Meat Fest 2009

A week of chasing cow and pig with one or two chickens thrown ended in exhaustion and a slow trip across the street to the good but not silly expensive Japanese restaurant.

It was her annual trip.

Already someone, a New Yorker of more than 50 years had, in hopes of luring her home, told her about an apartment in Brooklyn. "Williamsburg! and the ceilings are 11 feet high and the rent is only $750!" Such deals are murmured as if it were World World II and the Axis powers train lines were going to be bombed.

She pondered over squid legs and crunchy eel if moving here from the cornfields would dampen inspiration. After all, when she did her annual visit she often went to more Museums than I had all year.

Sunday Memories: Sunday Visits

It started when on Saturday I tried to walk down the street with Robyn under her umbrella. As I changed sides not to bump into my friend's bag, I suddenly lost sight of her. From deep within me I heard Florence's voice calling to Robyn "Where are you?"

"Oh! I sound just like my mother," I said.

"Where are you?" is what Florence would demand as she sat in that beat up old black chair watching again Singing in the Rain again or Sister Act again.

Unless I was taking a picture I'd usually be sitting next to her, knitting or jotting notes.

Her hand would skitter out from under the blanket and look for mine while never taking her eyes of the screen of a movie she couldn't remember having just seen a week earlier. The minute she'd find my hand, she'd know where I was and hold it tight.

Any knitting or note taking I was doing would cease. And we would watch the movie I did remember seeing over and over and over again and the tap dancing would tap and the singing would sing and the rain would rain and the trains outside would go by and the Sunday afternoon air would be not still or filled but just be Sunday air.

In this picture, it is the rare time she didn't care where I was. Joni had been able to get to New York to visit. And Florence wanted to show her this great movie. "Singing in the Rain! Have you seen it?!"

So this time, after turning it on for her again I got to get up and take a picture of something I knew would never ever happen again.

Home Sweet Home Is In The Bag

The safety sought and occasionally found in Home haunted Florence and me for many years, often appearing in our reluctance to leave the house or the throwing out of old objects.

When attempting to introduce a bath mat that wasn't from 1963 or unstained shower curtains that actually matched, Florence's terror of losing something that reminded her of all her years in that apartment exploded in rage and heartbreak and pain, even though all I was doing was introducing a couple of clean shower curtains and a bath mat that wasn't a petrie dish.

But almost like a person who cringed before a camera fearful their soul was being captured, the tossing of her old belongings felt as if history was being ripped out of her. It took weeks of angry exchanges before one day without warning new things were suddenly Home.

In embracing odd and familiar beloved items from her estate - a spatula, a coffee table, the wine opener - I too felt parts of her and parts of me affirmed, still there, brought home. Each thing made my apartment feel like a safer place to be, a home where decades before in desperate hope the pain would end, I had repeatedly curled up in cupboards or corners or benches seeking a safe moment of Home. When O'Keefe suggested replacing her old oversize coffee table with another, I sobbed, the thought of losing what was left of Florence too great to bear.

Tonight as emails flew back and forth to the new person in what once was Florence's home, the kitten, found in a box in the rain on Queens Boulevard, sought a corner of Home for himself - my bag, which often signaled I was leaving him alone for too lonely too long an amount of time. This evening, hearing rain begin outside, without question or pondering he recognized the warm space he needed to have stay, a guarantee his mommy/can opener would stick around a bit longer and that he'd be safe for a while.

Even The Cat Was Found On The Street

You left things on the street. You picked things up from the street. It was the New York Ikea when Ikea was still just in Sweden and New Jersey.

Beds, chairs, mattresses, bureaus, shelves, knick-knacks, desks, cupboards, plates, cups, coats, even shoes. Florence had many, many chairs gotten from departing neighbors, Coney Island vendors and street corner garbage heaps. I had many many chairs and surprisingly many many tables from departing roommates, stoop sales and street corner garbage heaps.

But now even if the items are left to be taken on sidewalks or by trash cans, even if there is a note that says TAKE ME, I feel a hesitancy, an embarrassment as it were that thirty years after furnishing my first and only home from the remnants of other people's lives, I am still too broke to buy things new.

In the final sweep of emptying Florence's apartment, things have come in and things now wait to go out, this time maybe to a friend, or neighbors.

