Just a Note

There are about 2 months in early 2005 I hardly remember at all; they're a kaleidoscope of colors and feelings.

I think a lot now about how kind people were to me. Unbelievably kind. Calling and checking up. Inviting me out for eggs. Having a drink. Listening to me rant. God knows what I must have said.

During that black hole period I received the best piece of advice ever, thanks to my friend Alex: "Just be careful -- you're very out of it -- look both ways before you cross the street."

Sometimes I find random stuff in the apartment. Who gave me that Judee Sill record? Dan was that you? It's a blur. I'm really enjoying it.

I can only hope to show the same loving kindness to others when they need it.

Thank you -- You know who you are!

Big Entrances

I love movies that start with a clever animated sequence.

"Down With Love" is my favoritest movie right now, for that and many other reasons.

"What's New Pussycat?" is another fave.

Recommendations?

Concerning the Continuing Adventures of the Pampered Pugilist; Or, How I Learned to Take the Punches and Like It

The major development in my entanglement with boxing is that somewhere along the way I lost my fear.

I think it's probably because Maria got injured and doesn't come to sparring class anymore, so the threat of leaving with a black eye or a bruised jaw is greatly decreased. So I have started getting bold with my opponents.

At first, it was easy to keep Kora at bay; like a chipmunk, she alternately darted and halted, hungry and unfocused. I could kind of jab her around. However, Kora broke up with her boyfriend and simultaneously found her hook. When I felt that hit, I snapped to attention. Soon we will see what Kora is fully capable of inflicting onto others. She is naturally sassy and fearless, so this probably won't be pretty for me.

Mike is about six-foot-twelve, of unabashedly sweet temperament and indeterminate Scandinavian descent. When I first saw him on the bag, his arms seemed to take two full seconds to unfurl a punch, and when they made contact, the bag swung high and wild. One time, the bag spasmed, dislodged, and hit the floor.

I quickly learned that, despite Mike's enormous wingspan, you can never quite see him coming; he is a free-jazz boxer, with a rhythm all his own. So I learned to be light. He will lunge at you with a hook that could make the blind see -- using only half his power, because he is a gentleman -- and you have to sit, slip, weave, or pull your sorry ass back, and try to at least graze his chin with a right before he can fully retract his arm. And think light, light, light. After several rounds tonight, our faces were both purple-red and we were staggering. And yet I remembered: pirouette, pirouette, and mustering all my energy, I danced. That got me the hell out of that round.

Tina was there tonight. She is adorable, but every time I see her on Wednesday I have a flash thought: "Crap." She closest in line to being the second coming of Maria: tiny -- five-two tops -- and fast. And I now know for certain that fighting tiny people is far worse than fighting tall people, for when they hit, they don't hit the proverbial bull's eye on the forehead of your headgear. They hit upward toward your jaw, lip, nose. I took a few hard pops from Tina, but no bleeding or swelling resulted, so I'm grateful and high as a kite on endorphins.

And I made an appointment for a Christmas facial, courtesy of a most delightful and generous friend.

Life is sweet!

Holy Crap, It's 2007

Happy New Year. I've been sick and as of 4pm I've watched about twelve episodes of "Law and Order" back to back. I took the whole week off from work.

Random highlights of days off:

1. Painting the bathroom bright white while listening to Neko Case and Sam Phillips and singing along while pirouetting on the ladder on one foot, reaching with spongebrush to dab paint in ceiling corners.

2. Icing said foot afterward.

3. Curling up with Chinese food (steamed) and watching "Ugly Betty" marathon (but only after complaining on phone to buddies about how it was being pre-empted by Ford's funeral. "Casket, go home! We want Betty!").

4. The smell of smoke in the studio. It was just the motor on the tape machine blowing out, but still.

5. Bruce's 11th-hour determination to try loading the (intact) tape onto other machines and transferring the mix so that I could still make good on my promise to bring a song home on CD for the holidays. The other machines didn't work, but Bruce's persistence was touching.

6. Getting my first "Blowout." I had read about a place in Chinatown that gives you fantastic hair pizzazz for $15. It was fantastic and pizzazztical, and right on time for a crazy-badass haute foode lunch at Perry St.

7. My 4-year-old niece doing her impression of the Cookie Monster: "ME WANT COOOKIE! COOOKIE!!"

I'm not one for resolutions, but I do vow to strengthen my resolve, doing more of the good things and less of the bad things. You?

Hope to see you soon.

