Merry Christmas, Really.

To my legions of readers out there, may you have the happiest of Christmases.  Really, the happiest one EVER.  And why not?  Why save the best for next year? 

The happiest, whereby your feeling of joy surprisingly tumbles out of you, faster than you can identify it. 

The happiest, whereby your contentment is so strong that you feel you need nothing except for the very moment you are living in. 

The happiest, where the things that might ordinarily drive you batshit float on past in a bubble of immunity.

Where you get your very first actual follower of your blog. (grins silly)

Whereby the breaths ghosting from your child's mouth against your neck feels like heaven. 

Where you stay plastered in the hug of a loved one a second longer than normal, long enough for your body to register the thrumming heartbeat of another, their life just a bit closer to yours, and you feel less separate.

Where you find the humor and wonder in being alive. 

The happiest EVER. 


Thanks for reading.

Adventures in Awkwardness

WARNING: this is unreservedly TMI.  If you think ignorance is bliss, you might want to skip it.  Don't say I didn't tell you.

"Is there anything you're particularly concerned about today that you need the doctor to know?"

"Err...well, I guess I need the doctor to be aware that I have this birthmark on the outer area of a private part that I guess he should, ummm, really kinda know about." Private part? You're still 12 in the brain aren't you?

The nurse absentmindedly muttered, all the while typing viciously into her portable laptop "Really concerned about private part. Ok."

What is she typing? Is she facebooking the other nurses to report that I'm a big dork that can't bring myself to say the word?  That I request my male dermatologist, who's exactly my age, whose kids go to my kids' school and whom I glimpse nearly every other day that I need him to look at my hoo-ha?  "Well, no, not exactly, its just that, um, I mean, I have this mark down there and I know that if a mark appears not due to sun exposure it should be seen, so I mean, I don't know, I just said it to umm, give fair warning."  Dork.  You're warning the doctor via his nurse that he may have to look at your lady parts.  Its not Hiroshima, for fuck's sake.

"OK, we've been warned." And with a bemused expression, she exits.

Doc enters, proffers a cheery greeting and quickly leans into me for a light kiss on my cheek.

Have I just arrived to a dinner party? I'm so confused.

We then proceed to talk about the usual things, this is a Doc that likes to know his patients: he's genuine and friendly, so we talk about the things that tie us  - the mutual friends we have, the kids, the school, the work I do, the fact we both often pick up our kids...  I do not know him really, but I know the universe in which he resides.  Still, he's just my age, he's only my dermatologist and I'm basically all but naked except for bra and underwear and clutching this thin blue sheet, and

Shit, I forgot to take off my underwear.  

"So, we're going to do a basic skin check today and I understand you have an...area that we have not looked at before that you need to have looked at."

I nod.  Oh my...he's being as obtuse as I am. 

We start out simple: arms, shoulders, back, now around the bra, now lower...finally

"So, now we need to look at one more thing, right?"  Is that a faint drumroll in the background?

"Right, yes, I'm sorry."

"Oh, its certainly fine.  Don't be sorry." 

And suddenly I'm transported to the terrible skin check experience of 2006, where, a few months after my pregnancy a small mark appeared just below my left nipple.  I shamefacedly admitted this when he asked there was anything that he needed to check that was covered by my bra....so I pulled it down to show him, prudently covering the offending nipple that bordered the mark when he said, "I'm sorry, I really am, but I need to see the whole nipple for a second." and I released it, and a second later, I was duly covered and we'd moved on, but this...I suddenly realize there's a pause in the room, and I'm back, folks....

"Right, yes, I'm not sorry per se, but you know, I mean, I just, I felt it was better to be...

"...safe than sorry.  Yes, it is.  Especially in areas not hit by sun exposure. Now, do you need another person in here while we do this?" 

Is this a trick question?  Do I NEED another person?  If I say yes, is it a signal I don't trust him?  If I say no, will the dark recess of his brain wonder if I'm a tart that just wants to flash him? 

"Oh, no, its fine. It will just take a second." comes my confident reply.  Faker. Exhibitionist tart.

"Well then...." he says gently. Steps back, waits.

"Oh, yes, right. Umm. I kept on my underwear. I don't know why. I just need to take them off. Wait one second. Sorry."  Word vomit! Cease and desist! 

