well....the world did not end

abandoned book, alone in the cold outside a cafe in Brooklyn.
"a state of denial"...

which is what we're all in, which makes me feel a bit like this really famous image, currently on view at the MOMA: 

and sometimes i walk around feeling like i might look like this, despondent and with dirt on my face, not entirely unlike the woman in Dorothea Lange's "Migrant Mother", an image iconic and important, albeit significantly staged: 

and then i realize that really, we all need to get over everything, like really, who do you think you are?  thinking this, I walk into a boutique, bored, to peruse, and find a candle that can help me achieve a real miracle, that is, love myself......

for only 64 fine american dollars, i could have achieved nirvana, which makes me think of this 

translated roughly into, "the more you know, the more you ignore", and don't i wish i were considering the writing on the wall, in PARIS

this is the sound glass makes when it breaks

i have a girlfriend who is fond of looking back and saying things like, "so much has changed"  usually, i'm a likewise stickler for romantic notions of this nature, but lately, it's kind of been making me majorly sick.  this time last week i was crowing about what a great day i had had.  i talked about food and friends and fugly looking dogs and god wasn't it great that i was just so fucking amazingly perceptive and gregarious and great?  well, it's a week later now, and i really can look back and say it myself: so much has changed.

i'm not one to disrespect the elements, and for Water i have a profound and rotund respect.  the Chinese, as a matter of fact, in all of their thousands of years of wisdom look to water as the ultimate of elements.  it resists nothing and can take away everything, so, yea, props Water.

i know other places have it far more horrible, as in wars and little girls not allowed to go to school and what not, but it's hard to think about them when you're seeing the things we've been seeing here these last few days.  what do you say to someone who has literally had every plank and nail of their home washed away?  well, i can tell you that you pretty much say nothing.  you stand there feeling a scream inside and your mouth opens and you say a lot of nothing.  how many empty faces can you look into and still feel ok with, "it could have been so much worse"?  here's some leftover Halloween candy, try not to think about the car floating in your kitchen.

honestly, these last few weeks have been straight up shit.  death, blood, broken dreams, death, full moons, rising tides, zombies, destruction, death.  what the fuck.  how about a little Special Sunshine up in here, and we don't even need to discuss the still-indefinitely-submerged L train.

so much has changed since last week and here i am thinking i need to get ready to go out, it's someone's birthday and we still need to go lower into Manhattan are we actually ready for that and suddenly i realize that six years ago - today - i was getting ready to go out for another birthday, not remotely knowing that in just little over an hour, my life would completely change, forever.  would i have stayed home?  should i have stayed home?  what the fuck would have happened had i just NEVER EVER gotten up off of my couch, this time, today, six years ago...

a moment ago i went into the kitchen for a refill of drinkable water which is far more than i can say for other people in this place when my arm caught a large, heavy wine glass that had been teetering over the edge of the table.  the sound that glass made behind me when it landed was somehow the most beautiful thing i've heard in weeks.  i wish i could have made that sound myself.  i wish i had a hundred of those glasses, i would have thrown them all down as hard as i could and then if i could just fucking cry already, i'd stand over all of those gazillion shiny shards and let all the tears i have in me just flow over them and they'd all just sit there together on the clean cold white shiny kitchen floor.  broken glass and a whole bunch of tears.

so much has changed.

i'm at 8

i'll be honest.  saturday was such a fantastic day.  yes, i am a few days late, but today is the first day that i've done absolutely nothing.  i woke up grumpy - saturday - because the thought of an impending hurricane gives me some uncomfortable but seriously stupid memories, but thankfully, i was able to move myself, that is, mainly out of bed.

i've been taking these body reading classes and they have been amazing.  not a chance sorry that i'll give up my secrets here, but they have certainly made me more perceptive on so many facets and for that i am so beyond grateful because who doesn't want to be more in touch with this place we're living in otherwise known as the world.  that or crawl under a rock, i suppose, but i've always valued the more gregarious side of my social little self.

so, things i saw.

the sky over manhattan, the hurricane still churning some 200 miles away.  the Williamsburg Bridge.  i've seen this scene a million times, and it's still always so pretty looking down this kind of shady little alley, i really don't know exactly why.  Diner, i do believe the best place for hot cuisine sex in Williamsburg.  they write out the menu on your table or on a slip of cash register ticker tape - they can't keep a standard menu since everything is always being switched up since it's always so goshdarn freshy fresh.  there was duck fat donuts soaked in creme anglais with chunky sugar that shouted "i love you and only you" to your mouth buds, scottish eggs that positively made a chaise lounge out of the back of your throat, what's better than deep fried perfect prosciutto wrapping soft boiled balls, duck crepes that's duck confit mixed with sweet shredded crepes from the tables of mount olympus, sweet trout making out with bacon, and homemade salt and vinegar CHIPS that actually DISSOLVE on your tongue.

i'm not done.  i was so jubilant over brekkie that someone asked if it was my first time in restaurant, but look why can't one just be happy about life???  then there was the puppy that was really a big fat warm potato and the wall of red ivy art that i thought about stripping to take away for my All Hallow's Eve costume but the neighborhood residents would probably tar and feather me, the cutest ever grungy little gremlindog that i loved so much for its ugliness that it hurt and then lamb pizza for dinner.  actually, i love life so much it hurts.  actually, it hurts.    

this morning i ran into someone who knows someone i love.  at the body language reading class, we were asked to guess where Americans fell on the internationally recognized happiness scale of 1-10.  there were confident shouts of "three! four!" throughout the room, peckered with cynical scoffs, to which the instructor, who trains the secret service when not dealing with rooms-full of self-righteous depressed urbanite paranoics, replied congratulatory, "you are TRUE New Yorkers!" evidently, the average American takes his mass of sunshine at 7.5

no sesame

it used to be, for many a moon, that i was a vegetarian.  well, technically, a pescatarian, or whatever i was, it didn't matter, but i did spend a lot of time practicing and legitimately making looks of utter disgust coupled with condescending sneers at the losers around me who would tear into their steaks, burgers, birds and other bloody shit with nasty abandon.  gross.  not only were you just fat and seriously ugly, but you were going to die soon, that was pretty much the gist of it.

well, what can i say, life ebbs and flows.

for some reason, mainly because of bacon, i started eating meat again.  i can't get enough of it.  salads?  fuck that, do i look like a cow??  all these things being highly considered, i've realized rather quickly that just like the cattle in the pasture, one burger is far from being like another.  oh burgers, how i love thees, let me count the ways:

your juicy greasiness that leaves a delicious amino-acidy film in every crevasse of my mouth
your heft, as i hold you in my hand
THAT TASTE, you know the one
ketchup
ketchup
buns

i've decided i need to dwell on this.  don't be surprised if there's a post on burgers twice a day now; i mean, why not?

