Lucy Is In And Giving Advice On Staten Island

It started with the ladies at the pool who needed swim tips and some goggles... And then someone said something maybe it was Karen and someone else said something else maybe it was Lorie and before you could say "Ask Anything - Free Advice" tee shirts were made and you know when you make a tee shirt that's it. You're committed. So one afternoon in between the comings and going of the Ferry, the sea rising and falling, the storm warning it was growing and the skyline wooing anyone willing to stop and look, Lorie and Karen set up shop and, from expertise hard-earned-hard-won because they know their borough their city their own lives, answered for free any question asked...

• What do I do first to start over after prison?
• How do I make peace with my adult daughter?
• Would God forgive me?

And of course the only question always there... love and love and love and... a marriage betrayed, a boyfriend loved, a girlfriend desired, a couple's confusion, a hope for union... and love and love and love and...* *Earth Wind And Fire-That's The Way Of The World

Encore - Sunday Memories: THE LOOK OF LOVE

Today is Judith's birthday. She is 90. The elegance and spirit from which she has built her life continues to emerge each day, paving the way for the rest of us to rise and become just as extraordinary.


Judith

She escaped from Hungary to England as the Nazis began to round up the Jews. In 1950, she sailed on the Queen Elizabeth into the New York Harbor.

It was morning and the crescent moon glimmered on the water.

The Lady beckoned.

The boat horns blew welcome.

Then the city unfolded before her eyes.

It was love at first sight.

It Was Also Her City College. It Was Always Her New York

Mimi breaking the rules by not knowing they're there.



We saw each other around City College enough to recognize each other on the plane to China. It was 1986 so not many people were going there. There was a dormitory just for foreigners and I know there must have been other exchange students with curly hair just like her and me but no one immediately comes to mind.

There was maybe one western style hotel and a couple of discos if at all. One night we went to that disco. The club closed except for us westerners and the one memory I can really remember was watching Mimi and Jaffe danced to the song everyone had played from every Brooklyn stoop that past summer.

She was intrepid as much as I was timid so I went home after the semester exchange ended and she traveled to the ends of the earth when not many people were going there.

It Was Her City College. It Was Her New York

I would study all night and sometimes even the day before all night for the geology class we both had to take as part of our science requirement and she would show up at the Greeks - the only diner near campus - and plying us both with hot caffeine that might have been coffee, I would tell her everything that was supposed to be on the test and then she'd get a B while I barely squeaked by with a C.

Misha is New York and the subway and the street and Puerto Rican and Jewish and the Mitchell Lamas on Amsterdam when nobody lived nowhere and sushi was one place downtown and she is embedded in my home DNA there are words and dances and story-telling-on-you and lemme tell you when a New York Grrl tells a story it is not a quiet event so go some place else for soft elegance because when we laugh we laugh everything and our whole bodies burst.

A Special Sunday's Vows: First In The Eyes Of God And Now In The Eyes Of New York

Doug and Shawn got married.



Friends asked if they could play music for the party.



We all couldn't stop hugging them...



and hugging them...



...and hugging them...



It was a celebration of what America was and could be.

For where else, Rev. Sparks asked us, could a Baptist preacher marry two Jewish men in a bar on the Lower East Side of New York.

And after they cut the cake....



...all that remained at the end of the night was love, honored by friends and family and now, finally, protected by the laws of the land. At least in New York State.



Altar photo: Celeste McClain

The Playground

Me and Rags hang out at the benches both watching all the other dogs play. I get extra big friendly with the other dog owners so that maybe their dogs will play with Rags or maybe they'll make their dogs play with Rags. Which I don't think works with dogs. (It also doesn't work with kids but nobody really wants to cop to that.)

Eventually Rags barks at the gate and we leave and I remind myself repeatedly it's not my childhood, it's just a dog park.

Special Announcement: ITCH #13-THE MAGIC RABBIT Includes The Writing On The Wall

itch, an evolving artist forum cum journal/zine included The Writing On The Wall in their issue, #13-THE MAGIC RABBIT.

One of the few hard-copy journals surviving in these challenging times, itch servces the community of dancers and other artists in Los Angeles and beyond. Check out their website and take them up on their invitation to grow with them!

Sunday Memories: Mamalochen

"I'm goin' ta Coney," I tell Dana.

"Why?" she asks.

"'cause this Master's student is doing a documentary on home and New York and nostalgia and stuff and she asked if we could go to Coney to shoot some video."

"Oh. You're going to your Mamalochen."

And when I see these three after their morning-beach-sit I remember my mother tongue and the heart that goes with it.

This Is Pat and Rags' New York

Pat and I have lived next door to one another since 1976. Rags moved in much later. She was Stephen's.

Pat's the real thing.

Grew up in the Bronx, worked the newspapers when newspapers were still newspapers and journalists were still journalists. Knows everybody who's anybody who made New York reporting the kind of reporting they make movies about, including all those tough guys that actors imitate when they have to play a "real" reporter.

