Bread

One of Those Surveys

2009-02-01T17:01:00.003-05:00

So, I have had about 10 people pelt me with this survey, in which you're supposed to write 25 random things about yourself. It was harder than I thought...

JULIE, 25 RANDOM FACTS, FEBRUARY 1, 2009

1. I am obsessively private about my life, to point at which I really debated if I could fill out one of these things… to the point at which people sometimes think I am either really snobby or too cool for school. I'm not too cool for school, I hated school and mostly think of myself as a big dork.

2. I have a weird and slightly obsessive fascination with logic puzzles. I work them all the time, they are my fifteen minute time wasting preference. I especially work them at night before I go to bed to wind down - something about determining the breakfast food, last name, job, street name and spouse of six random strangers based on four scant clues is oddly calming.

3. I live in the 70s. I love 70s music, my sense of fashion is sort of 70s casual, politically I identify most strongly with first wave feminists, and I still buy in to late sixties early seventies ideals about peace and universal acceptance/tolerance.

4. I go back and forth between really wanting to start a family and worrying that I am far too nutty about my privacy to deal with kids and their lack of boundaries. I also have no desire to be pregnant, ever.

5. I became a vegetarian when I was 12 years old after watching a video in my health class about how hot dogs were made. The video started with little pigs oinking in a field and tracked them through a slaughterhouse all the way until they were hot dogs in a grocery store shelf. I was particularly traumatized by a picture of a stack of skinned pig snouts. I never ate meat again after that day, and eventually phased out seafood. I could probably be a vegan if it weren't for cheese.

6. I am forever fighting a losing battle against cat hair. I go through periods where I am obsessive, and will stand and pluck every last hair off my clothes in the hallway outside my door before I go out, and then periods when I give up and everything I own is coated in a sheen of cat hair. During those times, I am like Pigpen from the Peanuts, and anyone standing near me is probably also coated in cat hair, too.

7. My favorite song in the universe is “This Will Be Our Year” by the Zombies LISTEN.
My second favorite song is a tie between the album version of “Somebody to Love” by Queen from A Day at the Races LISTEN,
...and “Jesus Was A Crossmaker” by Judee Sill LISTEN

8. I supported Hillary, and voted for Obama grudgingly.

9. I came out when I was 19, but I always knew I was a lesbian. My very first crush I remember having, ever, was on Linda Carter/Wonder Woman. I remember having little fantasies that she was the damsel in distress and I swooped in and rescued her (telling, yes?). Years later, in my twenties, I stood next to her at a pharmacy counter in Cleveland. She smelled HORRIBLE. She was wearing some kind of awful perfume, and my attraction to her was instantly, permanently killed.

10. My first real NYC apartment that was mine was a ramshackle building in a Hasidic neighborhood in Williamsburg. My landlord was a complete slumlord; the building was pretty much made of paper and tar and if you kicked it too hard, it probably would have fallen over. It had an amazing view of the Manhattan skyline, and you could clearly see the Empire State Building out of the kitchen windows - on holidays my friends and I would take to the roof for amazing fireworks over the city. Some of my fondest New York memories are intertwined with that apartment.

11. When I first moved to the city, to pick up extra money I worked as a cat sitter for an upscale pet sitting company on the Upper East Side. I got paid ridiculous money to feed designer cat food and Perrier water to rich people’s cats. Every week my boss would give me a set of keys to let myself into various client’s apartments daily and care for their pets. I got to see firsthand the outrageous displays of wealth the upper 1% enjoy. Among my clients were Justine Bateman, Jennifer Tilly and Munch from Law and Order SVU.

12. I am ridiculously verbose. I can’t start talking or write a sentence without turning it into 10 minutes or 400 words (obviously). This is not because I can’t get enough of my own voice, but because I have an irrational fear of not being understood or making my point plainly enough and feel I have to explain myself six ways to Sunday.

13. The very first place I lived when I moved to NYC was an apartment share in Brooklyn. It was a one bedroom occupied by a Turkish couple in their twenties. I rented the bedroom and they moved into the living room. They rented to me for extra money, and because Serder, the husband, wanted an American in the home to speak English to his wife regularly to help her learn. Serder turned out to be a batterer. Although he never attacked me, he became threatening the second time I called the police as I heard him beating his wife on the other side of my bedroom door. I moved out abruptly after only 6 weeks there. Sadly, I was never able to really talk with his wife about the battery due to the language barrier between us.

14. I have an obsessive personality. Whenever I get a new interest, I go crazy researching and learning and gathering and collecting anything to do with it and then eat, sleep and breathe it for a short time until I burn out in boredom. Fortunately, the things I get interested in are mostly nerdy – board games, television shows, books. Most recent geek-outs include my new Nintendo Wii (Wii Sports and We Ski ROCK) and the Twilight books, because they are Just. So. Ridiculous. I’ve been playing “horrify the Twilight noob” with all my friends for three weeks now.

15. I love food. I love cooking, and eating, and talking about food, and reading food blogs and trading recipes. My favorite recreational thing to do is invite friends over and cook for them.

16. I am nearly deaf in my right ear. There is a 78% hearing loss due to deterioration from a childhood accident involving a pair of scissors during a haircut. I hear mid-range tones, but have a very difficult time hearing low tones like whispering, mumbling or soft volume bass notes.

17. I love interior decorating, but can never seem to keep my apartment from looking like a college dorm room. I can’t afford to buy furniture that matches my taste, so I have picked up things from craigslist here and there over the years creating a hodgepodge of styles that lack cohesion. Decorating magazines of any kind are my apartment porn.

18. I have secret fantasies about becoming a street artist in the vein of Banksy or Keith Haring. Wooster Collective is one of my favorite blogs, and I taught myself wheat-pasting a few months ago. I’m waiting for the nerve to go out on my first mission. I want to spread love with my art.

19. I love being alone; I enjoy my own company and am happiest by myself, geeking out over this or that project and feeding my brain.

20. I lack ambition, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing. In the early stages of my career, I always felt frustrated that I didn’t have more autonomy, that I was smarter and could do a better job than my supervisors, and I felt restless. As I get older, I sometimes feel just fine being a worker bee, doing what I need to do to earn a living and basking in my free time everywhere else. I suppose another way of saying that is I work to live instead of live to work The goals I have now all center around my art and creativity. Over the last year I have made choices that take me closer to those and further from career ambition, and I’ve been happier than ever.

21. I love older women, and I look forward to being in my 40s. Over the years, I have known so many amazing women and mentors in their 40s and 50s; women who create peace and radiate calm and contentment. I think that kind of self assuredness can only come with age. I have taken great strides to achieve this through my 30s, but I think 40 will feel like an old friend when I meet it.

22. I hate drama in my personal life, and pretty much in general. I can often be heard telling people something is “not a big deal.” My mom frequently asks me if ANYTHING is a big deal in my universe. I think not really. It takes a lot to take me out of my comfort zone and generally laid back state. I can’t remember the last time I got really upset about something in my personal life.

23. My favorite tv show of all time is the Mary Tyler Moore Show. I’m heartbroken that Fox discontinued the DVD box sets after season 4.

24. I really, really want to be a homeowner. I go back and forth between wanting to buy and renovate a rambling three family Victorian in Ditmas Park (Brooklyn) or buy and trick out a loft in Williamsburg (also Brooklyn).

25. My favorite qualities in people are kindness, directness and intellect.

Over and Over

2008-09-09T22:25:00.004-04:00

Oh, friends, it's been awhile.

I've been here the whole time, laughing, scrapping, working, thinking, yearning, puzzling, knowing and finally deciding.

I sat down three and half weeks ago to write this.

I was going to tell you how I'm in the middle of a long exhale. Life has been full of changes, the biggest of which is my recent decision to quit my day job and wade back into the uncharted waters of freelance work and my love of the arts. I have struggled, these last months, with the familiar stagnancy of doing the same thing every day, of feeling like a wage slave as I spend 8, 10, 12, 14 hours per day throwing my love and my energy at someone else's vision for too little money and even less of my own time. I have worked for an amazing company these last two years, a company I have left with the fondest of farewells, and a sense of greater purpose and renewed commitment to things I have previously dismissed at too frivolous for becoming my "real" life.

That was three and half weeks ago, and, as always, real life kicked me in the ass again. The very next day, the very day after I started that post, an apartment opportunity presented itself. For those of you who know me closely, you know that finding just the right apartment to settle into in this city has been a seven year longing for me. Moving is always really hard, and despite my initial misgivings, the situation offered to me was just too good to pass on. Bad timing, really good situation. The result? It's nearly a month later, I'm half-unpacked in my very wonderful new apartment, but the cost was high, and I'm smarting. I had, over a period of months, saved a sizable amount of money to carry me through my period of unemployment, and was poised to enjoy at least two or three months of time to myself before I really needed to start worrying, by which time I had hoped I would be generating at least a small writing income. In addition, I had another income source on top of that based on my previous rental situation, so I felt I was good.

Things, as they often do, failed to work out the way I planned, and my world is on tilt right now. I used my backup money to move, and, through a series of unrelated events, lost my backup income as well, leaving my wallet really thin right now. I lost my time and space for a clear head and creative pursuits in the stress of planning, packing, moving and unpacking, and trying to find a sublet for my now empty but still under lease old apartment. Part of me is screaming to go out and do what I know I can, which is get a job, a grown up job, back in my career field, and cope with this stress by falling back on the security of a steady paycheck, 401k and health insurance. The trouble is, having a fall-back option means that, in these situations, you always... fall back. And the joyful stuff gets shunted to the back burner. Again.

My decision to quit my job was huge. HUGE. Going off the grid is not easy for me. I've always been a person who finds security in a routine, in a controlled environment and knowing what comes next. I'm a girl with a plan.

Except, right now, I'm not. I met someone new the other day, and I didn't really have an answer to the question "what do you do?" HUGE. I want to go to film school. I want to direct another show. I want to make t-shirts and sit in Union Square all day and sell them. I want to freelance. I want to write a novel. I want to get my MSW. I want to get a clinician's license and do private-practice therapy. I want to create street-art. I want to open a cookie bakery. I don't want there to be limits on what I can do, and I don't want to fall back.

Still, there are bills to be paid.

I don't know what I'm actually going to do right now, but I know that I can't not write about it. I've missed writing about it, and I have thought, at several points over the last year, that I wanted to re-initiate but the recap seemed too overwhelming.

At this point, I feel like... fuck the recap. I'm here, I have no idea what is coming next, and I'm stupidly excited and stupidly terrified at the same time. I forgot, though, that this is what growing feels like.

Nice to see you, friends, and stay tuned. I fall. But I get up again. Like Madonna. Over and Over.

Roll Out the Barrells

2007-11-14T01:00:00.000-05:00

A fun fact for the moment:

Frequently, I run late to work. Not outrageously so, not generally in ways that impact my coworkers or interactions with clients. Generally speaking, it's a 10 or 15 minute window of time contingent on the quickness of the train in the station, the ancient elevator in my building at work. Something I can't quite put my finger on that causes me to lose time in the mornings, so that nomatter how early I seem to get up or leave the house, I end up late to the office.

Sometimes, I allow myself to simply arrive late. Other times, I call in the help of my local car service to speed up the local leg of my commute. It takes me roughly 8 minutes to walk from my apartment to the nearest train station, 10 if the weather is bad. When I'm running really late, I'll call up the car service (in speed dial on my phone) before I put on my shoes to leave, and by the time I'm downstairs on the sidewalk said car is usually waiting for me in front of the building. They drive me the 12 blocks/four stations up to the express station, which gets me to Manhattan in 20 minutes, shaving about 20 minutes off my regularly 45 minutes commute.

Not a bad deal.

Here's the thing. For those of us living in New York, we understand clearly the differences between a taxi and a car service. For my non-city pals, here's the breakdown. Basically, taxi = metered yellow cab which can be hailed on the street, with a running fare calculator based on where you go/how long it takes, driven by a city licensed and insured driver. Car Service = foreign guy with a car and an arbitrary formula for deciding how much to charge based on how he sizes you up and how badly you seem to need a ride. Brooklyn is comprised mostly of car services, some of which are formal and have a phone number and a dispatcher, some of which are just guys sliding up to you on the curb and offering a ride. Sketchy? Why yes, but sometimes you just don't care.

My neighborhood car service and I have a love/hate relationship. For awhile, about a year ago, we were happy together, and mutually satisfied. I called them three to four times a week, they were prompt and consistent with the fare. It was a good match. At some point, however, they changed management, and I nearly broke up with them. They stopped being reliable and prompt in coming when I called, and several times attempted to jack my fare from the usual $7 to $13. Needless to say, those were some volatile times in our relationship. Happily, we've move forward and things have settled down again. The dispatch office is right around the corner from my apartment, and they are back to their timely, affordable business.

A tactic frequently used by car service drivers relates to radio play. Many drivers, in a play for a higher tip at the end, adjust the radio as patrons come into the car, choosing stations based on their perceptions of what their riders will most enjoy. I've had drivers come out and ask me directly what I like. Others just give me the once over and make their best guess. This has frequently yielded interesting results. Sometimes I get adult easy listening, which I don't so much mind (think oldies station). Other times I get classical or NPR. Again, not bad, fairly respectable if a bit stuffy. I can live with that.

Apparently, however, my image has undergone a transformation of sorts.

This morning I got into the car only to find that within seconds my driver had flipped stations to arrive at... Polka.

That's right, Polka. Russian polka, accordian player and russian lyrics and all.

Polka.

Polka?

Polka.

Do with that what you will. Julie = Polka.

Polka is the new black.

The One Where I Pimp Lesbian Hillary Love

2007-07-08T22:10:00.000-04:00

So, to quote John Lennon, Power to the People!