here's a burger i had w my gf Laura at Morgane, a newish French joint on Bedford that you think could do sexy a littler better than literal grease-juice running in rivulets down my plate.  how do you say "barf" en francais?  no amount of fromage bleu is going to cut the serious [lame] cheese factor on this one.  thumbs DOWN!!!!

not long thereafter, on the brighter side of things, Jack, aka "my building husband"slash"pension partner" as in we'll live off my pension whilst living on his island, traipsed across my threshold waltzing a pint of Steve's orgasmic i don't even care if that's cliche this is frozen salty sticky caramel sunshine from the land where everything is really good no simply amazing 1000 our of  scale of one to ten food no not sunshine that doesn't make sense it would melt it's inconceivable this taste oh my god ice cream.  and THAT'S what i'm going with.

value: EVERYTHING you save: NOTHING

i'm a total whore for Groupon.  it's embarrassing.  Subway sandwiches used to be my thing, but now i find myself waking up in the night in the throes of my early morning sleep disruptive disorder stress patterns checking out the latest must-must have deals on my smartphone.  i'm afraid to look at "My Groupons", the place where those deals are stashed lying in wait for their day in the sun.  what the F?!  did i really need $200 worth of framing from some place in Chelsea?  all the laser hair removal packages go without question, but the body-reading class taught by the former spy?  well, shit, that actually sounds super exciting, and i saved 80% on that deal, so lay off already.  the half-price tickets for live mystery theater on the LES?  don't you DARE tell me i didn't need that.  other items on the list include sheets, teeth whitener, a trip to Jamaica, acting classes, painting classes (BYOB!), belly dance classes, magazine subscriptions, mani-pedis, language learning aids, entrance to the Museum of Sex, massages, facials, and multiple, and i mean MUTLIPLE, half-off passes to the Russian Bath House on 10th Street where Zhenya, THE most muscled very tall Russian man in all of New York will spend an hour walking on my back at 78% off the regular, significantly more expensive price.  in a word, or two or three, Groupon has changed my life and i just happen to know that i am far far far from being alone.

now i hear they're going under.  what the fuck, and why can't all good things in life just mother-fucking last ALREADY??!

fields of rightdoing

today is the birthday of Jalal ad-Din Muhammed Balhki, otherwise known as none other than the most amazing, THE GREAT SUFI poet,  RUMI.  my heavens did this man ever know what to say.  how did he know, how did he get is so right?  "out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field.  I'll meet you there"?  or, " lovers don't finally meet somewhere, they're in each other all along"?  why can't it be so easy?  why can't Love be pahretty fucking simple, like you just look at it and you're like oh wow that's Love, there it is and that's that, till the end of time.  i mean, shouldn't it be?  or i guess it already is?  

it's possible that i read too much Rumi, it's possible he made it all up, maybe Love really isn't that all-consuming, maybe it really is just our brain and useless chemicals that make us think we'll fling ourselves off a cliff for THAT Love.  

if i felt that way, i wouldn't love Rumi.  i think that there are no human words to describe how wonderfully right and wonderfully wonderful LOVE is, but he was pretty fucking close.  

trading post

somewhere out east, there's this ancient little old mill inn that was quaintly turned into a high end-ish restaurant, quaintly now called the olde mill inn restaurant that lots of white people with money like to go to, and it's a place that sometimes i frequent with a certain favorite someone, usually for the 3-5 daily special of one dollar oysters in the summer, so isn't that just ironic.  it is, by all means, other than the oysters and the alcohol, extraordinarily uneventful and quiet and just lovely, usually with a handful of out-of-town New Yorkers at the bar slurping on two dozen or so of those cold little blobs of ocean spit-up that oysters really are.

one particular day, we had walked in expecting the expected, when rising from her place at the bar and greeting us gregariously at the door came one of the most beautiful women i had ever laid my blue-grey peepers on.  she was black, her skin glowing like she had rubbed it vigorously with some magic powder of mother of pearl, her hair dark and wild and framing her face the way i envy so much with women of color, her large black watery eyes outlined with kohl and the slightest flash of silver and the most luscious lips you've ever seen smeared with hypnotic hot pink matching her very very short dress that flashed across her dark skin making it impossible to look at anything other than her lips as she said something along the lines of "welcomeeewouldyoucareeeetositattheeeebarr?", some sort of lilting south american accent just barely whisping around those words, a glass of white wine gathering dew and raised like a trophy in one hand, her other gesturing toward the run of the restaurant, do vhat you'd like, dahlings.  

naturally i was feeling immediately entranced by this 55 year old with the most amazing ass ever, and that feeling of feeling like the frumpiest person in four counties is pretty rough to deal with when you have a senior citizen checking out your date and that witch really was.  as we took our seats, i caught those round eyes take him in, then me, and i like to think i know enough about sex now to think for a minute that maybe i should leave the room before i got it together enough to give this woman the mental props necessary for being very obviously the most hypnotic thing on the North Fork at that very moment or perhaps even ever.  

for some reason, they served us our oysters on a bed of not very cold ocean pebbles, which although aesthetically pleasing, truly ruins the fresh cold ocean idea on a really hot day.  an elderly couple that looked exactly like us but forty years on plodded in and up to the bar - they had not much to say but seemed fine with it and we looked at them and each other and laughed then for whatever the other reasons were, that weekend proceeded to turn into a living hell shortly thereafter.

always give a witch her props and never ever ever turn your back on someone walking into a party

slippery souls

i have been here a million times before, i can literally see the sun streaming through the cracks in the door ahead of me. yes, someone else's naked ass may reach it incrementally before mine, but there is a time and place for everyone to reach the light.

i'm at the seedy Turkish bath house on 10th street, and i've just come out of the Russian room where i scrubbed sea salt so fiercely into my hot skin in the 1000degree room that my shoulders are still screaming lay off bitch and now it's just slippery. it's so slippery now walking up the stairs in the flesh-colored rubber plastic sandals they give you that someone's great-grandmother wore in '52 because the salt is still on my skin and it's turning to soap in my rubber sandals and i'm walking timidly but fetchingly i would say up the stairs to roof deck, water streaming off me into my sandals making it all the more slippery as i clutch the rail and try not to think about the reaalllly bad fall i could take down three flights if i lose it in the sandals now and really bite it, just when i'm so close. that's the way I feel now, really, waking up every morning thinking shit this is scary but I really might reach it and I'm so close to the light.....

yes walking in those terrifying sandals is the way i feel, although i'm not really walking, i'm just trying to make it out of the slippery shit i've been sliding around in for years without falling down three flights of metaphorical stairs and calling it quits and not just him, but everything, this that, everything. i'm following the "no contact" rule, which really, i feel is the dumbest rule there is, but everyone seems to swear by it - it clears the mind, soothes the soul that type of thing. actually, i think that's what he was trying to tell me too last time we spoke, right after he threatened to call the police, but come on, can't he realize there's a little bit of psycho in each of us and then there's the sign i saw on the fridge behind the counter at the bath house:

ping

having unfortunately laid this post to the wayside these past few months, it is with great pleasure that i once again take up the noble pen - so to speak - now.

