facsimile

Listen: My Funny Valentine
Chet Baker

the indefinable words that make their marks on my skin

I cannot decipher the language but I have a feeling that they are important

just when I think I got it

It’s gone again.

everything that I imagined is nowhere to be found

I inch my way through crowds with a lovely tune playing from the speakers

I bathe my face in the intensely bright light that shines from each side of the bar

I hold myself up with the curving stone walls leading deeper and deeper into anonymous ruins.

I search these faces that pass me

I need some answers and I feel that they have them

I crave definition and I think the random eyes that crawl up and down

my outfit

shoes

hair

my skirt,

know more than I do.

I just want someone to know these things as I do

someone who’ll come to me with answers

or

an acceptable facsimile of

I think what I want is someone to take my frail hand in theirs

hold it tight and gentle

bring me close and just know

and I will know

and they won’t tell me that they do

but I will hear it

 (Read: Buddy Wakefield Live for Living)

Ambition

Is ambition blind?

I feel I’m the blind one when it comes to the elusive thing. I am surrounded by movers and shakers, performers, thinkers, those proud folks that make things happen. It makes me want to find the origin of this thing.Was I ever ambitious? No, I don’t think I was; in fact I believe I’ve spent most of my life running away from it, uncomfortable with the fact that if I’m succeeding than there is a person out there that has been passed over.

That’s when I was younger when all I had to do was wake up and find the new poem festering in my heart or maybe where my next meal was coming from. A time when I felt that there was enough for everybody out there so why the fight? It’s very different today. It feels that I have more at stake these days, more that’s passing me by. So little time so much beauty and pain to endure and experience. Time runs out. Used to be I was the one running things, or so I thought. The folly of youth, the innocence of magical thinking. What now? I’m in this place now where I’ve studied this craft and it just so happens that it is a career that is one of the most competitive.  How did that happen? How did that happen? I guess I must have lost my grip on my tightly prepared plans for the future. They have unraveled. They lay at my feet at the bottom the be. I spent years kicking at it and trying to gather it up at the same time. I was embarrassed of it and the time I spent away from it. I was embarrassed that I made them at all. Now what? I dunno. Break out the booze and let’s have a ball?

evidence

Evidence

Flipping through photographs,  I catch the past

I am enveloped by it

I have bathed in it from time to time in a morbid sense of regret

but 

not like this.

I am joy,

I am nostalgia,

I am memory.

Reminded of weddings  birthdays, vacations, day trips, moving days, performances 
holding tight intense embraces reserved for a rare few 

him, you, us

things I've forgotten then remembered again and again like a goldfish it is  a new scene every time.

I smile, I close my eyes

then like a brick wall I run head first into... 
the smile that I see in all of us, it is part child and part worn out mother of five.

I knew it was coming, it was all a build up to that moment of discovery

It almost always is. 

Flashing through pictures of

her children

me

them

the stages of our lives

her grandchildren

her sisters, brothers

her friends 
in two minutes, faded evidence of a life lived well

and

short

and

hard 
with joy.

Why I Walk Around Listening To Patti Smith In The Loop

(Listen: Patti Smith Gloria)

Why I walk around listening to Patti Smith in the loop.

Today, walking around downtown Chicago, I'm surrounded by cement reminders of my size in the universe.

I am a small, broke woman wandering around meccas of consumerism allowing small pleasures to permeate my experience.

Going to a job I consider a job although I don't get paid; I am satisfied fetching coffee and organizing snack pack treats knowing that the three minutes that I spend dabbling in something that I enjoy makes it worth it. 
Okay, so here I am fishing in my pocket for headphones, I'm walking to the high end Chinese restaurant to pick up some high end lunch for the high end office that doesn't pay me. 

I nestle the earbuds into place, turn my branded music device to ROCK and I follow form. I walk around and past the normal people just barely fitting in but inside my head I am on stage at CBGB's gripping the microphone in my sweaty hands and screaming melodically.

I  bring the audience to it's knees.
I am the goddess of rock.
I am laying it down.
I'm gripping the mike as if I let go at that moment I would fall into something I could never find my way out of. 
I am swaying.
I am swinging my head back and forth, pointing at you and you and you there in the dark when I say "jesus died for somebody's sins..." then curl the smoky punch line around my smiling curling lips until you feel it to your core.
I am spelling rock out in six letters G-L-O-R-I-A!
Girls want me.

Boys want me. 
I want to fuck the audience.
I am a sultry awkward rock maven with an odd but fierce voice and painfully sweet lyrics.

I am this for 5 minutes and 56 seconds and the people passing me are unaware save for the occasional head bop on cue or finger drum on my right leg; a phantom guitar riff that only I can hear.

