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.