one last quote for 2007: "i love kids, but i can hardly ever finish one......"

fast away the old year passes....fa, la, la, la, la, tra, la, la, la, la.....

it's new year's eve morning and i've been up and unable to sleep since 4am already....day 5 in a row....

has given me plenty of time to think about all the things that this year has brought me and how grateful i am for the family, the friends and the passing fancies that have graced my days and nights over the last 12 months....

i've made friends with folks from europe to the americas, both north and south, but i'm particularly happy to know and love those of you in the wild, wild west that i was so blessed with meeting this summer....i think of each of you every day and even in the midst of struggle, it brings a smile to my face, my heart and my soul. those of you in the west village and the west of hells kitchen in my own little playground of nyc, i know it isn't always easy to love me, but the things you bring to my life are invaluable from the companionship to the conversation, to the simple homemade meals where finally none of us has to eat alone for a night. thank you for the many moments of meals and the millions of sparks of pure childlike joy that have been missing from my life for far too long.

now for the resolutions that i refuse to make each year since they're useless if you won't stick to them....this year, instead of my annual letter to myself, i thought i'd post a few self-improvement areas up here so you can all call me on them and perhaps help keep me in check...(i just read my letter to myself from last year and must admit, i did pretty well on the list - i moved, i started eating at home and cooking again, i started following up as required with regular health care with new doctors, i asked for help from the professionals who could help me and insisted on respect from those who have in the past treated me like i'm less than human because i've not always been able to do the best things for myself).....

1. cut back on the smoking....i was doing so well for so long....but like everything in my life that i find dangerous and /or bad for me, i simply will turn my back on it and walk away for my own self preservation (and financial windfall too boot)....i only smoked one or two the entire time in wyoming and only since late october, have i been puffing away on a daily basis...it's the stress, but i know i can stop and i know i can't stand the taste or my breath any more than you probably can.....
2. continue to push myself to rejoin the human race....granted, it's not a race and i can take my time, but i must increase my social standing and my oh-so-limited local circle of friends....every time i leave my apartment it's a struggle, but i will continue to triumph over the demons that have left me so awkward.....
3. continue the effort to be a more contiguous part of my genetic family....i love my brothers and sisters and my parents and as we're all getting older, i'm finding it more and more important to have any sort of interactions with them....they are who i truly have in this life even when i feel totally alone....
4. move again....as much as i love this huge apartment, i am too far removed from any of the "real world" in which i can try to function and being in east harlem seems to make me g.u. (geographically undesirable) for dating and friendship....i must sacrifice my personal space and perhaps suck up and join the legions of minions that have roommates in this world....
5. get my sorry and sad butt back to work...anything will really do....an income is necessary to suplement the lack of finances provided by my social security disability....
6. try to get back into school and finish the hair licensing if i don't need to re-work all 1200 hours of training...it's a cash business and i can be good....i just need to be able to stay healthy long enough to show up daily and stand for 8 hours of class....it's a social thing too....
7. get back to the beach....try to find my personal possessions and see if i can reclaim them from two summers ago....that said...work on letting go of the fact that i no longer own the possessions left at the beach after my big accident and subsequent return to the city and the hospital on doctor's orders....atleast my skin grew back where i was so badly burned and unless i'm naked and you're right near me, you'd not even know that i have discoloration and scarring from where that hideous mug of boiling chai tea latte melted away my tan and almost crippled me for life....
8. get back to the gym....i've put on weight since august, and i've lost weight since december...now it's time to re-proportion the weight and make my body back into the really nice one it used to be...i used to have shoulders and traps and delts and abs that you could wash laundry on....now i have a washboard stomache, but someone forgot to take their towels when they were done with them it would appear....
9. give something back...i had the chance to see my holiday card hanging at someone's home the other day and when i reread it, i was really happy with what i'd written and how much my sentiments really rang true to my personal spirit. my soul is only ever full when it is giving something to help someone else....
10. find love in a minute and treasure it for a lifetime even when the moments are passed, they are what keep us warm and allow us to believe that good will conquer evil....i have forgotten that in the past and today i'm putting it in writing so i can look back and search for the truth in myself and accept nothing less in others....i'm worth it and any relationship based on lies is only hurting the person or persons who stand to lose me in their lives.....
11. sleep in heavenly peace on a nightly basis and enjoy the days while the sun shines.....
12. be less sappy....
13. no number thirteen....unless you want to be less superstitious.....
14. end on fourteen and let you all go about your way....happy new year.....
    

it's hardly a charlie brown christmas, but here's my version of the holiday tree for 2007......

this is an attempt at the choreographed snowflake/music show at saks fifth avenue tonight.....

i'm not sure what this video clip is at rockefeller center tonight....

it's definitely an experiment, and according to the upload thingy, it's 2M of 5M....whatever that means....far as i can tell you it's 24 seconds of un-edited excitement and pure un-adulterated joyousness....yeah, right....you've met me, haven't you?....

over the river and through the woods to tavern on the green we go.....

you'll kindly notice the piles of snow (albeit, diminishing even as i type) and the cheerful demeanor of the hack....the photo was going to be my holiday card shot until i tried to print it and it kept coming up too dark....live and learn...it's still quintissential new york city for the holidays if you ask me....and if you have $40 to ride through the park....personally, i choose my battles and my rides more carefully....i'd prefer to take a $7 cab ride that leaves me right at my door than enjoying the hind quarters of of a steed way past his prime!

and of course i took this super blurry one...which i totally intended to have be this blurry....in my world, i consider this to be an artful shot....

i do believe this is what we in the photo-snapping circles might call "diffused lighting"....or "confused fighting" is more like it - an elbow in my groin, a knee in my backside, a swift kick in my shins all while trying to gracefully avoid getting any of the unattractive holiday guests of the city in my potential christmas card shot....you'll be happy to know i gave up on that whim last night and used a clean, clear, crisp and non-color-re-touched snap from wyoming this summer as the card shot....that's what i call cowboying up the city slicker way....

