so, the Chinese super of my apartment building...

...doesn't speak English. And that's totally fine with me since I've hardly really needed him for anything crucial other than the two times I stupidly locked myself out of my apartment. In one case, he called the landlord, who translated, and then allowed me to climb out of his bedroom window, up the fire escape, into my bedroom window. (If anyone is reading this now and thinking it's easy to climb into my bedroom window, be warned--it's now locked.) In the second case, he wasn't home.

I run into him 3 or 4 times a week, and he always greets me with a "hello," and a nod, and I do the same. Then we share 15 to 30 seconds of awkward silence. If not for the language barrier, I'd say things like "So, how's it going?" and "Love the paint job in the hallway. The gray was a lovely choice." Or even, "What's with your love of boiled cabbage? You're a nice single guy--but the smell HAS to be just a little off-putting to the ladies." And I'm sure he'd say things like "Why do you keep locking yourself out of your apartment?" and "Why does your neighbor insist on smoking in the hallway even though there are 'no smoking' signs all over the walls?" Or maybe even, "Look, you seem like a nice, respectful girl. But would you and your lover mind toning it down at 3 in the morning? It sounds like you're gonna fall through my ceiling and I really need to get some rest."

But alas, those conversations will never happen. OR WILL THEY? Well, I have a mustard seed of hope.

On Saturday, I ran into him as I was walking up the stairs to my apartment, and he paused, as if calculating something life-altering in his head. And then, like a child with a slight--almost undetectable--speech impediment, but with remarkable eye contact--he blurts out "Hi. How are you?" I responded in my usual sweet manner, "I'm well, thank you." I didn't realize until I stuck the key in my front door that the super and I had just had a conversation. Yes, "Hi. How are you?" is a casual phrase that people pass around so frivolously that it's rather meaningless in most cases. And he could very well have had the ability to say it all along, and maybe felt that I hadn't yet--until now--earned the right to the "how are you" portion of his day-to-day greeting. I say all this to say, it was more verbal communication than I'd had with him in the whole year and change I've lived there--and a sign of respect, I suppose.

Anyway, it gave me great pleasure, so I figured I'd share. When I see him again, I'm going to stop him and say "lei ho ma?"--the Catonese version, of course. Let's hope he doesn't speak Mandarin...or get offended...or think i'm trying to flirt with him. Uh oh, I think, I mean...I hope, I mean I'm almost certain I locked my bedroom window...

a little reggae music...

makes for a lovely end to a steamy July weekend. this post is meant to honor reggae and dub legend Lee "Scratch" Perry. I prefer to avoid the overused phrase "the one and only" yet in Lee's case, the shoe fits. Anyway, this was my first time seeing him live (what a show!), and likely the only time in either of our lifetimes. He's 73...still horny (he has a song that uses the "P" word about 35 times *blushes*) and shamelessly eccentric--think bedazzled baseball cap, layers and layers of gold chains and rings, and a fuschia beard. Love it.

a lil bit o' good news.

I'm not Irish...but today I'm lucky. My company just voted to NOT do lay-offs. Just as I'd figured out how to make the most of being dirt poor in NYC while struggling to pay rent on an overpriced, tiny (err--cozy) apartment--I can now resolve to continue making the most of living as usual--and perhaps saving for what may come down the road.

In honor of no lay-offs, I'm grabbing a couple of my dearest girlfriends for an all-night dance-(and flirt)-a-thon.

Have a lovely weekend all!

p.s. And Nichole...if you're listening "CONGRATS" to you.

last night i dreamed...

...the wars ended
and strangers danced in the street
waving flags from trees

I made a feast to celebrate
but you never showed.

even in the best of times,
i have learned, though slowly
you are not there
and i do things i typically would not
like make a feast

now i have learned, to not do the things
i typically would not--to begin with

snow in july.

hello, global warming. If this isn't a sure sign that the climate is in distress, I don't know what is. Take a look at pics from my office's parking lot after last night's hail storm. Shocking, right? In case the photos don't give you a clear visual, those hail stones are the size of marbles. ouch! Of course, the whimsy-seeking kid in me thinks it's pretty darn cool to have a little ice on an 80-degree summer day :-)

waiting is hell.

when you're waiting for the lay-off list to land under your office door, you begin to consider how great life would be without the obligation and stress of a nine-to-five, and how dismal life would be without that stuff that makes the world go 'round. and how temporary everything is...jobs, income, layoffs, office doors, stuff (maybe even stress--if i so choose).

p.s. i whole has passed. yes, i'm a bad blogger. i know. i don't deserve the title "blogger." don't hate me (if you're at all even reading this).

at first glance, one might think...

...this hardly qualifies as art. but, everything on this earth deserves a second look--except for the toothy little man that yelled "hey sweetie" at me repeatedly from his truck as I was leaving my apartment this morning (though, at least i got an 8am giggle out of it).

art is "the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance." And might I add, if you can't stop staring at it, it's art. but who cares what I think. I love this piece here by Michael Bilsborough. His first NY solo exhibition opened last month. I'm moved to scribble my own psychosomatic maze.



from The Only Way Out is Through (if I had an exhibition, I think I'd name it this).

i wrote this on march 30.

and i found it in my "drafts" today.

i miss the bf sometimes. everyday. he's completely moved forward and let go, and right there in 2nd place, i've tried to do the same. but i miss the old us. the happy us...and isn't that what they all say...they "miss the good times"? but wouldn't it be a blessing to have someone to get through the bad times with as well?

