Here's what I think, after spending last night being really happily absorbed in working on my songs/arrangements/act...I think: Work is important. Even if you're not very good at it.But just finding something, anything,. you love doing, doing it for long enough to do it well enough so it pleases you...it's good, but more, it's necessary. I'm not saying I'm good at what I love doing, just that it gives me a window to lean out of and look at the world from. That's all.
-The reason I'm thinking about this is because I've noticed that folks who don't have this--who haven't said , for instance,"I love birdhouses and I'm going to build a truly lovely one!", or "I love baking, therefore I'm going to perfect my Better-Than-Sex-Cake till it actually IS better than sex!", etc--don't have time or energy for the trouble people can otherwise find for themselves.
It's just lately I've been fretting over some of my friends. I have several really bright friends who have Terrible Relationships instead of work. Drama, Big Pointless Emotions, usually with people who simply aren't interesting enough to warrant all that expenditure of energy (actually, is ANYbody interesting enough to warrant Relationship Drama?) It feels like work. It takes up the place where work wants to be, in their psyches, I think.
I know [knew--some have died] some very smart folks who have Drug Problems..Drugs can sure SEEM like work, what with the buying it, and then fiddling with paraphernalia and... whatever else it is people do with drugs, I'm at a bit of a loss here. -But that whole mishegas takes up the place where work wants to be,in one's psyche, i think. Again.
I'm not saying anything stupendous here. Just that I know a lot of folks who, when they gave up drugs, or bad relationship dramas, etc, suddenly gotten REALLY successful, because they used their energies on something they actually enjoyed and that wound up being a Good Thing. -And by "suuccessful", I don't mean the Trumpian definition, but the faux-Emersonian definition, written by someone's grandmother in 1905 but none the worse for that:

To laugh often and love much; to win the respect of intelligent persons and the affection of children; to earn the approbation of honest citizens and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to give of one’s self; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to have played and laughed with enthusiasm and sung with exultation; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived—this is to have succeeded.

And yes, it's soppy. Yes, it was probably voted "most likely to be on an inspirational fridge magnet"... so let's throw in a Santayana quote while we're at it, huh?:

To be happy, you must have taken the measure of your powers, tasted the fruits of your passion, and learned your place in the world.

Speaking for myself, I'm happier not having Big Personal Dramas. (Anymore. Have had more than my share. In fact, most of my best learning has come from being a complete idiot, often.)

But I do like... work. It feels good to burrow down into one's best self and do something with it. And, in a moment where I'm not sure what's going on with my life in a lot of ways, I can at least do the dishes and sing a song I wrote and think "I made that up!" and smile.

And here's a poem. Night, all. Love.

Ithaka  by CP Cavafy

As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon - don't be afraid of them:
you'll never find things like that one on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon - you won't encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbours you're seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfumes of every kind -
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you're destined for.
But don't hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you're old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you've gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvellous journey.
Without her you wouldn't have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.
And if you find her poor, Ithaka won't have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you'll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean

 

 

Leafing through the "NY Times Fashion Supplement" makes me wonder if crack is making a comeback in the fashion world.
There's a Ralph Lauren ad that features a very beautiful woman, posing on a savannah in Africa (sweltering and svelte on a veldt) -and she is wearing a ripped safari shirt, huge gold lame harem pants, TWO belts (those pants take some serious holding up),and a thousand dollar fedora. She looks like a morning drinker. Next to her is a beautiful black model wearing a crinkled white evening dress- and what appears to be her laundry,on her head. Nice. I'll try that out soon. Two pages in, four models are peering resentfully at each other while clutching Prada purses that look EXACTLY like large crumpled brownpaper grocery bags. I looked the prices up, and the cost of owning a purse that looks like your other possession are a grocery cart and a cradboard box, is: 7 grand. Yup. Meanwhile, Madonna and her new cheekbone implants that look like small, strategically placed steel girders, are (is?) shown as follows: Madonna is lying in her underwear and some strategically placed feathers, lying down on four chairs in a deserted restaurant. There's a wildly ugly Louis Vuitton purse in the foreground, the cost of which has apparently made her so broke she has to sleep on barstools. her and her girders. So the message here is what, exactly? -Oh, and there's an entire article about "The New Transparency": clothes made of see through fabrics and some bondage bras. Yay! Call me crazy, but I like clothes I cn go OUTSIDE in, thanks.

So if ou want me, I'll be home:swathed in SaranWrap, laundry on my head, lying on some barstools and clutching a brown paper grocery bag. Hey, it's a living. Maybe I'll hotglue some small Lego girders to my face, where my cheekbones should be. Total amount of mone saved: not buying the purses,or the new transparent clothes, or the Vuitton bag that's reduced madonna to penury,and the plastic surgery: approximately $56,000. Cost of explaining entire ensemble to boyfriend when he comes home: Priceless.

