one thing today

  ... the 6th summer in the Perry house - the gem I found thats prone to June gem days - we shall see about that as of tomorrow.   you can sink you eyes and nose into this air and spread it on a scone. What is ahead? That always stays the question as days unfold and accumulate like old newspapers stacked in a closet.   I felt like Jessie earlier today, sharing my play reading fuck up story with Brian. He laughed his head off. Jessie. Even her name, the word, makes me both happy and sad - wanting. Too much to take in and understand this life with so many gone. I think of Patti’s great line “oh to be not anyone gone.”   Barbara writes that Denise Hedderman died. She knows I would know/recall her - maybe even more than some because I am G and she is H and thats how it went in Catholic grammar school seating back in the day, every September, like clockwork.  She was quiet and pretty.

  I wake up feeling flat out flat. I remember what Twyla Tharp  recommended - when she feels out of sorts, I eat better and move my body more. I put on my sneakers and get ready to take a run - in my case - a slow, soft non walk.  As I sometimes do, I stick my finger into my Pocket Pema before I leave and see what my spiritual magician has for me today. She writes … we think that if we just meditated enough or jogged enough or ate perfect food, everything would be perfect. But from the point of view of someone who is awake, that’s death. We are killing the moment by controlling our experience. To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest.   mom spelled upside down.  I buy coffee at the deli. I tell Hugo you won’t have me to knock around for a while cause I'm headed to the beach. He says you stinker . I say I know I should feel lucky but I don’t. He asks why and I tell him … oh my brain gets wacky once in ...

Is it better to acknowledge feeling unmoored or plod along with blinders on and not take in rocky waters and high winds? Should you read papers and listen to news - or pull the blanket over your head and take a time out for some time? Is it an all or nothing thing or nothing like that at all? Do your dire dreams stay inside you or do you do a deep cleanse and kill them ?  Should you or shouldn’t you? Can you, will you, won’t you? Wild winds blows on while children taking their turn laugh and play away.

 For some reason, I  always ruminate on Memorial Day. Many of them have been more than enjoyable/memorable, many have not - but this one was fine. Not good, not bad. I think as you grow older ... it's easier to see what's what and not have your emotions and sketchy imaginings get the best of you and knock you for a loop.  While walking down the street yesterday - oddly, I caught a wiff of fishing town and remembered how much as a kid I thought I'd like to live in Bodega Bay in Hitchcocks The Birds and maybe even East Rockaway - which was close to my hometown.  My brother docked his boat there. I didn't go out on it with him much. 

  He has a fondness for lyrical description, particularly of the natural world (“the flowers from afar looked like a pure white froth … a bright sky-blue blanket of forget-me-nots was ruched in the dappled light…”). These passages effectively stir up an aura of misty poignancy, but they are deployed with such frequency and at such cloying length that at times it seems like his goal is merely to conjure an exquisite atmosphere, rather than to understand these characters or to imbue their story with any emotional weight.

  ... the best most elegant, glorious thing ever ! 7:09 morning - direct sun streams thru my windows and life is new again. Young. Ha ha. The orchid is big and fat lush and shows how shape and form beyond our doing does it most of all and always.

  … discovering a new author who knocks me for a loop when I inhabit a new world that makes my day juicier. Saint of the Narrows Street - bad title, great book. William Boyle. Brooklyn. Richard Price-y. Melodic, s hort, crisp, layered sentences …  He hides a lot meanness behind how handsome he is .  She imagines saying “I do” during their vows and wants to puke .     He's being handled like a broken butterfly by a monstrous child. 

  Our public reading last night - I am onstage reading stage notes and one of the actors - in character -   says I can’t read this - and I say … oh, I have readers on me - do you want to borrow them. And everyone laughs because it’s in the play - not for real - and worse yet - it’s  my play.   After the reading - a woman said I was so moved by your piece. She had tears in her eyes. I thanked her. We joined hands for a moment. It felt very pure. 

  Lena Dunham wrote in the New Yorker about leaving the city for good. She writes about her parents … Getting to New York was their ultimate expression of self-determination, the place where they would shed preconceptions about who they were meant to be and create a new life among artists and experimental thinkers, planting their seeds in the fecund soil of the city. 

  playing my fav music on a lovely Saturday and this out my window. 

  We are all prisoners of our dreams. We can’t control them. THEY control US. They take US  where THEY want to go. Sometimes, too often, over and over again - they take us to people, places, things we'd rather not encounter. Hard, tedious work, filth, sadness, trouble, worry. Why not more love and sex and taste sensations, nature and warmth and safety. Why not more sun and sights and sounds easy and pleasing. There is no escape. More fatigue and bleakness awaits. It is so better and lovely to live and have your way in the day - and night - when we are in control - rather than captives - to what awaits us behind our so called resting eyes.  

  After the meeting tonight, I talk with Elliot, an actor in our group - my favorite member. He mentions that a trans actors shifts things in the piece he will be part of next week at our public reading. He says “it’s obvious he’s trans and I don’t have a problem with that but I don’t like having to accept his choice of identity when it comes to telling a story with him." It surprised me. Actually I thought he (trans guy) did a good job at delivering his reading tonight. But I kinda gave Elliot a “well …” kinda non committal response to his point. And then, walking home, in retrospect   … I thought - I should have said “I just think its good for me to take every opportunity I can to give a person the respect they desire and deserve.” But I didn’t.   I like Elliot. His comment should make me think less of him. But deep down, surprisingly, I don’t. God damn. Life gets more and more difficult to understand and do well as it unfolds these days.  

  My 600th post here - time soars fast&furious - and my first about my two lovely sister nieces, B & T … young and beautiful and warm, funny, cool and so alive and different from each other and both at the very start of all things I hope will dazzle them with delight and true joy. They make a car ride to the train   talking about music and peeps and this and that the most fun fun weekend thing. O to have young hair and skin and eyes and   thoughts and desires and wild times and the right tools to make a place for yourself in this ever more sorry ass world that needs giant salvation. But they can and they will thrive - and it will be enjoyable to see how they unfold and flourish over time and place and space. As the genius Joni M lyric goes … I wish them both good, big    guesses based on what each set of time and change is touching .  

  .... is worth the wait.

  it really just doesn't get hoe hum - this view as I sit at my kitchen counter and do what I do. It's the handsomest building in town. some nights pink, some nights sexy, saturated 40's film noir b&w. It was built in 1930 in a years time. We've had scaffolding on our building for three years to repoint some bricks. Why is everything so pussyish these days?  2025 is WTF time. I like that I have this outside my windows - big and bold and beautiful and proof that once was a time everybody misses now who was there when things were different.

from Pauline Kaels review of Hud ... Rape is a strong word when a man knows that a woman wants him but won't accept him unless he commits himself emotionally. Heroes and villians both want the same things and that it is their way of trying to get them that separates one from the other. 

  Walking thru Union Square in the rain. My umbrella falls apart. As I collect the parts a beautiful young girl stands in front of me - here, take mine. I say no, I couldn't  ... and she says, no I live right here and I have too many of them in my apartment. I thank her and move on - my grumpy mood washed away by a surprising action. 

  At last came the golden month of the wild folk-- honey sweet May, when the birds come back, and the flowers come out, and the air is full of the sunrise scents and songs of the dawning year.” ―  Samuel Scoville Jr.