I've still got his shower scrubby under my sink, and he might have my bath scrubby still in a bag in his hall closet. who knows. when we broke up, he gathered all my stuff, dropped it into a plastic bag, and put it in his closet. It seemed very cold. Though, I thought to myself, "why not just throw it away?" i still have all of his emails...over 200 of them. i don't know whether to delete them or not...seems cruel to keep them, and cruel to delete them. months ago when i asked him if he'd kept the emails, he said "yes"...and that he'd keep them, though he probably would not read them. I wonder...

6 am

dawn's light jumpstarts the day,
kicking the night frost from his branches
"go away darkness. go away cold"

the deafening silence becomes
the song of robins
the stillness--
the dance of winds
the flutter and the tempest

yes, you are ready, my love

as the first elm bloom undresses
the laying grass shakes itself to life
the air has a virgin's odor
new. warm. lucky.

for 100 days ahead
we are Spring.

Image: sudhamshu

calgon, take me away.

that phrase never gets old. There are days I really wish I could say "take this job and shove it," another cliched, but never-gets-old phrase. Today is one of those days. I love my job, and I'm lucky to have a gig that I like, pays me decently, gives me health benefits, and even sometimes fulfills me creatively (I know, I know). But more and more lately, and partly due to the economic crisis, I've considered whether I'm cut out for many more years of nine-to-fiving-it.

Freelancers always seem so relaxed, don't they. And they work from far-off places--like the hammock in their back yard--or some warm, sunny vacation spot. I'm not saying that's the road I'm taking anytime soon--because lord knows the market is too unpredictable right now. I guess, I'm just sayin'. Just venting.

And on top of the stacks of paper on my desk, and the to-do list that covers pages of my notebook and hardly has any cross-outs, there's the looming sadness that my writing is having to take a back seat. And it hurts. a lot. I wrote short prose-y things (I think you call them poems) last weekend. It fulfilled me more than several months of working my ass off and bringing home a decent paycheck. go figure.

this woman's work...

...hangs in one of my most beloved coffee shops in nyc (Hi Wendy!). Her mixed-media paintings have hung on the shop's brick walls for a little over a month (and I pray they stick around). Every morning, when I walk in to grab my coffee, a quiet inner voice says "You need one of her paintings in your apartment." But-I'm-afraid-to-spend-money-because-of-the-looming-possibility-of-layoffs-at-my-company, I say. "Oh fuck it," says the voice, a bit louder now.

I like this one here--the photo doesn't really show you how multi-layered her work is. If you could see this one up close, you'd see thin slices of paper with chinese writing...perhaps from menus, and other scraps of paper fitted neatly into a kaleidoscope of intentional blotches, drips, and lines. And this painting, i'm thinking, is of a man, not a woman. A lovely man raised by two lovely women. Take note, California.

Art by Loren Abbate

a friend told me some depressing news yesterday...

..."When you see the man you're gonna marry, you'll know it immediatlely. It will make you sick. You'll have absolutely no control over it." That made me feel dreadfully awful because:

1) I don't want to be made sick by love.
2) I fear giving up control of anything in my life.
3) It hasn't happened yet: the sickness. So does that mean i have not loved?
4) I truly believe I loved two men in my life, and her statement has me doubting that. I was made sick when we broke up, though not when we met/were together.

When I posed question #3 to her...she said, "That's right. You have not loved." I don't want to believe her theory, but she is amongst the happily married, so what do I know, you know? When I said to her "Well, I get what you're saying, but I'm not so sure I even want to get married," A little light glimmered in her eye (seriously) and she said, "Well, then dating around is what's working for you right now." And then I couldn't tell if she was insulting me or belittling me, or if I was just taking everything a little too personal b/c she's happily married with two beautiful kids and a beautiful husband, and I am not. So I said "OK" (rather pathetically) and walked away, thought about it all, felt crazy, obsessed on it, and decided to commit my obsessing to words here. I'd love to hear your thoughts, if you have any.

it's been a month...

...and I can no longer get by with the "my computer's dead" excuse. I'll just say, "Life has taken over" and there's been a lot of it. So much to say, so little time. Work has taken over as well--and it's kicking my butt.