Jupiter is still in love with Rags but completely confused about it ever since Rags stopped ignoring him and started visiting us. So now Rags runs into the apartment, Jupiter runs away, Rags sniffs all the rooms, Jupiter runs after him, Rags eats all Jupiter's food, Jupiter watches, Rags runs out, Jupiter follows and then after Rags goes home or to the park, Jupiter sits at her door and sniffs for about an hour.

This is home and this is our New York.

Home Home Home On The Range

At Queensboro Plaza getting the N or the Q because the 7 isn't going into Manhattan on the weekend

The same MTA guy there when I got on the 7 to Main Street three hours earlier, still there on my way back still shouting into the megaphone...

"I'm just delivering the information they can receive it or not" but admitting 9 hours of this well he was just going to have to pray and give it to God when he sang in church the next day...

...and the gaggle of boys, speaking something I thought at first Korean but one gets sassy with me thought I'd be too nervous to tell him yes his hair cut was very attractive...

...and when I tell him I had the same cut in the 1980s including the shade in the back he figures out I was born in the 60's...

"I'm good at math, I'm Asian" they're headed to a party, they're from Tibet, they're arguing about which stop to get off, there will be girls there and they keep asking me which of them I thought was cute ...

...he seems like a good looking kid" and the kid going "I'm 19!" and I go "I'm old enough to be your grandmother, you're a kid"...

...and them all laughing and pushing and fixing their many different hair cuts trying not to look too fussy, I say to the sassy kid "you want to know how to get a girl interested in you? Listen to her" and him nodding but hoping he doesn't have to do much more to get her to kiss him...

...and then after the boys rush out to somewhere in Queens finally on the home stretch a family - the mom, the older sister who looked just like the mom, the fierce little brother, and the middle sister who had asked the screaming MTA guy for directions because her mother didn't speak enough English...

They sit down and I knit another pair of socks and the girl asks me what I'm doing and who I'm giving them for and the older sister takes out their new pet, a beta fish they got at the 99 cent store but it cost $7 they named her Vanessa...

...and that little girl smiles and I tell her about my fishes Esmerelda, Harold and Skuzy and her fierce little brother comes over because he wants to listen and they all get off at 34th waving good-byes and I miss them already...

It's all home as I go home.

Sunday Memories: The Last Time We Met We Used Pen And Paper

Twenty-five years ago, we were all in China together. We wrote on thin pieces of paper mailed in pretty envelopes with rarely seen stamps to friends and family who got our news maybe two weeks later and by that time the homesick may have past, a heart may have been broken after notes of hope read, and new adventures had in a foreign language.

The Aftermath Dedicated To Florence

Florence always said "sitting down is half the battle."

I never really thought she was sharing, just instructing. Giving me another piece of artist theory like the sight singing she drilled me in or the ear training we did every day until I was a teenager with too much fury to cooperate.

But she wasn't just talking to me. She was talking to herself, cooing at her own terrors and reminding them that once that butt hit the chair the rest would show up. All she had to do was sit down.

"Half the battle is sitting down," I'd murmur to myself as I ran through the city day after day, too frightened to face packed pages while there were friends still awake and meals to eat and second-hand furniture to consider.

Sitting down then came deep in the night when the air was cooler, the streets were quieter and the desperation to not go a day without writing stronger than the desperation to run away. And once the butt hit the chair the rest showed up pouring out of moving fingers while piles of life were discarded or pushed away for other times when sitting was not such a joy.

Sitting and sitting and sitting and one night, deep and late, something was finally finished.

Special Announcement and Alert from Chelsea Hotel Blog

Living with Legends: The Hotel Chelsea Blog, one of the most important blogs in New York City, contacted me this morning and asked for help in spreading the word on their recent posting.

The Hotel Chelsea, during its years as a true haven for artists and their friends, would often accept art work in lieu of rent. The recent looting speaks of something much deeper than paintings being taken off walls by new management. How a society responds to looting is significant of how civilized it is. Just as how "the greatness of a society and its moral progress can be judged by the way it treats its animals" (Mahatma Gandhi). Both are expressions of our hearts and souls and our respect for expression and life.

Thieves and butchers only work well in darkness and secrecy. So please help spread this post. To friends, neighbors, fellow artists, family, blogs and bloggers.

*photo by Hotel Chelsea Blog

Sunday Memories: Nina

Baby Nina

Oh it was exciting when Nina arrived.

The announcement didn't leave the refrigerator until she was deep into grade school and the stains threatened to eat up Bob and Carola's faces.

During toddler years, her finding the volume control on the remote meant any minute we'd hear a blast of 'Talking Heads' or some TV show. "YOU MAY FIND YOURSELF..." always reminds me of her. Just those words. At full volume.

Sax lessons were sweet to listen to. She had some swing. Then she switched to piano. Her recital at Third Street Music I kvelled the whole piece through.

Woman Nina

Now, while her folks are at a wedding, we hang out and watch PARENTHOOD, drink beer, eat Chinese food and talk about Lautrec and biology and having kids and gossip about the actors and the transferring of credit and all the while cliches whirled in my head and occasionally leaked out making me sound like every old lady on the lower east side.

