one thing today

  … an hour ago it was 79. The riverfront was full of riverfront folks - runners and picnicers and playgrounders and teens all cavorting and contorting along the piers and jam packed pathways overlooking the silvery Hudson. March is a wild card and swirling curls of shifts exist. Lets twist again like we did last summer, lets twist again like we did last year.

  I go through new obsessions on Youtube all the time. Yes, there's always babies and dogs. But I've gone through cracking eggs on  loved ones foreheads, blind dating in a London restaurant, portrait contests, a modern day Fathers Knows Best Not.  Currently, I'm oddly intrigued by a straight male porn star who cooks with his fellow players. He's cute and funny and naturally gifted at performing with an accent on dicing and pan frying and sexy grins. He and his guests seem new age fit and healthy, no drug addled mumblers like back in the day. They're clear eyed and humorous and so comfortable with their chosen profession it's a thing to strangely applaud. It's a site to see. just writin'.

The essence of bravery is being without self-deception.  Seeing ourselves clearly is initially uncomfortable and embarassing.  We see things we’d prefer to deny - judgementalness, pettiness, arrogance. These are not sins but temporary and workable habits.  The more we get to know them, the more they lose their power.  This is how we come to trust that our basic nature is simple and free of struggle between good and bad.                                                                                               - Pema Chodron

... about death is you won't miss your favorite people, places & things anymore. 

  Dana Carvey was on fire on tv last night. He did a zillion pin sharp impersonations and told how Bush senior called him and asked him to come to DC cause people needed cheering up. DC responded - where will I stay. He and his wife spent two nights in the Lincoln bedroom. The most common question he was asked was … did you and your wife do it. His answer … well, I don’t sleep over and tell but my sons middle name is Abe.  

  ...  To be Not anyone Gone This maze of being Skin Oh- To cry Not any cry So mournful that The dove just laughs The steadfast gasps Oh- To owe Not anyone Nothing To be Not here But here Forsaking Equatorial bliss Who walked through The callow mist Dressed in scraps Who walked The curve of the world Whose bone scraped Whose flesh unfurled Who grieves not Anyone gone To greet lame The inspired sky Amazed to stumble Where gods get lost Beneath The southern cross Crossover boy Crossover                                                                 - patti smith

  Does a face you see on the street or in a store or on a train ever stop you dead in your tracks? Do you wonder why? Is it because you think you know him or her? Did you you sleep with him thirty years ago? Are you going to know him? Does it have something to do with reincarnation? Is it a dream, a wish, a lovely sign from nature, the universe?  It’s a sense of recognition, sometimes somewhere behind in time, sometimes someone to come maybe soon. A stirring. A welcomed thing. I will find in no book what I find when I look at that face. And I read a lot.

omg. I go to my playwrights workshop tonight and discover a ten minute play right before my eyes.  more than an hour into the meeting, a young dark haired man walks into the room, apologizes for being late, Mindy says hello to him and Lexa asks him if he is an actor or a writer or both. He has a kind of whisphery, hard to place Andy Kaufman kinda voice and says he's an actor and he's about to make his debut in front of us.  omg.

Sylvia Sidney had the most beautiful, wide eyed open face. No mask. No artifice. I watched her last night in Merrily we roll along to hell - 1932 with Frederic march - about an open marriage - almost a century ago. wow. During her career, she co starred  with  Humphrey Bogart ,  Gary Cooper ,  Spencer Tracy ,  Henry Fonda ,  Joel McCrea ,  George Raft  and  Cary Grant . I wish I asked her about knowing them and more about herself when I stayed overnight in her home in Connecticut during a winter storm a long time ago.  She liked her Bloody Marys.   

  I was feeling bad about not getting Wordle yesterday and then today - got it on the third try ... was told I'm "impressive" - which is true? Both? saw The Brutalist yesterday ... too much story ... pasta thrown on the wall school of cinema - like Barbie tornado in Charlotte - gotta check in with my peep there I feel this March transition more than ever before - shifting, change, shocking that theres another and one like no other.   

One of my favorite all time things is seeing a photo from long ago that I didn’t know existed. A few days ago, my good friend mrs Johnson sent me a foto of four of us on a trip east from Ohio where we were college freshmen. At the time, I know I thought I was a gawky string bean who didn’t know his right from his left. And now, I look at the foto and think I look like Anthony Psycho Perkins' better looking younger brother. It’s funny how often Jonis line … don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you got till its gone … is apt.