Okay, enough rambling. This post was just to say "hello" "I've missed you," and I'll be back really soon, and more consistently, with peeps and winks from my life. Ooh, and there's love stuff, too! Hope I still remember how to blog...xo!

okay, baby is dead.

i cannot post enough sad faces here to describe my utter distress over the news that my lovely laptop has a dead hard drive. All the pictures. All the music. All the porn (he hee hee). All my writings and scribblings (thank god I write everything in notebooks). And no, I did not 'back up.' I feel like Carrie in that episode where her computer flashes a sad face and shuts down and everyone keeps asking "did you back your files up?" Except instead of a sad face, I got the Question Mark of Death.

p.s. Enjoy the weekend! Since I won't be trapped inside typing away on my laptop, I think I'll spend the weekend outdoors. Allegra--check! Patenol--check! Neti Pot--check!

baby's sick. again.

my lovely beautiful laptop is experiencing technical (or perhaps emotional) difficulties at the moment. no, that's not the main reason i haven't been blogging, but it's my story for now, and i'm sticking to it.

back soon. xo!
Chubbs

"40 plus and single?"

this was the subject line of an email that sneakily squirmed it's way past my spam filter today (gotta get that thing fixed). c'mon! times are not that hard that i have to be tagged "single" and 9 years older, are they? wait--i'll answer that. NO, THEY ARE NOT.

or perhaps the gods of dating are suggesting that i'm meant to take a lover in his or her 40s. how clairvoyant of them! but wait, i guess if they're gods--they'd have no use for psychic powers. anyway, don't know where i'm going with this, so I'll end here by saying, i have neither the need or want for the matchmaker emails. In fact, I made a match all by myself just half an hour ago with a chubby little black pug, with one good eye and a hankering for my ham sammich in a charming little hair salon on Broome--where jacqueline gave me a lover-ly bang trim (see below). He crawled onto my lap, enduringly planted himself there--and I fell madly in love with him. Oh, and then he fell asleep.

last night...

...i dreamed of writing a book of short stories.

don't move.

*sigh*
what?
it's just a lot.
what?
i dunno.
there's a lot you don't know.
i don't want to know yet.
do you want to tell me?
no, not yet.

you're smarter than i am.
am not.
but you know what i'm thinking
i don't.
but you read my mind.
no. okay--yes i do.
i'll stop.
i'll stop thinking now. i will
okay?
okay.

let's not think today.
today we will not think.
let's just lie here.
look at me. and lie here.
and be simple.
we are simple.
yes, we are.
simple is nice.
yes. it is.

this will not be cool to you.

but come with me anyway.

at the bookstore on bedford, the one with about a dozen shelves of the best books by the best authors--Wilde, Butler, Atwood, Boyle. You name it, it's there, or they can order it for you. "One week. That's all." So, I'm eyeing the social activism section, without knowing i'm eyeing the social activism section. Pick up the Eldridge Cleaver biography, and it hits me "Is this the social activism section?!" Wasn't he a traitor? I recall someone telling me that. But what do I know about social activism and being a traitor? "I should read this book." I could learn something about being a black radical in the 60s.

Anyway, I slide the book back into its slot, trading it for the last literary masterpiece by some French guy. Not Voltaire--i think Descartes. I skim the back copy--it says something about him being the "world's greatest philosopher." I dunno, this wall is a bit too heavy for a Monday evening. Where's fiction? Didn't I come here to look for a cheap copy of "The Road"? I pivot--a little too fast--bolting away from the social activists, and at my 180 is this guy. We lock eyes (really, we do) long enough for me to deduce that he is not in fact someone I "know from somewhere" like college, or my commute to work, or my neighborhood coffee shop or bar. but I do kinda know him from somewhere--like somewhere on a stage performing in front of thousands, and not standing less than a foot away from me in a Williamsburg bookstore waiting for me to scoot out of his way so that he can eye the social activism section!


He's my height. Lovely eyes beyond round specs. Cool afro and beard--perfectly messed up. He reminds me of a little brown bear--the friendly kind that share honey with you instead of biting off your arms and legs. I don't do anything brave like ask for concert tickets or say "hi-omigosh-it's-you." But before leaving empty-handed, I take an extra long time perusing the shelves, pausing to sneak peaks at him (hoping he hasn't noticed), and speculating on what book he ended up with. Soul on Ice?

photo: stereogum

natasha.

r.i.p.

from Asylum

i promise to be more pleasant.

i do, and i really have sweet, sappy things to say (though, i've just been busy busy). But I haven't been able to wipe this news from my brain...and how awfully grim it is. You hear the stories, you read the news headlines about the "epidemic" in DC, but seeing it here in this shocking visual gives it a entirely different, dare i say--horrifying--dimension. My jaw dropped when I saw this. My city *sigh*

p.s. and let's add another layer, shall we? DC is not a state :-(

soft spaces.

Our gray house has thin walls.
It smells old.
Firewood and ash.

He smells of firewood and ash.
Long black hair hides his eyes.
He is a nose and a beard.

You take him into your bedroom.
Our bedroom.
Mumbles. Squeaks. Cries. Sighs.
Your bed.
Our bed.

You scream
Are you crying now?
Are you sad now?
I hear you call him 'vile.'
What does 'vile' mean?
A liar!
I know what a liar is.

He stumbles out. Buckles his belt.
Nods at me. Wipes his brow.
No eyes.

He shuffles down our staircase.
Feet heavy.
Out of our house.
"Get out of our house!"
The screen door slams.

"Can I sleep with you now?"
You nod at me. Wipe your brow.
Brown eyes.

I squeeze my face into the soft spaces on you.
My nose into the place where your heart thumps.
Breathing in and out.
Taking in the fragrance of
sweat, him, and drugstore perfume.

i know that i complain often...

