Cooler than You: Stupid Things I Say and Do

In late December, I tried to write again to fall short to the binds of writer's block and life. Yet, now, a month and a half later, here I am.   *** It's been three weeks now since the surgery narrative changed. The message on my phone saying she passed is still clear as day in my mind's eye. Two days ago, I let my iTunes play a random list of songs. That was my bad, knowing good and well that that's rarely a good idea.  Joanne came on, and it hit me as I climbed five floors, gasping for air--not from the steep ascension this time--as I struggled, shaking to put the key in my door. It's always something like that, a song out of the blue, to knock the wind and fragile peace right out of you.   That damned Lady Gaga song connected to us and me, and now it haunts me like a memory you can never fully pack away. I've lived longer with lupus and RA than I did without; that song was written about the loss of someone from lupus, yet in its release, it's more along ...

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...

When summer began, it came in with a series of blows destroying the crops in their wake.  Looking back it paints like a series of farm stands, succulent and fruitful from afar but upon closer examination, the wells of fruit have wilted and rotted under the sun's eye waiting for the next unsuspecting onlooker.  Well, technically that was the end of spring and beginning of the upcoming season.  A couple of months later I'm waking up front the jolts, gasping for air, and--as usual--looking at the changes, carnage, and circus of it all. The summer began with learning a cousin died . . . Another one this year.  This one, one I was fairly close to for years and years died at 49 . . . On his bathroom floor, I hear.  Lessons of the past I don't have it in me to go into, he and I parted angry ways half a decade ago.  Addictions and misgivings left a lot of the be said.  A lot to be desired.  Damage was done, to everyone and especially me, and with h...

As life goes, last summer I found myself looking at the heartland's horizon, and this summer I'll be duplicating and extending some of these travels.  And with that, I have thoughts.   Yes, I was in the American Midwest, rolling my economical car forward, with iTunes blaring, and some flavored water at my side.   In a poetic manner of speaking, I woke up and found myself on the road.   Though, as we all know, the realities of life don't afford for that.   Instead, I had spent weeks planning, crafting ideas in the wee hours of insomnia on my Pinterest boards, and I had prepped my car.   I had ample data for my GPS, I had a cooler with bottled water and a couple of sandwiches, I had carrot sticks, and I had a somewhat curated playlist.   What that came down to was my asking friends for road trip songs and adding their suggestions to my questionable music library.   I planned to stop and see some old friends, from college and before, but as...

As I rock along the subway line, and pass with throngs of others up and down the stairs, escalators, and ramps, and pour onto the city streets, I can feel the hum of the urban hive.   Its rhythms, its rhymes, its pulse.   It's heartbeat.   These are the things I see.                On an average Monday, with mid-fall overcast skies and leaves beginning to change, billows of steam erupt from the sewers and rooftops.   Those from the lower domains carry the odors of the city, those that out of towners notice and I've long learned to ignore.   The ones from above, I look at them and wonder if they are the cast off dreams of New Yorkers awakening to find themselves in the cog again.   Or, I wonder if they are the cast off dreams of New Yorkers who find themselves awash in regret the morning after, in the middle of, or years into the game.   Are they the bellows of exasperated parents bemoan...