Or if left on the street corner, maybe to someone still brave enough to pick it up and take it home.

The cat of course stays.

Sunday Memories: Where I Still Could Find Her

O'Keefe asked me to explain all this.



I said I was trying to illuminate where New York and Florence still were themselves even as they faded from recognizable forms.



And now a year after Florence died and New York continued in its odd way and the home I grew up in now looks like a nice apartment for other people we never were, there are places still here and there, still persistently themselves ....



....that I go to to feel at home.

HAND-TO-HAND-COMBAT! LIFE OR DEATH DECISIONS! SLOW CAR CHASES! IT'S THANKSGIVING, THE MOVIE!!

This really happened.

It was right before Thanksgiving and like a billion other people, my friend ordered dessert from Veniero's on 11th Street to bring to the family gathering in Pound Ridge. It was probably pumpkin pie, or pastiero di grano or maybe even a cheesecake with little cannolis on top.

This woman is very attractive and she is over 30. Maybe even over 40 but her seamless attractiveness is elegant and well appointed. Oprah's makeover couldn't improve on her classic outfits, highlighted with tasteful touches of contemporary accessories.

So... as she waited on the long line she grew a bit tired. Noticing a bunch of round tables stacked along the wall, she sidled up to one and gently, as only elegance and class could, sat down.

The woman behind her, generously described as perhaps not very attractive and very unhappy about not being attractive, snapped I'M IN THE FOOD INDUSTRY AND YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE SITTING ON A TABLE. My friend politely pointed out that these were tables being stored, not being used for service. At that point the counter guy called "Next." Which was my friend.

YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO TAKE A NUMBER yelled the Unhappy Woman. My friend pointed out that not only did she have a number, she had the one they were calling and off she went to pick up the family dessert. Turning to leave she came face to face with the Unhappy Woman who then... punched her.

"Why'd you do that?" the counterman asked.

My friend quickly left and joined her husband in their car. As she began to tell him what just happened, the Unhappy Woman ran out of Veniero's and began yelling at the car. Windows rolled up and doors locked, her husband began to drive away. My friend pleaded for her husband to go slow because all they needed was for him to run over the foot of the Unhappy Woman as she followed the car down 11th Street yelling things at them.

That Thanksgiving Dinner the dessert was brought out to many ooos and ahhs.

"We almost died for this cake," the husband said.

A brief discussion ensued. Did the Unhappy Woman attack my friend because she was Asian? Did she attack my friend because she was Asian AND pretty? Or was this Unhappy Woman just basically nuts?

Nothing was decided. So they ate the cake.

I HEAR IT WAS HER BIRTHDAY

Not really knowing the circumstances of her birth on November 24, 1923 or 4, I have no idea if she was celebrated when she arrived. Possibly not. Her father was a World War 1 veteran who wasn't very nice and her mother, erudite, educated, multi-lingual, worked as a practical nurse because as an immigrant and refugee from Russia, it was what she could do. Her father not much in the picture in between hospital stays and abusive behavior, resources her mother had went toward the basics and then Florence's music lessons.

Poverty and unhappiness perhaps didn't lend itself to birthday parties with pretty cakes but stories of how much could be done with so little offer some hope that maybe there were birthdays she really enjoyed.

It was her 65th birthday that my sister did it up right with Florence's first birthday cake. A real cake with icing and flowers and her name and candles to blow out. As it wasn't something we ever got as kids, giving her this cake was a big deal. I found the candles - a 6 and a 5 - in a drawer of one of her tables when we cleaned out her house.

Sunday Memories: Words To Live By

Held in place on the refrigerator since 1981 by the "US OUT OF EL SALVADOR" magnet (which makes one wonder if we ever didn't go someplace we shouldn't have) the postcard reads:

Melba resolves silently never to eat again for as long as she lives.

Ode To The Office. Empty Or Otherwise

Thirty years of working in an office gotta account for something.

Hidden moments and unexpected beauty in the place we spend most of our lives.












Previous Homages to the Office:

Ode To The Office, December 2008

and

The Office Series

GUEST ARTIST, ROBYN: Communicating Across Difference

Robyn -- writer, actor, public presentation coach -- runs SPEAKETC.COM and has lived in New York for almost 30 years. I have yet to walk down any street with her and not see her run into someone she knows. Once in a single block stretch she said hello to seven different people.



