...this morning i woke up...

...late. Missed my 11am pilates class. But it's ok...no worries. Lately on the weekends it's rare that I sleep past 8am...call it ADHD, call it too many obligations, or call it an addiction to coffee. But today, I slept in a bit and finally listened to the Patti Smith interview with Terry Gross that my-friend-Rachel recommended to me last week on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Rachel knows a lot about Patti Smith...I know very little. Only that she's a poet and her music was a huge deal during the punk revolution of the 70s and 80s, she was part of that generation of Chelsea-Hotel artists, and that she's got this easy no-makeup just-woke-up androgynous manner about her. I'd love to look like that. Give me Tilda Swinton any day over say, Angelina Jolie (though I do heart Angie).

Anyway, Patti is promoting her new book "Just Kids" dedicated to her friend, onetime lover, and soulmate Robert Mapplethorpe whom you may know for his erotic often sado-masochistic style of photography. If you listen to this interview, you can hear two things in Patti's voice: 1)She's cool-calm. If you're like me you'll want to know how you can figure out how to find her and soak in some of it. 2)She fiercely loved and believed in Robert...they fused their passions and hunger and found a purpose for art and life together. She had this to say about how she found peace after the pain of Robert's death in 1989 of complications from AIDS:

The idea that time heals all wounds is not really true. Our wounds aren't really ever healed. We just learn to walk with them. We learn that some days we're gonna feel intense pain all over again and we just have to say 'Ok, I know you. You can come along with me today.' The same way that sometimes we start laughing out in the middle of nowhere remembering something that happened with someone we've lost. You know, life is the best thing we have....and I think it's very important to not be afraid to experience joy in the middle of sorrow.

If you can carve out 46 minutes and 16 seconds to listen to the interview--do it. It'll make you feel good...and we all could use a couple more things to make us feel good, right? As for me, it's already past noon, so I'm off to hunt down coffee, donuts, lavender soap, and brown eyeliner (so much for the "easy no-makeup just-woke-up androgynous" look, eh?).

Photo taken in 1976 by Robert Mapplethorpe

natasha.

r.i.p.

from Asylum

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.

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).

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?

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.