I quickly stand up on the foot rest of the examining table and without looking at him I pull down my modest light blue bikini underwear that I donned specifically for this exhibition  expedition today.  And for a split second I look at the blue bundled bunch in my right hand.  What do to with it?  Do my panties stay here, clenched in my paw like a winning lottery ticket for the duration? No! That's weird. And without a second thought, I toss them into the air, across the examining room, with panache.  It expertly lands on the chair in the corner.  Plop! Taaa-Daaah!  Oh yes, that little display much improves this situation.  What the fuck are you doing?  Silence briefly fills the room. Is he shocked that I just sailed my undies across the room? I know I am.

"Well, um, so, just right here, on the left, its..." And I'm trying to cover up and reveal at the same time.  And he's bending down and craning his neck and sort of holding up his index finger near the area in question, as if to trace an outline of it and then I realize, panicked, his fingers are bare.  No! What?

Quickly he speaks, now Captain-Obvious-meets-Doctorly-Noises "Ahh, yes, right, I see, right, well, there it is, its got a slightly irregular shape, its...wait one second, I just want to measure this.."

Another lumpy second passes between us.  He quickly measures, careful not to touch me, and then cranes his neck once more for a second look and pronounces it good. "You need to know that areas like this not exposed to sun need to be watched.  And I think that we need to just do a check once year to make sure its not undergoing any changes."  My face slides.  I think he notices.  "...or maybe once every other year"  he amends further  "...or if any changes take place." 

He leaves, instructing me to dress, and gets me a sample he mentioned.  I hurriedly dress, and he knocks earlier than I expect.

"Wait, just one second.." I pull quickly button my pants and pull my tshirt over my head. "You can come in now."

"Oh, my gosh, I'm sorry! I just didn't want to walk in on you too early. I didn't mean to... " he trails off, averting his eyes as I now adjust my sweater over my t-shirt. 

Umm, not 2 minutes ago your face was about 5 inches from my oonie, so I'm not terribly concerned about me putting on a second shirt in front of you.

"Here's the samples, you should just put this on once a day and let me know if that doesn't improve the dry skin.  It was great seeing you.  Take care of yourself."  Smiling, he leans, clasps my left shoulder, and places another very faint kiss on my cheek.  Why do I feel like this was some experimental form of a date?  If so, do I still owe my co-pay? 

Not seven hours later, I see what could possibly be him coming to pick up kids at the school.  I bend down to pretend to tie the non-existent lace of my shoe, passing the time, and wonder about how this small world makes me feel both safer, because we know who the players are and we're all invested, and then, at other times, utterly exposed.

What is your most awkward moment of 2009? It seems I got mine in just under the bell.

"How were your holidays?"

Well, funny you asked.  I was supposed to have a big happy gathering at my house but at the last minute as I was prepping the organic, free-range, locally farmed, $7.99 a pound bird for the oven I noticed an odd darkish color protruding from under the ginormous left wing.  Sensing dread before I even saw it, I lifted the wing and saw the mangled body of a small field mouse tucked in, safely rotting away in its little perch. My mother, who's a total freak about food, speculated the mouse could have a disease and refused to do anything but throw it out. 


When my dad, another Diva of Food, found out we'd be eating, at best, at some shitty restaurant on Thanksgiving he became increasingly sour and increasingly drunk.  He informed me sometime around 1pm that this brand of fuck-up is typical of me and began bitingly recalling every other family holiday where my efforts have wound up in either his rage or disappointment.  Recall, he'd said, the Christmas of 1993 when I convinced him to part with the dollars to take the entire family to see a movie on Christmas Day - a rare treat and unusual behavior for my parents. 


So I'd eyed this movie, Short Cuts, by director Robert Altman, who'd collected, said the newspaper, several indie accolades and mainstream prizes for the film.  Knowing nothing about what it was about, imagine my family's Yuletide delight as this disjointed, depressing circle-jerk masterpiece reaches a cresendo with actress Julianne Moore baring her full beaver.  It stared us point blank in our awed cinema-lit faces, boldly daring us to look away while she delivered a very long, pissed-off monologue.  Something the whole family can enjoy: Mom, age 43, and her three lovely kids, ages 20, 16, and my hormonal brother, 14, and Dad too, yes, but who could ever forget good old Grandma, then just a sprightly 71 years old and practically more of a child than all of us could ever hope to be.  Merry Christmas to us all! 

Julianne Moore and her bare ass cheek, just before the money shot.