Mega Thoughts

A thought occurred to me today while browsing through DVDs at the Virgin Megastore (and the branding of anything as "Virgin Mega" is a whole discussion unto itself).

Let me preface it by saying, of course it's no secret that we live in an age of decadence and vulgarity. I have been arguing back and forth with myself for years as to whether or not this is inherently bad. In terms of art, those who, early on, are ridiculed or dismissed for being offensive or obscene, but ultimately are recognized as visionaries (Walt Whitman comes to mind, as does Picasso with Les Demoiselles d'Avignon), help create what those in academe would call a new way of seeing. In strictly personal terms, anything that at first seems too vulgar or embarrassing to do or say almost always quickly becomes to me the only thing worth doing. It is more raw and almost always more true.

But I'm not really talking about either kind of decadence here. Nor am I talking about pornography, although I guess it would qualify. Nestled deep within the womb of the Mega Virgin, i.e. browsing the lower level at Union Square, I was struck by how you could just pick anything . . . and then have it. I want to buy "Breakfast at Tiffany's." Done. Then I will go to the bakery and buy 35 croissants and eat them slowly one by one while watching the movie 35 times. Can do. I can go back and buy any other movie and then own it.

Can a movie really be owned? If you watch it hundred times and memorize it, do you own it then?

Being able to get whatever, whenever is a big big problem. I always knew it was but now I can feel why: Because when you can own whatever whenever, you remove the elemental emotion of longing, which is essential to art.

That said, every time I wach "Tiffany's" I feel deep longing . . . for a croissant, preferably chocolate. But I don't eat it.

Score one for art and my winter wool pants.

Light

When I left work a small crowd was gathering on the corner. 2 guys were having some kind of scuffle.

I got closer. One guy was on the ground wearing yellow roller blades. The other guy was standing above him. The guy on the ground took a long, slow lunge at the standing guy, tried to get up, and slipped and slid. The standing guy shoved him and made him slide more.

A car was parked just a few feet away with its driver's door opened.

The standing guy didn't get taken down. The rollerblade guy couldn't stand up. He loped around on his knees throwing an occasional punch to the gut.

A woman waiting for the bus finally busted in. "STOP IT!"

The standing guy yelled at her to shut the fuck up, and pushed the other guy again.

I was rooting for the rollerblade guy to swipe the other guy's knees and bring him on the level.

A police car was parked on the opposite corner with its lights flashing, but no officer could be found.

I imagine them still there at midnight, deadlocked among the gravel and rain puddles.

Raining and reading

On a rainy, cool Sunday afternoon, when the house is clean and I'm buzzed from a long lavender bath, I curl up with some Bukowski. After reading for a few minutes I start to feel hopeful and light. Then I feel ashamed.

Hope comes because Bukowski reminds me that everything is strange and beautiful and even the most heartbroken soul can find grace.

Shame comes because it has been way too long since I have wandered in this field.

Next stop: Karamazov.

Wagging the Dog

It has come to my attention that the previous post may have been unclear, or heaven forbid, unseemly.

I guess I just meant woof.

Apologies to Scott and everyone if this seems disappointing.


*********************

Other topics of the summer:

1. Faith.
Why have it. What is it. Where can I get some.

2. Firemen.
If it weren't for the macabre sense of comfort provided by this show, I'd have completely given up on item #1.

3. 'Fiddich.
I do not drink this often, but take comfort knowing it's out there if I need it.

4. Frank.
Finally, yes . . . I believe every fucking word he sings.

"I Want the Fairytail."

Quoth the boy in his online dating profile.

That makes 2 of us.

Woof.

Not Dead Yet; Just Resting

Hi. Are you having a good summer, I hope?

I'm feeling renewed after a few days of rest. Also, I bought a new computer. It occurred to me that my old computer couldn't actually open any applications except Safari, and even that was getting pretty slow and sticky. It started making a horrible grinding sound to boot. So here we go: I'm all souped up and typing like lightning on a wireless keyboard.

This new computer comes with a built-in video camera and you can use it to take snapshots. I inaugurated it by, what else:


Dottie, the shy one.




Oh Saro, perhaps we shall run away to Paris and become chorus girls!

Intuition

I trust the voice inside my head. In general, I trust other people.

However, at one point in life I was very disconnected, depressed, and panicky. I started to lose my trust in others. I sometimes thought people were trying to poison my food. I knew this was nuts but I couldn't stop being nervous. I'd eat a few bites, freak, spit the last bite out into a napkin, and try to hide the napkin. This got to be very embarrassing.

