O

you know what shape is utterly lovely?  the Circle.  how perfect and sacred and truly wonderful is the circle?  no nasty edges to deal with, no harsh lines, just perfect never ending beginnings ending or beginning; you don't even know where to start.  for example: completion, unity, the beginning equal to the end, unbroken, of both boundary and enclosure, people ink circles into their skin to show their indelible belief in karma, and halos around one's head signifies something pretty special, i'd say.  then there's the sun, the moon, the earth, stars, the trajectory of planets, there's an embrace and there's the eyes, the window to the soul, i didn't even get to rings on fingers yet, there's the dragon eating his tail, there's bowls to hold broth in, there's wombs to hold babies, and then there's "coming full circle"

the Circle gives me a tremendous amount of hope in this frankly rather fucked-up pandora's box world, quite frankly.

i wish everyone a life-full of amazing Circles, "amazing" being inherent, since obviously, not one can be bad.

  

king maker

i had a friend they called the "king maker".  for the longest time, i didn't get it.  i sat around and just couldn't understand it: who makes kings when they could be kings themselves if you're in the business of making kings??  what a great friend.  funny, genuine, warm, giving, chivalrous, caring, loving, witty, funny and brilliant.  who needs a better friend?

thinking on this the other day, and headed out on my way, from Point A to Point B, i came upon the head of a broken key.  its shimmering gold caught my eye and i stooped to the pavement to wonder what doors it had opened when it had been whole.  who held it, what was behind that door?  mysteries, dreams, hopes, loved ones, reviled ones?  later, arriving at Point B, crossing a hot street in Brooklyn, again, something gleamed from the ground.  there, in the middle of a gummy, hot intersection at the corners of street and street, lay a jumble of broken keys, doors somewhere near or far never to be opened by them again.

keys are magical things.  doors are pretty spectacular.

sometimes i'm hard of hearing.  sometimes i can't hear.  sometimes i don't hear.  sometimes i don't want to hear, sometimes i put plugs in my ears, and sometimes i lie to myself about what i'm hearing.  maybe all this time they were saying "key maker"?  so then, what's better - someone to make someone else king, or someone who can open doors anywhere?  i'll go with keys.

all good things

those who know me well know very well my need to imbue a sense of meaning or at least symbolism on pretty much anything in existence.  i honestly can't help but think that the Universe is  some..........well, not to sound so shamanistic, but, some sacred Story Teller holding up one big fat amazing delicious mystery choose your own adventure picture book for me to flip through hungrily and figure out and sometimes it's Dostoevsky, and sometimes it's Maurice Sendak, and sometimes it's some homeless man on the streets.  how i loved those choose your own adventure books.  i could read the same one 12 times and know every possible ending and still be as thrilled as the first time when i turned to page 18 instead of 22 when i chose to jump off the cliff and not run over the drawbridge and found out that there is actually an escape jeep waiting at the bottom and not a swamp full of starving alligators.  i would stuff my face with multiple lenders frozen bagels, toasted, smeared amply with cheap margarine, or sometimes gummy store-brand cream cheese if we were having a lucky week, truly one after another, and read those books, all day.  choose your own adventure.

i've heard a lot lately of how we specifically choose what's in our lives.  shitty relationships, check. stressful jobs, check.  loud neighbors, check.  but honestly, the pages i've been choosing lately....they just keep flying through the dark scary tunnels, one lifesaver after another.  i turned to page 67 when i chose to keep swinging on the trapeze instead of jumping back on the plank and on page 67, the plank plummets to the circus tent floor, sabotaged by some crazy clown mad culprit.  i keep swinging, and my hot, handsome partner and i not only finish our act - to much applause - and catch the clown culprit who let the elephants loose on page 14.

the best thing about choose your own adventure is that you can choose to start again, or, you can just choose where to start.  

   

1234567

7 has long been my favorite number.  there are so many exquisite meanings to 7.  God made the earth in 7 days, 7 is linked to perfection in the tarot, there are 7 celestial orbits, 7 in Hebrew is from a root word meaning "full", or "complete", 7 denotes great wisdom in numerology, i just mentioned "7" seven times.  it actually looks quite beautiful just to look at, too: 7

seven years with a psychopath.