so i looked at that damned tree again....talk about bored....

when i was unable to find nourishment for my body, i thought, so, ok, i'll take nourishment for my soul.....

and thus i trudged my way along fifth avenue to saint patrick's cathedral where i knew they were having midnight mass and communion (hey, a little body bread and jesus juice goes a long way if you're truly starved!)....that said, the line for the mass was around the block and down madison avenue behind the cathedral....this was at 9:45pm....i thought of sneaking in with the choir boys through the rectory entry on the north side of the church but then i figured i'd be spiritually and physically hungry and i'd probably need to go to confession to boot....so i settled for staring at the line up that had wisely requested tickets for mass a year ago....suckers!!!!

with over 3/4 of a million pick pockets and rugrats in the general area i was loathe to get a non-blurred photo.....

but this one came kind of close....closer than many i've taken recently....it must be my camera dying because every photo i've taken for months has come out with an extra special hazy quality about it....but this was pretty good in terms of managing to avoid all the heads, arms, bags, thiefs, and general crap vendors surrounding all the harolds....you know, harold's the angel...they ignored my request, in triplicate, to just call them bob....they'll learn....

saks fifth avenue....hate the store, love the snowflakes....

yes, i'm bitter, ever since i worked in the visual merchandising (i.e. window display) department of saks fifth avenue about a million years ago, i won't set foot back in the store to save my life or anyone else's....that said, i love the snow flakes they've got illuminating the facade which is directly in front of the tree at rockefeller center....the flakes are illuminated to a random syncopation of music (carol of the bells maybe?) and it's really fun to watch...i took a video of it and will try to post some of it on here for you to enjoy or be annoyed by...you decide....

bloomingdale's - like no other store in the world.....

their holiday windows are sure as shit ugly, but the cascading waterfall of lights that surround the building for 9 stories top to bottom make it worth overlooking the nasty use of gaudy and glitter...i think the theme of their windows must have been jihad.....better luck wasting your cash on window display next year bloomies!

the last minute christmas tree

when you buy your tree at the last minute, it helps to bring the tree lights with you...you can cut the tree, wrap the lights and then plug them into the cigarette lighter for the trip home....the packer i barely caught in the throngs at saint patrick's cathedral was a beautiful throwback to a simpler time....circa the mid 1970's - you know when the waltons had all those cheesey christmas specials.

all creatures, great and small.....

this creature was super great! in fact, if it was easier to read and i could have made the colors print more clearly, he would have been the front runner for the holiday card that i made and sent out (yes folks, there is a wadey-klaus, and indeedy, i managed to get my handcrafted photo cards printed, signed and mailed at 5am on the 24th of december...if you get one, please let me know what the postmark reads....if you don't get one....well, just blame that on the post office....so undependable....)

if you can't read it, the thing i love in this photo is that his hat reads "i've been naughty".....me too....no, not really, mine would have read "i've been miserable...."

Christmas Eve at Rockefeller Center....

i waited in line to circle the ice rink....this after seeking nourishment and sustenance for my body....can you believe every foreigner in the country was in times square and rock center tonight for christmas eve....not a single restaurant or grocery store was open....after nearly 3 weeks without a real meal, you know i was jonesing for a sit down and atleast the brief conversation with another human being provided by the waitron....damn the bad luck....that said, i finally got to the front of the rink under the tree to find the line wasn't circling tonight so i had to turn around and force my way back thru the masses and the asses...good grief, it's christmas people, how about leaving those little urchins and their strollers home with the nanny, the granny or better yet, you and your fat fanny? i'll tell you, after 20 minutes of kicking and screaming and scratching and clawing, i'll bet those foreigners don't get in my way again anytime soon!

here is the card that i wrote and had intended to send out, but in case it doesn't happen, happy holidays from me to you!

• Let us break down boundaries,tear down

walls, and continue to build on the foundation of goodness inside each of us • Let us look past our differences, gain understanding, and embrace acceptance• Let us reach out to one another, rather than resist • Let us better the world in which we live, by nurturing, and replenishing the beauty of nature • Let us express gratitude for that which we have, rather than dwelling on our needs • Let us seek cures for the sick, help for the hungry, and love for the lonely• Let us hold hope for a better future very tenderly in our hearts• Let us love with our whole hearts – for that is the only way to love•

bah....hum bug....or whatever the hell the bug is that's keeping me sick.....

here's the view from the tree back towards fifth avenue....notice the herald angels of the finest white wire....that's saks fifth avenue directly in the background....i do really like the snowflakes they've got illuminating the facade of their building - gorgeous at night, but alas, i took this when the ugly lights were still on....i'll try to get another pic of it when it's dark and i'm feeling better....for those of you who have been pining for my holiday card, this was going to be the shot but my printer doesn't want to cooperate and frankly, right about now, i'm done trying...

tis the season....fa...la...la...la...la.....ok, as you were....

this is what the rockefeller center tree looks like when you're forced to be outside in full daylight....it's un-natural i tell you! that said, if you're going to hack down a 100+ year old tree of a certain size and such, wouldn't you personally try to aim for one that has a more pleasing shape? i know i'm aghast at the lack of symmetry on this beast! much like beer and dark lighting in a bar, darkness, blinking and flashing strobes on the tree and an over zealous group of foreigners who drink wine with dinner before visiting really do help to make this tree look spectacular....thank goodness for the beer goggles!

i have been under the weather lately.....