I went to my doctor for an EKG to see if my always-racing heart had a physical cause or was just anxiety. The office was closing early because a snowstorm had begun. Dr. Sharkey sat me down in his office after the test.

"How are you doing?"

I started falling, falling, falling down a hole in my soul. Sob, sob, sob.

"What's wrong?'

"I don't know . . . " Doctor, there's a hole in my soul . . . .

"It says here you're having panic attacks? Like, you're sitting there, and suddenly feel like you're going to lose it?"

"Uh huh."

"I get those. It happened to me at the Board of Directors meeting at NYU Hospital."

"Uh huh." The snow was splatting against the 15th-floor window.

"I'm going to prescribe an antianxiety pill for you. If there's something you have to do, and you need to calm down, just take half a pill and you'll be fine." He pulled out a prescription pad, wrote something on it, tore off a sheet and handed it to me.

"Okay." I took the paper.

"I'll tell you what." He wrote something else down. "This is my buddy. He's a great shrink. He'll fix what's bothering you. Just fix it. He doesn't want to hear about your problems, doesn't want to hear about your family. He'll patch you right up."

I took the second paper. I was still snorting and choking on sobs. However, I still knew this was bullshit. I walked out of his office, rode the elevator down, and stepped out into snowy midtown.

Spring: Day One

From my window -- the Verizon building nestled among other tall buildings with row upon row of perfect glowing windows. The buildings are crisply silhouetted against a solid black-blue sky. The wind is screeching. Occasionally a blink of light from a plane far away.

I'll Take Dare

I have to come clean. In light of the recent attention shed on a certain book that has been ripped into a million tiny shreds, I have come to reconsider the writings I have written over a lifetime. Not only have I passed off certain versifications as true, but sometimes in earnest nocturnal conversation -- or even on public broadcasts -- I have confided that these ragtag couplets truly are emissions from my soul.

But no more. The truth is that I have tampered with certain events and situations to render them more conveniently squished into song. I have taken the truth, bent it like a wire hanger, and used it to whack my tiny tribe of fans square on the ass.

Thus it is with great shame that I must confess a horrible confession.

It didn't really happen on 31st Avenue.

It was Broadway, one block over.

'31st Avenue' just sounded better.

Please.
Forgive.
Me.

Well Hello, Dottie

A new graceful presence in the household: Dottie arrived 3 weeks ago on the first snow. She is a big fan of food, toys, couch, and blanky.



Saro was pretty mad at first but has come to accept her fate.



Chiaroscuro in the household!

Chestnuts Roasting on My Ass

I am not a fan of food-inspired spa treatments.

No chocolate fudge pedicures, please.

No honey on my face.

And please, DO NOT wrap me in pumpkin pulp.

Ew.

Feng Shui Me

I had some ideas for rearranging the furniture, maybe adding a small new piece or 2. But I was petrified of buying something that was wrong and being stuck with it, or picking out a wall color or wallpaper that was going to make my home look plum silly. Or moving the piano . . . and then having to move the piano back.

Obsessed with the magazine that everyone at work is obsessed with, I saw an interesting article on one-shot design consultants. For a very small fee they will advise you on the best way to arrange your home, using what you have and making suggestions for manageable additions and subtractions.

I found a nice woman with a background in interior design and, as a bonus, extensive experience in feng shui. Jennifer came by today to have a gander at my apartment.

"Nice and spacious," she said. "But we have to do something about the energy when you come in. It's one long corridor, and then your energy falls out the window."

Couldn'ta said it better myself.

She meditated on my space for a long time and asked me a lot of questions as we sipped peppermint tea. When did I move in? Why this neighborhood? Why all white? After awhile she got up from the couch and rotated one corner twenty-five degrees. She paused. I worried for a moment that was going to be it.

I stepped back a few paces and surveyed the pivot. I don't usually like furniture on an angle, but this was working. Energy crisis averted!

She took out this crazy-ass compass on a big square board with colors all around it. She said it's very hard to find this compass in English. Saro started slinking around us, interested. Jennifer said she didn't mind Saro eating all her other stuff so long as Saro didn't touch the compass. As soon as we relaxed in conversation, Saro lurched toward the compass. No, Saro!

I said I was thinking of color for the foyer. Jennifer also had a giant wad of Benjamin Moore paint chips on a binder ring. How did I feel about red? Very interesting.

I really liked this meeting. She's going to e-mail me all of her notes and suggestions tomorrow. Her recommendations for new pieces were well within my budget -- Pearl River, Home Depot. And I feel confident I'm making the right move *before* dumping out all my bookcases.