In this instance, I happen to be talking about the people's power to mock, ogle, citicize, rib and obsess over pop culture, and more recently, the political process.

To be still more specific, my newest obsession of the minute is Taryn Southern's very fabulous and spoofy Hott 4 Hill! video that is making the pop culture rounds. My love for this video knows no bounds: for its queerness, for its satire, for its brass. I just love it. The Obama Girl vid may have started it, but Taryn Southern has taken it to a whole new level.

Here's the vid. Be sure and scroll down to check out her introduction to the video, aptly titled A Letter To My Fellow Americans, which is also found on her website hott4hill.blogspot.com (where the vid can also be seen, if it's loading too slow here.)

A letter to my fellow Americans:

On June 13, 2007, the face of the 2008 presidential campaign was forever changed with the release of a provocative video known as "Obama-Girl."

It was all there - a passionate statement of love and partisan politics - thoughtfully packaged into a catchy pop song.

In less than a week, the Obama-Girl tribute to Democratic candidate Barrack Obama earned several million online hits and played on primetime news stations across the country.

Now let me preface my announcement by saying that I am no stranger to politics. I ran for Student Council President in the 7th grade. I attended the 2004 presidential debates in Miami. I even met Bob Dole this year in the Las Vegas airport.

Following the release of the Obama-Girl video, I felt that it was my social responsibility to provide America with a fair and balanced view of the 2008 Democratic campaign by showing my love and support for my own favorite candidate - Ms. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

xoxo Ms. Southern

Dear 16 Year Old Me...

2007-07-01T03:50:00.001-04:00

Another meme, this one I thought particularly thought provoking, that's making the rounds...

10 Things I Would Tell My 16 Year Old Self:

1. You won't always be so powerless. One day, you will have your own apartment, and your own money, and your own life, and you can finally stop being careful and guarded and live on your own terms.

2. Those feelings you have? Those sex feelings? TOTALLY normal. Stop worrying, being queer won't seem so world ending in 10 years.

3. You don't need anyone's approval, particularly your famliy's, which you're never going to get in the way you want. Get an earlier start on doing what you love without apology.

4. Relax. RELAX. The world is bigger than Ashland, KY, and your life will take you wonderful places. You're right to love diversity and intellect, and you don't have to live here forever. You're going to make it just fine in New York.

5. Respect money. It doesn't always just come to you when you want it, and you haven't learned to manage it well yet. Be cautious with the check writing and the bill paying, or you'll make things really hard for yourself later. Your credit score DOES matter in the long run.

6. If you ask for what you need, someone will give it to you. IF YOU ASK FOR WHAT YOU NEED, SOMEONE WILL GIVE IT TO YOU. People love you but they can't read your mind, and you're going to keep being disappointed until you learn to tell people how to meet your needs and then give them the opportunity.

7. All of those things... those bad things that are happening to you and those bad things you're being told and those ways you're being hurt? You don't deserve them. Any of them. You're wonderful, it isn't your fault, and by the time you're 18 all of it will stop.

8. You're going to want to be an English Major in college... don't. It isn't practical, and that career you think you're headed for in journalism is going to suck. Take theatre, take screenwriting and filmmaking, and don't worry about being practical. You're never going to have trouble getting a job, so do the things you've always wanted and thought were frivolous.

9. Pursue other options for funding that independent liberal arts education. You don't really get it yet, but $60,000 is a LOT of money, and you're not going to be able to get out from that kind of debt for a long time. Don't do those student loans unless you absolutely have to.

10. Your straight girlfriends will never love you like that. Stop looking for what you need in the wrong places. Straight girls in general are not going to work out, so when you hit that fall in love with straight girls phase... skip it. It doesn't matter how good together you are, they're never going to settle down with you.

Requiem

2007-06-12T20:56:00.000-04:00

Tomorrow is Partner's birthday.

Partner, with whom I ended our three and a half year relationship in October. Tomorrow will mark the 29th year of her life, and the 8th month of our separation.

Our breakup has not been nice.

Friends of mine tell me that few ever are.

Our breakup, much like our last months together, has been full of fighting, of accusation and blame and anger. I've come to understand that I will never be able to do anything right where she is concerned, and that she will never be able to be for me the woman she was when we first fell in love.

Our most recent fight, and one of our worst yet, occurred nearly a month ago.

We haven't spoken since.

This has weighed heavily on me given her upcoming birthday, and my conflicted feelings about calling her or not.

When I think of her, when I close my eyes I know her as in our early days together...

...she is turning toward me on the balcony of our Montauk bungalow, she is orange sun and blue blue water and a smile like I am the only person in the universe... we are a tangle of limbs in the bed, end of the day easiness with breath in tandem, her face in the space of my neck, her lips grazing my collarbone and whispers of forever love... she is turning to me and we are laughing, laughing and there is nothing in the world but this...

It is this woman that I grieve. It is this woman with whom I never thought there would be an expiration date, couldn't imagine a world in which she wasn't in. It is this woman that still inspires a fierce protectiveness in me, that to this day I want to shield from the pain of our breakup.

I'm not going to call. I forgive her for the ugliness between us, and I understand what it means to be finished.

Dear Partner, I love you but I just can't carry your blame.

So In Love

2007-05-30T01:46:00.001-04:00

Today, just a song that I happen to love. Curtis Mayfield, So In Love. The brass and organ riffs in this song break my heart in pieces, and put it back together again every chorus. Listening to this song feels like being in love feels to me, earnest and hopeful and sad all at the same time. Curtis's music is like that, is open and gentle and vulnerable in ways that really reasonate with me.

My life was a sad song for a little while there, but it's getting better, and I'm getting what I need. Thanks, people of mine, for reminding me what I love.

I hope you love this like I love this...

Curtis Mayfield, So In Love

and further listening...

It's All Right (with The Impressions)

People Get Ready
(Live performance circa 1988, track down the original version off the People Get Ready album with The Impressions)

We People Who Are Darker than Blue

Snapshots, Spring 2007

2007-05-14T01:23:00.000-04:00

It isn't so much that nothing has been happening that is worth writing about; rather, I've been slogging through a mess of a life these past months. On top of all the hurrying and the laughing and the crying and the motion, stopping to write has seemed simply to overwhelming.

Rather than a mad recap, I thought I'd let pictures tell the tales. Something about 1000 words. Something about just not sinking too far in the details. Suffice to say I've surfaced back on top, I'm feeling more in control, summer is coming and I'll take whatever is coming.

As for these last months, the quirky never stops. Thank goodness...

FEBRUARY...

...Neck Face tagged the block where I work. I saw my first Neck Face tag three years ago; he tagged several buildings around my block in Williamsburg, my favorite of which was his name along with the trademark hairy monster arm. I hadn't seen anything new in awhile, but I hear in the years since then he's left his mark all over the globe, from California to Tokyo. Seeing him back here put a smile on my face. This is one mailbox; he tagged all of them all down the street. Welcome back, Neck Face!

MARCH...

...Color globes in the window of ABC Homestore on Broadway & 19th. A little art on my way home every night.

...I fall victim to a weird and inescapable obsession with baking. One that gave me temporary amnesia, and caused me to completely forget that while I'm a very excellent cook - I'm a really lousy baker. As evidenced by this coffee cake. I am not daunted, however, and continue to ruin concoction after concoction, all the while reading food blogs and telling myself that I'll get it right eventually.

I didn't.

...March, apparently, is also for lovers. Note the kissing feet under the ad behind the bus shelter while waiting for the bus one blustery Saturday afternoon in the shelter next to theirs. Periodically, one of them or the other would poke their head around the corner to see if the bus was coming, and then they went right back to their embrace. A lot of people around me, mostly older women, were scowling over it, but I thought good for them! Infatuation like that is so lovely. It's two months later now, I hope wherever they are they're still happy, and still kissing with such passion.

...I give up my weird obsession with baking, and go back to cooking, which turns out fabulously. Pizza from scratch, chunks of imported mozzerella, pecorino romano, fresh basil, olive oil. Perfection.

But I'm still reading those blogs...

APRIL...

...Nonni. Nonni, Nonni, Nonni. I visit Kentucky, and the world as I know it comes crashing down on my head. And she is the child, and I am the adult, and the strong, independent, self assured woman who has handled every problem in our family my entire life is gone. And she cries, and suddenly I am her power of attorney, and her finances are a mess, and I'm the master of my own life but the master of hers, too. I can only hope to be the matriarch that she has been.

...Another tag in the neighborhood where I work, this one traced in cement. I looked up the name Rudy Kazooty online, because it was unique and it made me laugh out loud, and because it was sillier and more fun that most of the tags and graffiti I see every day, especially with the added touch of heroic lightning bolt over the oo's. It turns out, Rudy Kazotty is either a children's television character, a puppet, or a Little Golden Book character. Maybe all of the above. I'd love to hear if anyone reading can provide a little backstory here.

...Over 5 Zillion Sold. There's a mexican restaurant across the street from my office called Uncle Moe's. I stop in a lot after work or on my lunch break, and I've gotten to know the guys behind the counter pretty well. They know what I want when I come through the door, and also hook my up when I'm feeling like indulging in their VERY FABULOUS and FAMOUS dessert. A rice pudding empanada. When I come in, they ask me if I want one, and if I do, they don't give me one from the glass dessert case that's been sitting around. Instead, they go in the back and fry me a fresh one. The empanada is stuffed and deep fried, leaving the outside crispy and flaking and heating the creamy rice pudding inside until it's hot and succulent. Then, before serving it, the whole thing is taken out and rolled hot in a bowl of cinnamon and sugar that powders my fingers and elevates this dessert to perfection. And yes, I'm addicted. And no, I'm not getting paid for singing these praises.

The last time I stopped in, which was at the end of April, was after a long and stressful work day. They were nearly closed, but let me in. They had their music cranked up and rocked out to what sounded a lot
like a Spanish speaking Led Zepplin while I ate. They brought me this without my asking, and we sat and talked awhile. All across the walls of the place were photos of little Taquerias, one after another, all taken with the same camera and developed in the same warm tones. I asked if the restaurants were all owned by their family; it turns out not, but that one of the brothers is learning photography and took them while on an internship in California. Above is my favorite, with an awning proudly boasting Over 5 Zillion Sold. I love that pride, and the life standing behind it. I love thinking about the owner of the business, who must have sat thinking about what to say on his awning, what would make his or her business stand apart from the many others like it and draw a crowd. I wonder if if made them smile like I did, and how many customers were told about the 5 Zillion before it ever went up on the awning. I miss how business used to be that way. Before computers, and chains, and automated phone systems and credit cards. The guys at Uncle Moe's get it about running a family business, and catering to your local and regular crowd. Here's hoping all of us choose to give our patronage to the little guys first.

...I was reminded that I have the two cutest, sweetest cats ever...

...who snuggled up with me and kept me company while I was tearing my hair out trying to take care of Nonni's bills...

...and chased my blues away with their supreme cuteness. Albert & Alex seen here, some candid snaps from a Saturday afternoon in April.

MAY...

...Peak blooming at the Cherry Esplenade at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens.

A blue sky, fragrant flowers, green grass, a perfect spring Saturday afternoon.

...Recently saw the movie The Reaping at the Clearview Cinema on 19th St. When I bought my ticket, I went inside to find the ticket taker, an older gentleman, engaged in a lively conversation with a patron who had just Fracture, the two of them debating its merits. The patron looked to be about 60, wore a tan fishing hat, a red flannel coat, and a business suit. I smiled at their rather curmudgeonly exchange, at which they turned to me and began to flirt shamelessly. We chatted briefly about movies in general, and I asked them their top three best movies of all time. The ticket taker said, without hesitation, Inherit the Wind, Gone with the Wind and Terminator 2. The patron felt it was too hard. He told me he had seen a lifetime of movies, 55 movies a year in fact, and it was just too much to pick three out of such a big pool. I stopped to think about that. 55 movies equals one a week, with three weeks in which he sees two. I was curious about which occasions he marked with a double viewing, but before I could ask he gave me the once over, and told me a story. He said he had spent his early career on Wall Street, and was miserable. He said in his 40s he had a midlife crisis, and decided he needed to figure out his life's purpose, but first needed to figure out how to know what it was. That involved quitting his job and just "being" for a little while. He said it took him 10 years, but he figured out that his life's work was to elevate people's minds, and he was to do that through demonstrating complete and unconditional kindness to all living creatures, human and animal alike. He told me he wrote a book on that very thing, but that rather than waste precious time fighting and compromising with the book publishing industry, he wrote a 42 page book and made it a point to give out ten pages a day, one each to ten different people he met during his day to day travels. He told me that he had given a page to Hilary Clinton, and to Katie Couric, and he gave one to me. His name was Bob White, and he handed me a handwritten, xeroxed piece of his life's work.

Would that I can be so lucky as to achieve that level of definition. Even if the meaning never goes beyond myself.

Thanks, Bob White, for nudging me back to my own writing life.

Come on, Snow, Come Down from Sky.

2007-02-25T20:26:00.000-05:00

That's what he said.

I was headed into the grocery store to pick up snacks for Oscar night.

He was standing in front of the double doors, a silhouette against the flourescent lights of the store's interior.

He was wire thin, in his 30s, maybe, and wearing dark jeans, a winter jacket and black ski cap, skin darker than blue, his words thick with an island accent.

He was standing, hands at his sides, palms open and up toward the stars, his neck bent far back to turn his face to the sky.

His voice boomed, a deep baritone plea.

I looked up at the sky in spite of myself, like how could it not respond to such richness of a person.