************************
Had a lovely day: utterly utterly quiet, which, when ou're as compulsively social as we've been lately, is just blissfully luxurious. Cleaned, listened to Douglas Adams audiobook while cleaning, watched "The Tudors", and read a cookbook from the 1920s that had the effect of making me never, ever want to eat food again: "pork souffle"? Ergh. And "Poached Eggs de Compte Molocki", which is just eggs with some white sauce and paprika, but I can't stop thinking about what the backstory might be.

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

And that's that. Nothing deep or earthshaking. Just grateful to be alive and roaming around bumping into things.
big love
per

...said Dante in the preface to "Inferno". It happens to all of us, that "hmm...I think I've lost the path here..." moment. It often goes in tandem with "...and that OTHER person over there is doing my life but MUCH BETTER than I am right now." Losing one's self invites envy to come sit on the couch, but there are some reassuring things to remember about "losing one's way/envy" moments:
1) It ALWAYS precedes a BIG, positive, badass breakthrough--ALWAYS-- and
2) Other people have felt this way, and
3) Even SHAKESPEARE felt this way, for Christ's sake. -And I am not Shakespeare, or even Shakespeare's small and dusty shadow, but I do feel much much better upon reading the sonnet that starts:
"When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes
I all alone beweep my outcast state
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my state-
Wishing me like one more rich in hope;
Featureed like him, like him with friends possessed:
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope..
With what I most enjoy, contented least..."

-because it makes me feel human again.

Currently, am knocking myself around the room for :not taking enough risks lately, for being too distracted by Other People; for not being louder, bolder, younger, or...or....

Of course, I have been all these things in my time.( As a woman said to me at a party once when I was 21, "I was 21 once myself. Turned out to be just a phase, though.")

The cure for anything is finding out what admixture of work, love, foolishness, and risk is right: mixed in the right proprtions, they turn poison into medicine.

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

A nice story: in the subway yesterday, a young woman sitting next to me seemed racked by indecesion. Then, she sat up straighter, and turned resolutely towards me.
"Miss?" she said, "would you like a cupcake?"

She untied a bakery box filled with pinkfrosted fairycakes.
"Oh, darlin', I'd love to...but my goddaughters just forcefed me huge amounts of coffeecake, and I can't even think about sugar. SO kind of oyu, though. Where'd you come by those?"
She looked pensive. "A guy gave the to me.-A friend guy, I mean. A friend from home."
"Where's home? "
She looked defiant, in a demure way. "I mean, home is Brooklyn, but where I come from, that's where he came from. To visit, I mean. But I live in Brooklyn." She named a street.
"Oh, how cool--ou live between the stables and the salsa studio! Great street. Why is he a friend?I mean, just a friend?"
A delicate shudder made her long brown hair move a little. "Oh, he's not a guy like THAT. Not a BOYfriend."
I thought, if this man is not gay, then what I am witnessing right now is his worst nightmare.
She changed the subject. "How old are your godchildren?"
"Three--that's the Chinese one--and six-that's the mostly Scottish one. I think I taught the little one to say "Abracadabra" tonight, If there's anything cuter than three year old Chinese girl saying "Abbacabadawa!", then I'm not sure I want to know what it is."
She grinned, undefensive once more. "Why part Scottish?"
"Oh, because her Dad's Scottish, and takes her to visit family in Glasgow and she comes back with a very strrrrong accent, and then it wears off gradually, and then they go back again. It's a magically regrowing accent."
We laughed. I was thinking about how my friend A, who is a wolrd famous rockstar academic, spent the evening after dinner, doing incredibly inept magic tricks for his daughters, while his wife and I laughed so hard that I fell off my chair, while Stella proved that she knew ow to start saing "abracadabra" but didn't know how to stop.
"Do you sing?", I asked the brown haired girl? I noticed her face was red and flaking off in places: she was using an overstrong acne medication, I guessed.
She jumped slightly. "How did--yeah, I do! That's what I'm in school for. How?"
"You've got a musical voice," I answered. I didn't say, "and I'm a professional psychic."Ypu sing standards."
She did, and we talked "Stardust" and Strayhorn till my stop approached.
"This is my stop coming up. I'm a total stranger, and ou'll never see me again, so if you have any secrets to tell, now is the time." I smiled, cocking my head at her, and raising my right eyebrow, a trick I'd practiced after watching Maura Shearer do it in "Red Shoes."
"Ummmm..." she frowned. "Oh, no, I can't think of any!! Maybe next time!"
She shook the hand I offered, I said "Peri", she said "Sydney", and I tripped getting up, caught myself and swung around on the metal bar and out the door. "Bye Sydney! It's all going to work out okay!"
"thaaaanks!" she yelled back as the doors closed
and turning on the platform, I waved her off as her three quarter profile smiled past and into the dark.






And now, off to go take care of my sick fella, and read about Hogarth.

One probably shouldn't write personal manifestos at 3 a.m. after a couple of glasses of Riesling.