Now in a proper rage at this memory and other carnages of holidays past, my dear old Dad departs half shitfaced, bidding me, in his delicate way, to "piss up a rope".  That being settled, I call my other Dad who lives a couple of hours away to see if I can join him and my stepmother's family for the holiday, (and offering to bring a fabulous free-range, locally farmed turkey as an extra, if need be.) 


Once the children are in the car and we're off to our not-quite-family's house for a real family Thanksgiving, the car breaks down.  The tires are fine, we realize.  The engine seems to start.  And then it hits us both, the check oil light has been on for so goddamn long that we thought it was just a permanent part of the dashboard architecture.  My husband, genetically incapable of telling an oil cap from a radiator cap, even if a vision of a topless Emmanuelle Chiquiri appeared on said oil cap and purred "Turn Me, Big Boy", burned himself badly upon grabbing the radiator cap.  Nothing left to do then but to share the holiday with our emergency service workers.  The kids, after they stopped crying, were thrilled about riding in the ambulance.  My 3 year old peed her pants, for good measure.  It was agony.

The ER: wholly dismal: caterwauling infants and their paranoid parents; the guy with a bleeding finger who has my 6 year old captivated "Is he going to DIE?"; a smattering of vacant seniors who look like someone dropped them off over two weeks ago; and my youngest, who by now has even realized, through the prism of her childhood lens, that this is a bad start to a litany of karmic-port-a-potty holidays.  To appease them both, I got them M & M's and peanut butter filled cheese crackers and let them play with the drinking fountain while Mr. Jiffy Lube found out how long it'd be before he could ever touch the remote again. 


By the time we got home it was kind of late and we just decided to make grilled cheese sandwiches.  It was pretty fucking sad, even by my own standards.  And since my husband had passed out on percoset and the kids were finally asleep I decided, as a rare treat, to take my pink vibrator out for a spin, you know, just to go to my happy place, but apparently the batteries -- wait...wait!  What do you mean you're sorry you asked?? *

So the question gets asked, in different iterations, googl times in workplaces, casual conversations on the street, bumping into friends in the store, making small talk over dinner parties:  "What are you doing for the holidays" and "How were your holidays?".   And I especially like "Doing anything good/special/fun over the holidays?"  It makes me want to lie something fierce.  This is the version of that kind of question that I always ask....hoping to find, well, someone who will lie something fierce.

Do you care? The inquiry is the seasonal suit of the regular old "How are you? How are things going?"  We ask, but in 94% of all instances, we could give a fuck.  Don't get me wrong: I'm not a social abyss (not yet, anyhow), I want to know if something is actually happening in your life that is extra-ordinary.  If its ordinary: chances are its just like mine and that's not notable.  If its fucked-up and perverted: chances are you're not going to tell me anyway.

So, the question is asked, and as the first shape of the first consonant passes through the vocal cords in response you are already thinking about how you want to get this over with and get back to what you were doing before, whether you'll be able to waste time on Facebook tonight or if, for example, how funny it is that the person you're talking to has no idea that you're feeling silly and slightly dangerous because you wore a pink-trimmed leopard print bra today. 


Coming off the train tonight, a nice work colleague gave me the one-two punch - it nearly knocked me out:

"So, how was your thanksgiving"

Me: I didn't have to cook. I guess that says it all. (Insert wry smile)

"What are you doing for Christmas?" 

Me: Oh, you know...the usual. (Insert eye roll)

Dude, YOU DON'T CARE.  AND I KNOW IT.  And I'm like the Kervorkian of responses: I'm just cutting that shit as short as possible, to spare both you and me.  Its a mercy killing of a bad tack of conversation.  Its not kindness if you're replacing the silence with boredom.  I like you even if you don't ask.  I probably like you more, if you don't ask. 

I feel like we'd be better off just coming up to our acquaintances and saying something more interesting, like

"Hey, there's this really cool band I've been listening to lately - do you like New World Urban Jewish Ballads?" 

or

"Yesterday I hocked a loogey onto the street.  Isn't that weird? I mean, seriously, when was the last time you actually DID something like that.  Ah, to be young again!"

or

"I know this is random, but I keep seeing these two same 10-cent words in every thing I read lately - peripatetic and concupisence - and I have no idea what they mean, do you?"

or

"What can I make for a (insert eating event here - brunch/lunch/tete-a-tete/coming out party) that would go good with green beans?"

or

"You're a guy. Why do certain guys have valets?  I mean, do you have one? You can tell me."