When this is all done -- party at my place.

Birthday Letter

Dear Ben,

I can't call you on your birthday so I have to write. Wherever you are now, I'm sure you're surfing the Web if at all possible.

I think about you all the time. I try to picture your face. Often we would be driving somewhere and I would turn and study the side of your face. You would wear that heavy grey polar fleece pullover and orange TiVo cap. You had a cute long nose and those rectangular glasses. I liked when your hair was longer and curling a little. You were getting a few silver hairs at your temples. I tried to picture what you would look like as you got more grey.

I try to remember our conversations. You would bring me up to speed on your friends and family -- their comings and goings -- and show me your old home movies. I already felt as if I knew everyone. Or at least, I knew their bar mitzvahs. You made that movie of your cat while you were home on break from college because you were pretty certain that was the last time you were going to see him. That was one long movie. You followed him around the yard when he wasn't doing very much, just loafing and poking around. And that turned out to be the last time you saw him.

Many people have noted with regret that we have so few photos and movies of you. You took reams of photos and hours of video, but you always were behind the camera. I don't even have a picture of the two of us. Everything that happened between us, with a few exceptions, was just us -- and now I'm carrying it alone. I have to talk/write/rant about you just to help bear it, even though I know you would be terribly embarrassed. But you knew what you were getting into with me. You read the whole blog before we even met.

You could dish pretty well yourself, though. When we first met you boasted about your colorful stories, and I remember a lot of them now. Generally your full-blown stories about people would fall into two categories -- People who Made Good Decisions and People who Made Bad Decisions. People who made good decisions, such as being the first to move to a particular up-and-coming town, often had been recipients of your advice. People who made bad decisions often had ignored advice from you -- buying a substandard appliance, for example -- and were punished with some kind of trouble, such as a defective unit, as a result.

Either way, you gave a lot of advice. When I was mad at you I theorized you saw everyone as projects that needed your improvements, and that you mostly related to people by criticizing them. In calmer moments I realized that you didn't criticize to be mean. You were just ridiculously informed about an insane number of things and were trying to help people out, freely dispensing your opinion whether it was welcome or not. And whatever it was, usually you were right.

I don't think I ever saw you mean. You could be smug; frosty; imperious; gracious; tender; passionate. But not mean.

I still haven't renovated my kitchen, but I'm holding on to the sketch you made. You sent it to me the first week we were dating. In my book, that's a no-money-back-you're-getting-laid guarantee.

You tried to give me music advice once. What a disaster. I had been having difficult gigs and you were videotaping them all. The night you tried to play a show back to me and make running commentary -- like "why don't you smile more at the audience?" -- I almost knocked your block off. It was the only time I told you to go fuck yourself and really meant it. But you seemed to like it when I got sassy.

You continued to try to be helpful. We even tried an album cover shoot in Central Park, scouting around to find the spot where Nina Simone sat for the cover of her first record. We climbed giant, icy "keep off" rocks and froze our asses sitting on them to get a good shot of me with the pond and bridge behind. Days later, you produced another pearl: "I think your record cover should be . . . the outline of your naked body." Good grief, Ben.

Last year on your birthday we met up at Columbus Circle. Your instructions from me were to wear a suit that fit. I spotted you from across the plaza -- you looked so tall and handsome in your suit and trenchcoat. You were taller than everybody. It was not too cold; holiday lights were up; the Salvation Army lady was there with her bell and kettle. When we kissed hello I felt so nervous.

Between our fancy dinner and jazz at Lincoln Center, we strolled through Borders in the Time Warner Center -- you pointed out Weird N.J. magazine. Why do I keep remembering that now? We spent the rest of the weekend watching Lord of the Rings and debauching. Afterward, you didn't call me for days. God I was furious -- but that did result in our setting up a schedule. And that worked.

I remember your signature touches. You would bring tea and cookies to me on the couch and plop your legs in my lap. Self-righteously, like a huge cat. As we rode the bus in the morning, you would plant your hand on my knee and squeeze. You would TiVo stuff for us to watch together. Weeknights were nice and slow with you. It shocks me now to realize how much of a steady presence you were.

Sometimes I get hysterical wondering where the hell you've disappeared to. I force myself to remember the night on the pier, as you were losing strength, and then later as your soul left your body. I tell myself this was the end of the story. Of course, that's impossible. Your story is carried on by everyone who cared about you. Ed wrote a beautiful remembrance of you.

It's really cold tonight so I'm pulling out your down comforter. Saro threw up on the green blanky and I need something warm.