Nothing happened. I smiled at him. He nodded in my direction. I went around him into the store. He went back to soliciting store customers for a ride in his gypsy cab. As I walked by, he mumbled to himself about feeling tired, and wanting to be able to go home.

I don't know the particulars of his situation, of why the onset of snow would allow him to go home. It would be hours before the roads got bad enough to warrant not driving. Maybe if it snowed he could justify to himself retiring early for the evening, missing out on whatever fares he might have left tonight if he loiters in front of the store until the 11 o'clock close.

Before I lived in New York, I lived an insulated life. I lived in a house, which I left every morning and got in my car, and drove to my job, where I worked in my office until I got back in my car and drove back to my house. I lived in a world of walls, barriers between me and the rest of the people in my town moving around in their own barriers. I know this now because here, in New York, I live among people. Being an avid pedestrian, I walk among people, rub shoulders with them (literally) on my way to work, whisper light brushes against their bodies walking down the street, hear snips of a thousand conversations every day. There's a different kind of intimacy, privacy here in the city, a privacy that incorporates a hundred bodies, a hundred voices in every space. I am struck daily by the beauty of people simply going about their business. It takes all kinds of people to make a city work; councilmen, dog walkers, fry cooks, teenagers, cab drivers, sanitation workers, doctors, window dressers, food cart vendors, nannies, real estate moguls, bank tellers, and on and on. A city's elite can only live by sharing the street with the blue collar workers who tend them. That's true of any cities, population 2 million or 2 thousand.

My mom recently sent me one of those forwarded emails that make the rounds, this one labeled an angry "HOW TO DESTROY AMERICA" just like that, in all caps. The long and short of this email was that our country is dying because of an influx of immigrants and a government that indulges them by adopting a policy of multiculturalism, valuing diversity over patriotism and tolerance over adaptation. According to the article, we are losing our national identity, and the loss is killing us. These points all made in much more offensive rhetoric than how I've summarized them here. I asked mom what she thought my reaction to the email would be. Rightly, she said she knew it would make me angry, and it did. I find such oversimplified, alarmist attitudes symptomatic of a kind of educated biggotry. The kind that points fingers at our immigrant populations and blames them for rising unemployment levels, health care costs and poor economies.

Here in the city, I interact with these people every day, all day. They are my clients at work. They serve me pretzels on the sidewalks and drive me where I need to go when I run late. They cook the food and mop the floors behind the swinging kitchen doors of my restaurants. They carry the boxes that contain the clothes hanging on the shelves of my clothing stores. They've also probably picked the fruit I eat when I buy it in the store, refinished the floor in my apartment when it was last renovated, stitched the knockoff designer bag the lady next to me on the train is carrying, sold me bootleg dvds, delivered my food when the weather has been too lousy for me to go out, and scores of other behind the scenes tasks I probably don't even know about.

Some of them work 14 hour days, live in 2 bedroom apartments with up to 8 people, send 60 percent of their income home to families abroad, or save their entire pay to bring more family members here. They do it without health insurance, paid holidays, sick days, life insurance, tax returns or vacations.

None of them are working jobs that I find myself sitting at home wishing I had, but most of them, like me, just want the opportunity to work and make a living.

As for the man I saw this evening who stood outside the grocery store pleading with the sky, when I came out of the store 20 minutes later, he was gone, and it was snowing.

I love how sometimes the magic of just wishing for something really hard works.

I love the sight of people in moments of true humanity, unguarded.

Humanity is what we all have, and it doesn't matter what state of affairs our "papers" are in.

The real destruction of America is in the forgetting of that very thing.

Artgasm

2007-02-11T20:20:00.000-05:00

I went to the Met this weekend (that's the Metropolitan Museum of Art, for those Non New Yorkers among us). I love going, and now that I'm older I've taken to restricting myself when I go, vowing to spend my time not trying to rush through a whirlwind overview of the entire collection, but to devote my time to one wing, to spend three, sometimes four hours just absorbing a small portion, taking time to read the cards and stories behind the work, to see the tiniest brushstrokes over a glancing appreciation.

Friday night I spend my time in the American and Modern sections.

And that's where Jackson Pollock happened to me.

I've always loved art. I've loved making it, I've loved looking at it. I got my first real art supplies when I was about seven, a professional pen and ink set, and several college level books detailing techniques for line ink drawing. I devoured them.

In college, I took several art classes, and in my senior year an art history class, Women Artists Since 1940. It was my first official "survey" art course, and I chose it with trepidation but at the encouragement of my academic advisor, who felt it would work doubletime to satisfy both my English and Women's Studies requirements for my major. The class was taught by a sour, unpleasant woman named Thalia Gouma Peterson, who believed noone was as smart as her and who, despite being an avowed feminist, actually hated women. In the first week of class, she informed us that we would be keeping a semester long journal in which we were to choose six paintings from the coursework a week and journal about them. Never having taken an art history class before, I wasn't really sure what "journal about them" meant, and I raised my hand and asked for clarification. Did she want us to talk about how we felt looking at them? About the composition...color, tone, texture, mechanics? About what critics said? Was there a form for this type of writing, or was this to be a more organic process? She looked at me with contempt and informed me that journaling meant journaling. That first week, I fretted about what to do. I knew what I liked, how my tastes ran, and we had been introduced to several works that I had strong reactions to, but I had no idea what was expected of me in terms of how to talk about art. I ended up writing about my reactions to the paintings, their tone and how they made me feel.

That was apparently not what she had in mind. The following week when she handed the journals back, I opened mine to find a big red "F", and a scrawled note reading I can't believe you're a senior English major!

So began an ugly semester between the two of us. My efforts to better understand her expectations of me only fueled her belief that I was just trying to "get over" in the class, which only fueled my anger at her anti-feminist approach to teaching and to women in general. I ended up failing the class. I appealed the F and won, and she ended up begrudginly passing me with a "C".

Since then, I've always been a little bit intimidated by the "art world." Again, I know my taste, and I'm confident in my ability to do things like decorate my home, or create household art, but I've shied away from talking about art with people who are artists or art critics. I'm able to enjoy looking at art, I love going to the Met, but I've never had that really intimate, personal and gut punching reaction to a piece. I've never just been floored, in any kind of emotional way. Usually it's more about appreciating the work of a specific artist in the context of their life condition or struggle.

This weekend I saw my first Jackson Pollock painting in person. I've seen poster reproductions of his work, and I've seen reproductions in art books and documentaries. But never the real deal. And I've never felt particularly drawn to abstract art.

Imagine my suprise, then, when I turned a corner in the modern gallery and came face to face with Jackson Pollock's Autumn Rhythm (Number 30) and couldn't walk away.

It was bigger than me, and it had a depth that I felt like I literally sank into. It had a kind of energy that was mesmerizing, and I found myself staring and staring, trying to find a methodology, trying to find a starting point among the layers and layers of paint drips. I've looked at his drip works before and flippantly thought to myself that they didn't seem particularly "planned," that they were random and chaotic and easily reproduced. I was completely wrong. The longer I stood there and stared, the more entreched I got, and patterns started to emerge, and my eyes were travelling and travelling the canvas without stopping. It was alive. I sat down in front of it and just stared, and felt this warmth come over me, this joy. No kidding. It was like suddenly I just "got it." I got what people talked about when they talked about art that was transformative, that was emotional and intimate. I had my first artgasm, right there in the Met in front of 20 other people speeding through the galleries with no idea what I was seeing. I was awestruck. I used to be one of them.

I sat there for 45 minutes. I started to feel this protectiveness of the painting. I felt myself inwardly flinching as people walked by and commented that it was nothing, that they could do the same thing on their garage wall. I wasn't really interested in seeing anything else that night; I was afraid to walk away from it, afraid when I came back to see it again I wouldn't see it like I was seeing it in that moment, that it's power would be lost.

After a little while, the gallery security attendant walked over to me. He apologized for interrupting me, told me he wasn't supposed to talk to patrons but he couldn't help but see my reaction to the painting. He had a thick Jamaican accent and I had to strain to hear him, but I was curious as to what he wanted. I nodded that it was okay, and he proceeded to tell me a story of a man he saw one day who came in and sat on the very bench I was sitting on, staring at the painting. He told me the man sat for six hours, six hours, and at the end of the day he stood up, he shook his head, shrugged and walked away. The guard told me he didn't know what it was that man had been looking for, but that he didn't think he found it. He told me I had that same look in my eye, and told me the painting was very intriguing to many people.

I still sat, looking. I do think the man found what he was looking for.

I certainly did. Without even realizing that I had been searching. Hello existentialism, I didn't know I had you in me.

When I got home, I researched a bit about Jackson Pollock. I found out that he believed that art was more than representations of familiar forms. He thought people used lines to create boundaries, to define shapes and space and enclosures, and he sought to free lines from definition and expose them as independently beautiful. When he painted, he stretched great pieces of canvas across the floor of his studio. He said "On the floor I am more at ease. I feel nearer, more part of the painting, since this way I can walk around it, work from the four sides and literally be in the painting." He didn't work with a brush, he used his hands, he used sticks and sometimes poured paint right out of the can to drip and spatter paint against the canvas in layers on layers. This was known as his "drip" period, between 1946 and 1950. Eventually, as his work gained more notariety he began feeling pressure from gallery owners to return to a more structured, traditional "form" representation in his paintings. He stopped doing drip works, and began drinking. In 1953 he stopped painting all together, unable to resolve his creative inspirations with the work he created to please the public and gallery owners. He died in 1956 in an alcohol related car crash, at the age of 44. People call his style of painting "action painting," and say he gave birth to the movement.

I was fortunate enough to find a video of him in action on youtube. It doesn't come near representing the actual wonderment of seeing his work in person. Neither does the reproduction I included above do it justice. If you really want to know, you'll just have to come to New York and visit the Met for yourself. I'll even put you up.

In the meantime, I've acquired a list of the locations of all 26 of his drip pieces. You can guess how I'll be spending my spring.

Icicles

2007-02-05T23:40:00.000-05:00

Things I love...

Icicles, especially in unlikely places.

Q train, Prospect Park station, Brooklyn, NY.
Monday morning commute.

February 5, 2007

Great Music Monday: Linda Ronstadt

2007-02-05T23:00:00.000-05:00

It's been awhile, but I thought it was time for some great music, you know, on Monday, because Monday's suck. And great music is...well...great!

Today, a little Linda Ronstadt.

I've been a Linda fan for a long time; I love her in the 70s with her rootsy, country-folk rock, I love her in the 80s and 90s with the Nelson Riddle Orchestra doing jazz standards, I love her these days teaming up with Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris doing covers and converting rock songs to children's lullabies.

Linda hit the music scene in 1967 as the lead singer of a band called the Stone Poneys, with a song called Different Drum, written by Mike Nesmith of the Monkees. Different Drum was not her most commercially successful song, but her clear-as-a-bell voice did get her the attention of several songwriters, beginning her looong career as a talented vocal artist and champion of then lesser known songwriters including Elvis Costello, Phillip Glass, Randy Newman, James Taylor, Roy Orbison, Kate & Anna McGarrigle, Paul Anka, Hank Williams, Patti Griffin, The Everly Brothers, Jackson Browne, Don Henley, Neil Young, Tom Petty and Aaron Neville.

She's incredibly feminine, but also incredibly and tomboyishly tough, and brings a different kind of femininity to her music than other female artists of the time including Diana Ross, Melanie, Carole King and Carly Simon. She was faded blue jeans over flower skirts, electric guitar over whispering folk, and managed to break into the boys club of rock and roll but maintain her identity as a woman at the same time. She was also the first woman to successfully sell out stadium concerts with only herself as the headliner. In 1975 she was photographed by
Annie Leibowitz for an interview and picture spread in Rolling Stone magazine, launching her to super sex-symbol status, but never lost her girl next door appeal.
That's what I like best about her. On top of her importance as a woman in the rock music scene in the 70s, she just makes really good music, and onstage she has a realness about her that draws you in and feels incredibly homey to listen to. Like she might well be playing the night away in a backyard jam session rather than playing to audiences of a thousand or more. And she is a person who simploy loves music. Of all genres. She's collaborated with more artists than I can list here, and has had hits on the pop, country, rock, latin, easy listening, blues, opera, mariachi and children's charts. The big hits, most of us know... It's So Easy, That'll Be the Day, Heat Wave, When Will I Be Loved, You're No Good, Blue Bayou. Below, a few of my favorites, of the lesser known but just as good variety. And a few that are insanely popular but simply too good not to include.

These are all live performances... she's actually never released a live album throughout her career, which is unfortunate as she seems to be a performer who really feeds off of and gets that much better with the energy of the crowd.

Most of these clips are from her 1976 concert Linda Rondstadt London, which is posted on youtube in it's entirety by the fabulous JKTRL. If you've got the time, I encourage you to watch all 12 of the clips. It won't be time wasted.

And now, some favorites. You'll have to follow the links for some of these, as the user denies embedding access. Just click on the song name for the jump.

The Tattler

Willin'

Desperado

Okay, so here are two versions of this song, because it's my favorite of hers and I simply couldn't decide which I liked better. The first is from a 1974 performance on American Bandstand; it sounds much like the studio released version that got radio airplay, and you can really hear how good the song is. Plus I love the backup singer in the yellow jumpsuit behind her who is shaking hip like she doesn't even have bones.

The second version is from an outdoor summer concert she did in 1976 and she is ROCKING OUT. She's really feeding on the energy of the crowd, and the music is loud and hard, and she's putting all her guts into it and the result is awesome, even if the audio quality isn't as good.

Hope you enjoy them both. I just couldn't choose only one.

You're No Good - American Bandstand

You're No Good - Summer of 76

2006, I Hardly Knew Ya

2007-01-07T13:04:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year, people.