it's funny...it's not that i've been extraordinarily busy.  i haven't saved any orphans, dug any wells, adopted any kittens, none of that no sirree.  when i think about the last few months, i see nothing but a haze of colors swooping by, a face or two here, an experience there (some super shitty, i can't lie, some so so so so sooo great), all wrapped up in just about the greatest most glorious summer days one could ever ask for.  truth be told, looking back over the ribbon of memories that constitutes what i remember of those days that have streamed passed, what sticks out most glaringly are those moments when i felt like i actually came up for air...there's a massive hole in the ribbon there, and there's just not much, except air, pure clean hey i'm alive air, and i'm breathing and i'm living, and all of that seems so very very good.

while i wasn't writing, i was keeping some notes on the things that i would have liked to have written about, so i'll take the liberty to share them, in no particular order, here:

- really, what the fuck is this thing called "Love", and why are white boys so short?
- full sleeve tattoos, how do i really feel about them?
- why is it that when i'm in a rush to get coffee on my way to work, there is inevitably a person of obviously lesser pressing issues taking their sweet dandy time ahead of me.  I PARTICULARLY hate when it's grungy skateboard dudes who are in their 30's.  two words for you, buddy: "fuck", and "you"
- sometimes i watch those "gotcha" tv shows on cheap cable tv networks at the gym and find myself feeling really really sorry for the jackass who stole the car while all 17 of the hidden cameras surrounding him catch every single painfully sleazy move.  man buddy, even i feel bad for you, is pretty much what i'm thinking when the cops catch up to him and his (or her, sorry - don't want to seem sexist) face is now broadcast in gyms from sea to shiny sea.  that is just sad, you dumbfuck.
- linden trees in Brooklyn in early summer smell so sweet.  i didn't know the word for "lipa" in English. my mom had to tell me and my grandmother makes one tasty tea out of those little white blossom suckers.
- FaceTime faces look absolutely fucking ridiculous.  it's mortifying.
- subway elevators smell so fucking rank.  who's in charge of Fabreezing the shit out of that shit??
- why do hand dryers always seem to run 10 seconds too short? seriously - "wtf"?
- a white line someone had chalked on a brick building on Broadway.  underneath, they had written, "this is where i draw the line"  ha!!

i may have mentioned this before, but there is a Crest WhiteStrips commercial that i find just too uncanny - as all the flashing pearly white start fading away, the pleasing, bodiless female announcer's voice says, real spunky, "When you open up to Life - Life opens up to you!"

if you weren't near blinded by the sparkle coming off that one, you should have been.

   

purpose

i woke up this morning looking forward to seeing my therapist who i haven't seen for months, because really, i've been feeling fine, but this time around i really needed to discuss my anger management issues when i realized that somewhere in last night's stupor, i lost my favorite sunglasses.  as i was thinking this in utter dismay, the strap broke off my favorite purse, which happened to already be on my shoulder.  staring at the busted buckle on the floor, the contents of my spilled purse all around it, i burst into tears, stuffed my wallet into a bag no bigger than it anyway, ran to the subway still in tears, and to my therapist's who took exactly no more than 45 minutes to tell me that i'm in a vicious destructive pattern that i will live my life out in and that i shall never get out of and that oh well at least i'll be happy when i'm with him again she's seen it a million times in her practice.  all that time i stared at her thinking really what the fuck i'm paying you and when i asked about the insane rage i often find myself in, she leaned forward and said, we all go there, *I* go there, nothing, and i mean nothing about why it comes up, what causes it, how can i preempt it, all those things, no, only - "forgive yourself, it's okaaaay!"  so i paid her not one but two copays, went back to Williamsburg, was so nauseated by life it made my Brazilian breakfast the worst thing i've ever eaten, went right back to Manhattan, tried to get jolly and find purpose in life with Natasha, it didn't come on a bench smelling like mothballs facing a church on 16th street, but lots of people did wave at us.  feeling utterly purposeless, i decided yoga by my place would do me good, so i headed back to Brooklyn only to find a message from my godmother who was very upset and waiting for me although i thought that was tomorrow, checked the yoga schedule, realized i was headed to the wrong studio, rode my bike frantically toward what i thought was the right but was just another wrong studio, finally went to completely the wrong one at the right time, but got there too late and was mat-spaced out, cried some more, rode my bike to Natasha's, sat and stared at the sky, the sky rained in my eye and the wind blew away my hair-tie, i checked the yoga schedule again and realized that really there had been a class by my place when I thought there had been a class way back when, flipped a coin, changed my mind, went back to another class at another studio, did Dragon Yoga for Babies for an hour and half with Jackie Chan's son, swam in my own sweat, found some center, thanked the Universe, almost fell into the street in front of a car on my now very weak legs, went back to Tasha's to get my bike, ate some fake chicken, listened to jazz, talked about Paris and this day one year from now, rode my bike back in the dark, felt the air on my skin, looked at pictures from when it all started and i looked so happy like hit me now and now i'm staring at my toothbrush which is on my desk and i'm thinking wow i am one disgustingly beyond-spoiled brat and you should never have too many days where you just don't do anything.  

the view, ground up:

Serbian, not Syrian

for those of you who don't know, i am so very very lucky to spend some of my time influencing the susceptible minds of today's fragile youth.  some days, i do it better than others, but oft times, i find that they actually have a lot more to teach me.

these last few weeks have been very busy.  i don't know why, but it seems that every spring of the last couple years has just been nearly tumultuous in terms of too much going on.  i wonder what spring was like for ladies in the Renaissance?  i bet they didn't have to worry about audits and sick buildings and getting the Loves of Their Lives to get it together and all sorts of other weird shit that one has to deal with today.  then again, who the fuck knows.  sometimes, i think life is kinda like your purse.  the bigger it is, the more shit you're going to shove in it, and it's certainly entirely up to you as to what kind of bag you want to trudge through life with.  mine seems to be busting my back these days, so my goal for the upcoming weeks is to clean out my bag(s), but now i digress.  as to ladies now and ladies in the Renaissance...well, at least we don't get shut up in isolation and fed bland food after being diagnosed with hysteria (although that might actually be a little later than the Renaissance, but you get my point) so there's a silver lining to everything, i suppose.

regardless, spring has come, and spring will soon be over.  Life is lovely...crap i almost said and it will soon be over, but really i don't mean that anymore than the valid truth that is a fundamental part of that statement meaning we really really better suck every bit of juice out of that sucker, but alright, i obviously need to turn this around, so yes, Life is and always will be lovely

i went to a lovely wedding a few days ago, of my lovely friend Jess, and her amazing husband, Brian.  readers of my post will know that Jess is hands down the most amazing colleague and stand-up friend that anyone could POSSIBLY ever ask for, and Brian - well, as far as i know, is pretttty dang funny, other than thinking that i look up to, or come from, terrorists.

some time ago, i had my students dissect "Pandora's Box" and this is the theme some of them came up with.  keep your bags light, Brian and Jess.