8.) good things come, to those who wait.  

AlAnon

imagine that you have a very good friend.  you play with this friend, you give them a name, you eat and drink and break bread and spill wine and sleep with them.  you listen to them breathe through the night and you wake up in the morning with them for so long, the crinkles and crevices on their skin are as dear as the veins on the back of your very own hand.  you love this friend, you imagine this friend is your very best friend in the world - nay, the Universe - the sun only shines for you and this friend.  day in and day out, you can't wait to finish your chores so you can be with your friend.  for so long, you love this friend more than you love yourself, that's how much you love this dear dear friend and the world could crumble into nothing but flames and ash around you but you would very truly honestly be just completely not only OK, but very very good, as long as you were with your very good friend.  

now.

imagine that one day, upon waking, you go to embrace this dear friend.  how very happy you are, here is your friend!  you behold their face, pure and true, feel their breath, deep and sour, but always new.  your heart swells for the moment you know is coming, when they will be you, this communion that makes you whole, each time, like the first time and then you take them in your arms, and maybe the sun is rising or maybe it's setting, whichever you'd like, see it as you deem fit, when, suddenly, as you are taking them in to you, where you believe they will and shall forever be, into your very heart and soul even, at this moment, your very good dear wonderful sweet lovely perfect friend, they slowly begin to disappear.  first from the inside.  you don't see it right away, but you feel it, and that silly cold bitch of a snake called fear now sneaks into your own stomach too and she lickssss your inssidessss.

no, no, this simply cannot be.  but you know it before you see it.  from the inside out, they are disappearing.  they are disappearing into nothing, and you are crying and screaming and shaking now and shaking them, wake up wake up stay, your very good friend, but they are slowly disappearing, from the inside out right there, right there right in front of you, until all that is left of them is a shell.  the shell is not your good friend, the shell is nothing; it is practically a rock except that a rock couldn't shatter the way this shell could.  you behold it finally, when the moment comes, when all that was inside of your dear friend has gone, and you are left, alone, aghast.  first your heart is torn from your chest and broken like a brick over Atlas' knee, then your soul is shattered, smashed to smithereens on wet, salty rocks, like the way seagulls crush their lunch but you scurry about picking up your own pieces, putting back in your own eyes, and you turn to look at your very dear good friend.

and


you


realize


there.
was.
nothing.
ever.
there.

what do you do now?  it is not even a pillar of salt.  do you kiss the shell, do you kick yourself?  that shell had once seemed to have been a person and you had loved them dearly, they had been your very good friend and you had had so so so so much fun.  you had laughed like you were a child, you had loved like you were Juliette, you had taken out ads in the world newspaper announcing how very very very wonderful this shell was, but now who do you tell that.....it was only a shell???

oh you'd feel so so so silly and small, wouldn't you?  there's help for addicts, but what about those addicted to them?

E M | ME

feeling it utterly called for in light of the density of recent days, i found myself in midtown earlier for an hour-long deep tissue massage by an exquisitely pleasant Japanese woman named NaNa who really threw her fingers into tearing apart some tight tight knots.  other than midtown at rockefeller center not really ever being a place i want to be in unless it's Christmas, not to say entirely anathema, i then had to find my way home.  i made my way through the city throngs that people take pictures of to the downtown E M at Madison and 53rd and leaned up against a wall determined to find some peace (my thing lately) even in the middle of it all.  yes i said that.

in my earphones, i had Mozart's papageno/a duet, and i stared straight ahead, making my my fuzzy box/circle of vision then be each and every frame as midtown streamed past me on the this dirty, stuffy downtown subway platform.  how different midtown is from brooklyn.  people wear completely unsensible shoes, like actual stilettos, and tight, crisp shirts and skirts with pleats, and shiny shirts carefully tucked under belts, hair pomaded, things like that, even a cinch or two, and they truly look a touch too much all business.  pa_pa_pa_pa_papageno

on the train, i spotted quite a young man.  solid jaw, strong nose, good lips, tall, with a healthy shock of thick black respectfully cropped hair, good hands wrists and forearms. relatively well fitted shirt, and office pants........reading a kindle.  i couldn't make heads or tails of it.  what was he reading?  how did it make sense.  i was fascinated.  and then i realized that around him stood of gaggle of bright eyes.  one redhead, another little betty boop....