...about having to trek all the way out to the sticks to get to my job. Most days i waver between reminiscing on the easy non-commute of my old job in Midtown, and just plain ol' fantasizing about not having a job at all...though I've never had the luxury of the latter (and if I did, I'd likely not think it as grand as it seems). Yet, when it snows, what does one who trekketh out to the sticks to get to work get? A SNOW DAY!

Last night i said to my friend Harry, "I reaaaally hope it snows all night so i can have a snow day."
Says Harry: "Snow day? You don't get snow days. It's New York!!"
Says me: "Yes you do, if you work in [the sticks]."
And sure enough, I woke up to several inches of pillowy white goodness and a message on the company voice mail saying "Due to inclement weather, the office will be closed today." Oh, the utter joy of a Monday off...

To properly celebrate, Hannah and i packed up some grilled cheese sandwiches and strawberries, and took a stroll through Central Park. It amazes me how the snow muffles sound and makes the city feel slower and less frenzied. Two friends sat on a swing in Central Park, gliding and giggling like children, and watched the real children sled and giggle down a hill. Who says there's no such thing as perfect? Well, it was at least until my fingers and toes began to freeze b/c of the 20-degree temps...ouch...oh well...sledding...snow pose...swinging...i didn't see the set of steps on the side of this hill, until after i'd climbed up (and fallen down...TWICE)oh, and then i met a boy...

faithful.

painting by Chris McGraw

this makes me feel warm and fuzzy.

not that i need help in that department :-) but, no, seriously, this is my most favorite commercial. watch it. i promise you'll feel warm and fuzzy afterward. unless you don't want to. but that would be a shame, so just watch it anyway.

tell me how...

...to feel nothing.

There is a song I love this week.
You would love it too.
But you won't.

There is a store on Orchard.
You bought something there once.
It's closing.

There is my wooden chest.
I want it back.
I want to reupholster it.
I don't know how.

There is this ache in my stomach.
remember? what do you remember?
tell me how much.

are you laboring to forget,
the way that I am?
is it working?
tell me how.

do you cry silently in the blue night,
like i do?
do you hide your eyes, like me?
or are you fine?
tell me how.

p.s. she's a ghost

where is my automobile?

happy birthday john hughes. and thank you. the world would be a much sadder place for unpopular, acned, rejected, sweaty-palmed, geeky, fat, skinny, big-haired, flat-chested, gangly, acid-washed, metal-mouthed teenage boys and girls without you. (and thank you most of all for jake ryan.) xo.

thirty-one.

i had no real plans to celebrate..."I just wanna do something low key." well, it was anything but...*smiles* (thanks hans)

♥ din-din at Sticky Rice (I must have that giant blue chandelier!!)

♥ beers under the red lights of motor city (no, no doorguy yet. my long-lost brother, apparently, was there)

♥ delicious orange-flavored shots and Jimmy James at the magician (tom, what did u put in those shots???),

♥ impromptu lychee martinis, bourbon & ginger ales, and chit-chat at verlaine (stan, thanks for fixing my rosary)

♥ more beers at motor city. (uh oh)

♥ braided the doorguy's beard TWICE--added a little lip gloss and spit to help the braids stay put

♥ chatted with iraqi heavy metal band. told one I was a man. he believed me. asshole.

♥ chatted with New School students. lied about their ages (they're sooo much younger than we are). one is the spitting image of Carey Elwes.

♥ doorman wrestled a douchebag to the floor, and said douchebag was thrown out. trash talking ensued.

♥ tried to get a 20-year-old girl into bars, in vain. ahh youth.

♥ went to Iggys with New Schoolers. (i really want to break their camera)

♥ "[doorman], are you okay?"

♥ hannah won the scavenger hunt (damn you): a cigarette, a cough drop, change for a dollar. but i got the piece of gum.

♥ we didn't see a bulldog we could obnoxiously mistake for a collie nor a guy with a sports cap we could yell "go team" to...but we had a wonderful night!! (let's not even ruin it with talk of the hangover)

here are some silly pre- and post-birthday mac-pics.

it's been ages since...

...I've had a Gawker-worthy celeb siting. Last night, it was Mischa Barton, low and behold, at one of my LES brunch haunts. I noticed her because my date Liz kept ogling her feather skirt. Liz gave it the thumbs down--I gave it a thumbs-up, but did little birdies have to die to make it? :-( Liz and I had a loverly date, munching on beet and chicken salads, swooning over our hotter-than-Jude-Law waiter, swaying in the warm tawny light to what had to be a handpicked-by-me 80s mix. Liz giggled and said, "They've got your number." When "Africa" started playing, our jaws dropped and we sang along--not knowing or understanding the words. Here's the video--my first time seeing it, and not what I expected, though, in that predictable-8-member-80s-band-with-big-hair sort of way, maybe it is. There--I just referenced Mischa Barton, feather skirts, and the band Toto in one blog post. I just made your day, didn't I?

i never celebrate valentine's day...

...but i am an avid of love. Does that count?