     

fast track, ex-press, no stops

the nyc subway is veritably its own study in top-notch Chekhovian drama and lessons from the Universe.  sometimes, i'd seriously like to pick out some randoms (folk) and have them spill it: what's your furrowed brow all about sister, what's worrying you bud, what's making you happy child, who do you love woman, who do you hate bro, what do you want man, where do you want to be darling, who do you wish you were sir, where are you coming from madame, oh, and most importantly, where are you going you fool????

sometimes, as i'm rushing to and fro, quick glimpses of something seemingly profound will hit me.  exiting the L on Lorimer platform, i looked up to see a woman in a white jacket in a Manhattan-bound train tightly grasping a pole, facing out the sliding-door window, head down, eyes closed, actually it looked rather peaceful...as the train screeched out of the station, i realized that woman had pain written all over her shut eyes, and she was crying, quite solidly.  next stop: Reality!

once, running down the stairs from the Downtown 4 to the Brooklyn-bound L, i saw a woman leading a young boy with long blonde hair like a girl, clutching and waving a white stick in front of him.  for a moment, i was so very deeply struck by this touching scene of what i thought was a young blind child in this wild morning crowd, when i realized...it was only a hockey stick. asshole!

upon exiting a particularly frightening 3 train heading home from the west side, i saw a...bum...clutching his head, large splattered drops of bright red blood strewn all about him on the dark subway floor like rose petals.  i ran away quickly to the ever-so-stressfully long underground transfer to the L at 6th avenue, and what do you imagine could possibly be waiting for me there?  rose petals, real ones, bright and red, strewn about my feet like large red splattered drops of blood: hey you, you're a star!

i can't seem to figure it all out, today and tomorrow, everything, him, him, everything, on a veranda overlooking a bay in Jamaica, me, but better, nowhere, and hopefully not straight to hell.

this is rush hour on a bridge.  there's life on that side, and life on this.  it might look like it's not moving, but right now, it is.  this is a standstill on a bridge.  there's life on this side, and life on that.  it might look like it's moving, but right now it's not.

blues and garbage

this morning, on the way out of my current homestead, i heard the most amazing, unexpected tunes floating up my block.  it was the blues (!), classy, classic, with a sort of contemporary deep house-y twist; really just mind-blowing and perfect and i wondered who in God's name was letting loose with such perfection this early in a daylight savings morn on my block.  i appreciate where i live, but usually the tunes blasting that early are the random reggaetons blasting out of souped-up wheels and tinted windows that i inadvertently start salsachachachaing to as they whiz by.  but, no...the blues.

it's morning, it's glorious, i'm in a touch of a bad mood because it's daylight savings and i can't even write to anyone to complain about the useless strain it puts on my life for the good week or so that it takes for my circadian rhythms to get shit back in tock (i mean, who could i write to?? God?  the UN??) - and oh, that, plus i'm STILL trying to figure out LOVE and you know what, it might really just involve another four letter word that doesn't even have an e or a v or an o or an l in it, so there i am all grumpysville and here comes the blues: goooooood.  morning.  

as i trip-putzed down the block at 750 which actually should have been 650 therein i still actually would have been sleeping had it only been yesterday, the source of these fantastical tunes gradually came into focus: a new york city department of sanitation......garbage truck.  yup, there they were, those men in green or orange, i can't even remember anymore, scurrying around the back of their truck, muscles a-bulging, bags a-heaving, crewcuts all over the place, scooping up my trash from all of last week that i finally got around to disposing of, and from the open doors of the truck's cab: THE SEXIEST MOTHER FUCKING BLUES TO EVER TOUCH MY SOUL

what the fuck.  seriously.    

shades of grey

every once in a while, i find that i've left a draft out in the open on this site, accidently clicked "publish" and not "save", so that months later, i'll come back and be mortified that my readers have been privy to my half-thoughts.  shame on them.  it's like watching someone with their skirt tucked into their panty hose for the length of a subway ride and not saying anything.

i won't comment on my various states of mind at those moments when all buttons - "publish", "save", "preview" and "close" - are all the exact same, and i mean all, but that reminds me of a time i worked for a spell at a hospital in the summers between semesters while at school...

i was supposed to be scheduling appointments and checking ill-folk in to the prime care clinic, but really i was usually just juggling my time between being bored to EXTREME, sick-stomach inducing agony OR stalking handsome young residents and learning their schedules so as to conveniently run into them on their lunch in the hospital caf, but that's obviously another story

anyhow, on one particularly slow day, i typed a poem out to some of the girls who worked with me.  i remember mentioning fat - fat on my own body and certain, specific others; i made fun of jerk-ass patients and waxed more than poetic on the physical attributes of some of the doctors and turned less than Shakespearian sonnetarian on some of the nurses...i remember sending that email to "all" and by all i meant the "all" on the list of recipients i had typed in, but as i sat there with the orange cursor on the small black screen blinking back at me for a very long time (it was the late 90's - no ipad in sight) before the home screen reappeared, i should have known something was up.

after sending the email on that fateful day, i went down to aforementioned caf to see if i could ever-so serendipitously run into a certain young Doctor Tellman, when instead, i ran into a girl i kinda knew from xray at the pudding bar, who, when she saw me, simply said, "I GOT YOUR EMAIL"

mortified, i ran back to my desk, trying my best to remain calm throughout the rest of the morning's duties pull this chart, cancel that appointment, when, lo, the clinic administrator called me to her office.  to make a REALLY long and terribly bed-wetting story short, it turned out that by "all", everyone in the hospital's five county network had received my ode to cellulose that afternoon.  everyone, including the board of trustees, the hot docs in ER, the president, probably even the fucking candy stripers.

the clinic admin was really a terrifying woman with short brown hair who took her job super seriously and she made it clear that she could fire me but wouldn't and sent me off telling me never to touch the computer again.

sometimes when i feel i've really messed up on something, i remember the feeling i had back then on that day when my blood ran cold and i figure, well, at least i'm not emailing everyone in five counties, AND i have a Brita.  that's a lot more than i can say for, i dunno, say, 884 million other fellow citizens around the globe.  imagine that.

agapi mou

names are so powerful.  i struggle with my own sometime, since so many people have a problem saying it, but have you ever noticed how most people's name seem to fit them just so?  it's like your friend Tom just couldn't possibly be a John or John a Tom or back to vice versa.  imagine your friend Abhicandra as a Louis or Melania as Jane or Mary Beth as Lahnny?  not right, right?

