What Dana Says Starts the New Year Right

Bits and pieces of Dana are slowly beginning to visit other places.   

Yet, she is like a lighthouse.   

When you least expect it, her brilliant light explodes into clarity and words that change the world.  David, her son takes as many down as he can and shares them with me.

Over the next while, old stories and new moments of Dana will be noted.  What Dana Says is worth pulling close and holding tight. 

**

The grueling freelance gig coming to an end, there was a faint light way in the distance beckoning a visit to Dana.

How is she doing?, I wrote her son, David, my Boy Next Door.

His reply didn't surprise, but still saddened.  She had had some rough weeks, was frailer than the last time I visited, wasn't walking a whole lot.  And yet....

And yet....

"I gave her some yogurt the other day," he wrote me.   "She said it was delicious. I said it was because it was Greek.

And without missing a beat she said " Their yogurt is better than their economy.""


**

Related Posts;

What Dana Says Is a Blessing for the Future

You Never Expect What Dana Says

The First and the Last

A Visit to Dana

Sunday Memories:  Two! Two! Two Memories In One!!

Sunday Memories of the Boy Next Door

The Buddha Has Left the Building

It was one of those moments that only happens when the timing is perfect.

A holiday weekend
Exhausted over-sleeping
A long list of things to do
Deciding to go to the pharmacy first
Missing the light and walking on the 'other' side....

...and there the Mariner and I stumbled onto a small pile of amazing books and two lonely plants.

A guy, carrying a shitload of stuff bounded out of the building.  "Take them!" he said.  He was moving out.  And not just out.  Out and away. 

Nantucket. 

That beats New Jersey by a couple of thousand light-years.

We didn't need to be told twice. They were good books - Just Kids, New York Times photos book, a book about Levon and the Band, David Lynch's meditations - they were the kind of books we would have bought at the Strand.

Cart, knapsack full, we headed to errands.

"Come back later! There will be more!"

When we did swing back around, dragging shopping bags filled with cold medicine and freezer bags, a pro was hovering over the now much-bigger pile of books and magazines.  We knew he was a pro because when the Mariner bent down to check out something, the pro slammed his hand down on it and glared. 

"Let's wait for the guy to come back downstairs, maybe get a picture," I said.

He came bounding down the stairs, clutching a big Buddha. 
 
Like lots of musicians and painters and artists and writers, he had come to New York a ton of years ago, lived in just about every neighborhood, and then finally landed on 14th Street. 

Been there for like forever, watched the street fights on hot nights, went to every store, knew every store owner (until they all got kicked out because the rent went up), knew the neighborhood, and then one summer he had to get away and Nantucket seemed as away as away could be.

And there he met a woman he fell in love with and then he started this podcast about the island and now there was a kid and yeah, it was hard to leave,  he was defnitely feeling emotional about it, but New York wasn't New York anymore and there was a better, kinder life waiting for his new family in the middle of the ocean where new stories awaited. 

The woman he loved whipped out a phone and showed us a picture of the cutest baby in the world.

"Do you want this Buddha?" the guy asked.  "It's been with me in every home I had in New York. It's been with me through everything I went through."  Like good times.  Like bad times.  Like life.

But, of course.  It would be an honor, we said.  And then I snapped the picture before we all said goodbye to New York.

If you want to hear stories about His Nantucket, Doug Cote's podcast "INSIDE THE WHALE" can be found here. 

**
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Perfect Timing

Refusnik on 14th Street

Sunday Memories: Apres Le Joie Avant que le Bus

He talked non-stop to his friend about his holiday.

And she finally rested.

A Different Nutcracker for the Holiday Season

Everyone was running crazy on the street, what with packages and presents and deadlines and the avalanche of Christmas decorations crashing down from every lamppost and corporate window.

Except here.

Like zen masters, they moved around one another as customers slipped in and out of chairs that were built with the form and function of a beloved car from the 60's.

You could stand there for hours and never be bored of the ballet ... scissors sweeping up and clippers zooming down and folded bills tucked gratefully into artisan hands.

There is no need to dream of sugar plums when you have a great haircut.

**
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Sunday Memories: The Intimacy of Men

Being Sick During the Holidays Calls for an Encore about the Holidays

Originally posted December 27, 2012:

When a friend got knifed to death, I got off the messengering bike, put on a skirt, a real bra, clean shirt, snappy beret and hit the many employment agencies on Fifth Avenue in the forties.  It was too hard to pedal  in midtown traffic when everything hurt so much inside.