In high school, it seemed every girl got roses and candy and bears (oh my) for Valentine's Day--and I got squat. So, I figured if I denounced Valentine's day, I'd be much less hurt about being slighted every year. That didn't work out as I'd planned. In college, I still felt the sting of rejection when I spied a girl dashing up to her bedroom with a batch of balloons, and a grin dripping with self-satisfaction that said "He loves me THIS much." And oh, let's not talk about the date stories, "He took you where?" "No way!" "Girrrrl, you're so lucky. He must really love you!"

Several years later, a sweetheart of a boyfriend gave me 9 dozen roses...yes, that's 9 multiplied by 12 equals 108 roses! holy moly! So, in his own way, he'd made up for all those high-school and college years of me getting nothing but tears and self-pity for Valentine's Day. But I wasn't as thrilled as I thought I'd be. I wasn't filled up with that "He must really love me" feeling. In fact, it didn't feel like love at all. It felt contrived, showy, boastful even--and much too easy. I pompously thought "now we're just like all the other couples who garishly feign their endless love for one day a year." I never told him that. It would have hurt him. Besides, his heart was in the right place, and it wasn't his fault he'd chosen to give roses to a complicated, over-thinking, wishy-washy woman. Instead I hugged him ever so tightly, and said "This is enough roses for a lifetime! *smile*"--and I meant it. After that day, I asked him to never buy me roses again--because I didn't need 108 roses to know he loved me. And besides, we didn't have 9 vases in our miniature basement apartment.

I asked a friend yesterday what she and her husband were doing for V-day. She said, "Well, nothing really...Feb. 13th is the day he proposed, so we don't really do anything for the 14th. Besides, if he'd proposed to me on the 14th...ugh...I doubt I'd have married him." There you have it, from one complicated woman to another.

And so it goes, I don't need one day of the year to know I am loved...tell me everyday, or tell me once every month or even once every six months...or really--just tell me when you feel it...don't squeeze it into February 14th. But, heck--bring on the dark chocolate!! These are my favorites :-) I'm in lurrve with the orange peel.

up close.

"Things that upon first, up close viewing seem completely abstract, full of seemingly random designs, but after stepping back from come into focus and make sense as one cohesive picture." --Alex Brown Near North Side, 2008, from Alex Brown's "Fodderland".

p.s. if you're in NY, or if Alex's exhibit comes to your city, i highly suggest seeing it. very alluring, cool stuff. sometimes i walk out of a gallery, and think, "I could have done that!" Well, most times I think that. But not this guy's work...I could never in a million years create anything like what he's done. And that's what you want to feel after you take time out of your Sunday to look at a bunch of paintings, isn't it?

happy birthday bob.

you would have been 64 today. i wonder if you know how much your music is revered, covered badly, and exhausted by an anxious college boy to woe a softhearted college girl--who grew up listening to bob songs on her sony cassette player.

the blackest eye.

Black eyeliner is the one (make-up) item i'd want to have with me, say, on a deserted island. "But why would you need eyeliner on a deserted island?" you ask. Well, my dear, it's not about need, now is it? That black eyeliner can double as a make-shift inkpen, for which to write on a makeshift sign made of tree bark--HELP. SOS. SAVE ME...and wave in the air when a plane or ship glides by, thus, saving your life. So, the thing you wanted, became the thing you needed. Stop me now...lol.This is perhaps the blackest eye liner...and it doesn't smear. go out and get it. Urban Decay 24/7 (shade: Zero).

to you.

today is my ex-boyfriend's birthday. (and i love him still.) he's a jolly good fellow...no matter how much he denies it. so happy birthday to him. photo by Henry Diltz, possibly taken in 1968--pre-fame Pryor

you're a dick.

what i should have said to an ex lover i nearly walked into on houston this weekend. so odd. but instead, i said "heyyyyy." awkward, isn't it? running into someone you once slept with? his eyes said i was the last person he expected or wanted to see. lucky for him, i wasn't his girlfriend catching him in the act of messing around on her. and that he was. i can hear the story he must've told her. "I'm going to new york this weekend to watch the superbowl with my boys." it's not right.

and something else...likely the most important piece of this: a sigh of relief. i am relieved. relieved to have him fully, absolutely out of my life. a tinge of guilt. "i'll text him and say 'it was good running into you'." but it wasn't good. and what's the point? i didn't text, nor did he. so...nothing. nothing but perhaps a reminder that the heart heals when it's ready to. what was once so much--a reason to come back. a reason to try again. a reason to reconsider. a reason to cut him a break. a reason to forgive the other women. a reason to give him space. a reason to let go. a reason to get on with life--is now nothing. but just maybe that IS something.Balloon Girl, Banksy

p.s. happy chinese new year! though today's parade prevented me from crossing the street to get to my apartment, all is forgiven. the dragons were lovely. and the baby with the ox-horn headband...you know who you are--simple adorable.

hurt. heal.

i'm supposed to write a letter to you. you will not read it. it would hurt you. or not.

you will never know the sweetness, nor the misery, and that i missed you for so long, and how, one day, i stopped.

you will never ever find out what happened when i was 6. and you will never know how I blame you for every. single. bad. thing that happened thereafter.