After many years of being, essentially, a Professional Muse, am finally reclaiming my own gifts (such as they be) and singing in public again. Put together a new band, called Femme d'Ete (literlly, :Woman of Summer", a French expression for a fleeting summer romance), and debuting at the Norwood Club--sort of a hipper version of Soho House-in late feb.
There comes a moment in everyone's life when one says "Okay: I am either This or Not This."
One is defined by the size of one's dreams. And ou have to "stake all to win all, in the game of Costly Colors", as Mary Webb has a character say in "Precious Bane".
I have loved being a muse. I have loved being a nurturer, a great cook, a Rock of Gibraltar in a Marilyn dress, a supporter. But it is, essentially,of course, a supporting role. Which can be enormously satisfying..,. but is also too safe to be ultimately fulfilling.
So there we are. One's work (in this case, writing music and words), one's larynx, one's body, one's worldview. You either put it on view or you don't.

Uncharacteristically serious. But unrelieved frivolity is as wearing as its opposite number, unrelenting seriousness.

hand me my false eyelashes, my accordion, and my French perfume. hand me the slim volume of Baudelaire and the thick book of Mistakes Ive Already made.

And hook up my microphone. Let's do this thing.

To quote Molly Bloom....

"YES."

Christmas was sort of paradoxical this year: it both went by in a blur AND seemed to last forever. -In that way, it's sort of like going to the dentist, except with presents.--Spent the Eve and the Day with various permutations of my Fella's family...his dad was married six times, he has eight half siblings, THEY have kids etc, and it's less like a family, at this point, and more like a very affectionate citystate. It was nice. And, since people WILL insist on bringing their children to holidays, and since children under 17 are, essentially, very cute, ver large petri dishes...I got Sick. -The thoughtful thing to do, of course, would be to lightly boil the children before taking them in public, but people seem oddly loath to do this. In the same way that people seem oddly unwilling to use the time honored traditions of child-rearing that worked so well in the previous centuries. I am thinking here of the wise practice of administering Laudanum to a fretful or sleepless youngster. Laudanum --a distillation of opium--makes children drowsy and gives them pleasant dreams...or if not exactly pleasant, at least memorable. Which would you rather have, a child with good dreams, or a child who wakes in the middlke of the night and writes "Kublai Khan"?-Yes, me too! -Sadly, as laudanum is inexplicably difficult to find, I usually resort to reading the child in question, random passages from any Martin Amis novel I happen to have lying about. That usually puts 'em in a coma.

Went to Maryland to see my folks after I finally stopped projectile vomiting--although it might have been a nostalgic reminder for them of my infancy. Still, I didn't want to have to reimburse the hotel for sheets. We all had a wonderful time, hanging out at their house and talking and laughing. My mother, in a moment of unconscious, but kind of adorable, perversity, decided to cook...TONGUE. For our celebratory dinner with my 30 year old Adonis of a paramour. Tongue. You forget how..tongue shaped, tongue is. M mother, beaming, brought out many wonderful dishes, and then, on a platter, the piece de resistance...a large, incredibly tongue shaped tongue. You expected the label to have said Torn from Its Roots..Just For You!" It looked like the result of a medieval punishment. But it tasted delcious. Once you forgot what it was, [I grew up with this, and it is a delicacy, but it is not for the weak of heart.] John was very noble, and dug in with man a sound of "delicious!".

The next night, we had oxtails. As my Dad pointed out, we had now had the front and the back of the cow. perhaps we should aim for the middle?

The weekend passed in a blur of great conversation. In between visits with my folks,we stayed at a hotel, in order to spare the folks the stress of guests.

Unfortunately, the hotel seemed to have taken to washing (the aforementioned) sheets in some sort of radioactive compound, because I developed an allergic reaction that made my eyes swell up like ping-pong balls, and the skin around them like bright red fur. In short, I spent an idyllic weekend with my beloved, looking like Tickle me Elmo. -Me, that is. Not the beloved.- We got along famously, though we DID have a bit of a taradiddle when a beloved male friend of mine called at midnight to excitedly announce that he'd just that second,found the pebble he'd brought back for me from the far reaches of the world. The Beloved was miffed that a Man would be calling me at That Hour. I thought thta was very sweet, if mildly Victorian, of my Fella. I very sweetly explained to him at the top of my lungs that my friends can call whenever they please. Another hurdle crossed. Whew.

Up at 5 tomorrow to do yoga and go to the gym. Sigh. No Rest for the Weary. No Peas For the Wicked. No more reading "Twilight" until dawn. [I'm so ashamed.] Onward and Upward! A new Year Awaits! A New Horizon Beckons! But mostly, I wanna get back into my skinny jeans. -Without inserting Velcro.