It was 1977 and entry-level jobs could be found if you showed up to plastic chaired florescent testing rooms with battered typewriters and sharpened pencils.  I found out I was good at adding and subtracting, but sloppy on accuracy when retyping the paragraph about the brown fox that was quick.

An index card with a company's name got pulled out, a call got made and I entered these doors to be interviewed by a man whose eyes never left my breasts.

Finally, off the housekeeping-housecleaning-bikemessengering-babysitting route, I got to sit down and sit still in order to make money.

The other night, Christmas in full bloom, wandering during a work recess of a job I sit down for, weaving in and out ice skating and cute shops, the Mariner and I bumped into these doors, barely unchanged from almost forty years ago.

So hard to remember one day to the next, the word winter, or the fact I had seen one of my favorite documentaries with a good friend.  But standing at these doors, I remembered the 8 a.m. hustle of many girls in many heels, much perfume, tons of makeup and me waiting to enter elevators that rode us to jobs we sat down for.

**
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Being Sick Calls for an Encore about...Being Sick

Originally posted on May 13, 2012

Sheriff Street Park

Until Florence got sick, I hadn't been back to the playground since kid-ness.

It was now renovated.  They had torn down the kindergarten building that had the public bathrooms we used during our kindergarten bathroom breaks, and put up a jungle gym instead.  The baby swings were still there and so was the sprinkler, which, when I was little, had been my idea of heaven.

But the sandbox was no longer there because sand had been deemed unsanitary. The big swings were gone because they had been deemed too dangerous (and judging from a small scar on my chin, perhaps they were). 

And the Men's Park was still empty.

However, the Bridge still loomed above the playground.  That constant song of train and car was the same as it always had been, from the very beginning of me playing there, sometimes by myself, sometimes with other kids, and when it was summer, sometimes in the summer camp program. 

Florence, five stories up, practicing, always a shout away if it was time for me to come up or if I had a question, like could I play outside a little bit longer.  That Bridge never left even when I went off to discovered Washington Square Park.

When I moved "uptown", I would pass the playground, year after year, decade after decade, on my way to visit Florence or a friend sitting shiva or a rare reunion with friends still on Grand Street.  But I don't recall ever entering it. 

Then Florence got sick.  Almost over night, she no longer could rush through her city and her life as ferociously as blood rushed through a body.  Suddenly days were filled with constant care.

So our big excursion, outside of making it to the car service waiting on the corner, became a trek to one of the park benches that faced the sprinkler and was practically under the Bridge.  We'd sit there for what felt like hours, but probably wasn't and listen to the only thing that hadn't changed, that song of train and car.

And then, Florence, with growing awareness that this was it for her day, her life, would ask to go home before she had to admit how heartbroken she was that the playground was now the limits of her world.

It Ain't Girl Power. It's Power.

Ambassador Samantha Power talking to the press 

about a meeting in the Security Council, United Nations

You only have to glance at a rerun of a TV show from not so long ago and the only thing you'd see the wife-mother-sister-daughter-girlfriend-fatbestfriend doing was.... not much.

Maybe smiling, or crying, or being supportive or being dumb or being admiring or just being... well...wife-mother-sister-daughter-girlfriend-fatbestfriend.

And somewhere... well... everywhere girls and women are still doing just that.

Not here.  Because when Ambassador Samantha Power steps up, it ain't just smiling, or crying, or being supportive or being dumb or being admiring or just being... well...wife-mother-sister-daughter-girlfriend-fatbestfriend.

It's someone really smart and capable stepping into power.  And being a leader.
 
**
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Samantha Power

Once Upon a Haunting...

the Henry Street Playhouse

This was the row where we often sat for concerts of Florence's colleagues or some of our classmates or visiting artists or the student orchestra.  The minute the lights went down, my father and I would fall fast asleep.  Either out of exhaustion or an attempt to escape yet another enforced concert.

It was the theater that David wove a story of global mass destruction when, just as the lights went down and the Paper Bag Players began to perform, I told him I wanted to run downstairs to see if my friend was there.  I stayed in my seat.  Terrified.

It was also where I saw the last public performance Florence gave during the Henry Street Centennial celebrations.   She had such debilitating stage fright that she had to come out to the piano before they raised the curtain.  

But the minute she started playing I sat up, not sleepy at all.  Each note opened up the heavens inside that old Playhouse and I heard something I had waited my entire life to hear.  I heard something I think she had waited her entire life to play.

