Cooler than You: Stupid Things I Say and Do

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...

Perhaps it is this time of year.  Perhaps.  Though, this time of year typically means I've bought myself daffodils.  Ironically, I did not buy them in the rain this year.   Someone told me a few weeks back I was very Wadsworth with the daffodils.  Perhaps.  The English Major for Life in me wants to agree with his own English degree self, but the feminist in me wants to knee gut that shit.  I think I'll step back and take the romantic imagery of Wadsworth instead.  "A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze." Indeed, probably one of the more famous poems of the language I type in.  "I Wandered Lonely on a Cloud" was one I recited back in my undergrad days for a lit professor I once had.  All that was a lifetime ago, scores and hundreds of daffodils purchased have come and gone.  As another arctic vortex swoops in, threatening to freeze me in my solitary ex...

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...

Last Year. There's a reason I went radio silent more often than not.  Let's just say six + rounds of prednisone, numerous ER ventures, a case of fucking elephant face, a damned surgery that makes me a matter for the colonies . . . I give you this. When the revolution comes, I’ll find myself in the colonies.* This assertion I am certain—as if being a college professor, a writer, or a divorcee wasn’t enough— the loss of an ovary certainly sealed my fate in the metaphorical stone. As to how I’d survive those colonies, I am uncertain, but as I wander through my life, I find myself accessing the carnage and the pain left in the proverbial wake I stop and stare. The pain of my ovaries began when I was young, and as the story goes, it has marched on with the beat of a drummer outplaying his companions, always calling out the show and demanding attention. Within the picture, 25 years ago (when I was 16 and young and fresh with plenty of dreams still unformed) I woke up w...

As September cools, and fall begins to awaken, I sit here looking back with a trigger finger gettin' lose and ready on the match.  September, far worse than August, was a surly little chic in too small heels.  Okay, that's a little kind.  She was a surly chick in too small heals needing carbs and a puppy for all the attention she demanded.  Y'all, September needs its own zip code for the love it needs these days.   August might have tried my soul, but damn at least she gave me some breathers and pleasant moments of remiss.  You know, like when the one-time beau met up with me in Denver with a lolli instead of flowers. Yeah, in an aside, pot is legal in Colorado--if you did not know--and so that lolli was a mango flavored THC laden fairy princess ride.  Of course, what I should also remind you is that when one consumes a lolli one should not partake of the entire thing at once and while alone.  Okay, you can . . . But, ya kno...

Twenty-five years marks a silver anniversary.  Someone, somewhere, owes me silver.  Why? 25 years ago, this week I take, I went to my doctor's office with an ear infection and easy bruising, and I came home with Lupus.  Just like that, life at sixteen changed. In that regard, as I sit here looking at a quarter of a century, more than half my life, and a sentence comparable to manslaughter I can't say I'm nostalgic.  I mean years of taking vitamins the size of chicken patties, years of staring down the gremlin bottles on my dresser, years of putting my feet on the floor in the morning and letting out moans and wails, years of endless doctor visits and blood draws, and years of wondering when the next friend will bail on me because the Lupus is too much.  That latter part: I called and left a message, the day of a meeting, that I couldn't make it.  Seven years later and I remember the spinning room, the adverse drug side effects, the trips to my p...

Sometimes life has a way of becoming a shit show.  A prolonged one.  This past week and a half has been one of those for me.  Some of it involves first world, white people problems like trying to upgrade my phone and encountering corporate robots, the grocery being out of my favorite beer, running out of coffee, and exploding coffee all over my kitchen (yeah, there was coffee on my CEILING).  More problematic things involved nearly everything I touched becoming a prolonged, nightmare of a project; having the fucktards at my CVS pharmacy act like I was a lunatic when I asked for a prescription refill and where the muscle ointment was (seriously, when someone asks for something like an ace bandage and you work in a pharmacy . . . as you say you have to get the manager--after she asks three times--because you are too stupid to respond . . . ); middle aged malarkey; medical hell; and learning that you aren't worth the time, hotel room, or moment away you start to wonder ...

1 May . . . the day in the sewing world, online voyeurism enclave, of the start of Me Made.  In that regard, I guess I've been doing Me Made since 2013 now.  That being said, I've made no quiet voice about the disdain of selfies . . . and the body image notations one makes during the 30 days of Me Made. Though, in 2013 I was nearing a year of being married, and what most now know is that my marriage was already on a very painful death.  That actually started six weeks after I do.  I'm not going into that here, but let's just say I stayed and held on for as long as I did from shame, status quo, and fear.  None of them are good reasons to stay . . . Though, looking back on the pictures the memories come back, in floods and spoils, about the incredible amount of begging to get him to take a photo, to partially engage in something I do (which, being a writer and with someone who doesn't believe in it  . . . ), and the skill changes. There was clear escapism ...

When 2016 started I began the year staring at the television, sitting alone on my parents couch, as my Dad slept in the back and the dog was with him.   That day we had checked my mother into a nursing home.  At that moment, I remember thinking if this is a sign for the coming year . . . Yeah. 2016. Here's your fucking match.  Celebrity deaths aside, it's like this year had it out for the world, with a vengeance and flare. That being said, there are many reasons that the departure of this year is a blessing, and by and large I really don't have it in me to rehash every horror filled moment of the 2016 realm of Dante's hell . . . 2016 being the layer he never wrote about.  For two weeks I've been trying to figure out what I would write to close this year . . . I've sewed some, made bras and jeans and a couple silk blouses, I've travelled, I've taught, I've collapsed under it all, I've lost myself, I've lost my faith in resilience . . ...

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...

“Mom.” “Yeah?” “I’m pregnant.”  Tho s e  final four words from Rory Gilmore  have now  erupted  shock waves across the internet, phone lines, and social gatherings.  I, like a large score of others who loved the  Gilmore Girls  show for years, am no exception.  I gasped, I laughed, and I logically saw it as an opening for another revival.  But, as I sat on my bed,  my  knitting falling from my hands, staring solo at my television I couldn’t help but feel a strange mix of nostalgia, anger, let down, and longing wave over me.   For months now I’ve been working on various feminism projects, and in the midst of that I’ve found myself re - watching  Gilmore Girls  as the show has always been my feel-good, go-to, comfort food of no calories.  That combo is hard to find, and about four years ago when Netflix released the entire series I was one of those  mid  thirty-year olds who spent the better p...