Really, there's so many better things to ask.  Things that might make people think you're crazy, but its probably better than driving them crazy with questions that only the people who panic and have nothing else to say ask (which is exactly what I did the other day talking to my boss's boss).

What do you say to someone when you feel you must talk but have nothing better to say?  What inane thing could you say instead?

*This is a depiction of a farcical Thanksgiving holiday.  In fact, all parts of this post are untrue, except for that bit about the family on Christmas Day 1993. Truth. Trust.

Axioms and Postulates

There's more to life than work.
There is more to life than errands.
Doing many things does not make you productive.
Letting go must get easier.
Relaxing in your house is good.
Remember how you used to relax?
Small spaces are better.
Less stuff is a lot better.
Your life will never be simple.
Life isn't supposed to be tidy.
Let it be.
Are you running down a road that has no end, tired?
When do impressions about others cease to matter?
When do you admit that you are the Mad Hatter?
Your life will never be easy.
Its not like you've been thinking of.
There's a whole spectrum between upset and medicated.
Namaste.
When will your heart float out of your chest and away?
Growing up feels like a soul-shellac.
I wouldn't mind getting my soul back.

For feng shui reasons, please don't take this post seriously.

A friendly reminder above a toilet in a yoga studio in Burbank, California.


As a concept for use in other applications, this is a hot little putter.  Considering how many people know the actual tenets of feng shui, versus a general idea of it, one could potentially have wide latitude to make any kind of statement for almost any situation. 


For feng shui reasons, please do not give me any work today.
For feng shui reasons, please realize it is your turn to make dinner.
For feng shui reasons, please keep your pie-hole shut while I am talking.
For feng shui reasons, please stop spamming my email box with your urban myth forwards.
For feng shui reasons, please realize I have to unfriend you on facebook.
For feng shui reasons, please talk about something else other than your adorable children and your house projects.
For feng shui reasons, please make this round on the house.
For feng shui reasons, please someone follow or comment on TOL.
For feng shui reasons, please sell me those tickets at face value.
For feng shui reasons, please say yes.


What would you suggest best serves feng shui reasons?

Space, and how we occupy it.

I travelled recently and it has once again confirmed what I thought last time I left our borders:  we are penultimate consumers.  You can read the statistics about how our obsession for acquiring and consuming stuff outstrips all other countries but you appreciate it more when you realize that in Hong Kong, a solidly middle-class family of four lives in about 450 square feet of space. 

In such a space there's usually a stove that spits like a flamethrower (but no oven), a single box that neither washes nor dries your clothes very well, and no opportunity to ever pick your nose in privacy, ever.  With a set up like that, Hong Kong must be a breeding ground for the voyeur, and a Ph.D. program for executing sneaky sex, among so many other things for which we appreciate privacy.  So, then, you spend your time out of doors.  And it is busy, crowded. 

But far from being a social pressure-cooker, from what I experienced in the city there's an orderliness to it, a sort of agreed-upon-process  among the citizenry that feels sane and civil.  I learned that the crime rate was virtually non-existent.  Our Chinese friend told us that it was in large part because "there's so much police".  It was then it struck me that in the five days I spent on the main island I never saw a single police car or cop, and I cannot recall hearing sirens of any kind - ambulance, fire, police.  Hong Kong is a place of much wealth, whether coming over from the mainland to spend their yuan or generated by business right there.  And wealth can demand certain social niceties that lower-income folk alone cannot usually afford to command.  Even as that wealth is 7 million strong in a space smaller than Rhode Island.

"play nice" signage on the Hong Kong mass transit rail

Or perhaps the mainland used its Communist-brainwashing-techno-blaster to turn everyone into little obedient automatrons.  While there is a predominant Chinese element in the culture, the expats seem to take up just as much cultural space as the Chinese. (It odd to call the British "expats" when they basically founded the place.)

In contrast to Hong Kong's tight quarters, I spent three hours in a 6,500 square foot home today.  A family of five live there.  Oh, its beautiful, I won't front.  But 6,500 square feet begs for stuff to inhabit it, lest it look like an empty warehouse.  Then you have to take care of that stuff: dust it, repair it, put it away, hell, just remember that it exists.  The owner, a lovely person, confessed that every room, every closet, every cabinet, every drawer, is packed full of stuff.  This person says they lay awake at night stressing about how the "warehouse" is full of inventory and nothing ever gets shipped out.  Stressful, as I gather, to lord over so many things.  A psychic pressure, all these things, some of which you've forgotten entirely, which need you to account for them, to employ them, to justify their existence. 