love and a Happy Newish Year
P

Christmas shopped today at Housing Works Bookstore, a volunteer staffed used-and-new book store in SoHo that donates its profits to helping the homeless, and helping HIV sufferers. Haven't bought any new clothes for six months. I have enough Stuff, I have finally decided. (Okay, I actually DON'T have enough shoes. Fine. Be that way.) Asked my mom for copies of family photos, which, in our family, can be quite amusing: on Mom's side, there are usually four generations of hard-to-kill and even-harder-to-get-to-express-emotion WASPS, usually gazing in well bred stoniness at whatever new baby has been the occasion of the Photography Studio Visit. On Dad's side, there are various tintypes of kindfaced but weary-seeming Jewish men,often in shirtsleeves and bearded.And there is one terrifying photo of a woman we know only as "Binah" (pronounced "Bean-uh"), who is being photographed in her hometown of Psyczymycz [no! really! it's pronounced "Psyczymycz"). She is apparently angry that she and her fellow townspeople are too poor to avoid vowels. Honestly, the woman has, as my Dad put it, a "face like a catcher's mitt."
For generations, my father has peered apprehensively into the cradle of every new family child, and then sighed with relief, as he realized that, once again, the Binah Face had been miraculouslyy avoided.
Anyway. It was an odd night tonight. A huge full moon, so bright that every time it came out from behind a cloud, I thought I was being interrogated. The streets were filled with packs of roving, drunken santas and assorted elves. After the twenty first santa went staggering by the cafe window, I asked the person next to me, "Please, just tell me ou can see these santas too?"
"What Santas?" was her deadpan reply.
Turns out it was a Santa Pub Crawl, where people dress up like Santa and his inexplicably-mini-skirted-female-elves [apparently, the North Pole isn't as cold as we thought], and they go from bar to bar. Until, at around 2 AM, the streets are filled with staggering, puking Santas. -Well, at least now we know why his nose is "as red as a cherry". -I felt a little cheesed off by this, partly because I had to listen to a bunch of concerned parents trying to explain the "Multiple Santa" phenonomenon* to their baffled 4 year olds. I expected some streetwise NY urchin to pipe up with "Yes, I get wh the're so many, but Mom, why are they all totall PLASTERED?"

Anyway. Quiet night, at home taking care of a sick boyfriend, which consists of making coq au vin and reading him rousing 19th century poetr like "The Charge of The Light Brigade" and "The Highwaman." He's snoozing now, or perhaps faking his own death to get away from the poetry. But the Coq Au Vin was AWESOME, and here's the recipe, from Julia Child via www.elise.com/recipes. Enjoy on a cold night in front of a fireplace with an attractive boy/girl/other/honestly-I-don't-want-to-know, of your choice. If you don't have a fireplace, simply set the trash in your garbage can ablaze, and if you don't have a partner, there's always other, totally viable options, such as your pet, or Match.com, or abduction.

Enjoy!
Coq au Vin Recipe
INGREDIENTS
1/2 lb bacon slices
20 pearl onions, peeled, or 1 large yellow onion, sliced
1 chicken, 4 lb, cut into serving pieces, or 3 lbs chicken parts, excess fat trimmed, skin ON
6 garlic cloves, peeled
Salt and pepper to taste
2 cups chicken stock
2 cups red wine (pinot noir, burgundy, or zinfandel)
2 bay leaves
Several fresh thyme sprigs
Several fresh parsley sprigs
dried fines herbes, or herbes de provence (optional)
1/2 lb button mushrooms, trimmed and roughly chopped
1/2 cup dried mushrooms, soaked in 1/4 cup hot water for twnty minutes
3 tblspoons brown sugar, if desired
2 Tbsp butter
Chopped fresh parsley for garnish
METHOD
1 Blanch the bacon to remove some of its saltiness. Drop the bacon into a saucepan of cold water, covered by a couple of inches. Bring to a boil, simmer for 5 minutes, drain. Rinse in cold water, pat dry with paper towels. Cut the bacon into 1 inch by 1/4 inch pieces.
2 Brown bacon on medium high heat in a dutch oven big enough to hold the chicken, about 10 minutes. Remove the cooked bacon, set aside. Keep the bacon fat in the pan. Add onions and chicken, skin side down. Brown the chicken well, on all sides, about 10 minutes. Halfway through the browning, add the garlic and sprinkle the chicken with salt and pepper. (Note: it is best to add salt while cooking, not just at the very end. It brings out the flavor of the chicken.)
3 Spoon off any excess fat. Add the chicken stock, wine, and herbs. Add back the bacon. Lower heat to a simmer. Cover and cook for 20 minutes, or until chicken is tender and cooked through. Remove chicken and onions to a separate platter. Remove the bay leaves, herb sprigs, garlic, and discard.
4 Add mushrooms to the remaining liquid and turn the heat to high. Boil quickly and reduce the liquid by three fourths until it becomes thick and saucy. Lower the heat, stir in the butter. Return the chicken and onions to the pan to reheat and coat with sauce. Adjust seasoning. Garnish with parsley and serve.
Serves 4. Serve with potatoes or over egg noodles.
Love
peri

"Jack Frost roasting on an open fiiire..
Chestnuts nipping at your nose..."

It's that Time again. I always think, in August, "I'm going to do my Christmas shopping NOW!", and then, because I have ADD the way China has people, I wander off to gaze at a beautiful butterfly, and when i look up, it's December. December, three years later.

For me, Christmas (and Kwanzaa, Hannukah, Winter Solstice, and whatever else makes anyone feel all warm and snuggly) has a definite start date: when the pretzel sellers on 5th ave start selling hot chestnuts, as well. One of my favorite holiday New York City traditions, that makes me feel like I'm in "Stuart Little or "The Saturdays" (GREAT older kids book about growing up in NYC in the 40's-can't recommend highly enough.)