I miss you, Ben. You are never far from my thoughts. Now go fuck yourself.

Love, Erica

All my boxes finally were packed and sealed for the office move. We had been packing for two days. My coworkers were quietly sifting through their own papers, drifting around socializing, or drifting out of the office. Russian moving men were hauling stuff away on handtrucks.

I beat it outta there. It was 11:41 am.

I went as far away from Soho as the train could reasonably carry me in thirty minutes. Midtown! MOMA!

MOMA! Where I'd never been before.

MOMA! Steel and glass and hardwood floors.

MOMA! Where the Pollock's as high as an elephant's eye.

I spent a lot of time on those Pollocks, esp. full Fathom Five, in which you can see the form of a cigarette and a paint tube cap sloshed in with the rest of the caked-on color. I like that. The artist and his crap.

Museums are so dizzying -- not to mention the art therein, in this case -- I had to take pee breaks often, just to unwind. The arch of my right foot is aching something fierce too these days, and the wood floors are killer.

There seem to be a lot of German tourists afoot for some reason.

If this were a romantic comedy, a dashing man would have approached me as I gazed at the Walker Evans subway candids. He would have commented on how vivid the unwitting subjects look. I would have explained how, upon seeing the larger Evans retrospective at the Met a few years ago, I saw a candid of a man I swore was my grandfather. It made sense: New York in the thirties and forties-- a very familar-looking Anglo-aristocratic guy in a fedora and topcoat -- square jaw -- light eyes -- baby on his lap. I couldn't positively I.D. either the man or the baby, though. The man's head is turned.

The portrait burned in my brain. I found it in the Evans book that accompanied the show. I called up my dad and asked him to scout for the book and find the photo. He and my mom did so over a latté at their local Barnes and Noble on Long Island.

"I'm sorry to report, I don't think it's him," my dad said. "That wasn't grandpa's nose."

And that would have been the end of the story I would have told to the dashing man who did not exist and did not approach me.

As if MOMA weren't exhausting enough -- with or without these imaginary dramas -- I headed next to Bendel's for some serious froufrou.

Bendel's! With a whole wing devoted to candles.

Bendel's! Pashmina my heart.

Bendel's! With lace thongs wrapped up tight like little bullets and stored in a jar.

I wanted some makeup but wasn't sure what. Finally I supplicated myself to the girl at the Benefit counter. She was so young and skinny her bra stood up of its own will.

"We'll do the smoky eye on you," she said gravely.

I left with smoky eyes and shiny candy apple lips. Bought 2 products. One is a yellow stick that knocks out an excess of rosiness in your complexion -- effective for when you paint your lips red and want to tone down your face in contrast. Fooling around with it today, I discovered it makes a very good under-eye concealer as well.

The second product is more controversial. It's luminescence. The dewey look. Huey, dewey, gooey. I still can't tell whether I glow, or I look clammy and schvitzy as if from food poisoning.

As soon as I hit the street I blotted out my lips. It was warm out, which felt comforting.

It wasn't even five o' clock yet. I'd ordinarily be at work for another hour or two!

Crossing in front of the Plaza, I looked up at Central Park East. The boughs of the trees were touched with yellow. Yellow cabs were passing by. The sun was low and gold in the sky.

The New Black

It has been said that this season, black is the new black. I can dig it. Sometimes it's just so right.

I put on light grey pants this morning and they just didn't flow for me. They made me feel vaguely like a wuss. I switched them out for pedal-to-the-metal noir. Black wool pinstripe trousers, black tee, black wrap sweater. Black leather jacket.

However, even in such a petulant mood, one could benefit from a little spark. My boss, who has an amazing intuition for garment design and color theory, calles it the "kicker color." Or rather, she's Australian so it's "kick-ah cuhl-ah."

I apply it thus: when you're feeling noir, viva le blood-red handbag.

These are the little amusements that keep me going. I fear I am becoming an automaton: sleeping, working, knitting in front of the television. One must fight the good fight -- William Packard taught me that. Right now I'm using that advice as leverage to help whup out a few more songs. But it's slow going.

What is the emotional equivalent of a kicker color?

I have noticed one phenomenon. I was sifting through a drawer of huge plastic crochet hooks recently and started blushing. Studying piles of cable-knit swatches today, my eyes followed the pretzel, braid, and diamond patterns in their ever-increasing intricacy -- twisting and pulling and splitting apart and linking up again -- until I grew positively dizzy.

Ah, Eros. You scamp.