Cooler than You: Stupid Things I Say and Do

I've been back from my summer away for nearly two months. I finally put all my jewelry away that had been sitting in a lock box. I'd fish out a piece every now and then, but mostly I'd been wearing the hull I'd pulled out for the summer. That's how these things usually go. Yet, as I pulled the pieces from the box, I wasn't prepared for the memories woven into silver and stone. The black beaded chocker I wore to a friend's Vegas wedding, for which I was the Maid of Honor. She and I don't speak anymore, yet I can't pass on the necklace I've long not worn. It hangs on a back hook in the jewelry case, so I rarely see it. Memories of our twenty-year friendship linger, pervasive, and are here to stay like a roach infestation that baffles the best Orkin man, yet I won't reach out. Read a few posts back, as my heart doesn't have it left in me.     I don't have jewelry from my sister. There's a ring I bought for my Dad to give her. It'...

A couple of days ago, Tuesday, to be precise, as I walked down 186th with my dog, flashes of an old memory hit me so hard I nearly fell over. In the five or so minutes it took to get to Broadway, I found myself reliving a long-packed away memory of my sister and her long-gone motorcycle. It was a Honda, as I know someone will ask. Beyond that, my friends, it was silver, and I don't know anything of the makes, models, and snazz of bikes. Yet, I went to see my sister in the summer of 2000 when she first showed me her bikes. Well, they belonged to her and her then-girlfriend.   As sisters will do, the older one convinces the younger to go for a quick ride. Honestly, that wasn't hard. What she didn't realize, and was floored to learn, it was not my first time as a passenger. Though, for me, it was a complete shock that she rode bikes. Look, you all, my sister loved her truck, but she was never the type to devote an intense amount of energy to the road. She loved her speed, but ...

While in Greece, I have clambered down a gorge, floated in Poseidon's waters, probably tempted the wrath of Zeus (this is me after all), wandered aimlessly, made a friend or two (I think), and nearly forgotten what the word trouble means.  Then again, I did say nearly . . . yet, along the way, the biggest thing that has awakened me is the shelling out of a disproportionate amount of my budget on new clothes.  As in, I went to a few big box stores and bought summer attire.  I shelled out some dough at local, Greek shops too.  I mean, I have certainly given more than my fair share to the Greek economy this summer.  I'm here for a few more weeks, and I'm certain local coffee shops (like the one near my flat), some restaurants, and maybe another bar or two will see my cash.  Tis the nature of life.  Yet . . .  I won't say I'm a skinny mini.  Hell, I've never been that.  In high school, my junior year, there's a pic of my Dad and me at the JR...

Two years roundabout, I published a little piece on naked yoga, life, dating, and the dances we all do. The zine is now gone, as these things happen, but I have the rights back. As June tries to swallow me whole, with good things and a swarm of busyness I can't fully comprehend, I thought it would be fitting to re-publish this here.  I'm days away from two months in Greece, with writings, books and plans, and a million other things on the fire. Will I end up naked in Greece? In the shower, certainly. Elsewhere? Who knows. This is me, after all, the perpetual Lifetime Movie in the making.  This piece has remained one of my favorites--aside from a novel I'm hunting for an agent on--and as it's crossed my mind, again and again, I still ponder the simplicity of it all.  It was a perfect evening, one that was meant to last for a moment--as so many relationships and vignettes of life do--but it served a purpose outside of its intent.  It reminds of freedoms and inte...

The snow falls, daffodils bought last week droop from the mason jar long wilted, dried flowers--from the fall--still stand in another mason jar providing another touch of me in this space as dried bouquets have long intrigued me, the lone orchid stands dying as a reflection of my mood and life as of late, my foot aches in the backdrop, and music no one wants to listen to plays.  Sad songs.  Moods and memories.  In the shower, I notice a new bruise on my shoulder.  I wonder when it came to be, where it came from, and why I didn't see until now.  Did I do that in my sleep? Was it someone on a crowded subway? It's the wrong shoulder for my handbag. I wash my hair and forget about it.  Riddled with aches of Lupus and arthritis I do yoga in my studio.  I can't make it out for a run, as my post-pneumonia lungs are still reminding me of things of I should not do, and pole dance is planned for Friday.  I play mixed songs, of a favorite playlist i...

It's funny the things we remember, and how we remember them.  A decade ago I remember getting the email for my first book.  It was about this time of year, and Tanfer--my co-editor--wrote me with nothing more than "Yes! Yes! Yes!" It was our first book each and together.  We were younger then, that's for sure.  Ironically, I think I'm slightly smaller now . . . Usually, that proverbial comparison goes the other way.  That meander aside, I remember culling those pages, corresponding with the authors, doing the next to final press review of the chapters at a professor's house in Port Jeff, and in September and October I did the index in Virginia.  I had left NY, and I was in Virginia on a Visting hire.  My parents were delighted to have me around, even when I sat on the couch eating Kit Kats ticking off index terms and numbers.  There was a sense of hope and happiness then.  In the middle of those ticking numbers, I picked up a couple of p...

As I sit here in the wake of another 80 hour work week--which is also attributing to my disdain as of late--and not having had a genuine day off in more than three months I battle writer's block and securities of social design.  Alone again . . . a tisket, a tasket that matters far more than it should, as most days I'm not home long enough to fully sleep to shake off the exhaustion.  Instead, between fits of sleeping and hustles to side streets and subways the snow begins to fall and the the air has chilled low enough to allow the truly ingenious--or cheap--to chill beer and other consumables in the open, frigid air.  I haven't resorted to that--as of yet--as my ginger beer is still in my refrigerator and every morsel of consumable food is packed and stored so that the city's real undesirables--roaches and fucking mice--can't make their way into it. Yet, on those subways from western Queens, to eastern Queens, to the Queens/Brooklyn border, to east Brooklyn, to ea...

I haven't lived in the mountains in years.  In about sixteen to be exact.  That was when I found myself living in Las Cruces, NM with the Organ Mountains in the background. Then I moved back east, and headed northeast to New York.  Yet, in years of moving and shuttling about I forgot and suppressed the memories of where I started.  Seattle.  All those years ago.   I'm in Oregon for the month, on work and research officially and more so is the resounding reset of me.  Pretty much from the moment I exited the Portland Airport a sense of comfort and ease began to settle in on me.  One of those moments when you realize you are home . . . in my case it was a home I always knew I had, but along the years I had suppressed it and moved on.  In the days since, things have fallen in place like natural kismet, without strenuous effort and with buttered ease.  I started out in Seattle, and we lived in a little house on A Street in Tac...