That moment, decades into a submerged career, became a haunting.  I never returned to the Playhouse after that. 

Until... twenty years later,  Doug was cast as one of the ensemble in ONCE UPON A MATTRESS and of course they were performing at the now-historic Henry Street Playhouse... 

...and who knew an unspeakable grief about my mother's art never taking full flight until the very end could be softened by the delight and joy of one of her favorite musicals.

ONCE UPON A MATTRESS - playing through January 4th at the Henry Street Playhouse.

**
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Real-to-Reel 

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Sunday Memories: Home for the Holidays and Remembering Christmas/Time Again

The lobby party was held again.  

Wallace, the Christmas dog, kept his nose to the ground making sure nothing missed his mouth.  

And we all gathered around, another year, grateful to see our lives in each others' faces.

Almost like being 30 again, tons of years ahead filled with promise and possibilities.  Deja vu all over again somehow made time move a little slower.

Originally posted December 16, 2014:

Gathering again, the lobby, for a brief moment, reminded us, like Dorian Gray's portrait...

...that there were holes in between one another.... missing neighbors heralded time fleeing.

Yet, Wallace still pranced with optimism.

This was his feast, knowing dozens of hands would reach down and slip a holiday treat.  Worth it to wear the bow.

And old friends, constant neighbors, traveling comrades still had things to say.

After all, there were still things to discover.

But, as the familiar walls echoed all our decades together...

... there were new neighbors, making their own memories of early times when they were young in the old building.

**
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Sunday Memories: It's A Wonderful Lobby

On the Way Home...

It was a long day with good news of a bad man finally getting arrested for condemning thousands to death.

The sidewalk was filled with a city still recognizable as home ...

... like three guys celebrating finding seriously good chairs someone put out for garbage night....

...a crew moving earth in the middle of a late-night traffic jam...

...friends making a movie about homelessness...

Every hello and chat was filled with gratitude for neighbors and grief for those thousands of people who never got to walk down a night street in their own cities and towns again. 

Refusnik on 14th Street

It was morning.  We were on 14th Street, loaded down with groceries. 

The guy was a jerk, honking his horn in his big white truck you see in commercials for Viagra.

He was looking for an argument because we were crossing the street and he wanted to turn faster than we were walking. He wanted to let us know he didn't give a shit about lights and right of way. He had a truck that was good enough for Viagra.

I said "Thank you." And smiled like he was doing me a favor letting me know he was there.

The Mariner knows cars and driving so he had technical details on his side.  Which is why he stopped and gave him a look like, "What's your problem?"

Which was exactly what Mr. Viagra wanted. He wanted a fight.

 I refuse. I refuse to be that man's enemy.

photo: Adrian Garcia Gomez

If the employees at the Abulafia Bakery in Jaffa can wear tee shirts saying "Jews and Arabs Refuse to be Enemies", then I can refuse to be the enemy of some Viagra jerk. 

**
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Sunday Memories: Heart and Soul And Then Some...

This is Joel.  He puts the world's heart and soul into photographs.

Sometimes it's India.  Sometimes it's Occupy Wall Street.  Depends on the day.

This is Joel's photo of me.

He got me to stand still for a split second and send a prayer to love with hopes it would be returned.   It was this picture, years later, that caught the Mariner's eye.

And this is Joel at his birthday party.

Two dozen friends from all over the tri-state area descended on New Jersey to celebrate, shower him with art books and good food and sing along with his renditions of Noel Cowards' bawdy songs and political parodies.

Joel just turned 69.  His mother is 100. This bodes well for the world.

Long live his heart and soul. 

**
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When Things Are Going to Hell, A Brief Reminder of Better Days And Better Men

The news about San Bernadino wouldn't come for another couple of hours.

Passing the old firehouse on 14th Street, lots of furniture was being moved out ...

... and lots of tools were being moved in.

But one thing stayed. 

**
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How Good Guys Win

"The world is in such a fragile place," I wrote friends.

"I often come home wondering if the bad guys, regardless of whether they are in governments or in insurgent groups, are winning.  So I hold on to the moments that speak of something better than war, including our dinner together, the happiest wedding ceremony ever, healthy food, running water, sanitation, heat on cold days and good health."

And a home filled with moments of well-loved cats and a good guy who wins over hearts and minds with his heart and his mind.

