The Sound of Silence

It has never been about noise. There's always noise whether you notice it or not.

Silence is space. A brief moment or years and years. Silence is walking through space alone.

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT: Sometimes There's Actually A Happy Ending!

Ellwood Got Lap!
Somebody adopted him and he's doing great.

"A Poem Called Home" Comes Home

Thanks to the Elizabeth George Foundation, I have been able to complete the trilogy, WIRE MONKEY.

On October 27, this coming Tuesday I will read a couple of chapters from the last installment, Poem Called Home at the Women's / Trans' Poetry Jam & Open Mike at Bluestockings Bookstore. I hope you'll join me.

A POEM CALLED HOME

Thirty years after leaving the ancestral seat on the Lower East Side, Bets returns only to accidentally break the arm of her mother, The Cellist. This send The Cellist down the rabbit hole of old age Armageddon, leaving Bets and her sister, The Other Daughter to face off with the law, the doctors and medicaid services. It's smack-down time at the Adult Day Program.


FEATURE WRITERS:
Claire Olivia Moed and Jan Clausen

WHERE:
Women's / Trans' Poetry Jam & Open Mike
Bluestocking Bookstore,
172 Allen Street, between Stanton & Rivington
1 1/2 blocks south from E.Houston

WHEN:
Tuesday October 27th

TIME:
7-8PM: open mike so bring your poetry, your prose, your songs, and your spoken word (you get 8 minutes)

8-9PM: featured writers (me and Jan)
(These are all approximate times.)

HOW MUCH:
$5 suggested donation

Hosted by Vittoria repetto - the hardest working guinea butch dyke poet on the lower east side

Bluestockings Bookstore
172 Allen St.
(between Staton & Rivington)
1 1/2 blocks south from E.Houston
NYC
212-777-6028
info@bluestockings.com
http://www.bluestockings.com/

Open mike - sign-up at 7 pm - 8 minute limit

Take V or F train to 2nd Ave. and exit from the 1st Ave exit and walk south down Allen St. (aka. 1st Ave) 1 ½ blocks to the store

Press contact person: Vittoriar@aol.com

Sunday Memories: Check Mate and a Reading This Coming Tuesday

Once upon a day, a year ago...

Florence had just died. The memorial was over. The temp job ended. There was enough money to last for another two months. For the first time there was time. To write, to rest, to find out where the stories were. At least until the money ran out.

The money began to run out.

During a cold afternoon, all hope for this time to coax story from the shadows drained out of me in one swift moment.

I crawled into bed, stared at the wall festooned with notes and ideas and snippets and sentences and thought, "I can't do this anymore. I can't live teetering on fear and poverty and one rent check away from eviction. I need to give up writing. I need to find a job. I need to make sure that I have enough money so that when I'm old I don't end up in a nursing home like the one on Avenue B where Gramma died, tied to a chair and without her teeth."

How Florence had kept afloat teaching piano lessons for $5, $10 or $20 always puzzled my sister and me. I hadn't been able to do that. It was time to throw in the towel.

The doorbell rang.

There was the postman who had been our postman for the last 30 years with a registered letter.

I thought, "Oh. I'm being evicted."

Until I looked at the envelope. It was from a foundation I had applied to for a grant. Months earlier.

"They wouldn't reject me with a registered letter" I kept saying over and over again as I tried to grab the letter out of his hands.

"You have to sign first you have to sign first you have to sign first!" the postman kept saying grabbing the letter back.

The only reason I stopped grabbing was I knew it was a federal offense to assault a postal worker.

When I finally opened the letter, there was a check. For the first time, ever, I was given time, more than a couple of days, more than a week here and there, more than two months before the money ran out. I was given almost a year. To write, to complete, to be what I was - a writer.

***
Thanks to the Elizabeth George Foundation, I have been able to complete the trilogy, WIRE MONKEY.

On October 27, this coming Tuesday I will read a couple of chapters from the last installment, Poem Called Home at the Women's / Trans' Poetry Jam & Open Mike at Bluestockings Bookstore. I hope you'll join me.

A POEM CALLED HOME

Thirty years after leaving the ancestral seat on the Lower East Side, Bets returns only to accidentally break the arm of her mother, The Cellist. This send The Cellist down the rabbit hole of old age Armageddon, leaving Bets and her sister, The Other Daughter to face off with the law, the doctors and medicaid services. It's smack-down time at the Adult Day Program.


FEATURE WRITERS:
Claire Olivia Moed and Jan Clausen

WHERE:
Women's / Trans' Poetry Jam & Open Mike
Bluestocking Bookstore,
172 Allen Street, between Stanton & Rivington
1 1/2 blocks south from E.Houston

WHEN:
Tuesday October 27th

TIME:
7-8PM: open mike so bring your poetry, your prose, your songs, and your spoken word (you get 8 minutes)

8-9PM: featured writers (me and Jan)
(These are all approximate times.)

HOW MUCH:
$5 suggested donation

Hosted by Vittoria repetto - the hardest working guinea butch dyke poet on the lower east side

Bluestockings Bookstore
172 Allen St.
(between Staton & Rivington)
1 1/2 blocks south from E.Houston
NYC
212-777-6028
info@bluestockings.com
http://www.bluestockings.com/

Open mike - sign-up at 7 pm - 8 minute limit

Take V or F train to 2nd Ave. and exit from the 1st Ave exit and walk south down Allen St. (aka. 1st Ave) 1 ½ blocks to the store

Press contact person: Vittoriar@aol.com

Got Lap?

Who knows why Ellwood's former owner couldn't afford the operation? Maybe he or she had only enough money for their own surgery but not their cat's.