in fact, that's such an understatement that i'd be remiss if i didn't say i was snow-plowed under for the last three weeks....what started off innocently enough as a funk which always grows into a depression and worsens from there mentally was made all the more jolly by what could only have been considered the mother of all crohn's disease attacks....oddly enough, i have in recent weeks (now months) been scheduled for 2 full g.i. series, an m.r.i. of my brain, a ct scan of my abdominal cavity, an mri of my abdominal cavity, a pet scan of my full body and extensive bloodwork.....one test i missed, another i skipped, the third (and of course the most ghastly and invasive of them all,) scheduled for 8am the day immediately after my birthday (way to make any birthday a night to celebrate - besides organized events, disorganized chaos, and the full-on attack of the go-lightly --who the hell had the nerve to name that shit "go-lightly"....ironic? i think not....more like unfortunate!) so i show up for the full on g.i. series after doing my duty as much as a man can do with as little of the go lightly as one can ingest....only to be delayed....and delayed....and delayed and then finally cancelled....my blood pressure skyrocketed and they weren't able to put me under for the tests....good gosh damn, man! demerol was the only reason i signed up for the go-lightly experience in the first place....not only did i have to drink a vile gallon of that toxic goo, but i had to spend a solid 15 hours expelling toxic poo....only to find out that all the inuendo (or my endo as the case was scheduled to be....) was merely voodoo that you do, but that i don't do so well....thus, one was accomplished back in october, inconclusively....now the late november one didn't happen and despite my bitching and moaning and farting and passing all things animal, vegetable, mineral and other, i am now required to sign up for the voodoo you do and the i do poodoo testing all over again....riddle me this....am i amused?

not a single iota.....

thank you ken for making my birthday into a night i'll remember....

i asked ken if he would do something with me for my birthday last sunday night after he got back from his family trip to florida for thanksgiving. he was gracious enough to say yes and true to his word, he did indeed help me to celebrate it.

with a really nice red-velvet cake from the amish market across from his apartment and a bunch of candles, the night was close to ideal. if nothing else, it touched me and made me thankful once again for the things in my life over which i am in control and the people with whom i am blessed to associated with. over all, i'd say i didn't want that night to end but it left me looking forward to many wonderful things to come in this, my 40th year.

they were the best of times, they were the worst of times....or so said charles dickens, long, long ago....the fact of the matter is, they are the times we are given and what we make of them and what we take from them all hinge on what we bring to them - whether it is emotionally raw, physically challenging or mentally challenging to embrace, the times are ours alone and no one can take away the memories created in these times.

i have memories that i wouldn't give away, sell, trade or try to change for all the tea in china!

thanks for the memories!

this week is my birthday...i can't believe i'm 39....

the days are ticking past quickly as i end my 39th year....thursday marks my 39th birthday and the onslaught of the 4th decade for me....i am not exactly sure what that means....never one to really dwell on my birthday, i mean, really, it just happened for me, i really didn't have a lot to do with it....but for someone reason, i have found myself wanting to celebrate it this year....i'm not sure how i'd like to mark it or what i expect to transpire, but somehow, it feels like i should be doing something that makes me feel my age while allowing me to retain my youth....

i guess i'll see what the week holds in store for me....after all i won't light the candles before thursday - nyc fire code may just cause the candles to lay dormant for yet another year.....

i was questioned about my blog name.....

and i thought it was funny, but a little obvious....those of you who know me, know me....what you may see is guarded and often-times called stand-offish...i've even been told i'm aloof....but those that have truly taken the time to know me know that underneath it all, i'm painfully shy, i am generally feeling awkward and have a very difficult time socializing with people i don't know....thus, when you take the time to read this, you get the real me....because underneath it all, i'm painfully aware of being emotionally vulnerable....thus, i'm pretty much naked. see, it's really got nothing to do with what you're wearing or how i'm dressed, it's a deeper and more abstract way of being seen....for who i truly am....

run...run....run....! 50, 000 people chased each other....

from bridge to bridge, and avenue to avenue, up side streets and across town and then by my bedroom windows, around the north loop of harlem, back into the northern end of central park and, phew....finally, to the finish line of the nyc marathon...here's the noise makers and their supporters that kept me awake after a particularly harsh and upsetting episode of insomnia....lucky bastards, as grouchy as i was, at the 21.5 mile mark (note the blue line up the middle of first avenue), they were still able to outrun me.....

the george washington bridge (gwb) is always a sight to behold....

when the sun goes down and the lights come up

the gwb is a beautiful thing to see, especially when you are so close that you can reach out and touch it!....

sitting and waiting, poised for snow and hot cocoa....

mom is safely back for thanksgiving from helping aunt pat and uncle jack down in virginia.

the holidays are fully upon us and once again, the weather is nose diving towards those lower regions of the thermometer and i've hit one of those crucial martha stewart milestones that so many of us measure our lives in....for some folks it's the laying on of hands to create festive and fragrant holiday wreathes from pine boughs and cones, for others it's opening up a hermetically sealed shrink wrap of pre-fab cookie dough to make the entire house seem homey and more enticing than it would otherwise feel in such dreary days....for me, it's back to my basics....let's start with the endeavors that become fiasco and work our way forward, shall we?....

let's see, friday i decided i finally needed, not wanted, but actually needed, to make homemade peanut brittle....that in and of itself should alert the papers and put me right in line with fiasco-ville, right? right! since i bought the christmas treasury cookbooks at night heron out in laramie with mona and mom this summer, i've been waiting, and waiting...and even waiting some more for inspiration to spark me into a kitchen frenzy for something divine and off my beaten path...peanut brittle struck me as that thing....easy enough recipe...except for the part that insisted a labor of love such as making home made brittle would also encompass the hand shelling of the required peanuts....pre-processed in a can wouldn't do....so i sought out and found my own 5 pound bag. peanuts be damned...and damn the peanut shells, i was going to do this and do it right.....

so i did....boil, boil, roiling boil and more boiling, add the peanuts, add the butter and the vanilla....boil some more...must be close to 300 degrees for hardcrack candy right? it drops in to water and makes a little ball with the string on the way down...very elementary in my cooking rudiments...only perhaps my timing and my thermometer were both off....i removed from heat, added the baking soda and stirred thoroughly....then turned to butter my jelly roll trays to pour it into for hardening....when i glanced back over my shoulder the damn science project (as it is henceforth to be known....) was growing all over the friggin' stove....yep....baking soda....inert and active ingrediant all at once...if you don't have the trays pre-greased, you can kiss the stove top goodbye...and about anything else within range of said experiment....drop the trays, butter flying, grab the silicone spatula and beat the beast (with much love of course) back into saucepan submission....that's why they say use a large pan....5 quart saucepan, far too small for the creature to live in when it's really raging to get out....