This time last year, I was working at Louis Vuitton, selling watches. In world economics,back when there WAS such a thing,the pound was ithen ncredibly strong, and, in my capacity as saleshuman,I met pretty much everyone from the UK. This is not an exaggeration. One lovely thing was that the strong pound emboldened British folk who might normall not have ventured into the glacial forbidding Frenchness of the Vuitton flagship store, to come in and act all giddy. So I met schoolteachers from manchester, retired naval engineers from Greenwich, and some lovely, flamehaired sisters from Scotland who could NOT stop giggling. -EVER.-The thing was, when they found out I was not going to demnd to see a bank statemnet or proof of aristocratic lineage, their relief made them confiding and warm. I think the British aren't really that reserved--they're just reserved with other Brits. Anyway, it was adorable: people would confide their life stories, under the influence of 1) relief, 2) Christmas adrenaline rush, 3) highly liquid lunches, and 4) the fact that there was no way on earth we would EVER bump into each other again. Very sweet.

Planning many dinners this month, and making lists of friends with different food needs. Back in another lifetime, when I threw three dinner parties a month (you want to learn to cook well, fast? do THAT) I got the hang of cooking for a pparty with vegans, vegetarians, wheat allergies, corn/tomoto/redwine allergies, no sugar people, no alcohol people...it's actually fun, kind of the food rquivalent of doing the Sunday Times Crossword, or juggling chainsaws. usually, at the end of the party, everyone was toasted and cheerfully eating anything, anyway, while Ed the cat prowled around and found unattended plates on the floor, wjich he would then STAND in the middle of. Pretty much ensuring that it was his food thereafter.Although, depending on hpw much wine had been consumed...not always/

Here's a brief list of party hosting tips:
1) One bottle of alcohol per person. No kidding, but it works.
2) Buffet buffet buffet.
3) Figure out what you're good at and do THAT. I.E: I love to cook, and suck at choosing music.But my friend Lisa is GREAT at that. So I ask Lisa to help with that.
4) Give people something to talk about when you introduce them. And brag about em a little. E.G.: "This is Bob, Ernestine. Bob recently won the All-Sahara 100 Meter Ostrich Derby, and he is also the last remaining member of the Royal Hapsburg Family! And Bob, Ernie here loves to make art out of dryer lint, and is also an expert on Civil War artillery! Don't say "minie ball" to THIS hottie, Bob...you'll be fascinated for HOURS!"
5) Don't stress about the food. People would rather have takeout and a relaxed host/ess, than Croquembouche and a stressed out nutjob.
6) Drink. Not too much. But also? Not too little.
7) Relax. (See note 6)
8) And go have fun! these are your favorite people, and the're at your house! it's all good! Whoo-hoo!
love
p

I used to think that being in a monogamous relationship narrowed one's romantic life considerably: I remember clearly, for instance, how much being married cut down on my dating.
However, I am finding, for some reason, that my ability to be madly in love with people I don't know, know slightly, know well but not in that context, or haven't talked to in years, is actually iIMPROVING. Is this a function of finally feeling secure enough to indulge in fantasy? is it a midlife crisis? Have my meds worn off? What's going on here?

Glen Campbell, for instance. I have now listened to "Greatest Hits" about 672 times in a row. I stare at his fluffy, golden, 1967 Good Boy With An Edge hair on the album cover (on iTunes, but still, an album cover)-and I love him madly. Never mind that I know that he is now a mean old Palm Springs hillbilly who spends hs time paying golf and abusing Oxycontin (well, according to the research i've done , courtesy of the online National Enquirer) --I don't care. In that Greatest Hits Album Cover, he radiates the appeal that can only be described as "I Am Hovering On The Edge Of being Completely and Permanently Emotionally Unattainable, And Only You Can Save Me. -Maybe." -Oh Glen! Put down that Percoset, get in your golf cart, and come to Brooklyn! -Okay, maybe no such a hot idea. Got a little carried away there. Sorry. No.

Maybe it's the Christmas Season that has me smiling wistfully: at romance, at love, at the memory of old boyfriends, old crushes, UPS men, young male Abercrombie and Fitch models, etc. Maybe it's the article about Open Marriage in the Post yesterday. -No, no, just kidding. Maybe it's that Christmas/Hannukah/Kwanzaa/Winter Solstice/WhatYouGot? is a time for hazy nostalgia.