We could spend all our existence justifying the existence of all of our shit, I say.

Opportunity to pick your nose or boink in privacy aside, Hong Kong comes in 88th in the Global Happy Planet Index....want to guess where the US comes in (forgetitIwontdepressyou150).  This measures social well being and environmental impact on the planet.  I don't conclude from this they're "better" than us.  The things I envied - the spotless streets; the beaches and mountains; the near-non-existent crime; the dizzying number of awesome mass transit options; the shiny grafitti-free storefronts and side alleys; the abscence of homeless and beggars to remind you that the world is an unfair and cruel place; and the tidy chaos of the open air markets...it  presented a copasetic Stepford Wives mix of two worlds: bustling metropolis and country club genteel.  It is initially a marvel, but after the novelty wears the mystery of how such a mix is acheived and sustains lingers. 


A mystery, like how a 6,500 square foot home is so much living space but is yet packed to the gills with stuff.  Lovely on the eyes, envious at first glance, but puzzling as how it is pulled off.  And the suspicion that, somewhere, to have things look this good, there's a massive tradeoff that's lurking in its closets, cabinets and drawers.

los angeles

this infinite table
a grotesque feast, a presentation of precedent
pomegranates and oranges,
concasse of hunger and silver-plated spittle,
cuvee, red beans and beer.

and the carcasses of gazelle and lamb
leather central and gristle-adjacent
napkins unfolded on laps, grasping
coddled eggs and eclairs,
lust and fear

my mouth fastens upon a peach
alcoholic, sick with ferment
my organs are undressed of their varnish
I'm inside out now
and try not to notice.

What I Mean, When I Get Mean

5:42 to 6:10pm:

I'm sitting on a completely full train yesterday and this balding-blond, glasses-wearing, ruddy-waxy complected, late 30-something suited dude wearing a blue tooth  (I'll call that an Ear Manacle) sits down across the aisle and one row back and crows unceasingly about a kind of chapstick he found in Milan.  ("And the Milanese CALL it chapstick too! Can you BELIEVE it?")  But its reality is simply too much for our ethused neighbor, this interloper of passenger train peace.  He himself certainly can't BELIEVE it, that he's FOUND it, and how GREAT it is.  His voice sounds like his lips were coated in frosting after swallowing a teaspoon of strong cough syrup.  A tone that is at once chewy, masculine, and saccharine.  He spells out the name of the brand for the trapped ear on the other end of the line, he discusses each flavor it comes in, while fondling the Milanese tube in his own hand.  I know this because I look up from Tropic of Cancer in incredulousness, and I can only think "What Would Henry Miller Do?"  (I'll call this "WWMD"?)  I look back down to my book and read the very next sentence:

"You are the seive through which my anarchy strains,

resolves itself through words." (p.11)

WWMD gives me permission: I began fantasizing, vividly (I'll call this Mental Masturbation) at what, I've come to realize, I desperately want to do.  My stop is next and I, calling forth my best amateur acting ability, rise from my seat a bit early and step back to him.  Wearing my best disarming smile and tilting my head to the side in flirtatiousness, I say in polite, measured tones for everyone to hear "I would fucking kill you with my bare hands for what you've done to us on this train ride."

Oh, the thrill of effecting a surreal violation of social boundaries by clothing it in a traditional approach to a stranger!!  Do I really want to kill him?  Nope.  I choose my words for their cache, for their novelty, much like he chose his Milanese chapstick.  I want to violate the boundary, like he did with his Ear Manacle.  I want to be Johnny Knoxville, with tits and green eyes.

But instead I do nothing, and in its stead begins an interior monologue that helplessly runs whenever a sense of ludicrousness overtakes me (I'll call this monologue "IfYouWearThis"). 

IfYouWearThis targets people who have put themselves together in an awful way -- but not out of a sense of personal style, or creativity, or their own personal brand of anarchy.  No, not that, but instead they put themselves together as if they were so bored or uninterested that they negate themselves. That they'd rather barf on themselves than dress themselves. The dreariness of their existence or the laziness of their psyche are on display. 

The woman next to me seems nice enough, and she too suffers the Milanese Chapstick Affair.  But she's got a flimsy black cloth bag with little pills stuck all over it and stray threads trailing from the zipper.  Uh oh, here it comes... 