these days i'm saying young man.  pa_pa_pa_pa_papagena.

advice i am slow to take:

i'll be sure to pass it on.

i showed that to someone who said, well if that were the case, i wouldn't sleep with my sister, or my father.

oh the things we know when we know that we didn't need to but needed to know them.    

swing low, sweet chariot

today i watched a woman's bag fall to the floor and the only thing that rolled out was a bag of assorted pills and things.  vitamin E pills, glowing, golden, like miniature magical duck eggs to keep the skin smooth, young and elastic.  other tablets, white and sleek, maybe some Tyrosine for sleep, some folic acid pellets, when you never know, some chasteberry for homeopathic menstrual relief, things like that.

it's funny, because i keep dropping all of my pills all over the place lately too.  go to grab a pen, bam, there goes a bottle of olive leaf extract that i just didn't close tight enough.  slap, there goes my migraine medication, and those little God-sent fuckers are 9 dollars a pill (God bless insurance).  go to replace the Motrin, bang, there goes the zinc, so really, what i'm saying is we all have our stash that we lose a grip on sometimes.  what are those pills for?  i could roll them all into one tight pill and label it "Bullshit - Good for Everything", and i imagine it would fly right off the shelves of your local vitamin store.

bullshit.  good for everything.

    

stair master

when i was a little kid, into teenagerism, i loved changing my clothes, numerous times a day.  i kept a huge stash of clothing and i would just change every few hours, just for the sheer joy of it, checking myself out in my mother's very flattering vanity mirror.  the lighting was just right, the mirror just so.  there was never a bad angle.  i can't even imagine where the clothes came from in those days, but truly they all looked great.

that was pretty magical.  sadly, at some point, sucking up my own physical beauty in a random assortment of clothes somehow wore off, i'm not sure why.  i think it was college and pizza.

this memory, combined with my adolescent, adulthood-impeding obsession with fairy tales, came to mind today as i trudged in serious stalwart style under a steady stream of unseasonably cold June afternoon New York City rain.  why is it that memories like that, of yourself in the mirror when you're 12 are so tasty, you wish you could suck the marrow straight from them, then smack your shiny lips to top it all off.  

later, at dinner, someone mentioned Orpheus, his love for Eurydice, and we all know what happened when he looked back.

last night, i dreamt of my recently deceased grandmother, my namesake.  she appeared real, as "real", but as an abstract, moving, floating painting.  in the living room, there was a baby grand piano that i wanted immediately removed.

: Bushwick.  What? 

  

faces of slurs

i spent such a lovely weekend on the beach.  someone told me recently that the ocean is a prayer, to invoke it as often as possible, and being that this is truly so very lovely and sublime and profound and perfect, i tried to remember that when i was feeling anything but magnificent.  i walked along the water, sucked in that salty air, fell on the sand, felt the sun slip all over me, opened my ears wide to that sound that can crush you...

i tried to meditate, that being my new thing now, since i've been introduced to it in simply the most pleasant of manners, and this is what i saw:

from the base of my spine, this grey repinesque demon, with a wide back, skin taught over his bony muscles and outstretched arms over a strong solid head, flew out, through my body, rushing toward the sea.  i felt him stream out of me in a cold rush and i opened my eyes just in time to see that the tide had grabbed one of the sneakers i had freed from my feet, that rascally demon tried to trick me even as he went.  i grabbed the sneaker.

the real demons are the fleeting, phantasmic thoughts that rush in and wreak havoc in your mind, piss all over your soul, grab their fiery little crotches and curse and mock you, their pointy red ears flaring, lips pulled back taught over a perpetual rotten-toothed smile.  they point and laugh and howl and double over in laughter as you pull the metaphorical covers up over your head, shaking and quivering and even pissing your pants if you could.  i don't know all of their wretched little names exactly, but they're all fast buddies with Fear.