Or maybe I just really like Glen Campbell.

xxx

Long long ago, in a city far away, a friend of mine used to know a handsome, charismatic young man who was (aside from being handsome and charismatic), a drug addict. The handsome, charismatic etc drug addict guy borrowed a fair amount of money off my friend, and then, when My Friend would ask for it back, HCDA Guy would put him off with excuses that got ever more Byzantine, as his habit got ever more out of control. The last excuse HCDA Guy ever made to MF was "Hey, man, I'd love to pay you back, but I can't, because [famous Jazz musician] Ornette Coleman stole my typewriter." Two days later, he died, which is what Handsome Charismatic Drug Addicts tend to do, which was tragic, but did have the slight advantage of being a Very Good Excuse.
The kicker was this: a few years later, I met a woman at a bar who was introduced to me as Ornette Coleman's Former Girlfriend. It seems like a strange introduction, but it was that kind of bar, or the introducer was that kind of person, and in any case I never went there or saw any of those folks ever after. But I couldn't resist. I asked this lady if Ornette Coleman had actually stolen this guys typewriter.
She paused, whiskey glass almost to her lips.
"I believe he did, my dear. Yes, I believe he did."
And then the whiskey vanished, and later so did she and the bar and the people, though they might be there still.-But I am not.

This is a roundabout meditation on personal responsibility. If that HCDA had said, at any point, "Something here is my fault", he might have stopped doing drugs, and apologized to his friend, and maybe made a plan to pay him back, and possibly even kept his typewriter... and incidentally, not died.
I'm thinking about this because I was, well, happy this Thanksgiving. Because, I think, I decided to stop blaming anyone else for anything. I made a decision that the only thing that really matters, in a family situation, is to rev up one's heart chakra into overdrive [or some sort of motor-y metaphor--don't drive, sorry); dial down one's "defensiveness/sensitivity" receptor to Zero, and be a big ol' loving goofball. I tried it. It worked. Came away from a huge family Thanksgiving, for once, not attached to the ways in which I "didn't get what I wanted" , but actively and actually and hugely grateful for everyone, and for all my blessings, which are beyond counting.

Yes. Mushy. But true. -And say! Isn't this a nice typewriter?

Anyway. Been rubbing elbows with the Great again. I've mentioned Laura Dawn here before, whose untiring work for MoveOn.Org made a genuine, one-person-CAN-make-a-difference-kind of difference in the Presidential campaign, and who can sing her ass off as well. I'd love to hate her, but she's too damn cute. So go to her band "Little Death"'s website and listen to her sing, and go see the band, because it's the best live show I've seen for ages, along with Trevor Exter. -Also spent an evening listening, fascinated, to the novelist William Kennedy ("Ironweed","Legs")and his wife talk about their meeting and almost immediate marriage in Puerto Rico, where she was a huge TV star in the 60's and 70's. Kennedy's books are SO somber, but he is actually twinkly and genial, and a huge flirt. People really are astonishing.And... The thing about people who do what they love, and are best at, AND get paid for it, is this: they're FUN. They've taken chances that most people haven't, and fearlessness makes folks good company.
And talking to terrific writers is fun because...boy, can they tell a good story. Which is not easy.

Anyway. Spent today reading Bill Bryson's new book on Shakespeare, and listening to "Beauty Attends: The Heartsongs of Opal Whiteley", Anne Hills' gorgeous renditions of 19th century savant/prodicgy Opal's poems, set to music by the incomparable Michael Smith (www.collectiveworksmedia.com, plese get it, it's AWESOME) and genrerally trying not to be dumber than i can help.(Oh, go buy ALL of Michael Peter Smith's music, please. "Love Stories" and "Time"make ver very good Christmas/Kwanzaa/Hanukkah/Solstice/WhatElseyouGot? gifts.)
.Because: It takes a lot of work to keep sharp enough to deserve any place at a table with these people. And it takes a lot of work to stay focussed on one's own stuff as well. And it takes work to constantly try to be a good daughter, a good friend, a good sister, a good ...anything....In fact, deserving a Place At The Table, in a bigger sense, IS a lot of work. But boy,BOY, is it fun.

As Robert Frost says in "Two Tramps In MudTime":

But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And work is play for human stakes,
Will the deed ever really be done:
For Heaven and the future's sakes.



And if I ever get a tattoo, it will be that poem. -Or a butterfly.-Just kidding, Dad. No tattoos.
And hey, Robert Frost?
Nice Typewriter.

Love
p

Anyway,

EXTREMELY random thoughts.

1) Very very happy about Obama. I keep rolling the unfamiliar taste of "oh wait, maybe I AM proud to be American, and not in a defensive, "bad-Toby-Keith-country-music-song" kind of way"" around in my mouth.--Yes, that IS the worst sentence ever written, from a purely grammatical point of view. But I took a Vicodin, so i don't care, and I took a Vicodin because:
2) I was in a cab accident, which reawakened a whole host of old injuries as well as inviting new ones to the party. Nothing serious, but my clever idea of "oh, this will heal A LOT faster if I don't wear this unflattering neck brace!" turned out to be about as clever as an inflatable dartboard. And no, you can't have any of my Vicodin. It's actually no fun at all and it makes you grumpy and nauseuos, but-and this came as a surprise--it actually DOES kill pain. Who knew?-Also, I'm so paranoid about addiction that I asked for only five, as the nice doctor was writing the scrip. -That was one surprised doctor, let me tell you.
"Are you sure you don't want more?" he asked, in a kindly way. "No," I replied. "because oddlyy, I plan on using them only for...[roll of drums here, please..] ..PAIN."