I feel a bead of sweat form inside the inside of my thigh and I know that it will end soon, I have 30 seconds to bring it on home and there I stand at the entrance of the high end Chinese restaurant. 
I push the revolving door like a heavy piece of playground equipment.
I have to make the decision to crescendo and collapse at the end of the stage or walk briskly up to the carryout counter and give the name for the order for Sweet and Sour chicken with brown rice and sauce on the side.

It is then that the question enters my mind: what would Patti Smith do? 

Would she continue to the end of the song or drag the earphones off and pay for the order?
I know the answer and I keep it runnin'.

mum's the word

Currently listening:

Finally We Are No One

By Mum

Release date: 28 May, 2002

           

mum's the word

The plain truth and the only thing you can count on is that there are absolutely no guarantees.

The only thing you can do is make sure that the people in your life know how much you appreciate and love them.

This is not a hoax!
It really is that simple.

When they die you will have to live with the fact that you were able to show them gratitude and you made the conscious decision not to.
Or the mundane everydays just piled upon each other and there was no other time to spare to call them and thank them for the fifty dollars they sent you for your birthday in September and it is now November.
Hearts are broken.
People are taken away, it is a fact, but if you did all that you could then you can rest easy.
The question is, did you do?

I did not

friday

Currently listening:

The Virginian

By Neko Case & Her Boyfriends

           

friday

all at once you can see what makes up the universe that surrounds you. beauty, art, sadness, love, pain, regret. like a thin, soft sheet it lies between you and reality and it sings so loudly that it drowns out what is really going on around you.

words.

it's words and letters strung along slightly and slowly

someday the words are an albatross, communication the bastard child of reason.
i'd like to be so many things to so many people.

i don't know how to access myself and i know that this is the first step to oblivion but it doesn't seem to phase me, not one little bit. i continue, i perservere and i continue to survive,

the question that i ask myself from time to time and more recently on the train from school to work is, what would i do if i found out that i had a life threatening illness, what would i do the day after?the week after?

i never have an answer, i am paralyzed by the choices.

i guess i would want to feel arms around me and warmth.  i would lament that the only person that i could find comfort in is gone now, i would become briefly resolved with the fact that i have to create the relationships that bring me comfort these days. that resolve would be brief however.
then,  i don't know what i would do.

i suppose this makes me an uninspired.

sunday again

Currently listening:

You Are Free

By Cat Power

Release date: 18 February, 2003

11:09 PM

Monday, February 05, 2007

sunday again

It has come to my attention recently that home is not a place but an experience. Home can be in a house but most likely is a place that is inside of you. I feel I have been searching for it outside and in towns I've never been to, cities that I've lived in before, places that I have visited and long for merely because it isn't the place that I'm living right now.

I used to say that home was where my mom lived, with that not being a reasonable statement these days, I am forced to face other truths about the idea of home. And to be perfectly honest, if I wasn't in the third hour of procrastinating about writing a 3- page- double- spaced- paper on my most memorable experience viewing a work of art, I would not be visiting this dialogue on "HOME".

Memorable art. How do you pick one? That's like being asked what's your favorite movie. How does one answer that and why should it be asked? As if the right answer will get you a reward and the wrong answer will exile you. Of course, if you ever find yourself in filmschool be prepared at every turn, every new class, every introductory "will you work on my movie for free" meeting to be asked what your favorite movie is.

It's such a quick and dirty way of feeling like you know something about someone. I get asked that question in bars, hell, I ask that question in bars; sadly I never get rewarded with the type of prizes one finds in the eyes of interestingly attractive men in bars. Oh, well, I'm young-ish and have many years ahead of me of drinking in bars alone trying to connect with a stranger and have time to come up with the right answer.

What a relief.

a song

Currently reading:

Where I'm Calling From: Selected Stories

By Raymond Carver

Release date: 18 June, 1989

11:27 PM

           

a song

A song, a song, a song. Play me a song that is slow and sweet like cold molasses running out of a cherry licorice tap. A song that is perfect and warm like a shot of hundred dollar bourbon aged for a hundred years in a hundred different oak barrels in a hundred different ways.

A song like this can take you out of your big, old lonely head and into something else altogether. There is nothing better than listening to a song you 've heard so many times before, catching a chord change or lyric or the presence of a well hidden ukelele pluck that you have not heard before.

The melancholy words, soulful twist of each word dripping slowly off their lips and into your ears. Eyes closed, eyes must be closed. When taken somewhere else it is important not to see the same walls, computer, peach walls and broken down body throbbing from the day that just hit like a Mack truck at 90 miles per hour.