It's 2007, and 2006 couldn't have gone by faster. New Year's Eve found me this year sitting in the back of Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center, listening to Audra McDonald sing the classic movie musical songs I've always loved.

I confess, that mythical larger than life, sophisticated new year nearly found me this time.

Still, after Audra left the stage and the hall emptied, I found myself left with my own recollection, as always. I've left 2006 in a good place, and I'm moving into 2007 the same.

The last 365 days, in brief:

LOST: time, sight of myself, my old insecurity about money, the summer - instead working insane hours at a horrible job, Morgan, anonymity, stress, a sense of obligation, tension in my house.

FOUND: a new job, my social life, Montauk, all the things I enjoy doing that fell away during the business of loving and living with someone, Manhattan again, financial stability, a great hairdresser, maturity, another new job, confidence, good health insurance, peace of mind.

As for the next 365 days, I've decided that this year my goal is to move beyond simply being financially stable, an achievement I'm very proud of given the cost of living in this city, and begin to acquire financial freedom. I want to stop living paycheck to paycheck. I want to repair and rebuild my credit. I want to build a "nest egg." I also want to invest. I've been reading a lot of books about economics, and I know that you can't really build wealth without doing it. I've reached a point in my life where I'm at a job that I can really commit too, with good management, room for growth, and a good wage. It's time to really take control of my fiscal self. I feel like I have developed a lot of self control about spending habits, budgeting, and managing bills, and I'm ready to look at things I've avoided for awhile.

I would also like to direct at least one other show this year. Last year was a whirlwind of changes, and I missed an opportunity I was offered and ended up not doing anything. This year, at least one. One is well within reach right now.

As for you, for my New Year's well wishing I'm borrowing from Eleanor Roosevelt this year, in a poignant speech she made on January 1, 1937. It's my favorite new year sentiment, one I go back to year after year and I'm happy to pass to you now...

"I wish for those I love this New Year an opportunity to earn sufficient, to have that which they need for their own and to give that which they desire to others, to bring into the lives of those about them some measure of joy, to know the satisfaction of work well done, of recreation earned and therefore savored, to end the year a little wiser, a little kinder and therefore a little happier."

Happy New Year, people.

All You've Got to Do is Dream

2006-12-17T11:49:00.000-05:00

This weekend, a glamourous interlude. My friend Melissa and I went to see the premiere of Dreamgirls at the Ziegfeld.

It was the perfect venue, it was perfectly glamourous, and the movie was perfectly executed.

I had been avoiding the hype, the buzz, the reviews, the music, the behind the scenes features all over the place, all of it. I find generally that when things are super hyped in that way, I tend to feel let down with whatever the reality is.

Not so with Dreamgirls. Jennifer Hudson was amazing. Beyonce, who I really don't like at all and was prepared to be annoyed by, was wonderful and understated and I grudgingly admit I really liked in the film. Anika Noni Rose lit up the screen and held her own with two very formidable presences who could have easily eclipsed her.

More than that, the cinematography, art direction, costuming and wardrobe and sound people have created a film that literally jumps off the screen at you. It was exciting like watching a live concert is exciting. At the screening, the audience, an interesting collision of city culture and broadway lovers, gay men and middle aged african americans, clapped, cheered, and at times gave standing ovations.

Standing ovations. To a movie screen. It was that good.

Pics below. This film opens in wide release on December 25th. Go see it. Dreamgirls, among other things, really will make you happy.
(click for bigger versions)

A glamourous venue for a glamourous movie.

More glamour. Seeing it in such a historic theatre made it that much better. Super smart marketing, Dreamgirls people.

Costumes in the lobby outside the theatre.

Inside the theatre. It went on for miles, and it was SOLD OUT. It was fun to feel like old hollywood for an evening.

Finally, finally, the film. Here's a little clip, it's the Dreamgirls theme, with some screencaps. I didn't make this one, but I've listened to it a million times since Friday. Enjoy.

The Tree

2006-12-04T22:59:00.000-05:00

So, it's the best tree ever. The shape, the fullness, we outdid ourselves. It's actually much bigger than last year's, in the way of being wide and full. It's taking up quite a bit of the living room, and casting a lovely glow over the place.

Pics below, a few different shots because I'm not a great photographer. Click on the snaps to see bigger versions.

And here's another, the view from the front hall. It's got a weird tilt that we can't seem to fix, but it's still dreamy.

The tree casts these lovely pine branch shadows all over the wall behind it.

The whole shot...

Christmas is Coming, The Goose is Getting Fat

2006-12-03T14:19:00.000-05:00

The city is getting that holiday buzz going. Walking to the train this week, the trees that line Broadway between my office and the station lit up with twinkle lights, as did the stray apartment window and fire escape here and there. I've started hearing Christmas songs playing over the grocery store speakers, and people on the street are carrying twice the shopping bags as usual. I haven't hit Macy's yet, but I know the windows are decked out in holiday wonderland.
I love Christmas in New York City. I love the Christmas season. While I don't go as bananas as my family, I've built my own little traditions over the last 3 decades of living, and I look forward to them immensely. Christmas cards, baking, wrapping presents, the annual viewing of the Christmas three: Sound of Music, White Christmas, It's a Wonderful Life. All things that fill me with the goofiest of holiday warm fuzzies and turn me into a mushball like few things do.

Last year, I added a new tradition to the list (which, I think is only a tradition this year, given that I repeated the process in exactly the same way. That's how tradition works, right?)

Anyway, added to the list: buying the Christmas treee.

Growing up I was always allergic to fresh, or "real" trees as they were called in my family. It was something I never questionned, and we all worked around, my family scouring the country, literally, for the most real looking fake they could find, resulting in a basement with, seriously, at LEAST 8 artificial trees packed away, each an upgraded model of the last.

Last year, in a move of wild health be damned abandon, I decided to get a real tree. I really had no idea if I was actually still allergic, NEVER having had one before. I felt a weird longing whenver I passed one of the million tree stands that crop up on sidewalks all over the city after Thanksgiving. Plus, I had never put up a tree since I'd moved to the city, not having had the storage space for an artificial. I talked with my roommate about it, and we decided to go for it, Morgan giving us the most scrooge like of humbugs the entire time.

We scouted around and found a Christmas tree lot that sprung up in a parking lot behind a bar in downtown Brooklyn that advertised 6 foot trees for 19 bucks. We poked, we prodded, we haggled, and ended up plunking down $60 bucks on what had to be the most perfect tree ever. Not having a car, we carried it home on the bus, up four flights of stairs and decorated it, Morgan getting excited and joining in in spite of herself.

Fast forward to this year. Last night, we went and bought our tree.

The same place, the same guys, the same excitement and another FABULOUS tree. I think this year we may have gotten a little carried away, though. We've ended up with a six foot tree that is delightfully full, but perhaps too big for our living room. It was too big to fit into the stand we had, causing Becca and I to take turns hacking away at the trunk with my swiss army knife saw, a hammer and screwdriver, and eventually, a meat cleaver from the kitchen. Add egg nog, Rosemary Clooney and Vera Ellen singing about sisters in White Christmas, and the intoxicating smell of fresh pine all over both of us and everything in the house and you get Christmas magic. The tree is up with lights, we'll be trimming it tonight. My Christmas cards wait for me and the cookie ingredients are burning a hole in my pantry.

Merry Christmas, people. Find your holiday magic wherever you can get it, however or whatever you celebrate.

As for me, well, here's a bit of my tradition...
(click on the snaps for bigger, better versions)

The lot, the promise of a great tree for nineteen bucks which really means sixty. The smell of pine, all over the block. Twinkle lights everywhere.

A forest in downtown Brooklyn.

The ground was actually concrete, but the billion shed needles made a foresty carpet beneath our feet. A whole different world than the high rise buildings a block across the street. We were transported. We embraced the shmultz.

The perfect tree, getting netted for transport by the tree guy. He gave us a break, it was supposed to be sixty, but he gave it to us for fifty five. We gave him sixty anyway. The lady in line behind us made a pass at our tree, she walked right up and fingered the branches while it was in the barrel. She had passed on it earlier, realized it was perfect, and asked us about fifty times if we were buying it. We took our tree and booked.

Becca, hammer and screwdriver, chipping away at the trunk after we realized it was too wide for the stand. It would take an hour, but we whittled it down. Never mind that everything in our living room was covered with flying woodchips by the time we were done and we've been tracking woodchips all over the house for the last 24 hours.

A cup of eggnog, a bowl of balls, ready for decorating.

Pictures of the tree in all its decorated glory tonight.

Happy Thanksgiving, Brooklyn

2006-11-25T13:56:00.000-05:00

Happy Thanksgiving people!

This year, as always, a big dinner, the onset of holiday season financial drama, and my thanks, sent out into the universe that I'm blessed with a roof over my head, food in my kitchen and a life I don't hate. Thanksgiving in Brooklyn is different than the big Thanksgiving brouha that goes on at home, with the family in the kitchen fighting and loving and sharing the old holiday traditions. It's smaller, it's I don't have a real table so I'm spreading the food on the coffee table, it's more about loving myself then about a big showy affair with gorgeous place settings and impressive presentation.

I'll always do the big dinner, even just for me - I'm totally worth it. Here's to good food and another year of scrapping and shining.

The spread; mashed potatoes, stuffing, broccoli casserole, stuffed shells, tofurkey.

Awesome.

Music Meme for the Masses

2006-11-09T23:33:00.000-05:00

SOOOO, I love a meme, I love music, and when this MUSIC MEME crossed my path, I found myself in meme heaven. It comes from the fabulous Andrea over at Hula Seventy. Read mine, play yours, and then post your lists in the comments. Here's how it works...

If your life were a soundtrack, what would the music be?

1. open your library (iTunes, winamp, media player, Zen, iPod)
2. put it on shuffle
3. press play
4. for every question, type the name of whatever song comes up
5. new question-- press the next button
6. don't lie and try to pretend you're cool

SOUNDTRACK FOR MY LIFE...

opening credits:
"Do Right Woman" Aretha Franklin

waking up:
"Train Wreck" Sarah McLachlan

first day at school:
"Beloved Wife" Natalie Merchant

falling in love:
"Lighter's Up" Lil' Kim

breaking up:
"Beautiful Boy" John Lennon

prom:
"A Kiss to Build A Dream On" Louis Armstrong

life's okay:
"Goodbye to Love" The Carpenters

mental breakdown:
"Little Plastic Castle" Ani Difranco

driving:
"Louise" Bonnie Raitt

flashback:
"Here Comes the Sun" Nina Simone

getting back together:
"I Shall Believe" Sheryl Crow

wedding:
"Hurt" Johnny Cash

birth of child:
"What Condition My Condition Was In" Kenny Rogers & the First Edition

final battle:
"Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover" Sophie B. Hawkins

death scene:
"Wigwam" Bob Dylan

funeral song:
"We Can Work It Out" The Beatles

end credits:
"Skyline Pigeon" Elton John

So, I totally didn't cheat. Just what exactly what IS my Zen player trying to tell me about my love life???

Get Out the Vote

2006-11-05T23:16:00.000-05:00

There was a time in American history when not all of us could vote.

There was a time in American history where the right to vote was so sacred, so sacrosanct, that the battle over who was worthy and who was not was so intense that everyday Americans just like you and me organized, and assembled, and fought, and bled and died to get the right or keep others from having the right.

Voting is really important.

Let me tell you a story.

Originally, a bunch of men lived overseas, became tired of taxation without representation and crossed the waters of the ocean to the US to create their own government, a democracy, where they could be self governing, civilized and generally uphold the ideaology of a free life and liberty and justice.

They were white, generally wealthy, and they were not perfect, and while their ideals were good, they weren't ready to look beyond the social parameters of their time and uphold those rights for people who weren't also white, male and generally wealthy.

Such was the birth of the civil rights movement as we have come to call the historical fight for equal rights across the marginalized sects in this country.

Women, in their quest for the vote, imagined themselves as powerful goddesses and warriors of light, mythical in their wisdom and justice, and staged parades, sit-ins and conscious raising events, dressed in elaborate costumes and defined themselves warriors in the fight for a political voice.

They were radical, they critized an Administration that would fight for democracy and justice abroad and deny the same to 50% of its citizens at home.

They were punished. A lot.

They were fined, spat upon, beaten, harassed by angry mobs and by police, imprisoned on false charges, force fed to break hunger strikes, falsely committed to mental institutions and degraded by the political adminstration and popular media, who called them muckrakers and dragged them through the mud. In response, they named themselves, suffragists, and vowed to suffer through whatever blocks in their way, and continued to lobby until the right to vote was granted to women, and later the equal rights ammendment added to the constitution of the United States.

They won. On August 26th, 1920, a constitutional ammendment was ratified granting American women the right to vote.

Unfortunately, people of color would have a much longer struggle.

On paper,African Americans in the United States had equal protection under the law dating back to the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which guaranteed equal rights for blacks in public places and made illegal the exclusion of African Americans from jury duty. The reality of segregation and descrimination was a different story, however, as first white America imposed unjust laws such as literacy tests, poll tax and complicated registration policies to keep people of color (and poor white people) out of the voting booths. In the 1960s, the battle for civil rights and the end of segregation and descrimination stepped up considerably. Activists who called themselves "Freedom Fighters" came from all over the North and flooded the South to fight to register African Americans to vote.

On March 7, 1965, 600 people, mostly African American, staged a march in which they planned to walk from Selma, Alabama to Montgomery, Alabama to draw attention to recent struggles and violent tactics preventing citizens of Selma from registering to vote. They marched six blocks until they reached the Edmund Pettus Bridge and attempted to leave Selma lines. In what would later become known as Bloody Sunday, agents of state government including state troopers, local and county policemen attacked the unarmed protesters and drove them back into the city with tear gas, clubs and bullwhips. All because they feared what would happen when black people stood up and claimed their political power. When they voted.