and how i have hated you and hated loving you.

you will never know how many times i have lied...over and over and over and over and over...about you. i kept your secret.

you will never know how i labor with the words...you will never read.photo from A Relationship Left for Dead on the Lower East Side--on view through Feb. 21. This and other works chronicle a gay couple's relationship over a number of years through photos from their picture album--the album was found, abandoned on a street in the LES.

recession-proof me.

many of us are feeling the bite of the recession in one way or another. for a girl who likes to indulge in the somewhat-finer things, it's been super tough to cut back on my weekend shopping sprees. but all is not lost. for one, i love vintage and re-sale shopping--and a great deal of my wardrobe, and all of my boots are either thrift or ebay purchases. it feels less like shopping, and more like recycling--thus, lessening the guilt factor, boosting the green factor, and, keeping more of the other kinda green in my wallet.

it's said that during these tough times, buying yourself something small, like new makeup, keeps a lady happy. it's called the 'lipstick effect.'

so, today when alesia and I bounced over to soho, I had to put on my horse-sized blinders--in sephora, where all the magically delicious face and body-care products call to me, that's a colossal effort. i'm a moisturizing ADDICT! i want this and i want that...and by this i mean the urban decay concealor, and that: the korres fig shower gel and body butter. but i stopped myself from splurging--I know, no fun. instead, i bought something i needed. a new hat...a true necessity in this cold-wave we're experiencing in the north east. I convinced a hat man on orchard to sell me this 25-dollar, hand-knitted beauty for 15 bucks. Baby soft and warm--this little hat feels like something my grandma might've knitted, had she been a knitter.

We ended a day of mostly browsing and gawking with 6-dollar cuban ham-n-cheese sandwiches, and 2-dollar yeast donuts from Donut Plant. yum! Indeed, an ab-fab, recession-proof way to spend a Sunday afternoon! p.s. I Googled "how to knit" and apparently it's self-teachable. hmmm, a new recession-proof hobby?

finished. done.

i finished my steve martin book on the subway today. I didn't want to finish. When I reached the last 10 pages, I slowed down, put the book away for 3 days--I wanted to hold on. The last word meant the end, and I wasn't ready. But today, I did it. I ended it. I let something sublime out of my life. I have the memories though, and I'll tell stories about it--but it's done. Perhaps I'll re-read it. Not many people immediately re-read a book they've just finished, do they? They return it to the shelf...read another book...forget about it...miss it...and one day it calls out to them and they pick it up again. but that could take years, if at all.

I'm rambling and leading you into some other piece of my life...and I'd rather not. Instead, I'll share with you one of my favorite bits from Steve's book, The Pleasure of My Company (thanks again, angda.)

The day after the letter was Easter Sunday. It reminded
me that as an adolescent I was primped and combed and
then incarcerated in a wool suit that had the texture of
burrs. I was then dragged to church, where I had to sit
for several hours on a cushionless maple pew in the
suffocating Texas heat. These experiences drained me
of the concept of Jesus as benevolent.

p.s. jay leno just said the funniest thing. "Barack Obama's first order of business will be to pardon Aretha Franklin's hat." ha.

feeling good.

i think i'm more of an exhibitionist than a narcissist. i'm not self-obsessed, but i do enjoy attention. so i'm embracing it. i felt kinda lovely this weekend. not sure why...call it mojo, or a new president, or call it finishing a 20-page essay, though it's much too long, so now i'm in the editing phase. And i started a new essay. yes, if you could see me you'd see a woman patting herself on the back.

my hair is getting long and unruly, and i need to figure out if i'm gonna get a trim or go long and scraggly. kind likin' scraggly, though several times this weekend, while eating, i got a mouthful of my hair. and during a few cigarette breaks, almost lit my hair on fire. seeee...cigarettes are dangerous kids. today i celebrated the holiday the way MLK intended, spreading peace, loving my fellow man (and woman), and letting freedom ring. And I did something I rarely take the time to do--I took a quiet walk in Riverside Park--and showed a little appreciation for the beautiful snow-capped trees.

p.s. i've only recently "discovered" alice smith. i'm late i'm sure, i tend to "discover" most musicians late. anyway, i love her a lot right now. what a voice. and she's sorta beautiful, isn't she?

so this is for my lovely.

hannah posted this in my comments section, and I thought it deserved to be front-and-center. it's beautiful and sad, and written by Frank O'Hara.

I've only recently (like a month ago) started to gradually warm up a bit to poetry--thanks to another talented friend who's shown me that poetry isn't all lofty rhyme, finger-snapping, and exaggerated (bordering on pompous) voice inflections. Poetry can be simple--just letters that impart feelings and other things with or without an orator, in other words, a story. Like, I could write a dedication to this most-perfect tea I'm drinking right now (but I won't), and if it were a good enough poem, you'd be able to taste it just from the words on the screen. I'm rambling...anyway, here's the poem by Mr. O'Hara...titled "Poem (To Franz Kline)".