i debated with pouring it directly on my silpat...but afraid the counter would be un-level and spill boiling and chemical goo into my drawers i went for the pans...great choice....it was hot and stringy and sticky and nutty for hours....

knowing full well i was going to want to try it before hefting it off on others in the coming days, i pried a small corner out for myself....yep....sticky....stringy....gooey and i might add a little delicious too, but over all too stringy and sticky for my liking (and i'm not allowed to have the nuts and who needs the sugar...i'm sweet enough - couldn't you just go diabetic knowing me?) so i decided to place them in the fridge and then flip them out on the silpat and container them for giving...what a brilliant plan...except for the fact i should have sprayed them down with pam instead of the somewhat invisible butter, so when i flipped and smacked my trays, i cracked the brittle...in fact, the warmth re-gooed the non-brittle - brittle and allowed for very slickly brittled nuts to fling about the kitchen with abandon....sticking in every crevice, on every surface and sliding oh so slowly as a science project is bound to do, down the cabinet doors hoping to reach my previously immaculate floors....

you know that brought bob to the window (you all remember bob, my squirrel(s?) from early on in the blog....yep...bob's back...and jonesing to get in for the gooey goodness of my non-brittle-brittle....who knew....?

i took a tupperware to ken's apartment last night after prying it out of the copperclad grasp of my revereware one fingernail at a time....it passed the peanutty-goodness test, but alas, ,even refridgerated it was barely brittle...that said, i think it was ok in the end, since most of it is out of my house, off the walls, deglazed from the floors and scraped from the stove....and what was at ken's was a well dented attempt of sharing....

this moves us to the successful portion of the weekend candy making experience....teaching ken and his friend michael how to create home made molded chocolates so ken can make up fancy little boxes for his client roster as an extra something for the holidays. i think i lost my love of chocolate making somewhere between the last wedding cake with disasterous flower ramifications and the umteenth hundred-thousandth hand rolled, dipped and marked chocolate truffle for someone else's wedding....i used to make candy in my sleep, in fact i used to love the intamcy and intricacy of hand painting each petal of a floral mold or each figure on a chess set, creating the fondants and cream fillings used to be an adventure, each taste something to wonder over and compare with the prior batches....but now, that's a million years in the past or so it would seem and i've had to step back and watch with new eyes from a different perspective.

ken can come across as a bit shy when he's not yet mastered something...or so it would seem....he's very much like me in many ways....meticulous but he has such a firm grasp on reality that he is the first to remind everyone to "remember the fun"....which is a good lesson to take away...because when all is said and done, the chocolates were beautifully done for a first go. ken and michael managed to even get down the fine art of inserting flat fillings of almond paste and liquid carmel into the centers without mucking up the fronts or the back of the pieces....ken played the concept of using edible gold leaf on the rosettes he'd poured and quite tastefully accomplished! i ate my fair share of the dark chocolates (life is far too short to be wasted on the other varieties in my opinion)....as ken stated a couple of times "they're so good, they're better than godiva...."

and as i am left to point back out to you ken - you are correct, they are better than godiva...that's because you embraced the moment and kept it fun.....

as i trudge towards birthdays, holidays and post holidays recoil, i am going to start working on stitching a little something to remind myself of that very self-same thought "remember the fun...." truer words to live with may have never been so randomly uttered with greater take away value....for now i'll log off so i can start the next project on which i must stitch....and then when i log in next i'll be ready to bitch about it i'm sure.....

i have experienced the most perfect moment....

the first night of freezing temperatures in nyc and ken invited me over to his really comfy and cozy apartment in hell's kitchen for dinner and to spend the evening....never one to arrive empty handed if i can help it, i grabbed the first bouquet that i came across trying to get from east harlem to that little slice of heaven he calls home....unfortunately for ken, my bouquet was a choice of two, either green beans with almonds or broccali with chedder cheese sauce since birdseye was on sale and i'd just been to the giant pathmark near my apartment....

when i walked into his home, i was greeted not only with his oh so adorable face, but he had set out a platter of cheeses and bread and crackers, as well as a really delicious bottle of cabernet sauvignon....we snacked and chatted and suddenly it dawned on me that i heard crackling and popping from the far end of the apartment -- he had laid the first fire of the winter season in his fireplace so i asked if we could sit with our wine in front of the fire...nothing makes me more centered and aware of everything around me than a nice home made fire....

as we lay on the couch, slouching ever so slightly further and further into it's generous and very cushy depths, ken asked if it was ok that he lay with his head almost on my lap....who could turn down a cautious questionning of said nature....so as he lay with his hair wrapped in my fingers and his breathing growing so steady and even, deep and sonorous, like the weltering flames of his fire in front of me, i could hardly help but be overtaken by a sense of such complete and utter contentment that it may have even bordered on rapture....the thing was, with ken's head on my lap and my hand playing along his arm and in his thick beautiful hair, i was so lost in my own thoughts that i didn't realize until many minutes later that as he was drifting in and out of a comfortable and unfettered slumber, i was actually crying....

that's when it struck me....just how idyllic and perfect that very self-same moment in time was for me....somehow it held everything i've ever wanted and all the things i've never had or couldn't find in a lifetime that must have been spent searching....as my tears slowly dried into blotches on either side of my face, i was forced to move and shift causing ken to slowly focus on being awake with me and i just had to tell him how i was moved by that immense burden of life being relieved in his home, nay, in his presence...astoundingly, as i tried to minimize my words and just get the exact sentiment of all i was feeling without all the adjectives, i not only realized that maybe i was crying not because i'd never had that moment before or even that i'd searched for it in vain, but instead, i think i have finally realized that my life should have been filled with many moments such as that one and somehow, sharing that one perfect moment, in solitude and faltering shadows of light, with ken, even as he slept, i knew i had missed out on so much of life's beauty and that i really want to be a part of something that allows me to see moments such as this, and feel emotions such as these....but to me the most beautiful thing was when i finally finished explaining in as few words as i was able, ken said simply, "i know, i was in that same place with you."