"SoIfYou get your raggy black cloth bag and you make sure it has these garishly painted glitter flowers all over it, SoIfYou carry that while wearing khakis fitted like a stiff paper bag and pressed with a center leg crease that could cut glass (why start now with the attention to detail? why now, at the crease!), SoIfYouWear that with a beloved, stretched red-white weaved polo shirt with Tigger embroidered on it and IfYouWear over it a long cotton navy jacket ripe with lint and plastic buttons and a string belt around the middle, which my 88 year old grandmother also owns, and SoIfYou walk around in this outfit adorned with a pair of black sneakers that look like they could withstand industrial waste and pearl earrings that dangle ...SoIfYouWearThis, where exactly did you go today?  SoIfYouWearThis, what tasks did you fulfill, people did you meet? SoIfYouWearThis, did you look in a mirror and say, Yes, this is what I intend.  This works for me. This is my message. 

Sadly, certain things almost always PTSD-trigger IfYouWearThis:

- Quilted cloth backpacks or purses for women.  I understand these are popular. Vera Bradley's made a killing.  But you don't live in horse country. Nor did you have a Manhattan for breakfast.  The print and cotton you love on your French Country placemats do not make for OK accessories. 

- Christmas or Thanksgiving themed sweaters or sweatshirts with holiday icons on anyone past the age of 25.  Why not just cut to the chase and wear a baby diaper?

colin firth as mark darcy in bridget jones' diary

- Men who unintentionally wear their pants too high under the age of 65. You're not a sausage.

- Wide belts on short waisted women.  You're not a sausage, either.

- Mid-calf length loose-fit jean skirts with a slit up the back for women under the age of 50.  Why do you hate on yourself so? A skirt this unflattering doesn't qualify as a skirt.

There's a saying that goes, "People don't think about you as much as you worry about what they think."  Wear these, and all bets are off. 

What's your most awful interior monologue?

Until I get my (metaphysical) balls up to post my work of fiction, another poetic liberty

It was so satisfying to put an "X" with a box around it
just fill it, fill the empty space
since I've run off the road
the lines are a weak grace

I gazed upon the yard below
the way high hidden window a secure square
this little face filling it's frame
the perch - a throne 
the room - a lair

And the distance and height a power
a lesson impressed hence
touch with out feeling
blindly freeing
the window an imprisoning consequence.

Moving to a new hood.

"hood" etymology:  a native English suffix denoting state, condition, character, nature, etc., or a body of persons of a particular character or class

Recently I shuffled my life around to be able to pick up my child from school.  That might not sound like a lot but it involves taking a pay cut (but not a job cut), hauling in a babysitter in the mornings and paying an exorbitant sum just to see the kids off cuz I now start work earlier, and effectively learning what it feels like to actually be with my child at a time when I never usually am.  To observe and be with him at a normal time of day, every day. 

The latter being the biggest change, and because I know I am the remedial Mom who, after being spending my entire motherhood diagnosed with ADHD in the remedial class, was given the basic assessment test again and was grudingly granted furlough, turning me loose on motherhood in a way I have not been before.  Literally, before this my child's exposure to me was maybe 3 hours a day during the work week, and less than an hour of it could've been considered actual attention paid to said child.  Most of the available fuel in the brain trust was spent wildly stomping on the desire to deal with details in lieu of dealing with the big picture at hand (just what in the fuck should I do with this small purple button lying here on the counter? keep it? toss it? what if I need it? I don't know!).  The big picture being so large it was just a blob, and the substance of it...just left me feeling defeated, and so I squinted at the picture instead, and pondered the fate of the button lying randomly on our desk counter for the last three months. 

But on that first day of school at 3:30 I jauntily walked up the street, eyeing other mothers trailing in from all different directions, answering the motherhood siren call.  They stand around unhurried, watching their kids play with each other and talking a bit, before meandering away from school.  They stand in pairs and clusters, in Tory Burch flats and worn expensive jeans, North Face fleeces, sloppy ponytails and modestly makeup'd faces.  Relaxed.  Its a scene, like anything else is a scene.  They are the Motherhood.  I want to fit.  I want to fit purely because I want my child to fit. (Like me?  Well, you'll LOVE my child!)  My child, who doesn't really do playdates because I'm never around.  My child, who doesn't have 6 extracurriculars, in part cuz I feel panicked that the growing stack of unread Sunday New York Times is a taunting detail existing to prove my willful ignorance of the world at large and must be addressed NOW. 

