to think that someone, or even someones are truly lending us an ear, but i doubt it.  the only ear latching on to us is our own, and half the time, that may as well be our ass.  no one's listening to us, and we're not listening to anyone, and that is just plain terrifying.  why must it be like that, i wonder?  i guess that's why children are so special and beautiful - they actually hear......and then comes original sin, stupidity, so i guess eden, therein, must have been a place where we all just listened.

look at this little pigeon.  here he is up on his soapbox.  he was literally walking back and forth on it chirping me-me-me-memehty-me-me-me-memehty-meeee and everyone was just walking by ignoring him.  so embarrassing.    

"tirra lirra", by the river

who doesn't love the pre raphaelites?  handsome ladies down on their luck, or gendervice-versa, or saints and goddesses or the young Jesus, and just all those streaming gorgeous colors.  i wish all art was like that, always (either that, or give me some Repin).  and while i don't have such an affinity towards it myself, i nonetheless accept their obsession with Arthuriana.  i mean, yea, it's sexy enough, but i can personally only take so much of knights and round tables before i start to feel hugely depressed.  too much metal.

i've always been drawn to John William Waterhouse's Lady of Shalott.  honestly, sometimes i like to think i am her, but not as me in real life, but the girl in the painting, does that make sense?  my whole life i've been looking at the world through a mirror from a tower, and then along comes Lancelot and i just lose it.  just look at that look of despair on her face.  that really is me sometime.  

glossy print guilt

recently, my gorgeous gal-pal (who says that??  i guess i do) Jacqueline pointed out that she has a hard time catching up on her leisurely reading when she's trying to catch up on the ever-growing stack of New Yorkers at the foot of her sofa, so i need to talk about this.  this is a disease.  a couple of years ago, i actually suspended my subscription because the amount of New Yorkers that i just had to read every last single fucking article in was out of control, taking over my apartment, taking over my mind.  it was like a blight - you would open your mailbox and there would be a brand new squeaky fresh New Yorker every second day it seemed, when you still hadn't even finished the article on the iran hostage affair, but as Jackie said, seriously, give it to me in four paragraphs instead of your 10 page tiny-ass print.  i would shudder when i saw all those covers with their similarly sickly hazy colors that kind of give me nightmares actually staring up at me from the floor saying all saltily, "you just don't want to be informed, do you?"  assholes.

when i got my e-reader, because i just happen to love trees, and i also happen to love receiving e-readers at Christmas, i resubscribed.  while i can no longer wave my New Yorker in other people's faces on the subway to show that i am a highly literate moron, i can, if i so desire, so very easily ignore the fact that i am ignoring a new issue of the New Yorker every other day.  it's like when i overcame the obsessive compulsive handwashing tendencies of my youth, it's that kind of utter fucking fantastic happiness. i would also like to admit here that i absolutely hate the poetry in the New Yorker.  i think it's just so absolutely horrible that i literally cringe when i read it.  am i about to be shot?  to make matters worse, they've also evidently stopped electronically transmitting the cartoons, which is half the reason i'm paying $2.99 a month now anyhow.

this makes me think of one of my absolute favorite short stories of all time, published in the New Yorker: Donald Barthelme's The Balloon.  it's about this massive balloon that sprouts up over New York and New Yorkers just deal with it, they play on it, they fall in love on it, they take walks on it, kind of like the High Line, but obviously even better.  it is just fucking awesome, find it and read it.

my horoscope yesterday, the day i realized i couldn't be with the Love of my Life.  that's like life without cupcakes.  fuck you New York Post.

come to bed, sweetheart.

i wish this post could play def leppard.

what makes love right?  can someone tell me?  this is also on my List of Things I Absolutely Need To Know, too.  when i was growing up, i had no real aspiration other than to find true love.  i didn't even know what that meant, come to think of it.  all i know is, i didn't want to be a doctor, lawyer, nurse, jockey, teacher, bus driver or any other of that standard iwannabe bullshit.  all i remember is standing outside wishing on stars every night, that "wish i may, i wish i might" nonsense, and all i wanted was him, but how would i even have known what "he" was when i was 9, 10, 11, 12???  what an idiot.

there was my first love.  God, i loved him, and it really was so sweet. all i wanted more than anything was to marry him and live happily ever after, but when he proposed - on the subway, as i was falling asleep and probably drooling all over his shoulder - i actually said no.  what an idiot.  he's a doctor now and has two or three kids, i can never remember, and a gorgeous wife who sits around doing nothing and sometimes i listen to him on podcasts and sometimes he'll send me an email, once or twice a year, and it's great but i know we could never have been together, anyway.  he still has a sexy voice and a sexy brain and i still straight-up love the shit out of him, but he wasn't the one from the stars that i froze my ass off wishing for.

star love is when you can't possibly be close enough to a person in any single given moment, when you want to crawl into their skin because there's so much love it can only fit into the two of you together, when you literally need only to to eat them sleep them dream them breathe them pray them wake up and die to them.  that's star love.  

when you wish on the stars, you always, always, always get what you want.

i never, ever, EVER imagined that i could possibly feel even the teeny-tiniest bit of love like the Love i felt with you, for you.  when i say it blows my mind, it's not even hyperbole: HOW is it even possible, that Love, and *why* can't i understand it??  it HAS to be 'God', it HAD to be Stars, because i still feel it, even when i don't want it anymore.

it doesn't make any sense.  maybe i wished too hard.  what an idiot.  