now that is a moment i will always remember, and whether another perfect moment ever comes along in this lifetime, it will not matter, for i've had one, and if you've had just one perfect moment with such clandestine beauty and such unadultered pretense in a lifetime, you know that the self same single moment is enough to sustain a soul until the end of all time....

the heart is a lonely hunter....

is that the title of a book from oprah's book club?

if so, sue me....it sure as heck is way i've been feeling oh so often as of late....

have you ever noticed that your heart can hold so much love, and because of all the love it knows itself to hold, it never worries one single iota about having the love it gives returned in kind?

the head on the other hand, much less forgiving and far more demanding....the heart may be a lonely hunter, but the head is meant to hunt solo, with a quiver full of poison darts and words that it can sling like arrows to any unsuspecting target....the head will stealthily turn inward and hide any brain that might have been visible, cloaking the soul with reason, and coating the outside edge of reality with expectecations....

my head knows not to follow my heart, and my heart seldom follows my head...as if the intelligence one has gathered could foil the the fool-hearty encounters anticipated by the other.....

it leaves me confused....my own confusion....and it leaves me pondering why, what, when and wherefore all things in my life are from yet alone their final trajectory....i have not had need of love, nor have i had want to expect anything from a single soul, for as far back as i'm able to recall...and suddenly, i'm finding myself right there in the thick of wishing, always hoping and subtly wanting what i know i shouldn't, nay, what i mustn't wait for....what animal ever trapped by another laying in wait has grown to love it's captor? but then, what animal, forever unloved and never without hope of said affection would ever show mercy upon it's captive if it were not for the unfettered and undeclared need for love in return?...

i have been shown love lately. i am sure i've put out some love myself...heck, i've been putting love out there for years, as weak and as mired as that love has always been in my own self-effacing need for approval....now it is different to me, for me, with me....i need love, yes, i do....and i deserve love as well, every human being, good, bad or indifferent does, but lately, i'm feeling the kind of love that puts my world at great peace and allows for wonderful things to root and begin to flourish....i am never certain when i love something or someone, that the love will ever be noticed, yet alone acknowledged or returned....it happened once, so long ago, that i have always felt that perhaps it's a one time event in any person's life (or atleast in this person's life...)but with that said, my expectations continue to remain low, perhaps in self preservation, but my emotion continues to grow unabated...and somehow, for me, this is a wonderful and necessary thing to know....

having known great love, and having lived through great loss, i live daily with great pain and often with great disappointment, yet now, i'm living....i don't care to measure the loss, i am not dwelling on the disappointment, the pain is part of the process and i can say with steadfast resolve that love, the age old folly of mankind, the thing that brings us to tears, both of joy and of sorrow....oh love, love which costs not a cent, but can cost a body it's heart and soul, love has not changed....i am no more, nor any less of the man i was when i thought love was something that everything could have...and here i am, thankful to the core that i am the lucky man with another chance to feel my soul open like a flower, showered with kind words and fond deeds, affection, for all the world to see so easily....my soul, my heart, my head....all going in different directions....all seeking something so vastly and eternally different, yet all bringing me to the same place deep within myself...a place few have seen, or been invited to witness, yet, a place that must be evident in my speech, in my step, in my laugh and more than anywhere, in my self....

my heart continues to pound relentlessly within my chest for each passing touch of a hand, hoping it is one of many the future will provide....and my head keeps telling me to let it go and enjoy the moment, for, you truly never know if or when love may pass your way again....the moment is there to cherish....the future is only there to instill worry...so i live in my moment....and my future...my future does not need a plan....

if i found a wistful unicorn....

if my turtle caught the croup, and really wanted chicken soup, would you bring it?

if my freckle decided yesterday to become a dimple anyway, would you notice it?

if said that i would dance, then fell off the stage and tore my pants, would you mend them?

if i ran backwards up a tree, tumbled down and skinned my knee, would you bandage it?

if i sang a song for you, as hard as that would be to do, would listen?

if my cricket wouldn't chirp, but stayed real still and out of work, would you watch with me?

if i found a wistful unicorn, would you pet it?

if any of these things you'd do, i know i'd never have to say to you.....

cold weather is upon us, the quilts are piled on my bed....

and the brisk, blue skies and sunny days of an early slanting sun (when we're lucky) fuel my vigor and rejuvinated sense of selfe....

with this phenomenal autumn weather, comes incalculable sales, savings, soirees and sorties for those lucky enough to be in those loops...that used to be me, a life time and a half ago....i was part of the connected and perhaps even the jet set...now i find myself somewhat, and more often than not, disconnected and when lucky enough to travel (*not by bus, and thanks nj transit, mind you), i may be part of the jet blue set now....economics being what they are, that suits me just about fine.

today i found a new favorite store on the upper east side. nestled between ron's old place on east 77th where i started the days wanderings and close to the bombay company store that is on 86th street, just 20+ blocks (all uphill of course) to my place....not so bad 'cept those damned hills...why couldn't they level the entire city before building here? it's as if they figured i'd be at the top of those hills one day and would benefit from the much needed exercise of walking up them....that said, WANKELS is now my favorite place to shop...it's a hardware store....i know, enough with the grief already, we owned that damned store for 35 years and i avoided it like the plague, since we closed down, gave it all away and sold off to the TRACTOR STORE, i've found myself needing, a monkey, wrench, a ratchet set, a hammer, hundreds of nails, screws, picture hangers, etc., and just about anything else you can find at home depot but no longer at my personal home depot....WANKELS RULES!!!! i've been putting off painting the nest, fearing it would make it too much of a home to move from, but i've decided to suck it up and deal with it. i'm here. i'm staying here, and to the chagrin of the management, i think i intend to die here (no worries, not a plannned thing and no time soon, for certain!)

