one thing today

  My good friend M sent me this New Yorker cartoon a lotta years ago - knowing I worship Joni and that we both had boots like Cartoon Woman in our yuuut. They were ridiculously impractical.  It took a ridiculous amount of time to lace them up and they weren't comfortable. But they were a statement. We were both just out of college and basked in the fact that we were making a little $$$ and could afford something ridiculous and sweet to the eye and touch. She was living on Cape Cod and while I visited her for our first Thanksgiving as students-no-more ... I showed off my new purchase while walking on the cold, rocky beach free at last from textbooks forever. 

 ... is the first photograph I ever took.

  Andy Warhol, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Elvis, Truman Capote, Tennenessee Williams for starters. What's with cultural icons and their mama mias? Someone should write a book ... a compiliation of why so many artists can't cut the umbilical cord. 

  A friend writes me - we’ll get thru this .  It reverberates and makes me think about things in a more sunny than cloudy way.   Kids at the hippie school still race round and play in the street as if their short lives depend on it.   People still marry. A bride and groom pose for  joyful photos on a West Village corner.   Leaves still change color and fall.   I run by the river and the water still gleams silver and makes me think of Jessie as usual.   A shower still feels great. I begin to reread Pema Chodrons book When Things Fall Apart .   The first sentence reads -   Embarking on the spiritual journey is like getting into a very small boat and setting out on the ocean to search for unknown lands.  

  my best ... more than some ... to distract myself. I can't read much news or watch too much TV - so ...   I amuse myself in weird ways ... like looking thru old photos ...  I was a fifteen year old kid here ... learning how to ski in that verdant locale that nearly rivals glorious Gstaad  - Van Cortland Park in da Bronx.  

  I was a really weird little kid. Just now I saw a scene in a movie called  The Beast with Five Fingers.  A man hears scary sounds and tries, with great difficulty, to get out of bed. For some reason, it sparked something I did when I was about ten years old. I think I had just finished reading Pearl Bucks  The Good Earth -  one of my first grown up books - and while showering I pretended I was a rice picker who had to gather the grain no matter how hard it was raining … i.e. the shower. On my hands and needs, gasping for air, trying not to surrender to the torrential downpour, I gathered the rice until the hot water ran out.