Undaunted, they staged two more marches on the same route, determined to get to Montgomery. All over the South, however, retribution was heavy as private citizens took up the cause and fought on the side of the oppressors. African Americans paid the price. They were punished. A lot.

Eventually, on August 6, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The act abolished the use of literacy testing, poll taxing and local registration practices and federalized the voter registration process, thereby circumventing local government bigotry and standardizing the methods by which we all still vote today.

When I look at this history, today, as a 32 year old woman living in this time of political turmoil and facing my own disenfranchisement as an American citizen, I have to wonder what has happened to create a widespread devaluing of our collective right to vote. A vote is a voice, it's participation in our own self-governing process, and it's a power that has been so historically coveted as to inspire bloodshed and heroism on very personal scales. Over and over in history those in power have recognized the power, the danger of voting, of giving everyday people the power to unseat their ruling party. How is it that we've allowed ourselves to believe that our votes don't matter, don't have an impact on our local and national administrations, and isn't worth our time? Isn't that what they've always wanted us to believe? It's the greatest, most cunning con in history, really, this breeding of political apathy that teaches us that voting is little more than a symbolic act, a relic of freedoms we no longer need concern ourselves with.

Bullshit to that.

Bullshit to politicians and media analysts who tell us that the electoral college decides anyway. Bullshit to our family and friends who tell us that their oppositional vote will cancel ours out anyway. Bullshit to the forms, the lines, the picking our kids up from school or getting up early to vote before work or the hundred ways we talk ourselves out of claiming what we worked so hard to achieve in the first place.

Today, November 7th, is the midterm elections. We, all of us, have the right, the consciousness and the fucking obligation to get to the polls and vote. The Senate, the governership, local district representatives. All of it matters.

Even if you think it doesn't matter, even if you think it won't change anything, even if you think it's a bullshit waste of your time, VOTE.

If you live in New York City, check out a guide to the candidates and their backgrounds and partisan histories here.

If you don't live in New York and you want to find out who's running in your local election and what they stand for, check out a regional map and follow the links here.

If you need to find your polling location, figure out where you can register to vote, or get other questions about your local voting process, get that info here.

They've won when reject our own given political power.

Get back to where you once belonged

2006-09-28T23:49:00.000-04:00

I was doing the dishes tonight, something I hate, and when I picked up the bottle of dish liquid and squeezed it, a thousand little mini bubbles shot out of the spout and floated around my face. They were so small they were moving with my breath, in a swirl, all around me. I laughed out loud. Four more times I picked up the bottle, and every time I was treated to a shot of tiny little shimmering soap bubbles.

Life has been like that lately.

I haven't had much to say, blog wise, but I've been terribly busy anyway, I suppose getting back to the business of pleasure. I won't go into it all tonight, but the abbreviated version is that I changed jobs, a hard but necessary decision, and practially seamlessly transitioned into a new, better, equally compelling but much healthier work environment. That was like a domino falling into a long row, and with it came much looking hard, much truth telling, much better frame of mind, better relationship stuff, and a general melting away of walls of defense I had erected around myself to deal with the stress of my former job. Walls that, admittedly, I had not meant to allow to extend so fully into other aspects of my life and my interactions with my important people. Things are not perfect right now, but I'm happy at work, and remembering how much simple things make me really happy. Soap bubbles. Morgan laughing about an imaginary mouse. A woman in a business suit busting out her best dance moves on the train at 8:15 in the morning as she grooves to her ipod. The landscape of Manhattan, integrating itself into my everyday scenery once again. I had really missed being in the city everyday, and I feel like a part of myself that I boxed off is coming back to me now.

It's crazy how much of an effect a stressful work environment can have on the rest of your life, kind of like blood seeping through your favorite pair of jeans. You wash them, you still wear them, but you've always got that insecurity that someone can see the stain, even if there's nothing really there at all.

I let it do that to me, I think. The insecurity, the bleeding. There wasn't really anything there at all, but I let it creep in. And grow. You probably have no idea what I'm talking about, and that's okay. For now, just the happiness counts.

More to come, but for now, soap bubbles and a silly grin sustain.

Take care, people.

Great Music Monday: Dixie Chicks National Anthem

2006-09-11T22:33:00.000-04:00

(slightly late)

Great Music Monday...

The Dixie Chicks sing the National Anthem

Patriotism is a word that has always felt slightly alienating to me. Growing up, the Patriots were a sports team at the middle school, and the word evoked the mental image of drums beating and screaming sports fans packed into Friday night stadiums, and parents and school administrators who extended a universe of special priviledges to kids who walked around like arrogant assholes most of the time. It had nothing to do with me and my bookish, geeky life.

When I got a little older, notions of patriotism coincided with the mainstream emergence of extremist militia groups beginning to make themselves known in places like Montana, Colorado and Tennessee. Patriotism, if prevalent enough to be called into identity politics, equalled radical zealotry and violence in the name of country.

After 9/11, patriotism took on a whole new frightening meaning. With one sentence, with one damning declaration, President Bush ushered us all into a new America where thoughtful political discourse is treasonous and questioning the actions of our administration is met with a love it, leave it or face vicious death threats from total strangers response.

"If you're not with us, you're with the terrorists."

In other words, if our vengeance isn't your agenda, let vengeance rain down on you as well. And rain it has. Patriotism has come to stand for a campaign of dominance, violence, oppression, torture and bullying militarism. The hate filled, devisive rhetoric of the new American patriots has done violence to us, our countrymen, our nationalism and our meat and potatoes.

This isn't my America, that isn't my flag, these aren't my countrymen and that is not my patriotism.

And so it is that I come to today's music selection. Somewhere between the hate mongering right wing "patriotic" garbage and the first real thoughts of becoming an ex-patriot, two years ago this song came across my headphones, and I fell in love -

-in love with the simple beauty of a songwriter's tribute to the land of the free and the home of the brave.

On this the five year anniversary of 9/11, I present a little bit of American pride.

Bush's America isn't my America, and I won't let my America be stolen from me.

Dear readers, the National Anthem.

Great Music Monday: Nina Simone

2006-09-04T22:59:00.000-04:00

Nina Simone

Nina Simone is someone whose music I have heard my whole life, but it's only been in the last few years I was able to truly hear and appreciate her for the gifted artist she is.

My first introductions to Nina were through old records in my family's house, records of her doing jazz standards, all of which I generally preferred other versions of.

A few years ago, I heard her doing a beautiful and greatly sorrowful version of I Shall Be Released, a song I could listen to a hundred times (particularly when done by The Band). The intimacy in her voice, the sadness, the slowness of the song haunted me. When she sings, she takes her time, and listening to her you know she feels, deeply, every note that comes out of her. She uses music and silence together to create a song, and the result, for me, is always a strong emotional pull into the music.

She recreates any song that she sings, giving it new dimensions of meaning and heart.

Below are two videos;

The first is of her 1984 performance Live at Ronnie Scott's. The song is If You Knew. It's deeply, deeply affecting and vulnerable, and I'm amazed at her willingness to live inside such wrenching emotion, even just for a song, and then to do it in front of an audience, so real, so stripped. Just amazing. Amazing.

The second is a recording of her covering Here Comes the Sun by the Beatles. It's probably my favorite version of that song. She brings a quietness, an intimacy and reassurance that makes me believe, really believe that everything is going to be all right when I hear it. Her piano work is light and the overall instrumental affect of the song is beautiful and comforting and hopeful, and it goes to a place beneath the surface in a way the Beatles never did. (Although I like their version as well, it doesn't hold a candle to Simone's work here). I added photographs of her to the audio track to qualify it as a video, lol. Some of them are album covers, others images of her at various stages throughout her career.

Nina died at age 70 in 2003. Her work never will. Enjoy.

If You Knew

Here Comes the Sun

Snapshot of a Commute, August 2006

2006-08-22T19:57:00.000-04:00

There are moments in life where the evolution of time bends itself to the bliss you're experiencing. There are moments where, immersed deep in the pleasure that happens somewhere between breathing and getting what you need, where seconds stretch to hours, stretch to years, and you realize with a start that you're smack in the middle of one of those situations you always said you'd have when you were very small and used to say *that's* how my life will be when I grow up. One of those situations that you think you might want to live forever inside of.

If you're lucky, you're the kind of person who can put yourself outside of it, just for a second, and recognize it for what it is and be so, so thankful.

On my way home from work today, I couldn't hold back the smile I felt, the kind that starts at your face but grows to inhabit your whole body. New York City summers are always a little hot, a little sticky, a little smelling of garbage and cursing that damn ice cream truck song that plays on every corner.

In the two block walk from the train station to my house, the neighborhood kids had opened three separate fire hydrants, and the street was a cool arching tunnel of water and fine mist that gave off a metallic smell, a smell of concrete and water and summer like the nozzle on the end of a garden hose. Adults had carried folding tables out onto the street and played card games on the edge of the hydrant's mist, wearing bathing suit tops, drinking beer out of paper bags and wearing dirty white towels around their necks to wipe the sweat and beaded water from their hair and brow. Boom boxes were shoved into the windows of the walkups lining the block blaring 10 different songs all at once and the vibe on the street was as if nobody had a care in the world.

It was infectious.

There was still that sour summer garbage smell in the air, and my clothes were still heavy and sticking to me uncomfortably, but in that moment I didn't really mind. I'm 32, I live in Brooklyn, and I'm doing exactly what I set out to do and I'm living right exactly where I want to be.

What a good feeling.

Great Music Monday: Laura Nyro

2006-08-21T02:07:00.000-04:00

In keeping with my ever expanding love of music, beginning today I've decided to institute a new blog feature.

Welcome to Great Music Monday!

Each week I'll be posting a new entry featuring an artist or song that has and continues to move me, redefine my way of thinking, earmark my comfort rituals and otherwise bring fabulousness into my day to day goings on. I picked Mondays because, well, Mondays suck.

I invite you to seek out your own favorites, post them and drop me a comment linking to you, so we can all share the major music love and improve the quality of Mondays everywhere.

For this week...

Laura Nyro

Pretty much everyone has heard Nyro's music, most likely without realizing. Nyro, most commercially popular in the late 60s and early 70s, was a prolific artist with a solid artistic vision she refused to compromise. Hitting the music scene at age 19, she released five albums between 1967 and 1971, proving herself to be an innovative, soulful musician. Although a soulfull, intimate performer, Nyro received the most acclaim and commercial success as a songwriter, writing hits for Three Dog Night, Barbra Streisand, The Fifth Dimension, and Blood, Sweat & Tears and includes billboard hits Wedding Bell Blues, Stoned Soul Picnic, And When I Die, Save the Country, and Poverty Train.

In her own performances, Nyro had a style and sophistication all her own, and was never better than when she sat alone behind her piano and sang to audiences as if she was whispering declarations of love. Growing increasingly frustrated with the direction record producers wanted her to take, Nyro withdrew from the music scene at 24, unwilling to sacrifice her art for the sake of marketability. She returned five years later and continued to make incredible music with no regard for commercial success.

Laura died in 1997 at age 49 of ovarian cancer. She is, in my opinion, one of the most underrated musicians of her era. You may have heard her songs, but you've never really heard them until you've heard her singing them herself. Whether doing her original work or covering other artists of her era (Carole King & Dusty Springfield were favorites of hers) listening to her sing was and is like hearing her song for the first time.

Below, Laura performing Save the Country for an NBC music showcase in 1969. Save the Country was later covered by The 5th Dimension, and is equally formidable (if slightly more mainstream version), but Nyro brings an immediacy and emotional punch to the song that gets me every time.

Further listening...
(tracks I'd recommend)

From Spread Your Wings & Fly: Live at the Fillmore East 1971 (Sony, 2004)
Save the Country
Timer/Up on the Roof Medley
Ain't Nothin Like the Real Thing Medley

From Gonna Take A Miracle (Sony, Original Recording Remastered, 2004)
Natural Woman
Up on the Roof

From New York Tendaberry (Sony, Original Recording Remastered, 2002)
You Don't Love Me When I Cry
New York Tendaberry
Mercy on Broadway

And pretty much the entire retrospective Stoned Soul Picnic: The Best of Laura Nyro.

Happy listening!

Party People in the House Stand Up

2006-08-14T19:29:00.000-04:00

SOOO, anyone that knows me knows that I'm a complete music junkie. If I'm doing laundry, there's a song in my head. If I'm on the train, a song in my head. In the shower, waiting in line at the movies, cleaning house, talking on the phone, doing paperwork for my job, in a staff meeting, at a funeral, WHEREVER I am, I've got an inner soundtrack.

Were I a better singer, I would annoy everyone I know by busting into song old MGM style mid-conversation when people's words jar a lyric or three. Being that I'm not a great singer, a fact I consider to be among the great tragedies of my life, I keep it to myself. But nod smugly, that I've got the song for any and every occasion.

I'm one of those annoying people that turn the music up and insist that everyone in the car just listen when a great song comes on... stop with the conversation, people, and just hear that music. I'm on of those people who make mix CDs for friends and give them album names, themes, cover art and a dossier describing why each song was included and what's so great about it. I collect music of all kinds; I love finding rare covers, b-side tracks, long lost bootleg live recordings... the more obsolete the better. Since the advent of the internet, I'm in heaven.

In short, I'm an audiophile.