there are some names that are truly magic to me.  magic.  i see the name, be it in my mind, or flashing across the screen of my phone to alert me to a message gloriously sent to me by the person of the name in question, or randomly on some sign, street name or billboard, or maybe i run into someone else who i barely know but who has the same name, and a ZING truly shoots straight through my heart and somewhere out into the universe to Them, to that real piece of magic.  magic.  it's like all those simple consonants and vowels all come together into a visual fairydust cupcake that bears all the fruits of what you LOVE and LOATHE most in a mere mortal, all in one or two or three consonants.  that's-what-life-is-all-a-bout.  there's seven, and they seem to make perfect sense.

there is magic all around you, if i do say so myself.

we'll always have Paris

i certainly am a francophile.  what's better than Paris?  Parisian vin et fromage and related fare, boulangeries, and snazzy looking people at every step, not a yoga pant, flip flop or camel-toe on an unsightly fat woman in site??  and if you know me and don't know about my lavender fields outside of Paris dreams then hey, i'm Mel, and we haven't met.  a Parisian professor speaking English, with that Frenchy accent?  i'm melting.  an afternoon in a random cafe sipping some simply exquisite cafe au lait or looking out a window at the rooftops of the fifth arrondissement?  sign me up, s'il vous plait!!

my parents lived in Paris before coming to the States, and this presents a real dilemma of pseudo-nostalgia for me.  i could be be asleep in my Parisian flat right now, dreaming in fluent French, any number of Hermes or the like scarves waiting to be flung around my neck when i leave in my chic crocodile-skin slingback flats in the morning on my way to have petite-dejeuner with mes amies Celine et Monique.  but no.  Brooklyn, miss.

i really don't have a problem with that either, i guess, being that i'm here, and here is better than being nowhere.

last year, Tash and I spent the most glorious week in Paris.  one day while shopping, i took off the dress i was wearing, my faaavorite-ever raggy cotton sundress from back home and changed into whatever it was i was getting in its stead at some certainly beyond cute boutique in the Marais.  you know, so i could have that all-appropriate i'm French so I'm effortlessly sexy look whilst having my afternoon casse-croute on the cobblestones, right?  well, i forgot to take that dress out of the bag later that night and the next day, the maids naturally made sure that the bag and the dress with it and all the rest of our garbage remnants made their way ever so efficiently to the nearest French dumpster and that was the end of my favorite-ever sundress.  i was pretty devastated but managed to put myself back on track, merci.

that day while we were snacking on the sidewalk, a gorgeous couple came out on the street not looking or speaking to each other.  the guy turned on the moped and let it rev forever while they both just stood around, not speaking or looking to each other.  finally, one of the older Parisian women with impeccable makeup and sass next to us got up sauntered over and asked them how it was worldly possible that they could have such little class.  the guy muttered something that i imagine was the French version of please fuck off madame, and then he and the girl both saddled up and moved along, not a word or contact of the eye between them.

i tried to find this great pic i have of a Parisian pigeon, but who knows where that's at now.  this here is Izi, a poodle, which seems Parisian enough

truly outrageous

one of my first heroes [heroines] ever was Jem, as in Jem from Jem and the Holograms.  actually, it might have been She-Ra first, He-Man’s sister, before Jem, and I guess that’d be important in paying proper homage here.  

hm.  

well, as much as I’d like to give them both their own stage considering they’re both probably both A-Class Divas Galore, they both made appearances in my life within the same, very important, decade – that would be the 80’s, thank you - and come to think of it, were I to closely study facial features…they might just actually be one and the same, anyway 

God, my skin itched to be them, those sexy sluts with the most exciting of lives.  Jem with her hot boyfriend (with a name like “Riot”…??  I can only imagine_that’s all_) and awesome star makeup and ever-important sparkly Star earrings, struttin her stuff on a twirling stage. and what about She-Ra, Princess of Power, with her completely bad-ass outfit, her sword, and a talking unicorn??  the question is, who’s better (I guess?)? 

i had a prized Jem cassette that my mom had bought at Nichols (precursor to Kmart, precursor to Walmart, probably even precursor to God), with a whole song on each side that I would sing along to at the top of my lungs, flip the cassette, sing the other one, flip the cassette and start all over again until one of my brothers came in threatening to send me definitively to hologram hell.  i imagined that my hair was pink and funky and large and sorta shaped like a star and that I wore precariously short pink dresses and danced easily in high heels, that my bandmates stayed well to the back of the stage, regardless of how down we all were, and that basically everyone else just thought I was the straight-up shit, especially The Misfits who still caused a lot of trouble, but nothing I obviously couldn’t possibly handle anyway   

the best part of both of them, aside from Jem somehow being a touch more accessible, and not from the planet Eternia, was their alter-egos.  I mean, really.  in real life, Jem was known as Jerrica, a classy music-exec blonde who looked a bit like a Pan Am stewardess, and She-Ra was Adora, a deceivingly simple looking servant’s daughter in red and white leotards although her real mom and dad were actually king and queen, so there. 

the moral of the story is that I probably need to come up with my very own alter-ego to live a ridiculously sexy life through.  as for She-Ra, I actually always kinda worried that there was something weird going on with her and her brother but still, a couple of months ago, my boss made a super cute composite of me as She-Ra on the computer, where evidently you can do anything these days, and I’m not even going to lie – I keep that pic.  laminated.  in my wallet.            

once I walked in on someone watching old youtube clips of He-Man assaulting Skeletor, and I’ll be honest, I thought it was gay porn. 

i'm nobody who are you

no, I am not in the throes of an existential depression (that’s generally status quo, considering the questionable state of things: gas is nearly $4.00 a gallon, and I don’t even drive; children can’t read and their parents can’t even care; people can’t love, can’t think, can’t hear, can’t see…stuff like that, you know?), but that is the first line of one of my favorite poems by the ever-esteemed Emily Dickinson.   she was great at pointing out the obvious, things like Nature is pretty awesome and that people are pretty lame. 

take:  Death is the common right of Toads and Men… Why swagger, then?   

haha, awesome.  first of all, I like that she put the toad before the man, but the rest of it - that’s really just the way it is.  you can strut your stuff as an ass or an Ass, but in the end both the ass on the field doing his master’s bidding and the Ass in the city doing the bidding as a master face that dreaded Common Lot one day.  where did Humility take the wrong turn, I wonder?  we all strive to set ourselves apart in some sort of stratosphere that makes us better than our neighbor who’s better than their neighbor who’s better than their neighbor ad infinitum.  i don’t believe for remotely a minute that one person’s not, it’s just that some of us do it so much better than others.  tell that to the Toads.   

the “Nobody” poem goes like this:

I’m Nobody!  Who are you?