So after weeks of remembering names, trading smiles, proudly standing relaxed in the playyard, with the security in knowing that I too have the ability to leisurely wander away from school when we're ready, I came home to know that I could walk by the stack of mail and not twitch.  And the fucking button, its still there.  And when the requisite tantrum has been thrown by the three year old and the requisite googl requests for treats has passed, I will still have time to go through the homework folder and put something together that some may consider dinner.  These, little tsunami's all, are convincing of the truth of the adage "time heals all wounds", in an unique way.  Motherhood may not be my nature (see etymology above), but it is certainly more my state now than ever.  In this state, the big picture has form, and its substance is scalable.

Some Other Brain Stylings for No One To Suck On...

"Debussy_88"

carefree and special,
a pretty thing in a cage
the treasured phoenix
its so ugly the way I want you
Trying - for you
Surrendering - for you
just a speck of dust - to you
a bankruptcy of my character or
a way to feel alive
smashed senseless and hallow grooves
and the promise between your legs
soft nectar and sandpaper
I grip the rocks above me and lay a plane, an altar. 

__________________________________________

Casings and Ashes

my empathy is convenient
how your latest sorrows complete me
the gust of lenience
a flowing harmony

my tools are inadequate
I cannot say I've studied my craft
but I come to your aid anyhow
casings and ashes in the armory

how your anguish weights my humanity
oh come and dress me in it
I'm so much nobler when I bend and bow.

(Insert Your Noun Here) Porn

I think the term "porn" is an adjective whose time has cum (yeah, I went there). 

Porn is, as most would see it, something sexy, tantalizing, even forbidden.  As a personal aside, as a class of movies, I've found porn not to do much for me, the longer I watch it, it seems fairly contrived and well, boring, no matter how shocking it gets.  I realize I'm in the minority on this and maybe I haven't been just been exposed to the kind stuff.  But until then, I just don't buy it, and I can't get off on something that doesn't at least seem genuine. 

But I digress, porn can be used as descriptive term, for talking about what you do get off on.  Take, for example, a good masculine jawline on a man, the kind you just want to lick when you see it.  That would be, for all intensive purposes, jaw porn to you.  Let's say you find a really lovely set of hands, long, dexterous, yet strong, maybe that's finger porn.  A particularly red and well formed set of pursed lips - lip porn.  A witty, Good Will Hunting mind?  Brain porn.  Yes, now you've got it. 

What's your favorite kind of porn?

The Loss of a friend, on what would have been her wedding anniversary...

10 years since
an ethereal bouquet
lushly ghosted past
your eager ash grasp

the loud and resounding completion
a tightrope of cannibal circumstance
now bound as matter of fact and plain on this -
a pleasant and bright day.

I miss you still, Heidi.

I Know Why The Caged Bird is Caged -or- Why I'm Writing Here Now

"In the Spanish number the house was electrified.  Everybody sat on the edge of their seat - the drums woke them up.  I thought when drums started it would keep up forever.  I expected to see people fall out of the boxes or throw their hats away.  There was something heroic about it and he could have driven us stark mad, Ravel, if he had wanted to.  But that's not Ravel.  Suddenly, it all died down.  It was as if he remembered, in the midst of his antics, that he had on a cutaway suit.  He arrested himself.  A great mistake, in my humble opinion.  Art consists in going the full length.  If you start with the drums you have to end it with dynamite, or TNT.  Ravel sacrificed something for form, for a vegetable that people must digest before going to bed." - The Tropic Of Cancer, p.76-77.

Henry Miller hit a mark when he observed an error so many of us make - to arrest, to cease, to cut short our efforts.  I suggest this not only applies to making "art", as he wrote, but in life too. 

Behind the authentic, architecturally significant doors of houses on storybook lanes where I live, where housecleaners and nannies come and go, there's people prudently taking pills to rest, prudently taking pills to make them feel less manic, imprudently starting an early happy hour, squirrelling to a secret spot to take a forbidden toke, escaping to tony shopping destinations sizing each other up using a measurement system of the id.  Making shadow puppets of ourselves in our own sparkly sitcom.  Staring in the mirror at ourselves, wondering how we got here. While the heart's deepest wishes, for passion, for naturalness, for meaning, for connection, go hungry.  

This is my giant YAWP!! to the world (nod to Dead Poets Society). I can't promise anything other than honesty and weirdness here on this site.  Wring the same from yourself, dear reader.

If you're out there, if you dare, share your thoughts with me.  I would love to hear them.
What have you sacrificed for form?