I will always love you
though I have never loved you

a boy smelling faintly of leather
looking up at your window

the passion that enlightens
and stills and cultivates, gone

while I sought your face
to be familiar in the blueness

or to follow your sharp whistle
around a corner into my light

That was love growing fainter
each time you failed to appear

I spent my whole life searching
love, which I thought was you

it was mine so very briefly
and I never knew it, or you went

I thought it was outside disappearing
but it is disappearing in my heart

like snow blown in a window
to be gone from the world

I will always love you.

p.s. it makes me sad that Mr. O'hara died in car crash on fire island--such a beautiful place. i didn't know you could drive cars on fire island.

p.p.s. this photo is incredible...(close-up of yesterday's crash-landing).

i'm going to bore you now.

I finished my two intro writing classes tonight--and I've come away with several insights:

1) I'm a better writer than I thought. yay. And being surrounded by other good writers only heightens my lust for authoring something great and lovable.

2) I'm a slow writer. I'm okay with that. Slowness can be a strength, said the tortoise.

3) I need to be more aggressive and really PUSH myself. The vision is there--but I hold back. Must be less lazy and more confident!

4) Knowing the plot is the easy part--character development is where it gets complicated. Making readers like your protagonist--and pull for him/her is a toughie.

5) NYC is full of lonely, batty people--and some of them take writing classes solely for human contact. On the elevator ride up to Creative Writing, some guy spilled his purpose for taking a Non-Fiction class all over me. He's writing a self-help book, and this was his 2nd non-fiction writing class b/c he was trying to decide which instructor he prefered, blah blah blah, and he's taking Non-fiction because it's hard to fit self-help into one particular writing genre. hmmm. All that from floors 1 to 4, and I can't say I really cared to know any of it. But, I'm polite (or naive, as my friend Peter would say), so I said "Oh. Ahh ha. Well, good luck." And I meant it.

6) If you can help it, do not sign up for a writing class where the instructor talks more about herself and her "commitment-phobic boyfriend" than the actual writing process. While her life might be an interesting one--I don't want to pay $425 to hear about it--I could pay $13.95 and just read her memoir.

p.s. Noooooooooooooooooo!

p.p.s. i just re-read this post, and it's really self-centered. forgive me...

r.i.p. mr. roarke.

And may your legacy live on through netflix. At age 5, I was hooked on Fantasy Island—it terrified me and gave me nightmares--I blame Hervé Villechaize--yet, you couldn't pry me away from the television. The show was right up there with the The Love Boat and Romper Room. wow. he was a dreamboat...look at those eyes **swoon**
I haven't seen this movie (yet), but don't you just love the getthefuckouttahere side-eye he's giving this damsel?

vanity is good for your health.

The only reason I haven't smoked a cigarette in two days is b/c I don't want my hair to smell like an ashtray. It took 2 hours to flat iron, and I'm not throwing that away for 4 minutes of nicotine-laced joy.

And then, there's this buzz about third-hand smoke. The message here: Don't smoke when your kids are around you...duh. Oh, and don't smoke in your house or car if you have kids, and don't let your kids sniff your hair after you've finished smoking.

the world is afraid of eccentrics.

or at least, Hollywood is. What's wrong with having fun, and being a bit OFF, or wearing a tacky, over-the-top shiny suit--even if it means landing on the worst-dressed list, in the case of Mickey here?!

I really appreciate Mickey--he was my favorite celeb of the night--funky suit, sequins, blonde highlights, (botox), wallet chain and all. He'd be my pick to hang out with at the after-party. Can you imagine the stories (and the drugs--but oh, lets not go there)? Perfect bores the hell out of me.

p.s. The Wrestler is on this week's must-do list.

Photo: Yahoo.com.

a dozen or so things...

...that make for a perfect saturday night.

1) A lovely, crazy girl named "granpa."
2) sephora.
3) blackest eye liner.
4) American Apparel.
5) figure skater dress (oh no!)
6) You've got a bruise on your back. No, it's cupping. Oh.
7) vintage boots.
8) joie de vivre. joie de vivre.
9) snow. snow. snow.
10) quesadillas and caesar salad. water with lemon please.
11) a dog in shoes. poor thing!
12) herbal medicine...................American Dad reruns. 12oz bag of popcorn. LOL. California Dreaming. Tiny Dancer. Last Christmas. Caribbean Queen. Smooze. Love Will Never Do Without You. LMAO. Susan Miller. Ben & Jerry's. Who draws the ice-cream art for Ben & Jerry's? A ride on the 1-train. Making faces at dogs. Now the D-train. Making faces at beautiful guy (his bike was in my way. what?! it was! *giggle*). Home. I Be Troubled. Baby Please Don't Go. Mannish Boy. Going Down Slow. Zzzzzzz.

night and day.

last night, i went out with meredith to do some post-work, pre-dinner consignment shopping. As we were digging through the racks of the very tiny, but surprisingly great Tokyo Joe, trying on pre-loved dresses and sweaters, this song came on and i froze in my tracks, my hands gripping a near-perfect Rhuel wrap sweater. Meredith tilts her pretty head and looks at me with "mom" concern-- "What?" And now i've lost all control.