"finita la musica, we're finished in this town"

it's a nice day to start again.  

  

9/11

when the Towers went down, i was in Bosnia.  actually, i was traveling from Bosnia back to Serbia - the bus driver was switching radio stations and i caught a snippet of a woman saying something about an attack on the United States and she sounded pretty serious, but i didn't know anything more until i got out and needed to grab a cab.  all the cab drivers were huddled around one car, listening to the radio, and when i finally got someone to talk to me, it was, "haven't you heard, New York is on fire"  Serbia had only recently undergone 78 days of bombing by American-led NATO forces, so needless to say, the sentiment over there was difficult for me to match as i watched the towers fall over and over and over, just like every other last person in the world that day.  

i didn't go back to the States for about another year after that, and it was another two years after that when i finally forced myself to go down to Ground Zero.  i'd be blocks away, and i couldn't even turn in the direction, but it's only for so long that you can stare south down 5th trying not to throw up over the fact that those towers were just NOT THERE anymore.  i don't know what happened that day.  today, i watched them read all of the names, i literally couldn't turn the tv off.  i felt better when a lot of the survivors said that they still didn't have the answers they needed.  there are no words available in this universe to express what i want to say to all of those people hurting the way they hurt, how can you possibly even begin to touch that pain??  i just hope that some day, somewhere, somehow, they get the answers they need.  even if we don't like what's at the other end of a question, isn't that what we all deserve in the end?

where is the love people?  doesn't a little go a long way?  what could possibly happen if we had too much?

God, I love New York, and yes, while it perplexes the heavens out of me consistently and endlessly, God Bless the USA.

 

  

"...nothing outside the text"

when i started reading Derrida in college, i nearly shat myself.  i fell right the straight fuck up in love and wondered where the man had been all my life.  deconstruction this, phenomenology that, context in, structure out, words shmerds, i couldn't even believe it.  everything he said made sense, i needed to marry him, and he was probably already close to dying then.  anyhow, in an unrelated move, i signed up for a class on Kant that bored me to desperate tears with all the NYU kids talking nonsense philosophical smack all while endlessly amazed at how massively intellectual they earnestly believed they sounded.  anyway, one day, Jacques Derrida walked in, no joke, i can't even remember why, but he did, and he walked in, stood at the front of the room and waved AT ME.  the mother fucker waved at ME.  that is not even a dream sequence, all of it really happened, just like that; everyone around me actually thought i knew him.      

marx and engels really messed me up in those days, too.  those assholes even made an atheist out of me for a moment, getting me all socialistically utopically inclined in the head.  i loved them so, i kept the reader on my nightstand and read it before bed for a year straight.  i am so heartily sorry that those ideas just could not work out, but what i really want to know is, what the fuck does exist outside of the text, Big Guy?

sexypants:

  

sugar plum fairies

this morning, on the 5 downtown, a black man stood amongst the masses, loudly proclaiming the end of times and other related terror.  i wanted to fucking smack him.  in his hoarse, seriously way too loud for morning voice, he talked about Broadway being overrun with smoke and running scared people (real original, asshole) and everyone just stood around pretending like he wasn't there.  actually, there was one lady who would giggle every time he said something particularly mortifying, so obviously i wanted to slap that bitch, too.

i've always kind of envied the crazies.  who's to say they're crazy and we're not?  shit, if i walked around yelling shit that crossed my mind, people would think i was crazy too, but really, what the fuck does that even mean?  that i can say what i want, when i want??  those lucky bastards: who doesn't want to be them??

when i was younger, i used to think fairies lived under this particular species of swamp plant that i'd pass once in a while when was i forced to walk to school.  yes, i walked past a swamp.  no, i didn't walk uphill both ways through 4 feet of snow barefoot, but when my father got pissed, one of our punishments would be hauling manual ass to school, which was, i think, 2, maybe 3 miles away in the rolling countryside, call me Laura Fucking Ingalls.  anyway, the leaves on this plant were like little sloping roofs, and maybe i watched Smurfs once too may clandestine times at the neighbors on Saturdays ("after these messages.......we'll be riiiight back!"), but i could see very well that little people could fit under there rather nicely.  i even wrote an essay from the point of view of one of those little people and Mrs. Gloo, my fifth grade English teacher, lauded it so much in front of the class, her nose turned red, which it usually only did when she was pissed, or drunk.  recalling now that i wrote that essay in 5th grade worries me.  did i really believe little people lived under plants in a swamp when i was eleven???  and why didn't my parents pick up on that??

sometimes when i'm upset and want to forget, i pray.  i don't know what i'm expecting, maybe some angels to come down and kick some ass, or maybe some celestial ninjas.  that'd be pretty cool.  maybe i should start shouting about it in the subways.  Repent, you fucking dumb asses!!!  Or prepare to face the celestial ninjas!!

see what i mean?

anyway, here's me as a celestial Super Ninja.  sorta.