so why WANKELS?

of course you'll ask.

say it it outloud. and again....and again....

i love the way it sounds....

and of course, Dutch Boy, normally $42 a gallon is on sale, custom tinted, for $21 a gallon. now i'll be doing the living room in either bulldog brown with bullfrog blue (i know, two different dutchboy color categories, but they're the colors i'm using...guess it's going to be bull-dog-frog since alphabetically rules my roost.....) there's a few other colors on the palette but i need a discerning eye and some input from elsewhere, so perhaps ken will be kind enough to give me some feedback tonight as he's invited to come over for dinner, and since i'm jonesing for companionship at the moment and nervous as all hell about my gastro interology appointment tomorrow, tonight, i'd much rather be un-alone for a change....especially after the dreary weakend left me weary and feeling whorphaned by every single friend, acquaintance and family member i could reach out to....

speaking of WHORPANs, why is it, friends will make plans, a matter of minutes or perhaps several hours out of the actual intended time and then consequently just disappear from the face of the planet? i don't find it acceptable. i don't excuse it. apologies don't fix it and my fragile self can't stand it since i'm the last to do similarly if at all possible, and atleast i would call....there are 3 friends that have yet to let me know they're still alive from blowing me off this weekend and let's just say, they're slipping with certainty off the totem of friendship....i mean, i let it go overnight and then called to be sure they're alive, but they haven't acknowledged that i'm alive yet alone that i'll be wishing they're dead by the time they get around to clocking in with me again. shit, put yourself there, get showered, get dressed, actually sit and wait like some freakin' prom queen for a date that will never happen, and go to bed sad and alone, later than you wanted and feeling like something bad happened...and i know i didn't do it, but damn, i hope someone's got an excuse or a missing limb or at least a hospital discharge slip....if i find out another of my friends is fucking with drugs and dicking me around again, i'm going to kick some serious ass....i will no longer stand for it.

maybe that's why i feel so rejuvenated today....i opened up a can of ASS-WHOOP and i'm trying to figure out who to serve up first while it's still steaming and i'm still hot under the collar about it.

thank goodness for WANKELS!

a shout out to one of my peeps -- hey kenny!

no let's see your blog, come on, i'm waiting.... ;+D

and for the rest of you, it's been a crazy busy day here in new york city...it was so much warmer than it has been - we hit mid-80's today...great day to run around like a chicken with it's head cut off, if i do say so myself!!! (stan & pat, did you have snow yet out there? mona, did you and clark start having small contained - no not the forest variety - fires out in wheaterville yet? mom and jim, go on and brag, brag, brag....i know, you're sitting poolside at your villa - thanks for the phone call mom, made me mis-post several photos on ebay once again...now i know how and why i make some of my costliest errors!)

let's see, i did laundry, went to the grocery store, came home and cleaned, and cleaned and cleaned a little more (oh, i forgot, the plumber was here to fix my backed up bath and shower situation...thanks whoever used to live upstairs for filling my tub with your backwash and dirty water...glad it had a chance to sit in the pipes for a few months before i was lucky enough to wake and try to shower...how embarrassing to have had an overnight guest who possibly encountered it first...it will probably cut down on future guests given my ratio of invites to stay over versus ratio not invited over at all)...then kenny came up from work, conveniently down near my friend ron's old place (you'll recall all my travailles back and forth fixing it once he moved out so he wouldn't lose his deposit - mission accomplished, ron got 99.9% of his money back thanks to my labor intensive and sucker-like ministrations to his former abode,) and i made us lunch while we had a nice visit for a few hours before he had to get back downtown to work. somehow, sharing a tuna sandwich with him today made my doctor ordered intake of tuna this week that much more bearable, if not downright enjoyable. who knew?

and then, i cleaned some more....glad that feeling passed...i normally do try to lie down until the urge to clean leaves me...today, i just couldn't thwart it....

oh, i got some gorgeous salmon pink roses, two dozen to be precise, from my neighborhood fish-monger/florist...sad to see my friend from when i purchased the great lilies is no longer there, and they've raised their pricing...i still am concerned he may have been relieved of his job since he gave me such a good deal and it was obviously in error...while i did try to correct the error so he wouldn't get in trouble, he wouldn't allow me to do so....sorry pablo...or pedro...or was it juan, i forget, but it was hispanic and more mexican than boriquian.... now i have roses, roses, roses, everywhere. i'm sorry, but anyone that ever says they don't like flowers is lying....how you can have them in your home and just not feel better...i don't care what ills you, flowers just make any day so much more bearable...even when you feel the need to clean....

so, here's something i got on my email machine today, it made me look twice, laugh once, and then log into my blog three times to finally post it for all of your enjoyment.... in case you can't see the title of this photo, it is simply "crack-o'lantern". (p.s. whoever carved it is a far sicker puppy than that dog that sent it to me....)