Imagine my pleasure, then, to discover MOG, an all music lover's community. Similar to myspace, MOG aims to connect people through their musical tastes. You create a profile, and then upload a list of your entire digital music collection. MOG makes daily listen lists for you based on what other users are listening to who have some of the same titles in their collections as you do in yours. MOG users don't play; it's all about the music. There's a live playlist feature that allows you to link your music client (Itunes, MusicMatch, Winamp, Windows Media Player, whatever) to your blog, myspace or webpage and publish a self-updating last played list. In other words, any of you fine folks reading right now can skip your glance over to the right side of this page and check out what I'm listening to this minute, or whatever I was listening to the last time my computer was on. It's a great way to share music, get the lowdown on new things to hear and fall in love with, and generally broaden your musical horizons.

Of course, being relatively new (launched at the end of June) it still has a few kinks to work out, but as far as I can tell it's all about music loving, and has no spam, privacy violations or spyware involved.

I encourage ya'll to check it out.

MOG's main page is here. MY MOG is here. Check out my live playlist, scrolled at the right...

The girl and I, summer in the city

2006-07-18T01:12:00.000-04:00

The girl and I, a few summer pics, NYC 2006.

Morgan on the balcony in the setting sun, Montauk.

Both of us, Long Island.

Morgan, fashion plate extraordinaire, Long Island.

Me, a rare pose in front of the camera, Long Island.

Double Dutch Revelations

2006-06-17T23:25:00.000-04:00

Double Dutch, it seems, is built into the chemical composition of little girls who grow up in Bed Stuy. When I first watched my kids grab some spare phone cord and hit the pavement to show their stuff, it was as if I had suddenly dropped into another country. Pop-ups, snappers, kick-overs, peppers, can-cans, and threesies were the language they spoke, and they all seemed to know not just the words but the accepted jump etiquette. The gang repping and the ho-ing and the bitches and infighting melted into grudging respect and admiration for the moves. Everybody's moves. Even when the moves weren't executed perfectly or even well. Apparently, you don't fuck with Double Dutch. Emily Post had landed in Bed-Stuy in the form of a rope rhythm, and watching them respect and support each other was amazing. It was some kind of street magic, and it was wonderful to watch.

Even the best magic can't erase reality, and it was in one of these moments recently that the reality of life in Bed-Stuy came back on us with a jolt.

The kids and I were out on the street, them jumping, me watching as we all waited for everyone to arrive for group therapy. We were laughing and joking and forgetting for a moment that some of us were bloods and some of us were crips and some of us had gotten our ass kicked on the way there and some would surely get jumped on the way home. We were laughing and forgetting, until it happened.

There was a sound.

A terrible, loud crack of a sound that rushed close up on us and reverberated in our ears and stopped time to deafen all the other street noise, and it came from close by. Too close. About 10 feet away close.

I stood in the street, and I knew it was a gunshot. I knew that I was standing in the middle of the street with 12 kids and no cover, and no idea how to protect them, or me, or get beyond the fact that someone was shooting at us. My kids are gang kids, and it had just caught up to us all.

After about 15 seconds, which felt like about 15 hours, I turned, only to see that all of my kids had simultaneously hit the deck.

Seriously.

12 kids, and every single one of them reacted instantly without hesitating, questioning, or feeling in the least bit surprised or taken off guard. They just hit the ground in one fluid, instinctual movement. One of them was crouching and repeating my name, pulling at me to crouch with them.

Instead, I looked down the block where the shot had come from. A group of teenage boys were emerging from behind a few cars and looking down the block at us. One of them ran into the street, crouched, and ran away quickly. Two seconds later, we heard another crack and the boys scattered.

It wasn't a gunshot at all, it was some kind of super firecracker. The kids got up, brushed themselves off and stepped right back into their double dutch game. Within seconds, the slap of the cord on the pavement was beating out a rhythm that my kids fell in step with easily, unphased.

"It's all right, Ms. Julie," one of them said to me, noticing that I still hadn't moved from my spot in the street and mistaking my frozen stance for residual fear or shock. What I felt wasn't fear, though. Not after those first seconds, anyway. Rather, what I felt was guilt. Guilt at growing up white and not in Bed Stuy, and for privilege, the kind that my kids will be lucky to ever reach a point where they understand they were denied.

All of us, the kids and I, had thought it was a gunshot.

I was the only one lucky enough to not know what to do.

Meme O'licious

2006-05-08T21:59:00.000-04:00

Have you ever had so much to say that you just can't say anything at all?

That's been me lately. A TON of rather big life things have transpired since I last posted in February. Needless to say, I've been busy changing jobs, directing a new show (sort of), travelling and dealing with the slow dissalution of my relationship. I'm in a state of mind now where I feel peace with everything that has happened, although my new job is opening my eyes to a lot of things and forcing me to re-examine myself and my clinical approach to social work related issues. More will come on that later. For now, just a fun meme to get me back in the blogging groove. Thanks to lovegreendog at blogger.com for this one.

1. How did you get the idea for your profile name?
I love the city, for me there is no where else on earth. Still, I will always be long haired 70s folk singer songwriter peacenik girl in both my heart and appearance. My profile name is a marriage between those two aspects of my identity.
2. What song are you playing now, or wish you were playing?
I Found A Reason by Cat Power
3. Has the death of a celebrity ever made you cry?
No, but a non-fiction television moment that did was John Kerry's succession speech the morning after the election.
4. What colour underwear are you wearing?
None right now, I'm laying in bed, but today I wore purple.
5. Do you want a baby?
Eventually. I vacillate between wanting to have one and wanting to adopt one and avoid the whole pregnancy thing/vagina birth.
6. What does your dad do for a living?
Never met him.
7. What does your mum do for a living?
Neonatal Intensive Care Nurse
8. What is/are your pet's name(s)?
Two cats, Albert & Alex (pictured above)
9. What colour are your bed sheets?
Cream colored feather duvet, and I go back and forth between pale lavender and cucumber green sheets.
10. What are the last 3 digits of your phone number?
837
11. What was the last concert you went to?
Broadway on Broadway last August... a sneak preview of the upcoming theatre season where the casts from all the current and newly opening shows get together for an impromptu free concert in Times Square. Very fabulous.
12. Who was with you?
Just me
13. What was the last film you watched?
Roman Polanski's Oliver Twist
14. Who do you dislike most at this moment?
George Bush & Donald Rumsfield
15. What food do you crave right now?
Buttered popcorn
16. Did you dream last night?
Don't remember
17. What was the last TV show you watched?
Big Love, which is my current best show evah tv obsession.
18. What is your fav piece of jewelry?
Don't really like jewelry, although I like wearing the commitment ring partner gave me for 1st anniversary. I've been debating on whether I should stop wearing it now that our relationship is changing or not, but I've discovered I miss it when I take it off.
19. What is to the left of you?
Nightstand with cell phone, lamp, glass of water, stack of magazines and graphic novel version of V for Vendetta.
20. What was the last thing you ate?
Cheese tortellini with alfredo sauce
21. Who is your best friend of the opposite sex?
Hmmmm, don't really have many male friends. I would have to say my cousin Phillip.
22. Who last MSN'd you?
I'm so not into instant messaging. Partner was the last person to text me on my phone, which is about as close as I get.
23. Where is your significant other right now?
Harlem
24. Do you have a crush?
Yes. Someone I work with who is totally smart, totally classy, totally real, totally beautiful and totally too young for me.
25. What is his/her name?
I could tell you but I'd have to kill you.
26. When was the last time you had your hair cut?
4 months ago, my roommate trimmed my layers for me.
27. Are you on any meds?
No
28. Do you have a mental disease?
No
29. What shirt are you wearing?
None, currently, I'm in bed. Today I work a brown turtleneck sweater during the day.
30. Are you sexy?
In my own brainy way. I think my confidence is sexy.
31. What's your favourite store?
Best Buy, Filene's Bargain Basement, Trader Joe's and The Container Store
32. Are you thirsty?
No
33. Can you imagine yourself ever getting married?
Yes, my favorite part about being in a relationship is that domestic based intimacy that comes with cohabitation...the simple act of living your life out in the company of someone you really love. Grocery shopping together, cooking together, hearing the shower running, seeing her mail come to my house. There's something about it that has always felt really romantic and really secure to me.
34. Who's someone you haven't seen in a while and miss?
Mandy!
35. Where do you work?
Case Manager/counselor working with at-risk and gang related teens in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. (Bed-Stuy do or die!)

War on terror: A bus ride in BK

2006-03-28T23:19:00.000-05:00

This happened to me the other day.

I was taking the bus into downtown Brooklyn to pay my rent, to a destination that just happens to be right across the street from both the Brooklyn Municipal Building and federal courthouse.

About 10 blocks away, a very clean cut man in a business suit, and of Middle Eastern descent, boarded the bus and took a seat in the very back, two rows behind me. Immediately, he began loudly singing and chanting what sounded like Islamic prayers and rocking back and forth slightly. This was slightly disconcerting, as most of the crazies are significantly less groomed than he was. A blocks later, another Middle Eastern man boarded the bus, went all the way to the back and sat directly in front of the first, who was still chanting and now violently rocking. He began murmering to himself loudly about ground zero, 9/11 and why it happened. At the next stop a third Middle Eastern man boarded the bus, went directly to the back and sat on the other side of the chanting man. The two latecomers cast several glances at one other. The rocking man stood up and went down the aisle to the front of the bus, to the driver, chanting loudly as he went. He yelled at the driver in Islamic, who yelled back at him to sit down or get off the bus. He returned to his seat, while the other two men continued to glance at each other and watch the first.

Around the time the second man boarded, I felt a tightening in my chest, a feeling I recognized as fear, and began an inner dialogue with myself about what to do. My instincts were telling me to get off the bus, and get as far from it as I could. Certainly, living in the city and passing National Guardsmen with automatic weapons patrolling the train stations and streets of Manhattan on a daily basis, random bag searches and soundbytes about the "War on Terror" permeating the media, the threat is not lost to New Yorkers . Most of us, I believe, approach our daily lives with a 'whatever happens will happen' attitude, not cowering or allowing an unnamed threat to inform our daily routines. I include myself in this group. On the bus, though, though I felt myself becoming genuinely afraid that the men on the bus were terrorists about to set in motion a terrible act.
At the same time, I rationalized to myself that two Middle Eastern men on a bus and a religious crazy did not constitute a terrorist cell, and my fear was being generated by post 9/11 racist paranoia. I don't want to be the kind of person who looks at a Middle Eastern person and assumes they are a terrorist. Yet, as the bus rolled toward downtown, I began to feel nauseous and in the back of my mind I was scoping out each block, thinking about the physical surroundings and where I would run to if something bad went down. My guilt was mounting as my desire to get off the bus grew and grew, and I was having a strong inner debate on whether my principals and desire to not participate in 9/11 racial profiling were worth dying for in the face of what to me felt like suspicious activity.

My principles won, and I stayed on the bus.

I was never so relieved as I was when I got to my stop and got off.

I had been really, really afraid.

People say that as a nation we're becoming numb to 9/11. People say that as the grass keeps growing and we have gone back to spacing out in front of the television, obsessing over the latest TomKat drama, and perpetuating our consumerist way of life, we have begun to forget about the pain, and shock, and horror of that day in September... the reality of the lives lost and how our nation was permanently altered.

People wear t-shirts, signs and bumper stickers with the catch-phrase "Never Forget," and use our grief to justify phantom occupation in far away countries.

People say that to disagree is unpatriotic.

To me, the real damage of 9/11 isn't about any of those things. We lost something deep and imbedded that day, and it isn't measured by buildings that fell, a generation off to war, or even lives that were lost.

It's in the clench of fear around the heart of an otherwise neutral girl, just trying to pay her rent, and the bitter tastes of suspicion and judgement where it didn't used to be.

Self Portrait Tuesday: AT LAST

2006-02-13T20:27:00.000-05:00

So, after many initial efforts and photographs that were underexposed, overexposed, had my finger in the frame, and made me look like Snape (and not in a good way)... I'm finally set for Self Portrait Tuesday.

The theme of February is All of Me, so I wanted to start my first ever entry a current picture, something straightforward that says 'this is me.'

So, this is me. Monday night, February 13th, just home from work.

Snow Falls in Brooklyn

2006-02-12T10:59:00.001-05:00

Few things put a smile on my face as instantly as a really good snow. It started yesterday around 2pm in the afternoon, and continued all through the day and night. It's still going strong. I went out for a 2am stroll last night, just to enjoy the quiet. I went out this afternoon and took some pictures.

I thought I'd share. Here's the snow, falling on the street where I live.

Outside my apartment ........................My building

Larger versions and other shots can be seen Here at my photobucket.

Slow Dancing on the Q Train

2006-02-07T00:23:00.000-05:00

Okay, so I'm still working on Self Portrait Tuesdays. Last Tuesday, I sat down and tried to kick off my participation by taking a photograph of myself, a "come as you are" type snap.

Needless to say, I forgot that I've always been a terrible photographer, and also not terribly photogenic. I really didn't manage to take anything that didn't look like a mug shot, so I'm trying again tomorrow. If I still can't get anything decent, I'll say to hell with it and post whatever I end up with.

Meanwhile, I've been recently afflicted with an unexpected yet not entirely unwelcome bout of sentimentality. I was on the train home today and had set my MP3 player to a random sampling of songs from my "covers" genre. As an aside, I LOVE covers. My friend Mandy calls me the queen of covers. The more rare they are, the better. I like it when it's an artist covering something outside their usual genre, I like it if it's studio quality, even better if its tinny, live, and scratchy sounding. I think coves are so intimate...all of us carry around songs that make our hearts beat a little stronger, and get us on a core level. When we sing those songs, it's impossible to hide your real self, and I love watching so called "celebrity" people drop their guard like that and just sing something they love, something personal to them. It's a little voyeristic, I guess, and more real.