i keep seeing this worthless ad for yet another worthless movie, all over town: it reads "danger is real, fear is a choice."  i keep seeing it, and it's right.  i would say, board your heart up against Fear, but then Fear would win, standing outside, just waiting for you to steal a peek, so I say, why not invite it in.  love that fucker, pour him some tea, watch what happens to him.  you'll have a kitten previously known as F--r now named Pooky purring in your lap, in no time.  or in some time, being that you start now.

tonight, in yoga, i realized suddenly how very unattended it is to be human.  we're all scurrying around on this planet...in my mind's eye, i panned out to the universe....where even the wide blue prayer of ocean is completely silent, and as i floated away, in to the utter stillness of the planets, the streams of stars that say everything and make so sounds, i felt very very very very very small and alone on that little blue yoga mat, and i felt.  Everything.  

a thousand pardons

the happiest people i know, no doubt, live with a strong will in their heart.  they wake in the morning and BELIEVE, unequivocally that whatever they'll do today comes from a deep and endless pool in their heart, that it would do the world a grave and honest disservice not to soar forth with the thoughts words and actions that come from the silver spring inside that is probably God.

at the same time, the happiest people i know are also incredibly stupid.  what a horrible choice, God or the devil, when the devil seems so easy.

Get behind me, Satan

  

hoarder of thoughts

eh Friday.  resolved as I was to the Grace of Restraint, i hit a moment of the good grass and headed towards the river to bathe in my own thoughts, Solitude came along.  i pattered past a lot - buildings, people, some alone, some together, some with insecurities i could sniff, as thick as their cigarette smoke.  an open garden, made-up faces, shiny heels with red underbellies in line on the sidewalk, soon there'd be places inside for them.  the thought that i needed to get out more smacked me rather solidly in the face, about the same way the sun did as i turned onto Grand St.  i was blinded, i couldn't see, glimmery black shadows, silhouettes of strangers, or maybe myself, came toward me.  the sun had exploded in the sky over Manhattan, a white nuclear blob i couldn't remotely think to think past.

eyes carefully squinted and shielded, i tiptoed to the waters edge and took a seat on a bench under a solid poplar, shedding as it were, dreams, leaves, letters, whispers.  they fell on my chest as i wondered how everyone else was holding up under the weight of this massive blazing sun.  manhattan streamed in front of me, I fell back into the banks of Brooklyn.  

hello, New York, I'm Mel, i live under your skin, and you in me.

traffic crawled in a steady snails march on the williamsburg bridge, the sun screamed in the sky, i sent pictures to people with captions that read, "this sounds weird.....but this is seriously the brightest i've ever seen the sun"

a party barge streamed by, a yacht, the East River ferry, moving so incredibly and startlingly quickly, i could practically hear it panting, i gottttttttta get there, i gotttttaaaa get there, couples came along and took to the rocks.

what is it about a river that magnetizes so?  we can stare at it for hours, listen to it, sit by it like the good friend that we really aren't to others, look over and around it, be still, laugh, love, or honestly weep?    

so many pretty people came along.  lone dog owners patted their pets in habit, stroking their necks like little furry lovers.  i stretched, i curled, my legs up, my head back.  as the sun fell graciously behind Manhattan, a deep rich cold breeze from the ocean alit on my chest, then jumped back to the river again

a man in black joined me on my bench, pointed out Venus directly ahead of us, bright, still.  i wondered how he had chosen the color, just like mine, and thought of how desperately i wanted to shed mine, but how colors are so near scary, that for now i'll stick with tan.  there we sat, me with no makeup, him with bad teeth, Venus on top of everyone, on top of us.

it seems like centuries ago that i couldn't accept that i had spent so much time being so much less happy than i could have been.  i'm sorry to myself for those stolen moments, i say to myself, to the River curling at my feet.

Buddha: a fool in his mischief quickly forgets, and i wonder which happy part of me is foolish now.