I have this little arrangement with myself when it comes to PDA (public displays of angst): If I feel I'm going to cry, but no one notices, I can slurp back my tears so that my eyes are just glassy for a sec, but no roll-down-my-face tears actually materialize. Yet once someone's notices the tearlings, and questions them...that's it--waterworks! So, when Meredith asks "What?", I do the face-fanning motion, but the tears well up and I tell her, "It's this song! Man...this song reminds me of [a boy I love]." More tears. Bigger tears. "And I've never heard it played by anyone else." Until now.

I suppose we all have one of these songs--or 2 or 3--that reminds us of a certain someone, don't we? And you either laugh or cry--or if you're like me, you do one right after the other.

If you have a moment (really only 3 minutes and 3 seconds), and you'd like to hear something deeply pleasant and near-and-dear to the girl who writes this blog, this is Billie's version of "Night and Day." Written by genius Cole Porter in 1932, it's been recorded many times by many folks (Ella, Sammy, Frank), and it goes like this:

Night and daaaay
You arrrre the one
Only you beneath the moonnn
or unnnder the sun

Ohhh, here come the tears again...

i gather...

...wee, fiery bursts of bliss from other bloggers. Today, this lovely-shoed lady's entry was said-burst. Her mention of Paris makes me feel both amorous and more-than-a-little regretful that I didn't do study abroad in undergrad. I couldn't afford to travel across the mason-dixon back then, much less the atlantic. but now...

The sculptures by Petah Coyne of which she speaks (hope she doesn't mind that I stole one of the pics...I needed to give you a visual) are freakishly alluring taxidermal bouquets of living and lifeless. When i die, I want to be buried within a sculpture like this one (sans the feathered, Hitchcockian effects), topped with red roses, bits of black and cream lace, old Chapstick caps, merino wool yarn in all shades of light blue, dozens of dried Fall leaves, six locks of my own hair (clipped close to the root), and a pack of Capri Ultra Lights sprinkled throughout (for de-stressing in the afterlife).

p.s. it feels good to be back.

hi. hello. again.

last night, i panicked. "wait, i thought it was wednesday night!?" my first thought upon reading the reminder email about my "Tuesday night" volunteer project.

When my alarm clock sounded today, i knew--even before i shook my lazy bones out of bed, that i wasn't ready. 6:30 am and a self-doubt ticker already circling my head. "What do I even wear to mentor kids? And who are these kids? They're not gonna like me. Are they teenagers? Oh no, please please don't let them be teenagers." I'm terrified of teenagers.

I'll wear all black. At least, that way, if they are teenagers, they won't tease me for being too eccentric or too plain, or for trying too hard or not trying hard enough. And perhaps I'll just blend in and become invisible and not be reduced to the wretchedness of my own teenage years all over again. And I'll wear the earrings that Maria bought me from Brazil, because I feel like less of a kid myself when I wear large earrings. *catholic-school-girl brainwashing*

So, I got dressed in my all black, pinned up my hair in slightly-messy bun à la easy-breezy authority figure, grabbed my pack of Capris, just in case I need one after the self-esteem pummeling--I mean mentoring (damnit! only ONE cig left in the pack), and onward.

Nine hours later, after my day-job, I'm walking east on 125th toward the Harlem rec center. I don't miss Harlem, and the 2 bulky, hooded guys ogling me on Lenox and 123rd reminded me why I don't miss Harlem. But, I DID pick up two bars of honey-and-apricot shea butter soap from the african vendor--so maybe I miss Harlem a tiny bit.

I'm on 122nd now and walking toward the rec center. It's a quiet, unlit street and I'm already not liking the secluded-feeling of the street I have to walk down to get to it, asking myself if I can commit to this dark, seedy walk for the next 6 months. No one would mug me just one block from a children's rec center, would they? Maybe I can find a better-lit, less seedy alternate route. I used to live here...what's happened to my fearlessness? Wait--I was never really fearless.

When I get to the center, two lady security guards have me sign in, tell me I look like one of the parents--"the chinky-eyed one," and point me through the royal blue double doors. When I get through the doors, I keep walking, slowly--not sure if I'm in the right place. I'm waiting for someone to point me further in the right direction or a big sign with an arrow that says "This Way," when Claire, our fresh-out-of-undergrad team leader cheerfully waves me into the classroom. I'm thinking "Good, she's friendly." So far, so good. An i-don't-wanna-be-here-and-i'm-not-hiding-it team leader would have prematurely ended it for me.

When the students arrive, they're high energy, expressive THIRD GRADERS. YES! No teenagers! We all sit and give introductions, and when we're asked to break into our teams, a lovely, giggly little girl named Heaven, points to me and says "I want her!" She wants me *smile*

I won't tell you about the two short stories Heaven and I wrote today (though one was about her and I becoming "best best best friends")--I want to protect the confidentiality of this young author. But I will say that we're off to a great beginning, and I will be making the walk down the dark, seedy street (or an alternate route...lol) to the rec center, with the two lady security guards, the blue doors, and Claire--2x a month--to help Heaven spill her big, beautiful imagination onto notebook paper.

Oh, and she didn't care what I was wearing and didn't notice my earrings or that I wasn't quite as ready as I thought I should be. And I didn't smoke that cigarette.