Anyway, up came a very fantastic cover of Minnie Driver singing "Hungry Heart" by Bruce Springsteen, and I had a swoony moment of sentimentality right there. Had my partner been with me, I would have swept her up into a slow dance right there in the middle of the 6pm commute. There are a few songs that do that to me, that make me yearn for that kind of closeness that you only get with a great slow dance. Driver's cover of Hungry Heart is one, another is At Last by Etta James, Andy Williams singing Moon River, and still another is Kiss to Build a Dream On by Louis Armstrong. When I hear those songs I'm still 9 years old and fantasizing about my perfect date, who cooks me dinner and cues the music when I come in the door...I don't have to ask, she just knows what to play, and we laugh and let the food get cold while she puts her head on my shoulder where we dance in a little easy circle all night long. I was never a little girl who dreamt about the perfect wedding...I knew even then I didn't want to marry man (and, how funny that I always knew I would be the breadwinner, lol). For me, it was always, ALWAYS that long slow dance.

Maybe that came from my grandfather, who used to slow dance with me when I was very small. I stepped on his feet, and we danced our way through all his records.

Anyway, it's hours later and I'm still slow dancing in my head.

What a nice feeling.

Self Portrait Tuesday

2006-01-29T01:56:00.000-05:00

Recently, I came across a great photo project/blog site called Self Portrait Tuesdays.

Every month has a different theme, and each Tuesday of that month participating people post a relevant self portrait of themselves on their blog, and link back to it on the Self Portrait Tuesdays site.

It's interesting, full of humanity and really fun in a voyeristic way. I'm addicted.

I've also decided to start. Therefore, watch this space. Starting this Tuesday (1/31) I'll be posting self portraits. January's theme was Personal History.

February's theme is All of Me.

For more info, and I encourage my readers to participate, see full details Here, or click the button below.

The New Year, taking stock

2006-01-04T11:16:00.000-05:00

So, another one bites the dust.

Actually, that's way more full of doom than the tone of this message will be. If you're looking for sarcastic, pessimistic and everything sucks, you should probably stop reading.

I wouldn't call myself Mary Sunshine by any means. I try to look at things with real eyes, call out the bad things and always remember the good. Lately, though, I'm wondering if I really am Mary Sunshine and someone just forgot to tell me.

I've always thought that New Year was one of those holidays that always sounds better than it is. I was thrilled to tune in to How I Met Your Mother recently and see that I'm not the only one, and there was an entire episode devoted to that mythical (and non-existant) perfect New Year's.

(Sidebar: If you're not watching How I Met Your Mother, you really should be. It's fabulous. LEGENDARY!)

Anyway, every year I tell myself that this is the New Year that will be different, I'll have a great party, populated by interesting people, and do something other than watching the ball drop and calling that handful of amazing people I love. Or sometimes I tell myself that this is the year I'll do something really romantic in the tradition of An Affair to Remember involving the Empire State Building, a declaration of love, and cartwheels.

Yeah, I know. So it never happens. New Year's Eve 2005 had the distinction of being the most quiet and unsocial yet (spent praying in the New Year at church. Urgh. Long story. I'll tell it in a minute).

Even so, I've been catching up on my blog reading today, and time after time I've read how my friends spend their new year feeling lonely, dissatisfied and generally blue. Several of them mentioned the involvement of tears. It's making me feel sad for them, but also strangely peaceful about where I'm at right now.

My new year may have been spent in church, but I've got good love, a roof over my head and groceries in my fridge, an all day movie date this weekend, and when people ask me what I do or where I live, I don't feel that old pang of disappointment in my heart before I tell them. I have money stress, and job stress sometimes, but everybody has those, right? All in all I think that adds up to a life I don't hate. I think I'm happier than I remember to be thankful for, to whatever exists out there that causes it.

It's 2006, and I'm starting out in the black. Here's hoping that when I tune in this time next year, I'll have moved forward somehow, and have the same peace I feel right now.

Oh, and as for praying in the New Year? My partner's tradition. The family holiday visit (my family) went so well we decided to stay a few extra days, including the New Year. Partner has an amazing network of family and friends in her church community, they gather for a dynamic service of music and love and prayer every year to ring in the new year. It's as much a family event as a church event, and being out of town in a strange place she was missing it terribly. She wanted to keep her church tradition, so I went with her so she wouldn't be alone. Typically she does her church thing and I do my ball drop calling thing, and we reconnect after midnight. Going with her was only right since she spent the entire holiday season with my family. As for the church, it was teeny tiny, but the people were really nice, and we were only there for an hour. It could have been a lot worse.

Eh. Chalk it up a a new experience. Although next year I think we'll get back in the city before 12/31. Just the same.

The girl and me, my parent's house, Christmas 2005

These Boots Were Made for Walkin

2005-12-20T13:53:00.000-05:00

So, there's a mass transit strike in NYC. No buses, no subways. Gridlock.

There's also a lot of bullshit rhetoric flying about the place of unions, the relative evillness of the MTA, blah blah blah fairness cakes.

The reality is that the TWU is every bit as corrupt, political and self-serving as the MTA. The reality is that the union administrators are pulling in six figure salaries as compared to the actual train & bus operator's 60k a year. The reality is that in-fighting in the TWU is a major cause of where we are in the city today, and I'm not getting behind anybody's billion dollar office politic scrapping. The people being most hurt by this strike are not the city bigwigs, who can continue to drive their Range Rovers and Bentleys to work, with an inconvience of heavy traffic.

Rather, its the TWU members who will be fined two working days pay for every day of striking, and the millions of working poor in the city who don't have cars, can't get to work, and will either lose their jobs OR lose money as a direct result of the commercial revenue not being generated. Those six figure union admin people can take the two days's pay penalty with ease.

The rest of us are walking one and two hours to work in 20 degree weather.

I am generally a major supporter of unions, organized labor, and the fight for a good living wage.

The major sticking points of this strike are the MTA trying to raise the retirement age from 55 to 62 for new hires, and an 8 percent a year wage increase over the next three years.

First, 60k with great medical, dental, vacation and retirement is nothing to scoff at. Transit workers are paid much more than many professionals working jobs that require more skill and more education (IE teachers, social workers, and human services in general). I've NEVER in all my working years heard of an eight percent wage increase at one time, let alone eight percent every year for three years. Where will this increase come from? The billion dollar surplus the MTA has at the end of this year. Which means never mind the badly needed system improvements. And regarding retiring at 62, welcome to reality. Fewer and fewer places are offering a 55 year old retirement age, and really we don't need it. 55 was fine 50 years ago when the life expectancy was 65 or 70. Now people are living 20 and sometimes 30 years longer, and are in generally better health at 55 than we were decades ago.

The TWU is unreasonable and so is this strike.

It would be nice if both the MTA and TWU would take their corruption out in the back alley and duke it out themselves, rather than cripple an entire city at its busiest time of year.

Outing Myself, or: In Search of an Odball Pairing

2005-12-10T00:09:00.000-05:00

For those of you who know me well, no, this is not a post about being a lesbian.

That's old news. Really old.

Rather, this is the moment where I out myself as a big internet geek.

In other words, a reader of fanfic.

Yes, I love it.

I love the slash, I love the genfic, I love the rare pairings and the smut and the angst and the darkfic and the whole fanfic universe. For every really stupid fic I come across that won't be read beyond the 1st paragraph, there are two amazing, well written, compelling and totally interesting fics giving new spin to great characters we love OR filling in the blanks that shows so often leave behind.

Long live fanfic!

That said, I recently saw the film version of RENT. Being a longtime RENThead, I was excited and trepidatious at the same time. I've seen the stage show 4 times, and the music has the power to make me cry just listening. I was worried about Rosario Dawson stepping in to the role of Mimi for the film. Not because I don't think she's a great actor...she is. Rather, in her climb from indie quirk talent to blockbuster supporting roles (say, KIDS vs Pluto Nash) she's developed this off screen gangsta personality I find totally grating. Lose the tude, Rosario, you're far too talented to need it. You're only really too cool for school when you don't act like you are.

Anyway, my worries for all for naught. She was GREAT! Although the film had some majorly clunky moments due to Chris Columbus's weird need to have spoken dialogue and altered timelines... the film really did stay true to the spirit of the show, and had some GREAT moments to balance it out. Overall, it was a good experience and I'd like to see it again. I think that's very much due to the fact the nearly all of the original broadway cast that ORIGINATED the roles were cast for the movie. Rosario as Mimi being one of only two exceptions.

ANYWAY, she was amazing, and brought such a vulnerability to Mimi's character that was played just right. Not pathetic, but compelling. The only thing is, I felt that Rosario had WAY more chemistry on screen with Wilson Jermaine Heredia, who played Angel, than she did with Adam Pascal's Roger.

Which brings me back to fanfic. Before the film, it never occurred to me that there was RENT fanfic out there. The show was just right as it was. After the movie, however, I'm interested to explore some relationship stuff between the movieverse's Angel and Mimi, as their onscreen chemistry was just. that. good. I've looked, but all I can find is Mark/Roger fic.

Consider this a call for submissions, or a request for links. If you write it, I'll post it. If you give me places to visit, I will. I'm on the hunt for movieverse Mimi/Angel fic, pre or post canon events, or even AU. Anything that takes that chemistry between them and runs with it.

Yabba Dabba Doo

2005-11-25T12:04:00.000-05:00

I don't know where or when, but I've recently realized that somehow in the processs of living my life I've become Fred Flintstone. I am, in a word, practical. I have a wardrobe of simple, classic pieces that stay in style from season to season. I have two pairs of shoes; one brown, one black. I've had the same hair color and style for the last 10 years. I go to work every day, put my feet up on my days off, and am learning to be a good provider for the family I am building. Yabba dabba doo. Minus the loincloth and bowling hobby.

It is through living with my partner that I've come to recognize my inner Flintstone. If I am Fred, then more to point she is my Wilma, coiffed hair, coy giggle and shopping addiction included. She spends more on having her hair done in a month than I have in my lifetime to date. She has 250 pairs of shoes to my two, owns handbags that are more expensive than my car, and assures me that it is I who is living in the stone age when I question why it is again that she can't possibly be seen in the $245 jeans she bought four months ago.

Consider a typical Saturday afternoon conversation.

Julie: Quiet, reading a book on the couch

Gf: *LOUD SIGH*

Julie: looks up at partner, who is well into hour two of ebay shopping, then goes back to her book

Gf: *LOUDER SIGH*

Julie: Everything okay honey?

GF: Yes.

Julie: Great! Goes back to book.

Gf: It's just...LOUD SIGH.

Julie: I thought everything was great?

Gf: It is.

Julie: Great! Picks up book again, reads the same sentance for the 8th time.

Gf: It would be even greater if only...

Julie: LOUD SIGH

Gf: What? You asked!

Julie: You're right. What is it?

Gf: LOUD SIGH. If only I had a new pair of jeans.

Julie: You have 20 pairs of jeans already. They look great on you, honey. Nobody wears a pair of jeans like you.

Gf: Thanks baby. LOUD SIGH. bats eyelashes. If only...

Julie: You just bought a pair of $200 jeans three weeks ago. Where are they?

Gf: I wore them already.

Julie: And?

Gf: knowing Julie is starting down a dangerous line of questioning. Turns laptop screen. Just look at these. They're so hot! Wouldn't my ass look really hot in these? shakes ass a little to demonstrate.

Julie: Yes, they would. Your ass always looks hot. Espeically in those jeans, because they look just like the jeans you just bought.

Gf: Those were True Religion. These are Antik. They're completely different.

Julie: Jeans are jeans.

Gf: clutches heart and gasps in horror

Julie: Do you have the money for these jeans, being that they seem to be the new life and death item in your life?

Gf: giggles and slides into Julie's lap.

Julie: LOUDER SIGH

GF: I was thinking...

Julie: rolls eyes

Gf: I have half now, and being that you got paid yesterday, and I don't get paid until next week... wiggles ass suggestively while talking

Julie: Do you plan on campaigning all week until I give in?

GF: Of course. giggles AND we could make a night out of it. You know you've been wanting to try that French place on W 5th. It IS right next to [insert boutique here].

Julie: SIGH. Where's my keys?

GF: heads into the bedroom for shoes. I don't have any shoes to wear with them. We're going to have to stop in [insert shoe store here] while we're out too...

It isn't that I don't know exactly what she's doing when she's angling for a shopping trip. It's just that her pout is too sexy. Is her spending justfied because she works in the fashion and entertainment industries and her career success is directly related her ability to fit in and keep up with the Jonses? Possibly. Does that matter in the face of the impact it has on her (and, by proxy MY) wallet? Doubtful. Will I continue to induldge her flirtatious shopping requests and fashionista lifestye?

Yeah. Happiness is like that.

Meanwhile, yabba dabbo doo.

Anti Rape Condom for Women

2005-09-18T13:27:00.000-04:00

This article came across my desk today.

REUTERS. Kleinmond, South Africa - A South African inventor unveiled a new anti-rape female condom on Wednesday that hooks onto an attacker’s penis and aims to cut one of the highest rates of sexual assault in the world.

“Nothing has ever been done to help a woman so that she does not get raped and I thought it was high time,” Sonette Ehlers, 57, said of the "rapex," a device worn like a tampon that has sparked controversy in a country used to daily reports of violent crime.

Police statistics show more than 50,000 rapes are reported every year, while experts say the real figure could be four times that as they say most rapes of acquaintances or children are never reported.

Ehlers said the “rapex” hooks onto the rapist’s skin, allowing the victim time to escape and helping to identify perpetrators.