Are you – Nobody – Too?

Then there’s a pair of us!

Don’t tell!  they’d advertise – you know!

How dreary – to be – Somebody!

How public – like a Frog-

To tell one’s name – the livelong day

To an admiring Bog!

Awesome. 

my name is ISH

this morning, i spent some time reading to my niece.  honestly, I get so bored when it’s not Dr. Seuss.  she’s little, so she just doesn’t fully get it yet, but the finest words are words that rhyme in time, you bet.   there’s a character that makes an appearance in one fish two fish red fish blue fish (which I could truly read all day, if you wish) whose name is ISH, and God I love him.  I love him for a couple reasons, first of all – “ish”???  man, does that man get leeway.  i started using “ish” a lot in my own life a few years ago; it seems to make sense.  “i’ll see you there 7ish”, “that’s…coolish”, “i’m feeling sick-ish”, “i’m working…hard-ish”  ish is the shit, which is still ish but without the t, incidentally.  Ish might as well just be the mascot of our times, so as not to call him a sign, but that seems to be about where it’s at; he really is just one cool cat.  when you can’t commit, to a time, a person, a place, a real emotion, you call on Ish, who bounds along, blurs the line and everyone breathes a sigh a relief, kind of like you do when you unbuckle your pants after lunch on Thanksgiving, THAT’S how good Ish is, certainly better than crack, since crack is no good, and probably even better than chocolate and obviously chocolate is great.  if you look around, you’ll see Ish is everywhere.  this is what Ish does for us: kicks the can down the road, then goes after it, kicks the can down the road, then goes after it which is the coolest thing because then we can just deal with that can later, you get my drift?          

you know what Ish is good at in one fish two fish red fish blue fish?  he makes a wish, he wishes for fish.

"Today is gone.  Today was fun.  Tomorrow is another one."  

smetana shmetana

i have two very special things on my mind tonight.  eyeliner and sour cream, of course

sometimes i think i am nothing without eyeliner.  yes this is challenging, but without it, i feel like a specter, scaring children on the street.  i also look a bit like a child and older men have fleeting fantasies when running into me in an elevator, say.  yes, i do humor myself, i know.  but eyeliner.........for example, MAC's Blacktrack: just the simple act of dipping my stiff little liner brush into that little glass pot in anticipation of running that shiny silky black fluid gel across my lids....oh, it delights me SO!!!  you know who would understand this?  the ancients, say, in Egypt, or the Persians.  in those cultures, kohl was used not just to further sexify some alluring sexpot, but also applied by men and on children to avoid certain eye ailments, protect one's peepers from the sun, or from falling unfortunate victim to an evil eye.  some mothers even applied kohl to their infants' eyes soon after birth, which sounds like a good time to do it to me.

what does sour cream have to do with it?  not much.  i just think about how much fun makeup is which somehow led me to think of sour cream, which is also fun, on pretty much any food in existence.  name one thing that would not be better served with sour cream on it - you just can't, can you?  apples and sour cream.  i want to roll in it.  sour patch kids and sour cream. mmmmm.  ethiopian food and sour cream.  how do you say mon dieu c'est delicieux in Amharic??  pork dumplings and sour cream oatmeal and sour cream sturgeon and sour cream .................give it to me, NOOOOWWWWW.

once in Moscow, i got the worst food poisoning of my life, chills, delirium, fever, sweat, spaceballs birthing in my gut, and a stay at the American hospital, all from fresh homemade sour cream bought from a nice little old lady shivering at her stall at the outdoor market.  as i recall, i ate it with relish.  and nutella.

MoreLove TwentyTwelve

i had this friend who was always good for telling me to be grateful for what i got.  i liked that.  once i said, "i need more money", to which he responded, "no, you need more love"  i appreciated that.  in fact, i think it was the best line, hands down, of 2011.  "more love", Two Thousand Eleven.  "more love", although, honestly, this friend seemed to think a lot - or mostly - about more money, so that was just a big ol' fat paradox in mores.  that is, "more"s, as in, "gimme more" and not "mores" as in the mor-ays of social customs or conventions or values as defined by a society, which is certainly not something my friend subscribed to, anyhow.  although, honestly, i appreciated that too, because who needs mores?  when you have mores, you have marriage and religion and other things meant to conventionize the bejeesus out of you but please don't bejeesus me back, because i DO give respect where respect is due, like to a knight in shining armor on his white steed, of course.  or Jesus.

but morays.  moray is actually a slippery eel come to think of it, which is kind of what my very good friend was like.  a slippery eel.  murky waters.  which is funny, because although i loved him so, i do NOT like to even THINK of eels, almost as much as i don't like to think of social mores, but i certainly do like to eat them.  eels, not mores.

so, now: an attitude of gratitude, in the moment.  i'm grateful for what i got:  

heat (I could be cold), running water (I could be dirty [ier]), internet (online banking), health of family and friends (enough said), employment (comprehensive health insurance), prophylactics (unwanted pregnancy), Empire HMO (see: employment, see: keep your one kidney, see: prophylactics), fuzzy socks (winter, warm feet), Jon Stewart (sanity), humor (it's funny), dvr (see: J Stewart), locks on doors (beat it, rapists), tyrosine (essential amino acids, sleep more), retainers (keep your teeth straight, what am i, twelve??), rainy days (make me dreamy), galoshes (see: rainy days)  

i really could be in Malawi.  God, i'm so grateful.  that's Malawi, not Maui, check it.             

MORE LOVE is right.   

parcel post

one of my favorite eats is escargot.  who was the strange strange person back in the day that sat around watching a snail take its excruciatingly slow time across a rock somewhere and think to themselves, man, i bet that sucker would taste amazaaaazing with its shell ripped off and baked in a cast iron plate with 2 lbs of butter, garlic, enough salt to really kill a pound of snails and a good ol', crusty, toasted baguette to really sop up the juices after.  i mean, wtf???  wouldn't ANYTHING taste good like that?  i bet you i could do the same with crickets, grasshoppers, frogs, snake skin and robin eggs and have all of them be tastier than sin.  i mean, i'm salivating right now.  why do we do half the things we do, like workin for the man every night and day, or feeling when we shouldn't and not feeling when we should?  i bet you all of that is like eating snails.  you just wouldn't do it without the butter salt and garlic, so why the FUCK are you doing it in the first place?