A song like this can break your heart, make you smile crookedly and shake your head because it is so true, so, so true and that is the thing that breaks your heart into a dozen hard to find pieces.

A song like this helps you remember what you've allowed yourself to forget throughout the day as it rushes past as you rush to catch up with it.

A song like this wishes you were in love and makes you cherish your independence in the same breath. Your severe and unrelenting independence that rests heavy on your shoulders like a pair of lead shoulder pads.

With a song like this I am everything I write about, every quirky character that longs for something she's never had before that she usually gets at the end of the story. The too strong for their own good character that allows someone to break through the hard, crusty layer at the end of the story. The character that allows herself to be moved and changed for ever, resolved at the end of the story. The loner that meets herself at the end of the story and is pleasantly suprised to know that she never really was alone.

You've heard 'em. You've wrapped them around you when you danced alone in your room, in front of the mirror, on your bed through every room. You've walked from kitchen to living room to office in that walk- dance combo that is saved for rock musicals and old Pat Benatar videos.

Procrastive

Currently listening:

Rabbit Fur Coat

By Jenny Lewis with The Watson Twins

           

PROCRASTIVE

I am sitting here, where I am sitting and I am going through the stages of procrastination, that this time meant actually baking a chocolate cake.

So, I guess you could say that I am evolving to greater heights with my procrastination.

So, instead of writing words and phrases and sentences about what I got out of Raymond Carver's story or Lorrie Moore's that I haven't finished yet, I am baking a cake, emailing my wonderful friend and re-burning a picture cd so I can print out photos for an album I was supposed to send my beautiful friend in France.

Well, at least I'm growing.

But I think I need professional help. Maybe a Procrastinator Therapist. Maybe she/he could prescribe some medicine for this condition. PROCRASTIVE- take by mouth seven times a day.

Better yet, I could invent a new condition...Procrastinative Anxiety Disorder(PAD). And like Restless Leg Syndrome(RLS) before, I could air commercials testifying to the validity of such a disorder with testimonials from real people and how they live normal, productive lives after taking the maximum dosage of PROCRASTIVE. I can see it now.

But, the cake brought me a realization about art.

So often results trump process in creating art. Maybe it is because we get so excited to visualize the final product rather than how we are going to achieve that result. Maybe it's just me and my wayward path I have been traveling as far as getting things done. I often start so many projects that the process becomes the challenge; a fire that I have to put out before starting the other fire over there. There are things in my life that fall to the wayside and don't get finished, my projects are not one of those things. Friendships, family, relationships, personal happiness, It just takes longer and I wonder if I'm giving it all of the time deserved to each. How could I?

it is now 11:58PM this same sunday and here i sit, i have done every other possible thing other than my homework. it's become comedy, the big joke that keeps me splashing in buckets of hope that tomorrow starts another week and that is the week that I get everything done in time or start meditating to focus my overactive brain. Or focus my energies completely on another project altogether, nose to the grindstone , shoulder to the wheel, hunkering down, gettin' to work, get 'er done.

It amazes me sometimes at the honest hour of midnight how I could get all I have to get done, why do I not then get work done in an hour then it wouldn't hang over my head like a heavy, sharp blade torturing me for seven days.

1:33AM

Currently listening:

The Captain and the Kid

By Elton John

Release date: 19 September, 2006

1:33 AM        

monday night/tuesday morning

There is a definite feeling that I have when entering my apartment. A feeling of comfort, yes, but more. I feel, when I slide the standard, hexagon shaped key into my lock that I am so glad that when I open my door that's it. I don't have to wonder if the t.v. will be on. I don't have to make pleasant conversation with my roomate who just smoked one too many bong hits and wants to hear about my long day in my life.

I am home.

It is my own.

I sacrifice much for this luxury and, every morning that I wake up and wander around my house sleepy and comfortable I am thankful.

Everytime I step out of my shower, towel off and walk around naked I am thankful.

This is mine.
I grew up sharing every bit of space with my siblings, mother and grandmother that there is no greater joy than not having to share any of my space with anybody.

Truelly, I do not adorn the walls with art and framed movie posters, I don't really even keep it all that tidy and clean.
I live in the space and I allow myself to luxuriate in the fact that it is sparse and simple and waiting for me at the end of the day.

It won't bring me a single sunflower just to see me smile or dance wth me or lift my face in their hand and bring me in for a kiss that will causes me to hold my breath, but hell, until I get all that I 'll take ole 1750 in it's simplicity.

face smile

Currently listening:

Comfort of Strangers

By Beth Orton

Release date: 07 February, 2006

10:58 PM

Thursday, March 01, 2007

face smile

i really do like it when I leave a bar smiling. I really love that I spend a cool 6 hours making my mind up about the dishonest nature of one human being and spending 1 and a half hours making my mind up that people, in general, are awesome, kind and creative.