Wishing my friends peace and joy, I also sent hopes for moments that would last decades and speak of something better than war,  reminding us all that sometimes the good guys win.

Once Again: Just in Time for the the Holidays: Thanking the Problems for Being the Gifts

Originally posted Thursday, November 27, 2008

Years and years and years ago times were, well, not so hotsy totsy. I was urged to make a list every night of three things that I felt grateful for that day.

I thought it was the stupidest thing I ever heard of. If there were things to feel grateful for, I wouldn't be in the shape I was. But desperate for anything better than what was, I did. Often item 2 and 3 were the pencil and the paper I was using.  Sometimes item 1 was that I didn't kill myself that day. Scrapping the bottom of the barrel.

Then one day I noticed a gentle reprieve. Item 4 was the autumn wind and soon 5 was that great cup of coffee.  Each day the list grew. My life soften.


Things got better, things got worse, things got different. Things got real. Life went on.

Then things got, well, not so hotsy totsy. I was urged to thank my problems.

I told the bearer of such advice to go fuck himself. But desperate for anything better than what was, I did. And slowly a rejection turned into a reprieve from a firing line, a disaster led to the perfect place where things ran perfectly, a broken heart broke open bigger and I ended up loving someone else more.

Each obstacle held the gift I always wanted.

I was no fool.  I began to thank my problems. A lot.

Things got better, things got worse, things got different. Things got real. Life went on.

And then things got completely and unequivocally horrible grief loss rage insanity wiping shit off floors begging love not to leave sudden wakings in the middle of the night desperate to have those lost years back desperate not to feel it was all over desperate...



There was nothing to do but thank and thank and thank while pouring out pain like a mother giving birth, not always sure the gift I sought lay beneath such poundings, but thanking just the same.

The more I poured out pain, grief, loss, desire, yearning, unresolved, uncertainty, fear.... pages and pages and pages of thanks poured out too, like kisses that pour out when love invites.

Thank you for this crisis -- it got me to go deeper and recognize the bruised injury....Thank you for forcing me to practice loving even when I was being rejected. It hurt like hell and I was so exhausted from years of crying but I finally emerged from the prison I had always lived in ....Thank you for such sorrowful childhood moments. It taught me to stand in the heart of a crisis, a trauma, a disaster and understand war and choose peace ... Thank you for my desire and my passion. It kept me moving to bigger rather than smaller .... Thank you for the directness of your words, the clarity of your heart ... oh and thank you thank you thank you for that kiss that night .... Thank you for this pain that makes me weep with regret and love fearlessly .... Thank you for such a beautiful home -- it may be filled with decades of heartbreaking memories but it is a home that sheltered me all those years and I can still afford to live in it and it is now so rare and I am so blessed...

Thank you for the memories of where everything that went wrong was only on its way to going right.

A Crutch By Any Other Name

Years ago, Florence broke her leg in an unfortunate accident that involved relatives.  After that, I had a phobia about leaving anything at anyone's house because what if they tried to return it and broke something in the process.  Too risky.

 before the leg broke

Florence didn't do much doing those days of a heavy white cast and a pair of heavy wooden crutches.  She went from bed to piano to bed to kitchen, back to piano.  She didn't need to more than that.  She had me to do her serious walking. 

And so I did: to the Coop Supermarket on Grand and the Dry Dock Bank on Delancey.  To the Library on East Broadway or Houston, back to the Dry Dock Bank and then home and then the supermarket and then...

Only looking back did I wonder about my many visits the Dry Dock Bank.  For each day I would hand over a note, written in my mother's hand, requesting a withdrawal from her account to be given to me.  Who, I guess, the teller assumed was truly her daughter.

These days, things are a bit different.  Besides debit cards and photo i.d.s., crutches are lighter, casts are flexible and New York is a bit more easy to get around.  Especially if you don't have a kid to do the legwork.

**

From writer, Adrian Margaret Brune  who grew up in Oklahoma and learned a few things while temporarily "disabled" in New York where she now lives:

1. Locals are gracious and will hold doors, but don't expect package carrying -- they're going somewhere, too.

2. Subways have elevators, and if someone points it out, it means you're taking too long on the stairs.

3. Crutches come in handy when theatre-goers attempt to steal your cab.

4. "Pimping out" said crutches with extra padding is worth every bit of the $25 you spend.

5. Carpet is wonderfully soft for walking.

6. Despite former athleticism, if someone put a gun to your head, you still could not run; a fast "crutching and ducking" amounts to the best possible outcome.

