QUITE WARM, FATHER

this "winter" sucks and i hate how people are walking around all effusive in their love for this wimpy weather - hello???  it's almost January, it's NOT supposed to be nearly 60' out!!

when i was little, i used to play outside in the snow all the time.  since there was literally nothing else to do in the hills, i spent a lot of time alone in the woods trudging through snow up to my knees, making snow forts, snowmen, snow angels, sledding, slip-sliding across frozen waters and just generally freezing my ass off.  not only did our perpetual poverty at that time make ice-skates or really good slippery sleighs completely out of the question, it evidently also put the kabosh on real snow-wear: i remember just layering up pants and pants and pants over socks and socks and socks, which the snow and ice would inevitably make its way through, quite confidently at that.

regardless, i loved the snow.  at night, it would sparkle like nothing less than magic under the moon and stars, and every snowfall had a special signature of its own.  sometimes it would leave thick white fluffy flakes that screamed "every day is Christmas!!!!!" or sometimes it would leave fine, gritty, nasty snow that would pelt you mercilessly in the face like a million tiny knives, but no matter which, they both sparkled like straight up fairy dust under any kind of light.  and it was cold, but being that everything was enveloped in this cozy white, it was somehow warm too, the odd way that only winter can make it.  

one of my favorite tales growing up was a Russian one about an evil stepmother (naturally), a spoiled stepsister, a meek father, and a perfect daughter who suffered tremendous grief at the hands of the first two.  to make a really great longer story short, the stepmother sends the good daughter out in the freezing Russian cold assuming that she'll quickly keel over and make life a lot easier for the rest of them, but when Father Frost comes along to the poor thing - i imagine he swooped and swirled down around her with his white, sparkling, shimmery robes - snapping and crackling his fingers to make it even colder out and asks, "Are you cold, my dear?", she responds, "QUITE WARM, Father."

Frost keeps it up, snapping his fingers all mad crazy making it colder and colder, yet each time she lets him know that she's just snug as a bug, even though her teeth are practically chattering right out of her head.  finally, he gives in, and, evidently impressed with the strange tenacity of this poor little peasant girl, wraps her kindly in all sorts of fine furs and sends her home atop a chest full of other precious goodies to boot.  of course the nasty stepmother eventually gets her very sad due, and i imagine that the snow maiden went on to lead a very posh and fantastic life afterwards - most likely in the south of France.

  

rêves de lavande

the problem with myself is that i have always been a dreamer.  now, i understand that the first step to accomplishing anything in life is probably to have a dream, but it seems that my own general issues come from actually stepping out of the dream world and making things happen in real life, so if you're looking for me, you'll find me having tea in LaLa Land.

currently, i live in a shared space in Brooklyn.  i do love my cozy little quarters, but it's a FAR cry from the grand, airy, stone villa in the south of France surrounded by fields of waving lavender that i always imagined to be my official place of residence since the time i learned to read and figured out there had to be sexier rural settings than upstate NY.  Paris would be a few hours removed through a pleasant drive in my small Renault or Peugeot, or top-of-the-line, latest BMW hybrid suv, which would be just fine, too.  in this version of my dream, my trunk would be packed with fragrant cheeses, some crusty breads, fresh picked field flowers and a fine Bordeaux to share with my Parisian city-amis, where i would switch up all those fresh trunk goodies for some equally nice city goodies, say shoes and shirts and scarves and dresses and eccentric hand jewelry, from the Marais.  on the way home, i'd call my stable-keep on my cute, non-smartphone Euro-cell to get my finest Arabian mare ready, as we'd be going on a long trail ride when i returned, me with my velvet-lined black riding hat (which i really do already own, in anticipation) topping off the rest of my finely tailored riding threads.  after that ride, i'd take a light meal consisting of cream-and-wineish something on my stone patio overlooking a fine Provencian valley, where i'd sit and wonder, in my now fluent French, how everyone back in the States is doing, being that, why not, i could think about them from time to time.  a perfect breeze would toss my hair lightly about my shoulders a little then as i checked my watch (in Europe, i might wear a watch.  a nice dainty silver one picked up somewhere in the back streets of Paris) and figured that right then would be as good a time as any to take an early evening dip in my perfectly unobtrusive pool before heading out for the night to a small theater production in Aix.     