  

correction:

i came across this pic whilst getting my hair done.  it's football superstud tom brady with superhottie Giselle in the background obviously, but more importantly, a RIdiculously cute doggie woggie in HIS basket.  therefore, i hereby take back what i have publicly stated previously on men and dogs.  i really meant to say it's just really super fucking hot.

  

getting over You

i just read an article on this supposedly inhumane drug treatment center in Russia, where the patients are just literally locked into a room until they're over it.  well, physically at least.  anyway, according to this article, human rights groups are all up in arms, and some dutchman or the other is quoted as being quite peeved with this barbarism.  of course the fucking Dutch are furious.  free flowing Afghan heroine coupled with miserable rates of unemployment, poverty and alcoholism that even AA couldn't handle seems like something you'd need an international tribunal for in the Netherlands.

my neighbor told me that when she grabbed her son by the arm the other day, he told her he'd call the cops, or even worse, tell his teachers, so now she certainly doesn't send him to bed without dessert, let alone dinner, and the little mother fucker is ELEVEN.  i am just so sick of this pansywansy bullshit that we've let ourselves sink to.  if i as much as asked my mother a second time for a Hershey bar at the checkout line in the grocery store, i would have gotten a quick slap across the face to remind me to shut the hell up already.  what the hell is wrong with us?  why can't we get over ourselves, stop babying our fat asses into complete and full-fledged loser human race status and grow some balls already?  it's one thing when you can barely own up to your own misery, let alone your own happiness, Idiots.

it's rainy and gray today, which just happens to be the real shit to me.  i don't know why but i wish i could wrap this weather around me.  i drove through the Catskills earlier and nearly threw up at the waste that Hurricane Irene made of it....i've never seen such things with my own eyes.  during the hurricane, these two swans just roughed it out somewhere out on Long Island.  the wind was whipping every which way and the water was rising and they just bobbed right along, right there.  i don't even know how it's possible, which seems to be the theme of the day.
 

   

hello (again)

deja vu.  what is with that feeling, when you're like, holy shit, i know this, i've got this, i've had this?  your mind does this little scramble where it tries to figure out exactly where it is that you've actually had the experience or seen the something before, was it a dream, are you psychic, what the hell is it??  usually, when it happens with me, it's little fleeting moments of the petty and mundane, a certain part of a brick wall (not even the whole thing), the way someone you don't even know passes you in the subway, something you see out of the corner of your eye so quickly that you can barely remember what it was only a moment later.  for a couple seconds you try to figure it out and usually you don't, because evidently you simply cannot, regardless of what Deepak Chopra says, and you're left to the general precepts of the snoresville life you led only moments before.  what about people?  what about those people that you're like God i feel like i've known you forever, but really, i only just met you yesterday?  what's with that?  that's another question on my Great List of Questions that i would really like answered one day, thank you God.  

par exemple: my great girfriend, Marija.  we've had our ups and downs, but for the most part, you can NOT convince me that i did not know that sizzling wench of a woman somewhere else, looooong before i met her by accident only in the aughts on Manhattan.  in fact, if i had to guess, i would say our history goes back to some phat harem somewhere, where we almost certainly bonded over general ridicule regarding the bereft manlihood of the sultan, or grand vizier, at the least.  that, and fresh Turkish Delight.  otherwise, it doesn't make sense.  kind of like that person you love so much you want to tear your eyes out sometimes and for the life of you, you can't figure it out but somehow you do, you do love them, and the only thing that seems logical to me here is that you're just doing what comes naturally, which is what you do when something is familiar, like when you're doing it...again.  


speaking of sultry, I just got back from Belgrade.  this sounds so cheesy, but i have to say it.  Belgrade is like a lazy dark haired lady with crazy dark eyes and i would even venture to say thick dark eyebrows sprawled out on some ornately upholstered chaise, her lounge wear flowing behind and away from her in all these dark, rich flowy colors (I'm thinking something circa 1900 Ottoman opulence here), her head resting on her forearms as she looks out over nothing (and two rivers), generally bored out of her mind.  and it's hot. like literally, it's hot, and that's why she's so lazy, but she is just so beautiful and grand that you just want to look and look at her even when you're walking away and you know you really have to go, but you're still tripping all over yourself checking this lazy hottie out.  Belgrade's really not that beautiful, come to think of it, but it certainly seems like it.

now i'm back to NY, and she ain't no lady.

here's a pic, Marija and me.