;+D
wadeo

painted with words....vincent van gogh's letters to emile bernard....

i have had a single favorite building in new york city for my entire tenure here....that building would be the oh so graceful, elegant and sublime pierpont morgan library on madison avenue and 37th street....built by john pierpont morgan as his personal library, adjoining his mansion nextdoor (beyond sublime!), this classical and simple building used to be fronted by a large iron gate that opened into a cour-carre (carriage courtyard) of coblestones....the entire courtyard before the entrance had always been impeccably maintained with gorgeous topiaries awash with twinkling white fairy lights....i walked by this building every day for nearly 6 1/2 years when i worked at booz allen & hamilton (40th and park - you all will recognize that office building since it's always used in building shots for seinfeld and friends - the building, the kalicow building is shaped like a rotary propeller, so it's an odd and distinctive shape, actually quite impressive in it's own lackluster right)....in all the days of walking past it, and all the late nights in a towncar on my way home from too many hours of consulting work, i never once had the inclination to investigate and venture into the building....

fast forward almost 7 years...and voila! the impetus i needed to finally examine the interior of what used to be the best block in the city in my humble opinion....of course, in the 7 years since i left b.a.h., they've added a visitors entrance in front of the main library building...gone are the gates....the topiaries were left to wither and die on the vine and the coblestones, well, who really knows where old foundry stones go to die....the new front on madison avenue might as well be the pyramid at the louvre for how inconsistent it is with the design elements it was supposed to embrace and compliment...now you can't see the lovely details of the main building, or even romantacize the days when the pierponts and the morgans would arrive by horse and carriage to sit in their own private library with it's vast collection of world literature and rare artworks...

but now....oh now....it's ok that they defiled the monument of the past....at least until january 6th, 2008....that's because they've redeemed themselves somewhat by bringing in a very special and very rare glimpse into the life and mind of my man, vincent van gogh....

and what a way to redeem themselves indeed! not since the metropolitan museum of art featured the complete works of vincent van gogh from his time in arles (1887 - 1888 when he died), way back in 1987, has there been such a rare, unique and comprehensive glimpse into the life, the art and the man who a hundred years after his death was to become the title holder for the single highest auction sale of a single piece of artwork (sunflowers, 1985, 5.5 million - catalog estimate was approximately 750,000). it was my great good fortune to have been at that exhibit as well, thank you to mlle. moore my high school french teacher! the show was sold out for a year in advance of opening and she had the foresight to purchase 40 tickets with her own money and offer them to the seniors in her 4th year french class ( of which there were 29 students, her single largest ever 4th year french class...she'd had two french classes of 30 for freshman, sophomore and junior years, which speaks volumes about how fun and intensive her classes were, but she was selective and not all 60 students were invited to take 4th year french...thank goodness i made it past the cut or i'd have never gone on to my french degree!) at that exhibit, several of the the paintings seen at the morgan library were present as well, but the scope was different, that was just paintings...it was art at it's zenith...it was also a day that could have landed me in jail and one that has kept me from frequenting the met on a regular basis....every work he did that was in a private collection was brought to the met, there were over 100 paintings in all....there was one that hung in the white house, another that was owned by elizabeth taylor (rain on my window in arles - a silent and lonely cacaphony of lavenders and blues and greens, simple streaks down the canvas which was quite small and very approachable...thus my problem....i couldn't help myself, it called out to me in it's stoic patheticism...so i reached up and touched the oil paint....and the guards roared, and security fanned in and the alarm went off...and i was escorted out of the gallery....thank goodness mlle. moore caught the flux of people and saw my tall self being escorted away post haste....she intervened...and alas, i finished the day but have never been back since...by the way, you really shouldn't touch a van gogh painting if the opportunity arises, no matter how delactable or debased it may seem...he applied his paint in such bold and thick strokes that the underlying oil and pigments are still gooey and wet under the surface luster...i didn't know this...i took a fast and hard lesson in art and good behavior 101 that day....not only could my finger print change the course of the art by releasing a torrent of fresh ooze, but i could have left fingerprints and la liz would not have been so thrilled i am told.

the thing about the current exhibit is that it featured 20 handwritten letters to a young artist by the name of emile bernard who was befriended by van gogh in paris where he had previously lived (in montmarte - near the famed moulin rouge, the basilica of sacre couer - the highest vantage point in paris, at the top of nearly 1100 marble steps, and the garret apartments of those would become some of the most famous and commonly known names in the art world of the french pursuasion....degas, monet, manet, millet, gaughan, latrec, seurat, etc.) emile, merely 19 years old at the time of his first meeting with van gogh, was one of the few friends to stand by him as his health declined and his world collided with madness and shifting perspectives of reality and fantasy....the entire time of their acquaintance, bernard would send finished paintings and sketches on to van gogh, now living in arles in the south of france, where it was believed the warm weather and clean air would help to alleviate his deteriorating mental and physical well being. in return, van gogh wrote long missives, responding to his friend's request for feedback...helping to shape the young artist from an immature and unpolished poet of paints to a demure and elegant professor of pigmentation....all the while, van gogh was sending these sketches and finished paintings back to paris, to his brother theo, who was requested to fence them as he might be able to the top art dealers and galleries of the day, so that bernard might be sent some francs to afford new pigments and an occasional live model instead of having to frequent the bars and bordellos of paris to sketch live action at the basest and most debauched level. keep in mind, van gogh himself at this time was living on merely 5 francs per day in arle, including room, board, meals and art supplies....5 francs today, if they still existed, would be approximately a single euro, which in today's news is about $1.45. back then it was less than 50 cents....that's not much to live on....van gogh himself was in such desperate financial straights that even his weekly pension from theo didn't afford him the luxury of live models....instead, he would paint the wife of the barkeep at his local bar and offer the painting in exchange for his bartab....he would paint street scenes with no life present and landscapes with biblical undertones (the olive trees in arles - all about the crucifixion of Christ, bit in a manner never before seen - no Christ figure...it was merely the fabled wood of the cross in the form of gnarled and twisted olive trees, looking for all the world like pained and arthrictic old people dancing in an unseen zephyr that only the mistrals of southern france could create), so too, he painted the militia seen in and around the town...they were drunken and unwitting models for his lonely and immediate needs...