The other day I saw an amazing communication on the NYC Subway. I was headed uptown. The train was crowded enough that I had to stand, but not the suffocating type of crowded that makes you question your sanity. A very tall African American man started walking through the car. Let me pause to let everyone know that I am African American. Anyway, this tall gentleman had the distinct body language of someone who wanted some kind of interaction/altercation. And for those of you who may question this observation, don't. I'm really good at body language and don't make these assumption lightly.

As this same man passed by me, my umbrella touched him and he jerked around to stare. I, being the well seasoned New Yorker, did not make eye-contact and I felt him decide that he wasn't going to pursue that particular altercation possibility. As he walked by, I eyed him carefully, wondering, dreading, who he was going to "mess with” cause I and everyone else in the car knew, he wanted to "mess with” someone. Most of the other riders in the car, did what I had done earlier and focused their eyes anywhere but in his direction. All except one.

A slightly vertically challenged Caucasian guy stood balanced in front of the subway car door facing in. The black guy stopped and stood directly in front of him. Facing him, staring at him. If the white guy looked down, he'd be staring at the man's crotch. If he tried to look any other place, it would be far too obvious that he was avoiding eye-contact and that would smack of fear and vulnerability. I sucked in my breath. I dreaded what might happen next. BUT, before the black guy could say anything or send out too many hostile vibes, the white guy, noticing the black guy's cap said: "Bronco's fan?" And what do you suppose the black guy did?

He began to grin from ear to ear. He raised his arms, and did a little dance around the car. The riders who'd been avoiding eye contact, started to look up and smile. He let out a whoop about the Broncos and he and the white guy engaged in a passionate discussion about football, Denver and the recent game. The subway reached its next stop, the black guy got off but not before giving the white guy a high five and parting advice about his team. I felt like I had witnessed one of the most compelling demonstrations of the basic idea behind Nonviolent Communication. (NVC)

NVC believes that people take action based on universal human needs. Sometimes these needs lead to positive actions, sometimes they lead to negative actions but the person is just trying to get a basic need met and will use any strategy available. I feel like this African American man had the need for connection. He wanted to connect to another human being badly. One strategy he was used to using was intimidation but that day, on that subway, a very confident, compassionate (or perhaps naïve) individual offered him another way to connect by offering him conversation about a shared interest.

The white guy and I got off at the same stop. I hadn’t realized it, but his girlfriend had been in the same subway car seated across from him. They got off chatting as though nothing unusual had occurred. I wanted to say something. Ask him how conscious the decision he made had been? Let him know how impressed I was with his ability to deflect a potentially uncomfortable encounter into a conversation. But I didn't. I didn't want to draw attention to something that had seemed so natural to him. I just hope that I can remember and learn from that example.

Sunday Memories: You Say You Want A Revolution...

It reads:

"imperialism sucks
march on washington november 15, 1969"

It was here on the kitchen wall in 1976 when I moved in.   In those days, the house was painted in purple and red and yellow and more purple and maybe blue but it was hard to tell. 

One day in 1980 a woman visited, friend of a friend of a friend of a roommate. She had either designed the poster or knew who did. She found it funny to see it tacked up by tape over the toaster.

I always thought it was an abstract painting with no meaning - just acid trip colors until 20 years into looking at it I realized there was the shape of a man in chains and blood and grief and oppression.

Recently I got a frame from Ikea for it.  I'm not sure what took me so long.  But when revolution no longer marches on Washington,  it should be framed.

They Came From Outta Town- Part Three

A series about New Yorkers who accidentally got born in the wrong city, but somehow found their way home.

Adrian
(b.Richmond, California)


I could never remember he didn't grow up here unless he reminded me about gardens and trees and cars. Had the audacity to move to London. And like it. How I feel about that is unprintable for a family magazine or adult blog.

I was raised within the constraints of a large, stifling, Mexican family.  

As a kid I dreamt of being a princess, speaking French, traveling the world and living in New York.

I finally moved to New York in 2001 with a broken heart, no money and no real plans.

The city beat the crap out of me but I fought back.  Eventually, she gave in and decided I could stay.  For 8 years, I had a real life in New York made up of real friends and real seasons.