The only thing anyone knows is that one very sad, bad day Ellwood, three years old and declawed, ended up without a home or an owner or a lap to sit in.

Dr. G of Cooper Square Veterinary said, "I'd take him but I've already have four at home." He wasn't even counting his bulldog when he said that. Just the cats.

Since Dr. G. saved Jupiter from himself, the very least I could do was try and get Ellwood a home.

So here's the skinny on ELLWOOD, one really great, delicious, loving, wonderful being who would make someone with a lonely lap very very happy:

He's three years old.
He's neutered.
He's on C/D wet food.
He's great with other cats and dogs!
He loves kisses and hugs and he head butts everyone he meets!!
He loves laps!!!
He's a TOTAL MUSH!!

Contact Emily at 917.573.8710 or emily10012@aol.com
kittykind.org
P.O. 961 Murray Hill Station
NY, 10156

Once I Was A Man

Now I am a fucking eunuch with a cone around my head.*





*According to Dr. Gagliardi of Cooper Square Veterinary Hospital, of all the hundreds and hundreds of neutering he has done on dogs and cats, Jupiter was the first to chew off all his stitches. And then after getting fixed up again, go straight for them again.

Cooper Square Veterinary Hospital
211 East 5th Street
NY, NY 10003
212.777.2630

Sunday Memories: Weapon Of The Spirit

It was 1988.

They had been invited to El Salvador but not by the government. By the students.

Traveling hours and miles through many military blockades and repeated searches, they finally arrived at a small town where there was to be a concert supporting the resistance.

But the military had destroyed the stage.

Somehow the sound man was able to put things back together. So they took the stage and began to sing this song about El Salvador, for El Salvador.

At that moment a military helicopter slowly lowered to tree level. Looking up, they saw M80s pointed directly at them. They still sang.

Twenty-one years later in the basement of a church built for peace and freedom, they sang that same song. With the same passion, with the same commitment, with the same courage.

***
photo: Frank and Bev, with Chris in the back, at the Human Condition reunion, 10-17-09 in New York City

bevgrant.com

Night Streets

This is like daylight to me. Decades of working inside cubicles sometimes never going outside during the hours of nine and five, nighttime becomes freedom and joy and play, skipping down dark and bright streets.

Welcome to Hailey's California

Born October 7, 2009 at 11:30 am weighing 7 pounds 8 ounces.

Born into the ferocious joy the Universe felt when she arrived. And the reality that the minute she is sick of sunny California, her New York auntie has an extra room.

Sunday Memories: The First Step

We met in a tiny office for NYU graduate students. It was 1993 and she was very friendly. That's because she came from California.

We pounded out the idea of friendship together, did office work together, survived so-called writing classes together, graduated together, wept together, wrote together, planned together. We buried ideas, ex-boyfriends hopes, and parents together. Sixteens years were filled with gasps from infuriating new ideas, risks of spirit and never enough meat-fests from BBQ.

Now Josslyn is in Divinity School. I say a journey of a thousand miles starts with one step. She says when marching with Dr. King, Rabbi Heschel said "When I marched in Selma, my feet were praying."

And then there's the first step of recovery she and I had embarked on so many years ago:

We admitted we were powerless fighting the greatness of our mission and that our lives became unmanageable the minute we turned our backs on the Divine.

Rain Delay for Sunday Memories

Due to special guests Sunday Memories will be posted Sunday afternoon.

When It Used To Be Healthy

Smoked for 30 years, the last 13 spent trying to quit, 8 years since the last smoke.

Cigarettes were commerce and connection and a key to a tribe until they got so expensive they became the symbol for "do I look rich get your own..."

And the truth about those health issues like addiction and cancer were too serious to ignore.

Still, in the midst of 12 hour days, heavy workload, tired bones, that man's break look good.

Good like a fantasy about an old boyfriend who really wasn't that nice and wasn't that cute but in the fantasy he was.

The Definition of Heaven On Earth

I said it was those firefighters playing baseball. The best game, the yummiest men.

But my colleague shrugged, said, "Nah. It was that hot man on the 6 train from the Bronx who made woo woo eyes at me me because I was doing the London Times crossword puzzle during rush hour. Without a dictionary."

Sunday Memories: The Surprise Of Things Not Turning Out As Expected

Yvon.

Queens boy. Speaks fluent French with a New York accent. Still talks to the kids he grew up with. Married to a Honda but fools around with this Ducati. When she's not in the shop.

All the landmines missed, accidents avoided, disasters survived, hardships endured, healing revealed, life unfolded.

Suddenly the age never expected to be reached arrives.

And memories as old friends with new babies show up to celebrate.

The Secret Of The Fruit Man

For the first time ever the Fruit Man by the Avenue A bus stop on Clinton and Grand was closed. Well, the first time not a Jewish holiday. I knew he couldn't have been evicted because the building was a city building sold to the tenants so that everyone could stay there without being kicked out because they weren't rich.

I said to Irene, "Where's the Fruit Man?"

His stand, basic and built on old boxes, a beat-up space inside for the stuff that couldn't stand the heat or the rain or the snow, was like all the fruit and vegetable stands in the neighborhood, but his remained while the rest dissolved into fancy supermarkets or gourmet coffee shops or Chinatown where fresh fruit sold from their shipping boxes still meant something.

Everyone in the neighborhood went to him. Even Florence who hated him. Irene loved his cantaloupe.

"He retired," Irene said.

"Really? Why? Was he sick?"

"No. He was 90."

"He was mean."

"No. He wasn't.

"He yelled at everyone."

And Irene said, "All his customers were old and hard of hearing. That's why he yelled."