  

notes back to the Ledge

a few words, if i may.

so there i was a couple of months ago thinking to myself,

you know what i'm terrified of, Self?  the Abyss.  man, why the f is that so scary?  my therapist tells me that this particular fear is fear of fear and nothing else (and therein, fear of nothing), and i know a lot of smarter people have been saying this all along [see: seriously bad-ass Inaugural Address, FDR, 1933], but why is that gaping blackness called Not Knowingness so fucking terrifying sometime??

ya.  so there i was, just really wanting to just fling myself off that scary metaphysical Ledge that hovers over that abyss since i was slipping off anyway, which is what this amazing grease of Life does.  you're standing around wringing your bony hands peering through half closed lids into the churning darkness for too long thinking you really do want to jump that you've had enough of just standing there and staring into it but isn't it going to hurt but oh man you sooo want to jump because who knows what's down there, it might be something good, like fresh cake or Doritoes or mind-blowing sex and people who aren't assholes and chocolate or fairies who sprinkle pixie dust and make your wildest dreams come true OR you might just land on your ass and have it really really really hurt like teeth shakingly hurt like when some douchebag's Jaguar goes over a massive pothole on the FDR so who wants to jump because aren't most of us just big fat whiney pussies anyway and THAT'S when Life, who's been the patient friend who never laughs at your antics standing around behind you now starts getting seriously bored with your lame ambivalence just steps forward and says later bitch! and helps you out with a nice solid but loving shove right between the shoulder blades or a swift but kind kick to the arse more likely and off you go, cartwheeling and tumbling into the Darkness, into the Unknown.

everyone said to either stay away from the Ledge, or get off it, but i am happy to report that the Abyss is only what you make of it, or in other words, it's only YOU, and the real journey doesn't seem to begin until you get there, so i'll tell you what was saddled up waiting patiently at the bottom of mine: Pegasus.  and a really really good cupcake too.

bohémien gitano Γύφτος cigano

"You're pissed again why?  Cause i didn't spend ONE fucking night with you?!  You just fucked yourself...I'm busting my ass and that's what you send me?  I was going to tell you to come out after work today BUT NO CHANCE NOW!  No apology will suffice.  You are and always will be a jealous selfish gypsy!"

i love eloquent poets.  but i really do love gypsies.  i never used to get why my mom would pull me close and whisper fiercely in my ear to stay away from the gypsies as we headed into the market to buy fresh green goods in the balmy summer morns back in the old country.  the way i saw it, the gypsies had it quite all right.  they were dressed in spectacularly dazzling colorful rags and they were barefoot, so what's better than that, what's wrong with gypsies?  we dance to gypsy music at weddings, we listen to gypsy songs that make our hearts bend, we throw down gypsy cards when we want to finger the future...what, then, is wrong with gypsies??

i've always had a soft spot for gypsies, come to think of it.  my father used to call me a little gypsy, although not always in real terms of endearment, come to think of it, my mother very closely resembled a drop dead gorgeous gypsy before she got all Americanized and starting wearing corduroys, with her long black hair all flowing and a colorful bandana wrapped around her head, dancing like a gypsy makes you think that you're actually as free as one, thinking like a gypsy nearly straight up turns you into a bonafide member of the Roma and years ago, when i thought about what my street name would be if i just starting tagging up the streets of Brooklyn, i came up with Gitana.  the Gypsy.  i really did think of that, since you never really know where life might go.

but i do love poets.

here's a verse from Bizet's Carmen, the habanera, now this really reads like poetry:

L'amour est un oiseau rebelle
que nul ne peut apprivoiser
et c'est bien en vain qu'on l'appelle,
s'il lui convient de refuser.
Rien n'y fait, menace ou priere,
l'un parle bien, l'autre se tait:
Et c'est l'autre que je prefere,
Il n'a rien dit mais il me plait

that's something about love being a rebellious bird that no one can tame and you're calling him quite in vain and nothing helps, neither threat nor prayer...geeez!

what a great great opera, that gypsy queenie Carmen prancin her stuff all over the place and then tossing that ring right back into Jose's face so that after he stabs her even though he really deliriously loves her, all he can do is cry his arrogant, puny, manboy guilt all over her dead little body.

what a dumass.

the field mouse's prayer

when i was a little, i used to have this babysitter, Agafia Ivanovna, God rest her merry old soul.  she was straight off the boat in her layers of black wool and a thick scarf wrapped around her head, trailing an even thicker history around behind her.  she had been shot by the Germans, survived Stalin and the Gulag and left for dead yet somehow literally trudged through the freezing kill-all-the-Nazis Russian winter snow and made it to upstate NY.  she and her husband built a small cottage where not a single window opened, centered around a brick-oven type behemoth stove - reminiscent of the one the witch in Hansel and Gretel kept to cook the children in - that kept the place at a fiery, stifling 93'F [regardless of season] which they centered their beds around.  if they had to go to town for sundry, they would ride there in the their tractor, and they also just happened to conveniently be our neighbors. aside from looking forward anxiously to my daily mid-afternoon snack, right before my daily very-long nap, of a haaa-yuuuuge glass of port wine and a slice of black bread dowsed in soy sauce, i was nonetheless desperately bored at Casa de Seriously Old People and counted the minutes i didn't even know how to count yet since i was only just three or four until that glorious moment when my mother would appear from her job and take me home.  Halleluia.

one day, i found that i could very easily hide behind pretty much anything and scare the living bejeesus out of Agafia Ivanovna, no matter how many times i did it.  she would walk into the living room (area) and i'd jump out from behind the couch yelling, "Boo!!!" and she'd nearly faint.  ten minutes later, when she went back into the kitchen (area.  again, it was a tiny cottage built around a very large stove), i would stand behind the fridge and just fall out out at her as she walked by and the poor old woman would catch the fits just like that while i laughed to hysterical, delicious tears over all of it.  i couldn't get enough.

finally, one day, Agafia Ivanovna took me aside and sat me down under a bunch of icons of the Orthodox faith, saints, Jesus, Mary, God, all haloed and special looking.  pointing at them and up at the sky, she told me that if i ever, EVER so much as remotely considered scaring her like that again, the Mother of God herself would come down from the sky and cut out my tongue.




well.

as you might imagine, i don't believe i uttered a SQUEAK after that, which is ironic because i was actually so squeaky as a kid that one of my nicknames was Squeaky.  not there in that Hansel and Gretel kill children cabin, not at home when my dad was yelling at me to learn my prayers and learn how to wash dishes and cook cheese pies and clean the house, not at school when i was the only one that evidently knew the answer but just didn't want to hear the sound of my own voice, not even years later, like now, when someone is so wrong i want to choke out my spittle on their face as i choke the right out of them; but, nope not me, i was as silent as a silent little mouse.

finally i was enrolled into kindergarten and my brothers would pick me up after school and that pretty much ended that, but for years i had a problem.  i had a problem scaring anyone (which is A LOT of quality fun for a little one), i had a problem looking in people's eyes, i even had a problem lying little white lies when i really wanted to, all because all i could imagine was Mother Mary coming down from the heavens in her sweeping blue gowns and without as much as a word, just slicing out my tongue, probably with a small shiny gold knife, kinda like the one they use in church to cut the proskomedia.