I met a mattress and lived with a bunny.
I walked over water.
I danced all night and kissed boys.
I walked with Luci to see La Virgencita.
I watched my friends leave.
I made art that traveled to cities I have yet to see.
I became a princess.
I got clowned.
I met Poookie and we drank like champions.
I welcomed my sister to the city.
I fell in love with a monkey.
I became a Master.
I clogged the internet with Claire.
I celebrated life like I never imagined.

I, like many, have my own special love affair with the city of cities.
This is the place where I’ve felt the freest, the most alive, the most accepted, the most loved and the most challenged.

The affair now continues from a far.
I MISS YOU TERRIBLY, NEW YORK.
(I’m not cheating on you, I hate it here…really.)

Kisses from across the pond

They Came From Outta Town- Part Two

A series about New Yorkers who accidentally got born in the wrong city, but somehow found their way home.

Bucko
(b. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania)
Writes about cowboy and Jerry Springer rejects. In a party of lots of poets was the only cool person there.

Long answer: I'm not the tough, street-smart New Yorker, or the "pushy" New Yorker, or the worldly one, or the zillions of other types that I think make up the plurality of "New Yorker." I came to NY to make it here, in the words of the Sinatra song, and to be part of a huge metropolis. I'm making it, and I'm part of a community in NY, so yeah, then I'm a New Yorker. When I go to hometown, I can be perceived as pushy, arrogant, self-assured, liberal, cool, impatient, goal-oriented, etc. So in my hometown, I'm a New Yorker. But New Yorkers can spot my non-New Yorkerisms pretty quickly. I grew up on shale and sandstone, not granite, so there are some profound differences that go beyond having had a big yard and played in woods when I was little.

Short answer: If someone said to my face "You're not a New Yorker," I'd say, "Duh. But I've been here close to 20 years, and I WOULDN"T LIVE ANYWHERE ELSE, so fuck off."

Sunday Memories: Giving Peace A Chance

It was way more dangerous in 1972. At least according to the crime rates.

But we didn't know that or notice it. We just went about our business all over the city by ourselves or with each other, a gang of 12 and 13 year old girls traveling the subways, the buses, the streets without a cell phone because they didn't exist then, and at least in my case, not even a dime to call home in case something went wrong.

So it was no big deal for us to head over to the Peace Building on Lafayette and Bleecker to pick up peace buttons to sell on the street for the cause - BRING THE TROOPS HOME! PEACE NOW! FREE KIM AGNEW!

Our plan was to walk up 6th Avenue selling peace buttons until we got to the big peace rally near Herald Square. We pinned our wares to our teeshirts and in our tinny little voices hawked our wares - Peace Buttons for a dolla! Stop the war in Viet Nam! Buy a button for a dolla!

The shame of that day wasn't the man jiggling under his raincoat while touching each button on breasts I wasn't sure I had.

It was when on a dare or perhaps on empty pockets we all dashed under the turnstiles at 34th Street and ladies who probably were our neighbors or knew our neighbors or maybe even our parents TSK TSK'd us scolding "such nice girls such nice girls doing that shame on you what would your mother say..." as we ran down the ramp to the F train and home.

They Came From Outta Town

A series about New Yorkers who accidentally got born in the wrong city, but somehow found their way home.

O'Keefe
(b. Orange County, California)

His grandparents and parents grew up in the Bronx, White Plains and Eastchester and then along with a ton of other people including some of my relatives migrated to Southern California before it got bad. His great-great-grandfather owned a bar in Hell's Kitchen. And his grandfather owned a liquor store and was a bartender. It's why O'Keefe can do a Bronx Irish accent like nobody's business.

I got here I felt like I didn't have to leave. The city replaces nature in the oddest of ways. You live in it and with it. It really is my city to me. I'm not a guest here. I'm not a visitor. I found the street wide open madness and joy. It could never be too much.

Guest Artist Dana On Parenting (Or How I Survived Motherhood)

"I sat in the playpen as they wrecked the house."

Dana, with her grandson, her great-grandson and her son posing for a picture being taken by her other son.

Sunday Memories: Behold The Lowly Rubber Band

Besides the once-a-year-when-you-get-a-shot bubble gum
there was the rubber band.

I think Florence thought it some form of God or magic elixir. There were many in the house but tucked away in corners reserved for precious things. Even pens were treated more carelessly.