No, he was very nice doctor and very responsible. But still surprised.

3) One thing you can do when you're in the St Vincent's waiting room after a cab accident [and I hope from the bottom of my upper right ventricle that you never are], is write bad poetry. Espeially when you suspect that all the hospital hoop-la is just going to come down to a simple case of whiplash and you're going to look like a bit of a prat for making such a fuss.-So- Here is the first of a new poetry genre I like to call "Bad Poetry You Still Sorta Get Points For, because You Wrote It In The St Vincent's Waiting Area While On a Gurney/" -Ready?-No, you're not. You only think you are. -Here, have a Vicodin. It may help.

I Call it:
"On Suspected Whiplash, In St Vincent's Waiting Room, On Seventh Avenue and 12th Street,Where You Also Manage To Bump Into Your Boyfriend's Brother Who Is There Entirely Coincidentally,Although That's Not Really Relevant, Actually"


There should be something noble in this pain
About which so much fuss is being made
This waiting room is quite a pyschic drain
Perhaps I should have hobbled out, not stayed.
Purgatory: beige and purple seats
The color of the bandage AND the bruise:
The limbo griddle now upon which heats
Anxiety: whom next will Night Nurse choose?

Tho' future terrors lurk in doctor's chart:
The waiting [room] is still the hardest part.

PL 2008

GOSH that's bad. I think "limbo griddle" might well be the worst phrase ever coined. Though as rock band names go..nahh, still terrible. Sorry.

3) I have learned many things through this ordeal. One lesson i learned tonight, from watching "Indecent Proposal", starring Demi Moore and woody harrelson[one is only allowed to watch truly bad movies on cable if one is genuinely ill], is this; you may cast Woody Harrelson as an architect in a movie, you may even make him wear prop glasses, but you will never, ever make an audience believe he is smart.
I mean, you can put a duck in a black shirt on a balcony, but I ain't never gonna think he's Mussolini. -Valuable life lesson there, children. I suffered so you don't have to.

4) A few last notes: Christopher Ricks, who is he Oxford Visiting Professor of Poetry, wrote a fantastically good book called "Dylan's Vision Of Sin", and if ou are a serious songwriter, or even a frivolous one, or just someone who loves great writing about great writing, go buy it. -You can't have mine, it's signed. AND you can definitely not have my vicodin. But you can have my
best wishes
peri

who is going to read this entry tomorrow and be ver very embarrassed

Back in July, a beautiful and talented friend talked me into coming to a party with her.
"There's a guy there I think you'll like," she said.

She was right. Thank you, Laura!

And here I am, three months later, suddenly living in a duplex in Brooklyn with a working fireplace, a dishwasher, washer/dryer ..oh, and a self-described "big hairy half-Jew" who looks like a fifties movies star, has the manners of a Southern gentleman, and treats me like the second coming of Aphrodite. I'M jealous of me, and I'm ME! Holy cats.

There has been a serious period of adjustment. For one thing, both of my much loved (and ancient) cats died in the past month: Shirka, the beautiful, vain calico who was the most insistently loving animal I've ever had, was 17, and Eddie Sebastian, Private Eye-the most vividly eccentric and human animal I've ever known--was 21. But post-divorce, they were my small furry family, greeting me with love and noisy demands for attention and chicken gravy (special cat treat, gravy out of a jar, delivered by spoon-try it)) when I came home to my tiny,lonely Village apartment. Not to mention witnessing my entire adult life. But it seemed as though they felt I was going to be okay now, and that it was safe for them to go. GOD I miss them. Shirka slept on my back with her paws around my neck,purring into my ear: every night for 17 years. And Ed would mack on all my women friends, with complete and utter confidence that he, indeed, the God of Love he knew himself to be, and not, say, a neutered 10 pound orange eunuch with white eyebrows. And it worked! Women LOVED him! My woman friends made him handmade gifts and came over just to squeal over how adorable and macho he was! Confidence is everyything, I tell you.

Finall have internet access for the first time [on a steady basis] in FOUR MONTHS. THAT's nice. Still feeling a wee bit uprooted--a small part of me actually misses the neo-bohemian hellhole I was living in--it was MY hellhole, and decorated in a very eccentric but sorta sweet way.This new place is decorated with gorgeous antiques, and oriental rugs, and a chandelier and Many Klassy Objets. I still haven't quite figured out where to put my 1960's plastic horse, or my toy guitars, or the 1940's "paint by number" paintings of horses, or ...well, you get the picture.