I appreciate sitting in a cold car waiting for songs to end and allowing to be transported to 2004, Providence Rhode Island in the back of someone's backyard dancing in the moonlight.

I miss places I've been

I miss places I've yet to go

I want to see life as a potluck

and I don't ever want to go hungry.

I know there is enough for everyone

I know there are no bad choices, only changes.

I know that I am destined to recreate my mother's life with different results.

Finally, I am okay with that.

I wish all my friends to know joy and peace and I wish I made it easy for them but I don't think I do.

I miss people I have alienated.

I wish I hadn't gone lonely, needy crazy- just romantic, sort of Sylvia Plath crazy only with a happier ending.

I love you. You that are listening.

Someday, that will be priceless.

For now I will just say goodnight and hope you don't hold it against me in the morning.

Know that I meant well.

a glass of red delight

Saturday, March 03, 2007

           

a glass of red delight

I drink wine.

I have been drinking for quite some time now, my first glass was when I was 13 years old. It was the first time meeting the parents of my sister's fiance (now husband.) Mom and I drove to Pottstown, Pennsylvania from Cleveland; I think it was spring. I was a painfully shy girl and my brother-in-law's parents were retired teachers so they were used to drawing impossibly timid children out of their hard shells and I was no different. We had dinner one night, I was wearing that awful red turtleneck. We had wine with dinner, my mom let me. I got tipsy and honest and I smiled a lot despite the askew teeth in my mouth that I had practiced for years in concealing as much as possible.

I loved the warmth and the excuse.

Since that moment I have always cherished the experience of loosening, a feeling I haven't had a lot of time with. I wish I could capture it, I wish I could store it inside naturally and tap into it when I need it the most. I love towing the line between relaxation and remembering. I love the freedom I take in allowing for the memories to wash over me. The painful and the joyful. The awkward and the sublime

Mom.

Fletch.

Losing everything.

Getting back, but better.

Aunt Patty.

Painted cowgirl.

Falling.

Starting.

Recovery.

Relapse.

Recovery.

Here.

All of it, it rushes back. I relive it and I let it stay a minute. I let regret set it's stony finger on my furrowed brow then watch it shrink.

I cannot apologize, I know it now that it would be impossible. It's too much. It's too much.

I can atone, I can go on and love fiercely and kind.

At least I can try.

Let Me Explain

Let me explain. The past holds many lessons. I am interested here in the travel, the journey through the world, life and memory. Memories are simple and precious and untouchable. They exist as they exist.

Here is the journey from the deep recesses of my heart and mind.

It's alive!

The resurrection of a site.

A limp body, once full of life, lies with arms crossed solemnly on top of chest.

Someone steps into the darkly lit room dressed in a white, floor length lab coat perhaps.

A broken man stumbles in behind, dragging his bent body.

Information systems online?

Yes Master.

The media technology social device connected?

Yes Master.

Good. Good.

Yes Master.

And with a crack of thunder and a vibrant light splitting the darkness in two separate entities...

we

are
back.

searching for a place to live

the present is a fast talking street preacher
the past is a meandering prophet
the future, is a fast talkin' teenage street preacher destined to be a prophet

why not dwell in the past? it's safe there, how i choose it to be
sepia tones of a perfectly constructed diorama of memory and little regret
but the future is a soft focus filled with redemption and grace, how could I not live there?

it is the present that I fit around my hips, uncomfortably tight and constricting
it is the present that is uncertain, inflated with regret

Chronic Procrastination

Today I was thinking about Rome and my friend Dean who has just moved there. I then remembered that I haven't posted or told anybody about the travel blog, this travel blog.
It is within my nature to come up with a grandiose idea like, "I'm gonna do a travel blog and post everyday that I'm in Italy and it will lead to accolades and awards for it's wit and insight then I will be accoladed!", then not following through with it...it's the Ralph Kramden in me.

But, call it a sentimental journey, call it a longing for this beautiful place or call it a cure for my chronic procrastination but here I am publishing and sharing the trip.
I've expanded this idea of travel to the mundane everyday experiences as well, now I can't say that it will be a consistent influx of wisdom and laughter but who the hell knows?

So I'm gonna publish the posts from the Italian trip, then go from there I suppose.

Cooking Class

It was an overcast day at the villa, perfect for staying inside and learning how to make homemade ravioli and pappardelle noodle, ragu alla bolognese, and a peach tart for dessert.