We never bought them. That was unheard of. Rather, on our sightseeing visits to Macy's (sightseeing because we never bought anything there either--I'm not counting that one time my sister and I got a new dress each) Florence would send us off to go collect rubber bands from the nooks and crannies of whatever clothes department we happen to be in.

It was a mission, understood to be taken seriously and to be successful at. So I'd crawl under racks and in and out of empty dressing rooms and collect as many as a child's hand could hold and bring them triumphantly back to Florence who I guess dumped them into her handbag and sent me off again.

What I remember was that on the way home or perhaps one afternoon at home, we'd request a rubber band. pop it into our mouths and chew away, happy for such an approved treat.

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."

Guest Artist Dana: The Pot of Gold

Marian and I had high expectations. We were about to go to see a one-woman theatre piece calls “the Amish Project”. It referred to the tragic murder of thirteen school kids whose Amish classroom was invaded by an armed lunatic.

At first I refused to join Marian in reliving such a terror. But word came from several critics of its unique value. Travel plans were finalized, and I was nearly dressed when Marian called at the last moment to tell me that there was a long, steep flight of steps from the street entrance up to the theater.

I am too disabled to manage those damn steps.

Marian decided to go alone. This was another time I had been rebuffed by architecture. Suddenly my missed evening struck me harder than the play’s tragic subject. I moped regretfully the remainder of the afternoon.

Stepping outside on my terrace to relieve the blues, I was thrilled to see a dazzling rainbow its enormous arc embracing the sky from mid-Manhattan to north Brooklyn, I began shouting to the strollers eleven stories below to “look up, look up, a rainbow!” But no one heard me. I was the sole beneficiary of the splendor. I was Finian himself.

Sunday Memories: St. Marks Place

That street was normal to me. It's where folks crashed either from drugs, booze or too much fucking.

It's also where people went to get the drugs, the booze, the fucking from which to crash.

If those buildings were beautiful you couldn't tell because everything was, well, normal which meant real people lived there and there were florescent lights in the hallways and if there was graffiti I didn't notice because graffiti was all over the place so how could you notice anything different?

It was part of the world we owned, from Avenue A all the way to the Nedicks on Sixth Avenue, from Washington Square Park to the youth center on 12th Street, and sometimes 14th Street when the rich merchant marine, who lived with his aunt and had really good pot, was back in town.

This street was our through-way and it's where we sauntered and stomped. It's where, before there was any way to instantly call or write or text to find a friend or a boy or a boyfriend, we had to actually show up, hang out on a favorite stoop and hope to run into whoever it was we were hoping to run into. And sometimes we did and some weeks we just waited.

In this picture on this stoop is my second boyfriend (my first was in 7th grade like years earlier). He was homeless and a runaway and crashing at Gypsy's on 4th Street. He came to New York to become a famous folk song artist. The new Bob Dylan. He was peppy and sweet and voted seriously most ugly. One night he and his best friend (also in the picture) went to Club 82 on 4th street and he thought he was kissing a woman but really it was a man who just knew how to look prettier than any of the girls we knew. He and I were already going out but I didn't care.

Years later I saw him running down our through-way screaming as some drug deal went south.

Happiness Is Where the Heart Is and The Heart Is Always Home

Around a table.

In front of an audience.

Just being with together, even while packing up stuff in a condemned studio in Long Island City.


Bouncing all over the place in between late night TV and a 4am"wake up and scratch my ear" appointment.


A rare visit with someone wonderful.


And the world crowded together to witness a new era of hope.

Thirty Years Of Pressing My Nose Up Against The Bakery Window

The first time I went in here was in 1982.

There was a women's theater group I was beginning to get involved with, and sometimes they would hold meetings at De Robertis.

I was shocked. I had never met anywhere for anything unless it was the principal's office because I was in trouble or the bar (which was certainly a place to meet but not for meetings). So stepping both into the unknown of this group of women, none of them from here, and a bakery I somehow thought was against the family law to enter (the wonderful cake beyond our self-esteem and wallets), it all felt very foreign.

I got used to going in but it still took years to order a pastry.

Now it's a place I meet others at often. Old friends, former classmates, even blind dates. In this picture, I'm meeting with Robyn and Joyce whose writings and struggles to write urge me forward.

Still have trouble ordering pastries, though.

De Rebertis Pasticceria
176 First Avenue
New York, NY 10009
(212) 674-7137