“He will obviously be too pre-occupied at this stage,” Ehlers told reporters in Kleinmond, a small village about 60 miles east of Cape Town. “I promise you he is going to be too sore. He will go straight to hospital.”

The device, made of latex and held firm by shafts of sharp barbs, can only be removed from the man through surgery which will alert hospital staff, and ultimately, the police, she said.

It also reduces the chances of a woman falling pregnant or contracting AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases from the attacker by acting in the same way as a female condom.

South Africa has more people with HIV/AIDS than any other country, with one in nine of its 45 million population infected.

Ehlers, who showed off a prototype on Wednesday, said women had tried it for comfort and it had been tested on a plastic male model but not yet on a live man. Production was planned to start next year.

PICS HERE: RAPEX website

As you can imagine, this is causing ripples of controversy across feminist groups, human rights groups and law enforcement professionals.

I've not yet made up my mind. I do think that this is something that might actually deter rapists, much more so than the threat of a prison sentance or other legalities. I also like the fact that once it hooks in, it can only be removed through surgery, and therefore will always identify a perpetrator of a sex crime.

Critics are saying that it will enrage the attacker and lead to a more violent attack or murder for the intended victim; also that it will just lead to more anal rapes and not be any kind of deterrant. Plus the usual barbaric, blah blah.

In my opinion, rape is barbaric.

Stupid Misogyny

2005-09-10T11:39:00.000-04:00

SO, I haven't been to the movies in ages, so yesterday I decided to do a day at the movies. In other words, being in NYC where there is no such thing as a matinee and you can't go for cheaper than $10, I went to a big stadium theatre, paid for one and stayed all day ultimately sneaking into four.

One of these was The Aristocrats. For anyone not familiar, it's a documentary made my Penn Gillette (of Penn & Teller) about the history and sociology of a well known joke on the comedy circuit called "The Aristrocrats."

The documentary featured about 100 comics telling stories about how they first heard the joke, telling the joke, and telling why the joke is significant to them. In theory, the joke is this boundary breaking, taboo busting legend among comics that started on the vaudeville stage and is still around today, morphing to fit whatever is going on.

The framework of the joke goes like this...

A man walks into a talent agent's office. He says he has this great amazing act that he knows the guy will like. The agent says 'tell me about it.' The man says well, my wife and I come out on stage, we both drop our pants, shit on the stage and roll around in it. The agent says "what do you call an act like that?" The man says..."The Aristocrats."

Comics love the joke because it's all about improvisation. From the time the agent says "Tell me about the act" to the end punchline of "The Aristocrats" they get to improv what was happening in the act. The deal is the point is to make it as vulgar, desparing, offensive, and horrific as possible and then have the irony of "The Aristocrats."

The thing I really hated was that the bulk of the comics interviewed were men, everyone from Bob Saget to Jason Alexander to Robin Williams to Tim Conway. All of them told the joke the same. The man comes out on stage with his family. He tells his wife to lay down, he drops his pants and shits in her mouth. He rolls her over and does her in the ass. He calls out his 9 year old son and 7 year old daughter. He puts his big drippy cock in his daughter's mouth while his son does her up the ass. They switch around, so the son is doing the mother, he's doing the daughter up the ass and then they're all shitting on each other and rolling around in shit and cum and on and on and... The Aristocrats!

Spare me. I was watching the audience, because I didn't particularly find anything about the film funny. I looked around and the men in the audience where falling out of their chairs laughing, and some of the women were also laughing but not very many. I found the whole thing disturbing.

Yes, the joke was about breaking taboos. But vulgarity for vulgarity's sake isn't progressive, it's just vulgarity. Inapropriateness doesn't automatically qualify something as revolutionary. All of the incarnations of retelling in the film reflected that age old paradigm of the man standing tall while his wife/family (literally) grovel at his feet. Or, in this case, exist just to be used as a bunch of holes for his big kingly cock to go in. I thought it was one hours and forty minutes of a flimsy excuse for men to spread their nasty fantasies and not get nailed for them.

When as a society are we going to get beyond this baseline objectification of women? Or finding humor in incest and sexual abuse?

I hate misogyny.

Oh, and a few afterthoughts.

After I saw it, I was talking in the lobby to a woman waiting to see the film. She asked me if I liked it, I said no. The first thing out of her mouth was "Oh, are you a born again Christian or something?"

That made me feel great. Am I a right winger and I just don't know it? Somebody, please, if this is the first step towards going there just shoot me. Shoot me now.

Also, I should say in name of fairness that there were women in the documentary, a few, and their versions of the joke were slightly different, in that the wife in the family was the dominant figure controlling the action, and the men were more often being used and serviced. Also, some incarnations of the joke took on politics and not just sex and shit - satirizing racism, 9/11, and other more current hot topics. Those were edgy, funny, and made more sense. But they were also maybe 6% of the makeup of the film. Grumble. Grumble.

Books are Dreamy

2005-09-07T20:55:00.000-04:00

Fall is in the air. I spent my afternoon today at work compiling back-to-school care packages for the youth in my afterschool group counseling program. Fresh penciles, packets of loose leaf, brand new spiral notebooks, pens, crayons, rulers. The air in the city, while still warm, has that scent... that turning leaf, earthy organic smell with a hint of crispness like an old friend you know is dropping by later in the week.

Fall for me has always been about starting to layer my clothes, walking everywhere I go just because I love the feel of the air, shopping for winter, and the onset of winter, my favorite season. When I think about the fall and winter months, I feel myself in place in the world more than any other time of year - there are few times I feel more satisfied than walking down the city streets, wrapped in my heavy peacoat with my scarf and hat and gloves swooning with the romance only your favorite season can bring, and the total contentment of knowing you're right exactly where you want to be.

Fall is also about books for me. I suppose in retrospect I never got over that back to school book rush from my college days. While my summer reading is filled with fluff, light beach reads and back issues of magazines left piling in the year's crunch, the schoolyear is the meat of my reading life.

I love wandering bookstore stacks, browsing for new great reads, but too I love revisiting my old favorites, that short list of literary greatest hits that have become the canon of my life. We all have them; watershed books that shape the people we've become; remind us what kind of person we want to be, and how to love ourselves and the handful of people who are really important to us.

I'd like to take a few moments now to pay homage to those books... to share my list, in hopes that you will do the same. I'd love to hear what makes up other people's lists... After all, I'm always on the lookout for that next really great read. Throughout the year I'll be posting more fully fleshed out entries devoted to one book at a time.

For now, just the list.

Dream of a Common Language by Adrienne Rich

The Work of a Common Woman by Judy Grahn

The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver

For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf by Ntozake Shange

The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy

The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler (Villard Press Edition)

Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison

A Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupery

In Search of Our Mother's Gardens by Alice Walker

A Separate Peace by John Knowles

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Good Thing I'm not Dating my Blog

2005-06-11T11:26:00.000-04:00

So, in typical fashion, I posted my first entry with good intention, and then promptly forgot all about it until just now. Ahem. Good thing the blog is not my lover, or I'd have been dumped on my sorry ass about 20 times by now.

Good thing also my blog is not my stack of unpaid bills, although I confess to being slightly more attentive to those but not much.

[barbie voice] Underachieving is haaaaaard! [/barbie voice]

At any rate, I think I've found an apartment. Actually, I've FOUND an apartment, I've just not yet been APPROVED for said apartment. Yesterday, in a sad act of part desperation and part hope, I faxed off my completed rental application into the universe, and am now waiting for news. And reflecting on how NYC has made a complete liar out of me.

Said application was, in my estimation, 1 part absolute truth, 1 part exaggerated truth, and the rest blatant lies. It's just what you have to do to get by sometimes. I bolstered my employment history (but only to cover the two years in the city I spent freelancing and fucking around like a freeloader), I totally fictionized my rental history - not a single item of truth on it, nope, and generally ass kissed and schmoozed in my letter to the building owner. Fortunately I have connections and also good friends, all of whom I hit up to collaborate my ficticious past, but now I'm left reflecting on the nature of lying.

Do other people do this? Before I moved here it would NEVER have occured to me to...oh...say... lie on a resume. I remember the first time someone suggested it to me, my reaction was to gasp in horror and cover my mouth scandalously in the best tradition of Scarlet O'Hara... "the horra, horra..." But, with my good pal Cat's help, I lied, and I got the job I wanted. And so began my descent to the dark side. Since then my friends have been bosses, landlords, clients, etc. anytime I need a quick reference. And it works.

Am I so naive that I just never realized this is the game that everyone plays? Possibly.

Was I just lucky enough in my job and apartment hunting before that I never had to lie? Probably.

Am I bound for hell for my evil web of deception? Yeah, I am.

But hell is fun. Especially if get my sweet apartment. The roof deck is to DIE for...!

A House is not a Home

2005-05-17T03:24:00.000-04:00

This post finds me sitting up in the middle of the night after an evening spent in Chelsea eating Thai and window shopping with Morgan.

The middle of the night part comes from my inability to sleep due to the fact that I'm currently in the middle of the dreaded NYC apartment search.

Again.

Ugh. I have to give myself kudos, however, for staying in my current apartment for two years, after a pattern of moving every 4-6 months prior to living here.

Just the same, a move is in order. And the hunt is on. And the hunt is NOT fun. Here's a typical listing:

$1350! 2BR! Brand new, completely renovated 2 1/2 br apartment in Brownstone available ASAP. Apartment is parlor floor of house and includes 2 full bedrooms, 1 smaller carpeted room that can be used as a very large closet, a study or a kids room, 1 bath, kitchen and living room. 11ft ceilings, 9ft windows, moldings and hardwood floors. Apartment is immaculate and everything is totally new renovation, including new bath with ceramic tiles and new kitchen with all new appliances and butcher block counter. Apartment is cable ready, comes with mini blinds, dishwasher and a decorative fireplace in one of the bedrooms. No utilities included. Tenant pays for heat and hot water, apartment has it's own boiler which the tenant will control with programmable thermostat. 3 blocks to the C train, 3 1/2 blocks to the A Train. Two months security, first months rent, credit check, application fee, good income, W2's and paystubs are required. No Pets, No Brokers. Open house will be on Saturday May 21st between the hours of 12pm and 4pm. Please call 917-662-6763 for further information or to set up an appointment to see aprtment.
Hancock St. at Nostrand Ave.
this is in or around Clinton Hill/Bed Stuy
Fee Disclosure: $35 Credit Check/$500 fee (not a Broker's fee)
Listed By: Owner

Okay, let's do some math. $1350 first month's rent, plus $2700 (two months security, plus $500 application fee plus $35 credit check fee = $4,585 to move in. Welcome to NY. I think I'm getting the vapors.

I'll provide updates for how the search is going. Meanwhile, amid my leftover Thai and girlfriend's snoring, I'm carving out a good life. Money sucks, but I have great people and a great city to spend it on. And on that note, I'm going to sleep. Tomorrow I have to find a landlord I like well enough to give 70 percent of my income to... (jk. a little)

Acquiescing

2005-05-04T16:39:00.000-04:00

I confess to having tried this several times already.

One thing I've noticed about growing up in my generation is that we, all of us, love to move. My grandmother has moved a total of 4.2 miles in her life; when she married, she lived with her parents until she and her husband could afford a house of their own. They bought it, a nice house in a nicer neighborhood roughly 7 minutes away from the house she grew up in. They brought her parents with them, just because that's what good Italian daughters do, and she's been there ever since. 81 years and two addresses in her entire life.

Me, 31 years and I've already had seven spanning about 1000 miles.

We're mobile. Probably more mobile than any generation before us.

As a result, our communication methods have had to adapt. Letters became phone calls, became emails, became text messages, cell phones, broadband, and now... at last...

the blog.

Because who really needs to talk anyway? I know when I read my friend's blogs it certainly feels almost like spending time together. In a middle child sort of way.

Really, though, I don't hate blogging. I think in it's best incarnation, it allows smart, worldly people a forum for interesting discourse and a way to connect with other smart, worldly people. At it's lesser incarnations, it creates a kind of mass slumber party, a virtual world where passing notes and the latest personality quizzes reign supreme and they all hail the exclamation point. TOTALLY!!!!

I have friends, love of my life kind of friends, who operate on both ends of the spectrum, and that's okay. It just brings me back to my original thought, which is that I've tried this before. Every couple of months another of my friends will send along an email that reads something like this...

Julie...OMG! We have to talk about blogging. I know. I KNOW. We've always been 'down with blogs' but you should see this community I've found. It's so not the way we stereotype blogspace. Seriously. I started one myself, you have to check it out. I know you'll be into it too. Let me know when yours is up, I'll put you in my friendspace!

-well meaning friend

...and so, like the good friend I am, I go and investigate said blog and respond with the proper enthusiasm. Occasionally I go through the process of making my own profile, so that I can leave comments on particularly fun entries. But that's about the extent of it. I don't really blog for me. There's something unsettling about taking the time to reflect and respond to your life and then putting it out there in a public forum where the prevailing sentiment goes something like: THIS IS FOR REAL!! IT WILL COME TRUE! Copy this bulletin to seven of your friends and....

Yet here I am. Something funny happened along the way. I developed a kind of blog-envy. I have my own things to say, I want to find out my own things from other bloggers. SO...this is my blog, this is the stuff of my life. The act of living, of getting up daily and moving through a world full of millions of people, obligations, obstacles and stimuli while protecting and hopefully providing for your own heart is incredible.

Incredible.

I look forward to sharing a little of mine, hearing a little of yours, clarifying my own path on the way.

This is a blog for me.

(Inspired in part by the very fabulous QC Report by Quinn Cummings, probably one of the best blogs I've read)