Anna, vivacious and energetic led the class alongside the chef, translating his instructions from Italian into English. Making pasta starts out quite simple and easy enough...flour, egg, well, mix with hands. But it is the kneading that was the more laborious part of the process and takes the most time. The sauce was a Bolognese with a mix of veal and beef sauteed with carrots and tomatoes and surprisingly no garlic which is always the first step in making my pasta sauce.

The sauce bubbled in low rich sounds as Anna showed us how to knead the pasta dough. Then we kneaded, fashioning a sort of pasta dough kneading relay race with team Pomaio Podere of the Arezzo Clan. We kneaded and folded until our forearm muscles grew parched and then nod it off to the next person.

The dough for the tart was made ahead of time and pressed into the tart pan all that was needed was homemade peach and apricot preserves made with the fruit from the fruit trees outside. Anna weaved the strips of dough in a rustic lattice top and then into the oven she went, the pie and not the vivacious, spunky girl friday.

Northern regional cuisine is so different than the Southern. Veal, pine nuts, white beans, olive oil and chopped tomatoes sauces and fresh fruit and chocolate desserts as opposed to the slow roasted pork in spicy tomato sauce, eggplant and almonds with mascapone or ricotta dreamy, creamy desserts of the South. I allowed myself this one time of not asking what part of the animal I was eating until I took at least one bite; and if you're wondering if veal cheek is tender like soft butter melting in your mouth, it is.

At the end of the lesson, we sat down at the family table to:

Team Pomaio Podere homemade ravioli stuffed with spinach and ricotta cheese, pappardelle con bolognese and torte della pesche all brought together with a pretty, little Chianti from the vineyard.

Crafting a meal such as this is, with time honored technique was not only satisfying but brought a new kind of respect for the food. The history of a regional cuisine so simple, the past revisted with every bite.

The last supper

Outside was calm with a hint of rain in the air, the table was set with tapered candles and flowers from the garden for our last supper, the final night at the family table. Earlier in the night we tried to capture the sunset on our various technological devices, a sickly facsimile of the real thing was all we could achieve. How could we capture the moon rising slowly through the blood orange sky speckled with grayish clouds?
We had some wonderful meals in this dining room consisting of food taken right from the farm. Wine made from the grapes from the vineyard, olives from the trees, herbs from the garden. There were entertaining conversations, a birthday dinner wine tasting, the birthing then nursing of our hangovers and not much more can be said.

Old Arezzo

This one I'll let the photos do most of the work. After awhile it's hard to articulate how amazing a thing is. If there ever was a place I traveled to that has touched me it would be Old Arrezzo. It's a walled, Medievel city up the road from, you guessed it, New Arrezzo.

The first thing I was struck by was the simplicity, all reds and browns against the grayish blue sky that we had that day. I could imagine, walking down those streets, how it may have felt to be alive then.
The first stop I made was San Lorenzo which is the oldest of the churches, built before the year 1000. Then Santa Maria in Gradi where I lit another candle for Kathleen.
I then wondered into the sculpture garden of, what appeared to be a community arts center. It was explained to me by my brother and sister-in-law an exhibit of metal sculptures that included a lifesize woman in a burkah whose eyes peered into your soul that brought shivers...count me in. The metal sculptures did not disappoint and my brother did not lie, even though I was prepared for her I shuddered slightly and studied her gaze into me. I sat with the figures and took my notes and moved on, her gaze staying with me. Better than any Japanese horror movie if you ask me.

I stopped in for lunch:

Caprese salad
Antipasti
Chianti
Torta di meringa di limon (not lemon meringue pie as listed on the menu, more of a lemon tart with pine nuts...Italy needs pie)

I walked along the narrow, cobblestone streets imagining what it would be like at that time and what character I would be in that movie. A tough nut of a bar wench with, yea you guessed, a heart of gold. Perhaps falling in love with young knight well beyond my station.

Then, walked along the "Life Is Beautiful" tour, a series of posters in front of various locations of the movie filmed in Arrezzo. Dialogue from the film ran alongside screen shots of Roberto Benigni and Nicoletti Braschi falling in love in that old Italian way, this was turning into a very cinematic trip, just then it began to rain and I ducked into the church where the happy couple had their wedding, years before the tragedies occurred with the Nazis and the camp and such.
The romantic end to that my cinematic movie, however, is that I duck in from out of the rain into the church and I run into a tall but not too tall, dark but too dark and handsome but not too handsome Italian man with a sweet smile. In actuality I walked around, remembered I had an umbrella, left the church then got lost around the narrow, cobblestone streets of Old Arrezzo.