wow.  coming out of that one back to the reality of Williamsburg sure ain't no Parisian Picnic, but you know what?  I'd like to take a moment to think of and thank Thoreau here, with his seriously-Frenchy sounding last name: "Go," he said, "confidently in the direction of your dreams."  

i'm goin, buddy, i'm going. 

sand

this dumb Christmas season really has me up in arms.  there's a girl i know, sort of a colleague, who i started to mad-respect a while ago, who then became an amazing, first-rate friend.  i love it when that happens, as it really almost sort of never does these days.  anyhow, she was the only one i really wanted to get a gift for this year - other than for my nearest and dearest, of course - so i've had my eye out for a while, but i have to admit, i am just NOT a good gift-giver.  finally, i bought her a little glass perfume bottle like the kind my mom used to fill with rose oil when i was a kid and filled it with a little bit of sand from the Sahara desert that i keep in a glass Coke bottle from the time i was there.

what a time that was.  the Sahara is like practicing tantric yoga by accident, those flowing creamy dunes for as far as the eye can see.  you're in the midst of this grand white silence, gazillions of tiny pieces of rock from time inconceivable blasted into particulars so minute that if you swallowed one you'd probably never ever ever even notice, yet get gazillions of them together and you might be saying good night forever in the face of some of those.

sand is just no joke.

you know what else i like about it?  take one tiny particle of sand at the west end of a beautiful beach somewhere.  now, imagine another, similar-minded, gleaming particle of sand on the east end of aforementioned beautiful beach somewhere.  technically speaking, these two wouldn't have a chance in heaven, or the Universe, or whatever Nirvana it is that particles of sand subscribe to, being, in this instance, significantly separated by both distance and mass [those gazillion of other particles of sand], but look at it like this:

- first of all, they're not really separated.  yes, they might have a gazillion other little particles of sand pressed between them, but being that they're all pressed so tightly together that you might as well not even count that space, does it all even matter then?  it's like they're already pressed up, one against the other.

- secondly, if you don't want to look at it like that, consider those two same particles in the following fashion: let's say they really are separated the west from the east end, with a gazillion other particles of obnoxious sand in betwixt.  well, the beauty of sand is that it's always shifting.  one day, it might be on a dune in the Sahara, and the next it might be making out with the sea.  granted, perhaps i'm taking a bit of time-lapse liberty here, but i'm sure you get the drift (PARDON the pun).  ANYHOW, along those lines, in terms of constantly shifting sand, and time and earth and all of that, who's to say that those two luckless particles of such-separated sand might not just end up running into each other like it's all out nobody's biz?  just like that, and then it wouldn't even matter if there had previously been a gazillion other particles of sand in between them or not, if there had been a whole world or an ocean, it just wouldn't matter because right then, there, now, or at least for that moment, they'd be together.

i met someone so very very very dear to me at a place called "Ammos", or "sand", in Greek.  being a person who has to read into the metaphysics and further symbolism of every breath and step i make in life, i've long pondered the meaning of meeting at such a place, and now, some time later, i finally understand.

fuck, i love sand.  it's so tiny, yet so grand, and all of that into one tiny glass perfume bottle.

here is some sand stuck to my toes after i went to the beach right after a pedicure.

merry Christmas, Jess.

Soli Deo Gloria

the other day, i finally accomplished one real biggie off my Bucket List.  i finally took part in the annual Sing-In of Handel's Messiah at Lincoln Center.
MY.  GOD.

that thing is NO joke.  you grow up singing the Halleluia chorus and you think you have it under your belt until someone pulls the whole book [and by "book", i mean a score that is more massive than the King James] on you and you're cowering under your forty-year-old rickety wooden seat out of sight of the stage at Avery Fisher Hall like there's a comet coming at you.  and He shall WHA??  how many 8th note melismas CAN  a person possibly throw into ONE chorus??  how then can one person proceed to sing those melismas sanely, let alone a choir-ful??  I'll tell you, that man had FAITH.

oh God, MUST you continue to mock my mediocrity??

what does it matter, i guess.  does the National Endowment for the Arts even even still exist in America these days?  does anyone know what music is, or is it all Justin Bieber across the FM dial??  did good music really go out the window with Stevie Nicks?  woe is me with the Selena Gomezes of today.

how does God decide as to when someone gets to putz around on the face of this earth, as to who gets to live in intellectually impoverished times like these sad ones, where people don't know the difference between your and you're (or even care), and who got to live during the Renaissance amongst the Italian court, or better yet, who got to live across the way from 25 Brook Street in the great city of London, anywhere between the years of, say...1723 to...1759.  is there a Divine Spreadsheet He uses for that?

anyone know a good harpsichord tuner?