7. Some passers-by look suspiciously if you are sans huge cast.

8. Riding a train during rush hour without a seat creates a strange sense of accomplishment and pride.

9. The East River will make for a wonderful javelin-style "crutch toss" when all is said and done.

10. Moving freely will never be taken for granted again.

**
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Refugees Don't Just Look Like Sunday Memories

This is my family. Grandmother, aunt, great-grandmother, grandfather.

It's the kind of picture you find in sentimental exhibitions at so-called museums touting immigrants in America.

My family came in steerage class on crowded boats because they believed the poem at the feet of the Statue of Liberty.

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles.

Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp! cries she
With silent lips.

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

My family believed that poem.  Living in poverty on the Lower East Side, working grueling jobs...  no matter.  They believed.  And because of that leap of faith, I got to get an education, buy a computer and write about them.

But that's not what pictures of refugees look like today.

They look like this.

 Reuters/Dimitris Michalakis

And my job and yours and each and every one of us, especially those of us who came from that heritage of diaspora and flight and fleeing murder and slaughter and genocide, each and every one of us must do everything we are capable of so that child in those arms gets to settle some place so that maybe one day her descendant will get an education, be able to buy a computer and write the story of the day, as her family was fleeing certain death, her grandmother was carried to shore and to safety.

Shame on you, 31 so-called governors from the United States who are refusing to welcome in Syrian refugees.  Shame on you.  You did not earn that poem and you do not belong in our country.

For the rest of us who are American citizens, here's how you can help:

The Guardian: Where to donate to help the Syrian refugee crisis



**
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Respite

Years ago, I asked a medical examiner about how she survived the daily heartbreak of her job, so often having to investigate the aftermath of insane evil, of brutal cruelty, of raging violence.   

She told me she had asked her boss the same thing.

"I surround myself with beauty," he had answered. 

Good plan.

**
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This Is What A Muslim Looks Like

Adel Termos tackled a suicide bomber in a market place in Beirut.  He died in the explosion but saved dozens, maybe hundreds of people.

This is what a Muslim looks like.

He looks like a hero.

Pass it forward.


 **
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When the F*#&$ Will This JUST Be a Sunday Memory: Use Your F*#&$*g Words

When the F*#&$ Will This JUST Be a Sunday Memory: Use Your F*#&$*g Words

Originally posted after the bombing at the Boston Marathon, and then as an encore after the "Charlie" massacre, today it is posted for Beirut and for Paris and it heralds and celebrates the #NotInMyName campaign 

**

10:30 at night, the United Nations still toils

Before my auspicious interview with a famous artist to be his intern, Florence  begged, "Please don't curse. And don't talk about sex."

I'm not sure where she got the idea I talked about sex with strange men who could or could not allow me gainful employment.  I had never slept my way - literally or metaphorically - into any professional commitment.

But the cursing? Perhaps she had forgot lessons learned at the feet of masters, me following her down beaten-up streets as she screamed at me or my father curses more foul and vicious than the shocking comments I sometimes spy on a niece's facebook page or now overhear on nicer streets.

Perhaps her spewing blew off enough steam that she was too tired to make a third attempt at stabbing her husband with the letter opener.  Perhaps it was why she only swung at us with open hands or closed fists, not with knives.

Perhaps, like my dad locking himself behind bedroom doors so he wouldn't destroy us, her cursing allowed her to say what was on her mind and not go to jail for murder.

In the middle of a 12-hour day hammering out words of peace, news came of the bombings at the Boston marathon.

It's tougher to find words than throw punches.  It's harder to curse than to destroy. It takes longer to build than to bomb.

But, if you really want to change the world, use your fucking words, asshole.  Use your fucking words.

**
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Shades of Blue Take the Stage!

IT'S TONIGHT!!!!!

IT'S AT PARKSIDE!!!

IT'S....SHADES OF BLUE!!!!

WE HEART NYC WRITERS NIGHT + OPEN MIC!!!!

THURSDAY!! 
NOVEMBER12!!

PARKSIDE LOUNGE!!

317 East Houston Street, NYC

8-11pm

A great lineup of featured writers: 

Nicole Hefner Callihan, Sarah Gerard

AND FROM SHADES OF BLUE 

Amy Ferris
Matt Ebert
Claire Olivia Moed
Elizabeth Rosner
Sherry Amatenstein

Hosted by Megan DiBello.

21+ age limit.