Agafia Ivanovna, wherever you are now, i'd like you to take that back.  it's put a real damper on me for some time now in terms of getting my point across.  i'm sorry i scared you with such relish and probably very well near caused you serious myocardial infarctions more than once, but it really all was such good, honest fun.  for example, right now, i'd really really like nothing more than to tell a certain someone to SERIOUSLY SHOVE IT and actually have them HEAR ME, and honestly, i think the Mother of God would probably like it, too.  

ok, that's it Agafia Ivanovna, i really appreciate it.  thank you, and God bless you and amen.

p.s. i went through every last one of your closets and drawers while you cooked whatever beet soup it was that you'd cook every day.  multiple times.  maybe hundreds.  it was fun, sorry.  and the soup was always absolutely delicious.  

    

poseurs and the Eka Pada Raja Kapotasana

a couple of years ago, i took some yoga on the upper east side at a super swanky studio full of a lot of stiffy uppity white woman.  there was an instructor we'd have once in a while who looked like a really tall skinny muscular Jesus with ultralong hair and a beard he hadn't thought of in many a year of our Lord.  this guy was such a crack-up.  we'd be in the middle of a super peaceful tadasana and all of a sudden from behind our closed lids in the flickering candle light, you'd hear him start sniggering and sure enough you'd open your eyes and Jesus' doppleganger was standing up there hands in prayer position eyelids closed shoulders bouncing from the laughs coming out of his belly.  the ladies were not into it, but i obviously happen to have a soft spot for Jesus.  his eyes were all shiney and crinkly with happiness and i'm pretty sure that he just got straight up stoned as possible, like out of his mind, before Wednesday night's 6:30 intermediate Ashtanga.  needless to say, he did not last.

shortly thereafter, he started showing up in my neighborhood, a little removed to the south and east, locks aflowing, the air just positively swirling with aura around him.  i saw him so much, sometimes even in other parts of the city which really is just pushing it and so much so to the extent that i figured it had to be a cosmic something, so one day, when i saw him, i literally ran down the street breathless to catch up to him.  he in fact did not remember teaching a class on the upper east side, but i just laid it out that i was so like, just like, so drawn to him, that i thought i had to like confess my sins to him or something, him with his sparkling eyes and long beard reminding me so much of my spiritual fathers of yesteryore.  i really thought this man had come to earth or at least Brooklyn to forgive my sins and just like that he nodded and said yes that seemed to make sense and then invited me to his "retreat" upstate where i could be very easily accommodated, for he had a large bed.      

i decided to steer clear thereafter, devastated in my being takeness, and only then did i realize that he was always surrounded by a gaggle of glowing flower girls, their long fingers running through his hair, incense practically trailing off them as they walked.  he actually started wearing braids and i even saw him in a skirt one day at a sandwich shop where he tried to give me a hug. he smelled so bad, i almost lost my quinoa.

i remember the first time i hit full pigeon pose.  i remember thinking there was no way my foot would go there and then i just fell into it like there was nothing better in the world and i kinda think that's just what Life is apt to do.

plus la corde est longue

the longer the string, the higher the kite flies.

there are these great Italian candies - dark chocolate bon-bon type doodads, with chopped hazelnut that scream sexy times in your mouth - that i became obsessed with in Europe.  they're called Baci, meaning "kisses" in Italian, and i happen to love their silver foil with cute blue writing and stars, and best of all, each comes with some sort of proverb or saying, usually romantically inclined, but always translated into four or five different languages that i always try to stumble through, no matter the readily available English translation.  they always always always always make me smile.

i used to think, back in the day day (yes, that is an extra "day", to denote just how long ago that day was), that if you hadn't accomplished everything you needed or thought to accomplish by the time you were 35, you might as well just die.  well, i'm 35, and the way i look at it - i haven't sung at La Scala and i probably won't, so no check on that box.  that kinda peeves me until i think about the work it takes to be an opera singer - a LOT, just the same as a doctor, say, and while i'm really quite fascinated with the amazing inner workings of the human bod, there ain't no way in the highest heaven you'd remotely catch me pulling the 80,000 hr weeks it takes to become a bona fide, certified MD.  an opera singer likewise BUSTS their BALLS, their boobies, their buttcracks, their kidneys and livers, everything and anything if you're really goin to get somewhere on that golden stage.  i might have had a nice voice, but truth be told, the slightest stressor throws it into all sorts of disarray, including cold, allergies, and mainly but not entirely all other variables limited by and entirely contributed to my psyche.

so, that's that.

this is Maria Callas.  after i got over Madonna, i couldn't get over Maria, the way she rolled over even the most arduous series of eighth notes that a chap like Bellini Rossini or Verdi could throw down on a symphonic page.  this Greek goddess ate other sopranos for breakfast, in fact, i think she was the greatest that ever lived, and you know how the curtain fell on this one?  she got herself involved with a short Greek guy who promptly turned out to be a complete asshole, whereas in she promptly died of a broken heart, alone, in Paris.  

plus le cerf-colant vole haut

prime time, high def

one of the things missing in my life when i was a child was a television.  not that it was missing in a negative sort, since i'm actually quite thankful now that i grew up without it, but its absence from our lives then seemed to be just another deafening roar that our poverty made to everyone else in the county.  it was so embarrassing to have friends over, to watch them stare questioningly into the corner where the tv should have been, a cold draft from the outdoors causing the nearest curtain to flutter uncomfortably.

the story goes that my old man threw the tube out the 2nd floor window when my brothers ignored his calls to come help with some work outside, just one time too many.  legend also has it that my mom was just pulling in to the house, probably in a silver '67 Chrysler, when that Zenith '76 came crashing to its sad demise in the driveway.  thereon, RD2 Box 9 was sadly and conspicuously absent of that amazingly comforting high pitched whistle that accompanied the powering up of the boob tube in every other home in America.  my father then became so incensed with the concepts of television and so certain that it was the demon in the den and the demise of society that he even tried to start a "non-tv society" which pretty much went over well exactly nowhere in the continental United States, but he did at least make it quasi-official by plastering a serious looking banner across the other set of family wheels at the time, a tow truck, no less.

so, there we were.  my brothers and i riding our bikes to the public library twice a week, all of us filling up a brown paper grocery bag - also of the days of old - with as many books as our bike baskets could carry.  when it was time to come in for the night, after our homework was done, after running ourselves snot-ragged over the hills and cliffs and forests and trees and rivers and limping or carrying our busted selves home, oft times we all sat around the fireplace (it was too cold in those days to hang out upstairs in the bedrooms in winter) and read.  our parents were still learning English then, so every once in a while, pops would look up and ask, from behind his MAGNIFYING glass, "шта значи реч 'conspiratorial'?" and one of us would have to explain it.

these days, i happen to be mildly obsessed with 30 Rock, House Hunters International, the Daily Show and the Colbert Report, but man do i still ever HATE tv.