Joyeux Noël

an amazing thing happened this morning.  i put the holiday station on Pandora, figuring if it weren't going to snow and give me some good ol' Christmas time in the city here in New York, i might as well at least let a little cyber cheer into my heart.  lo then, the complete joy and amazement as i stood there shivering in the snowless December morn, when suddenly this wondrous feeling really did creep into my heart, sort of like the Grinch, but backwards.  in the midst of all the consumerism up your ass bullshit that is Christmas today, I realized that way back when, whenever, in the day, Christmas REALLY must have been the most magical time of the year.  standing there listening to Brenda Lee rockin around the Christmas tree, i truly felt the magic in my heart, kind of like Jack Frost, nipping at my nose and oh what a feeling that was

think about it - those were the days before this little nuisance of a thing called global warming. it probably actually snowed back then in December, and not just some wimpy squeaky little streaks that didn't make it past the first cut at snow globe try-outs in Arizona. no thanks!  Christmas lights must have twinkled across the snowy white way from neighbors' porches, which you'd gaze at through frosted windows as your cheeks flushed red from the roaring fire on one side of you, a lush green tree decked out with angels and gold and red balls on the other, as your hands warmed up around a cup of freshly squeezed hot cocoa, straight from Mom's happily glowing kitchen.  in your mind you'd be replaying the happy laughs of you and your buds as you skated across the frozen pond that afternoon, Grandma and Gramps would be arriving shortly with presents that actually meant something, and for once a year, your Pops would be in not just a good but great mood, with plenty of sparkling cheer to go around, as bright and yellow as Aunt Lilly's eggnog that you weren't supposed to sip, but which you and your big brother would amply try from time to time, in the course of one night.

think about that.  those were the days.  these are the days of clawing off someone else's face to get the last 60" plasma at Walmart at 4 AM the day after Thanksgiving.  

i wish this post could play Dean Martin's rudoph the red nose reindeer from Christmas with Dino and have the whole world realize just how fucking great life is.

all i want for Christmas, jingle jingle.  

eerbetoon

when i was little, there was a certain cripple that lived in town.  whenever my mom and i would go for a grocery run, we would inevitably see him somewhere - he was very tall and thin, with sort of a bald dome, and grey hair over his ears.  he wore silver-framed, spectacle type glasses and actually, i think he was rather handsome.

here's the thing.  he had some sort of condition that caused his spine to arch up and back, so literally, as he walked, he faced the sky.  i don't know how he did it - can you imagine?  if you think you can, try it - walk around your living room with your face turned upwards towards the ceiling, and see if you can make it past your couch to get a glass of water from the kitchen.

anyhow, i thought of him yesterday, and i haven't thought of him in some 20+ years.  i wish i could find out who he was, what happened to him, where he was from, how he ended up in our dinky little town walking through a park being ogled by some little twerp out the window of her mom's '84 toyota camry.  i want to know if he's alive so i can go and plant a kiss on his cheek, and if he's dead, where do i have to go to place some daisies and stand at his grave?

i tried to find a picture good enough for this...despair, and this is what i came up with:  sometime last year, the female (Ida) of the polar bear couple at the Central Park Zoo died.  in her absence, after 25 long, presumably happy years together, her mate (Gus) became noticeably dejected and despondent, and then took to swimming endless laps in the pool - back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, ad infinitum!  i didn't know this when i visited, and i wondered then what kind of horrific, dumb life that polar bear led, swimming back and forth in that glass pond all day, people peering in on every single side...i didn't know it until this very day, when it finally hit me - ALL that fucking polar bear wanted was to be left alone, but there was just. nowhere. to go.

i think about how much sky that man saw, the tree tops, the sun..............and then think about HOW MUCH of straight up NOTHING the rest of us see, even when we're just staring.  straight into each others' faces.