So, life goes on. Just with a bit more happiness, in a nicer place. The struggle now is to stay creative despite having everything I could possibly want. Talk about a Luxury Problem.

xxx

If elected, john mccain would be the oldest first term president in the history of the united states.
This isn't inherently bad, except for the fact that john mccain has had repeated bouts of cancer and is quite possibly exhibiting signs of early onset alzheimers and dementia.
Given what is known of john mccains health history its altogether reasonable to question his ability to fully serve as commander in chief.
According to a panel of over 30,000 doctors he might currently have a type of melanoma that has a survival rate of less than 2 years.
We, the voting public, need to know the state of john mccains health and fitness, both physically and mentally, in order to consider voting for him.
The problem is that john mccain is unwilling to release any of his health records.
He has over 1,000 pages of medical records that are currently under lock and key, and that he won't release to the public or the media.
If senator mccain is fit to serve as commander in chief he would then have no reason to hide his medical records.
If he wants to prove to the american people that he is mentally and physically fit he should release his health records immediately.
According to medical actuarial tables and given john mccains history of health problems there is a 25% chance that he's suffering from early onset alzheimers, and a 50% chance that he wouldn't actually be able to serve his entire first term.
If he releases his medical records he'll be able to show whether the public should or should not be concerned about his physical and mental well-being.
Please forward this on in order to pressure the media and the mccain campaign to release john mccains health records.
Thanks,
Moby

The British slang for "lies" is "pork pies" ( from Cockney rhyming slang: other examples are "trouble and strife" for "wife", and, well, I've forgotten the others)..and "telling porkies" , meaning lying, is a great phrase. It definitely connoted the general piggishness of untruth. "There you go, telling porkies again..." Sigh.
Spent today dealing with a finance company that is so dishonest, it might be asked to be McCain's vice presidential candidate soon. Talk about porky.Folks, if you get a chance to have dealings with GE Care Credit and Finance, take my advice and run like the wind in the opposite direction.
And, on a personal note, am still bizarrely,deeply hurt that a young woman I've never met, told big ol' porkies about me to her boyfriend,who's an old friend of mine. {Now an ex old friend.] I don't know why it would bother me that someone would tell her boyfriend that I was showing up at her workplace, calling her, and trying to be "friends"....this is a woman about whom the ONLY thing I know about her, is her first name. Very odd. Not exactly the sort of thing that I would do.- Bear in mind that i don't even call people I KNOW. And if I had the kind of spare time it takes to show up at somebody's "workplace" [and there's a bizarre and pompous nomenclature], I would be one happy camper...except that I'd actually use that spare time to go to the Met or the Frick. -Still, it really hurt. People never cease to amaze me...it seems people are either MUCH better or MUCH worse than I expect them to be. -Sigh.

And now, off to keep arguing with a finance company. What a waste of time. Just think, I could be using these precious moments to stalk people's "workplaces." Simply send me your first name only, and I, Hercule Poirot, will magically deduce the rest.-

Double sigh.

xxx

This blog is a forum for the radically trivial and pointless, and I see no call to change that now. The world may be collapsing around us, day and night may be on fire, but if you want to find a good fried chicken recipe, I am here for you.

That said, the fact that the economy about as stable as an inflatable dartboard or a chocolate teakettle[thank you, Terry Practhett], is a wee bit alarming. I can say with some smugness that my cunning plan of spending the last 15 years in irresponsible and abject poverty has paid off handsomely. As I knew it would. No credit card debt, no stocks, no 401K worries. However, my heart genuinely goes out to those who weren't following my "What,Me Worry?" template. It's as if, in the fable of the Ant and the Grasshopper, the feckless Grasshopper winds up lending the industrious and rsponsible Ant some tasty leaves to tide him over till Spring. Yikes. I'm pretty sure this is not how it's supposed to pan out.

What else?Saw "Che" the other night, the 4 1/2 hour hagiography of Che Guevara,directed and written by Steven Soderbergh and starring the deelish Benicio DelToro. The first half was great, but the second half was so tedious, as the Bolivian police force hunted down Che in various mountain steadfasts, that i was tempted to yell "He's behind the damn bush! He's the hairy guy with great bone structure!:" so they'd catch him and the movie would end. A little like the vanity production of "Anne Frank" starring Pia zadora, the world's least talented actress,that was on Broadway for a day or so. The story goes that, after witnessing Miss Zadora's theatrical stylings for the first act, when the second act began and the Gestapo come into the house the Frank family was hiding in, the audience rose as one and shouted "She's in the attic!!"

Mr. Soderbergh was nice, though. At the dinner at the Plaza Athenee afterwards [and just for the record, it would have been nice to know that there was afancy event afterwards, because I was wearing a twenty dollar mock-Hermes tunic from the Sikh stor next door to my house, an article of clothing for which the word "garish" would have been swaaay to kind), Soderbergh said "So, what did you think?'
I said, "Well, I was glad you didn't cave to popular outcry and make it a musical."
-He talked to me anyway, but probably only to see how the hell I got into the dinner to begin with.

My fella and I move into the New Place this weekend. As Dr Suess said: "Just tell yourself, Duckie, you're really quite lucky!" I am so lucky that I keep thinking that any moment now, I will be hit by a meteorite. I have True Love AND a duplex with a working fireplace. If I alsonhad an actual working metabolism, I would be insufferable, but sadly, such is not the case.

Anyway, forgive these ramblings, and know that your silly blogging friend wishes you luck beyond your wildest and most improbable dreams.
xxx