I remember you when you were just this big

You have time you're young.

Oy.

There Is So Little Here That Didn't Travel Through Time And Space...

...to come together and make a home.

The chairs from Florence the table Dad made the lamp a gift from someone moving the sofa offered up for free the shower curtains from a now-closed store the plants from neighbors the Buddha from hope

In The Dog Days Of Summer...

...the Cat stays cooooooool. Just like a cooooooool cat does.

Sunday Memories: Otis's Ladder

It was left in the apartment early on, I think in the 70's. Otis brought it up to fix something or maybe I borrowed it. But it remained after he left.

A hulking presence - like a six year old boy who didn't understand why he was 6'8" when all the other kids in kindergarten were kids size - this ladder moved from corner to corner in the odd shaped hall, never quite blending into the wall, but still becoming part of the scenary.

However, its height was necessary in an old apartment of ceilings beyond reach and so it hulked about. At some point its rungs held the excessive number of shopping bags I felt were too pretty to throw away, but too pretty to use.

It was used maybe a couple of times a year when a bulb had to be replaced or the even rarer event of changing a light fixture. It didn't matter what you were using it for. The minute you stepped on it it wobbled and swayed, even if you were on the lowest rung. Only Joni had the presence of balance to meander about on the very top.

As space within and without opened and an old home cleared for new welcomes, this ladder, covered with history from before I moved in 35 years ago, was quietly taken to a storage closet, my name now taped to it. No one, but me, would remember it had once been Otis's.

They Don't Have Real Food Where She Lives

Cuz Patty needed deli and she only had a few days in New York.

Deli is in her blood. She comes from the same grandparents I come from, the ones on the Lower East Side surviving diaspora and poverty, domestic violence and disease.

Where she lives now, pastrami comes in plastic and is served with mayo on white bread. And the only blintzes in a ten mile radius is frozen and made of tofu.

So in 100 degree weather, we trekked to the Second Avenue Deli which used to be on 10th and 2nd but the landlord raised the rent and now it's on 33rd and 3rd and the minute we walked in we smelled the smells of food we knew like we knew the names of our ancestors.

2:17 pm


2:23 pm

The Journey Of A Thousand Miles....

...sometimes begins with a couple of words.

Other times it begins with a couple of feet and some really cute shoes.

My team who have walked with me into all our new lands.

Sunday Memories Encore aka it is too hot to write: WHAT WE DID ON OUR SUMMER VACATION

Saturday, July 5, 2008

Florence, Atlantic City, 196something


Vacations were for other people.  For us, summer was a stand-off between our need to have something to do during the day and our parents’ need to not have to think about it. Everything really worked much better when we were at school.  He was at work and she was at the piano.

Time stops for no man or pianist for that matter and neither do the seasons. Summer came. Repeatedly.

I am not sure when it started and when it ended - it didn’t last long - but for a couple of years, Atlantic City became our Riviera. And with the recent purchase of a car needed to get my father to his job out on Long Island, it was suddenly accessible.

The exotic motel we stayed at had an ice machine - the push of a lever and a cascade of perfectly formed ice cubes tumbled down - not the bitterly small, thin ones we made in aluminum trays.  And right below our small balcony was a real swimming pool -  not the huge ocean of Pitt Street Pool, but small and shallow enough to paddle across and splash about.  It even had a fancy swirling shape.   It was DESIGNED like from out of a Jacque Tati movie.

Those few days in such a luxurious setting - whatever was or wasn’t happening in this family didn’t matter -  there were things to delight in - the beautifulness of the old boarding houses and cheap motels pushing the battered boardwalk into the sea, all the salt-water taffy stands in every flavor in the world, all the magic peelers transforming radishes into flowers. 

The beaches were  clean like the Beatle’s movie HELP, not a cigarette or empty beer bottle in sight.  And the wonderful waves didn’t smell bad.  And the big seafood restaurant had fancy chowder crackers in beautiful little seashell shapes.  Beat the penny pretzel we got on Delancey Street any day, hands down.

The four of us in one room, two beds, no memory of how my sister and I negotiated sudden close space but we slept not missing the familiar rumble of the Williamsburg Bridge.

Time stops for no man and no family either.  We all moved out to other worlds, leaving Florence behind in the former home of the family.  Not sure what my sister or my father did for their summer vacation, but Florence’s became day trips to Coney and, in between shit jobs, I worked for room and board in a fancy commune upstate. 

And soon after, Atlantic City got torn down and shiny casino hotels we could have never afforded took the place of those old motels and boarding houses.

Still, there was an unexpected silver lining.  Searching for eager gamblers who didn’t drive, the casinos sent buses to the Lower East Side with an offer hard to refuse - take our free bus to our fancy shiny casino hotel and we’ll give you $10 to gamble.

Surrounded by shabby men of all sizes, religions, races and cigarette brands, Florence, bathing suit under her jeans, beach towel in hand, grabbed that free trip to Atlantic City  - $10 to splurge on a cold beer and a sandwich she didn’t have to cook?  Now that was a vacation.