**
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Sunday Memories: The Walk and the Talk

This is Leigh.

She's brilliant.

I know because on a rare free night we went to see her one-woman show.

It is a wild stroll down her memory lane, some 30-years ago, of days that crushed her heart and left her hope in rubble. 

And between laughing and crying and gnashing my teeth because HOW COME I DIDN'T WRITE THAT LINE, a light dawned in a dim brain and a memory bubbled up.

I remember a walk she took with me then.

My heart was also crushed and and my hope also in the rubble.   I couldn't trust myself to be alone and safe at the same time.  Leigh was someone who seemed so together and stable and strong enough to withstand the disaster I suddenly was so I asked her if I could for just a few hours visit with her.

We visited.  But at some point she needed to keep an appointment.  I remember us walking down Second Avenue as the light faded. I was bracing myself to get through the next couple of hours.

I don't remember the words we said.  I just remember this strength and stride of Leigh's.  I just remember wishing I could be her, be stronger than what ailed me, and so much did then.

It was now 30 years later.  I was suddenly hearing how those days for her were just as crushing as they were for me.  Only this time, in a dark theater, it was me keeping her company... 

And still, I marveled at her, marveled, and even though those days were long behind both of us, I still wanted to stride as fiercely as she did.

**
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Fucking Him Flies to Switzerland!

 
If you are reading this, FUCKING HIM, the video collaboration of C.O. Moed and Adrian Garcia Gomez, is in competition at the renowned Kurzfilmtage Festival in Winterhur, Switzerland and Adrian is representing!

And if you are IN Switzerland, you can find the list of screenings HERE.

 And be sure to say hello to Adrian while you are there.

This is Adrian in Switzerland!


**

The piece asks the simplest of questions:

• What is fucking?
• What is love?
• What's the difference?
• When do you know?

Adrian Garcia Gomez is an interdisciplinary artist working in film/video, photography and illustration. His artwork, which is largely autobiographical, explores the complexities of race, immigration, gender, spirituality and sexuality. His short experimental films, photographs and drawings have exhibited around the world. He currently lives and works in Tel Aviv. (superadriancito.com)

C.O. Moed chronicles the heart and soul of a disappearing family and a city in the throws of extinction and evolution on IT WAS HER NEW YORK. A recipient of the Elizabeth George Grant for fiction and a Rockefeller Media Arts nominee, her short stories and dramatic works have been published in several anthologies and literary reviews. (myprivateconey.com and myprivateconey.blogspot.com)

**
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Operating Instructions

Forgot early morning was like deep night.

All this promise of something magical about to be revealed

...almost like traveling the last couple of hours to your birthday or Chanukah or Christmas or whatever day had a ton of presents waiting for you.

I didn't want the tram to land.  I wanted to float a little longer in the last possible moment of magic.
 

**
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Sunday Memories: You Can Run, But You Can't Hide

It's so lovely and easy to,  like the angels in Wings of Desire, slip invisible through millions of people's stories.

 Returning to a little piece of Heaven on Earth that felt like Home, that's all there was, a sea of millions of other moments in other peoples' lives.

Who was Addy and who painted this for her birthday?

Christ by the rolls of shipping paper and boxes and envelopes you always needed when you didn't have them.

And how come we all gathered so many pens and markers? 

The perfect place to have an angel to pray to.

Somebody once loved these white tigers.

and the clothes...the clothes just begging to be tried on, even if there wasn't one thing needed...

All it was buoyed by a delight of wandering through, unfettered but engaged.  Almost like an interesting chat with someone also waiting on line for the bank.  Amused but not involved.

Then a pile of blank notebooks beckoned.  Could always use those.

Except...

There was nothing blank about them.  They were, in fact, filled with parts of my own story.

The phone number of an old high school classmate, the amazing one who one day in English class, got up and tap danced on the teacher's desk and we all knew he was destined for greatness, the one who died too young, too soon...

the beeper of another...his photos so astounding they capture rare moments of our souls so well his name has become a verb to us (have you gotten "..." yet?)...

the daily reminder notes of a third...the one who, decades after being a young professional dancer, literally danced up a wall at a party..UP the wall... there's a picture somewhere proving that...

HEY I KNOW THESE PEOPLE IN THIS BOOK!  I shouted to the guy who was selling all this stuff.  I KNOW ALL THESE PEOPLE.

"Anything happens here," the Heaven on Earth guy shouted back at me.

And anything does.

I went to school with his brother.

**
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