theo managed to sell some of the artwork of emile bernard and later, this resulted in several successful showings in the salons of paris....unfortunately, theo, unbeknownst to vincent, was unable to sell a single painting of his own brother....who had unwittingly become a pyrriah in the art world. these soulful and honest letters tell of vincent's struggle, to become well, to exist on diminished funds and to finally free himself of his mental degredation so he might rejoin his other artist friends in places such as marseilles where he knew there was a thriving artist colony right along the mediterranean...while he never did get to marseille, he was able to capture the vivid colors and scenery of that area by simply using his imagination and the descriptions provided to him by bernard. he painted a beautiful and oh so simple sea scape of a small sail boat bobbing at anchor in the harbor of marseille and sent it along to bernard. bernard himself could only avow that it was not only fine form, but accurate within an iota of the colors used to depict the vivid sunset over the sea as he had posted it to vincent.
as van gogh saw his finances diminish to the point of indebtedness, he began to reuse his canvases...not just once, but seven, eight, nine, ten and more times....at this juncture of his life, while his grasp on reality spiraled out of his grasp, he was producing paintings at a rate of 20 or 30 a week. he would never have been able to afford the canvas required, nor had the time to frame and stretch canvases, to accomodate such tempestuous application of brush to board. his artwork, hundreds of canvases, and boards and sketches, survive today...and under hundreds of masterpieces and whimsical studies and elegant mistakes are unknown and untold masterpieces that may never be discovered by the human eye. when a van gogh painting is brought to an auction house such as sotheby's or christies', they always xray the painting, it's part of the verification process to authenticate the painting...in the last 25 years, there have been about 15 of his major paintings, multiple versions of sunflowers, and several of his irises, as well as crows over a wheatfield, that have been put up for auction to the public sector...every single one of these paintings has revealed itself to be atleast a secondary tenant to the canvas, covering what only the trained art historian and xray technician can decipher as his lost works....

van gogh painted something like 70 self portraits.....the most famous being the self portrait with bandaged head (after slicing off his ear and sending it with a note of endearment to another person in arles, hello, a little stalker-esque....vincent...an ear....what were you thinking?) this is the time and place where the ear was removed...but the self portrait they had on display was instead a beautiful full vincent van gogh in shades of green that only hinted at his inner pain and misery...

he painted his favorite young lady friend...perhaps his muse....she is known only as "la mousme" which is a declension of what is assumed to "the muse" but it could have been an actual name...her name and records of her existence in the time of vincent's letters are all but lost....

i always thought his paintings reflected his actual mental decline....i have seen his earlier works, they are gentle, soft, flowing and almost ebullent with their liquidity of phrase and the soft capture of his subjects....they were the perfect imitation of the impressionism of the time...which was precisely what he was hoping to avoid and escape from ....he wanted to study the light and the form and the effect of time of day on both to see how shape and form could follow function and where the two diverged only to rejoin one another in a differential spatiality....he was so beautifully and classically trained that it is almost impossible to see it in his most famous paintings...that is, until you read his letters and see the sketches and studies on paper that he created and recreated and redefined and refined and later realized with such exacting precision that his uncanny artistic vision and integrity are all but visible as haughty and tempestuous brushstrokes of seemingly callous color. but that would be an injustice if i continued to propagate that belief....indeed....he painted precisely what he wanted and idealized it in exactly the shades and shadows that he thought would break down walls and over turn barriers of art....read his letters, luckily i was able to squint and squat and read silently to myself in french, grasping his exact words as they corresponded to his very visions, immortalized on paper in quick sketches outlining his color choices, the pigment color positions on his pallet and the very often fleeting changes of light and dark proffered by his southern sunlight....

to see his painting of the bridge at langoise (1888) and then to see the corresponding letter with his preliminary sketch of the scene is astounding....he sketched as he painted, every wide and seemingly arbitrary brushstroke to be placed on canvas was carefully placed and scaled in his pen and ink sketchs around the borders of the letters....his painting was as deliberate as his writing....succinct and with much thought behind every word....every stroke a story....every painting a lifetime that he would never truly be a part of. the sketch showed the bridge at noon the day of the letter, but when he went back to create the canvas, there were blackbirds along the pathway near the bridge, they were added as gently and as subtly as they would have been removed if the sketch and the canvas had been created in reverse order. every single color delineated in advance, with measured brush strokes, each genius and begging for life, each one very much a part of vincent van gogh.

many people dismiss the art of van gogh as childlike and perhaps thick in terms of his painting style....i personally have always loved his landscapes and flowers...having seen the house at arles in 1985 on my first trip to france, and the self same olive grove where he painted the crucifixion concept, and the very wheatfield that he painted with crows in flight...with blotches of red in the lower corner...they say that the red would be poppies because they grow in abundance in the south of france, but those of us who know vincent's story and have lived his life surreptisciously through his artwork and the recorded evidence of his times, we know better....the red was placed with great intent by van gogh as it was one of his last paintings to be completed before his death in 1888....in fact, it foretold the story of his tragic demise as artist, as man, as friend, since three days after the painting was finished, he walked in the same wheatfield, in the lower corner of his own canvas, and took his life with a bullet in the head....perhaps they are poppies in a wheatfield overshadowed by the black forms of crows, harbingers of life, death and a memorial perhaps...but more likely, the brilliant amber of the wheatfield surrounded van gogh just as life and normalcy did, but the dark cloud of the birds separates him from normalcy and just maybe, his loneliness and unfulfilled existence needed to be marked with proof that he had actually existed.

vincent van gogh, you were an amazing man....thank you for allowing us to know you, even if briefly, through your short life, your extensive contributions to art, and now, the intimate letters of a man who put the well-being and success of another ahead of his own. i can't help but wonder if you'd have been famous in your own lifetime had there only been wellbutrin or paxil to let you know that it's ok to be sad, and alone is only a place you go to in your mind....

nothing is better than fresh sushi when you are in new york city....

and since i found this game on line, i thought you'd like to learn how to make your own and enjoy it with me tonight....

here it is, late thursday night, another week gone already....

it's now the second half of october, where does all the time go?

mom and jim are in florida for a family reunion with all of his brothers and sisters. i see from my missed call log on the mobile phone that mom called me last night again. i was sleeping, so i missed the call. we're having an aweful spell of heat and humidity in new york city these past few days...it came as a shock to me, as i left the apartment wearing a sweater, jeans, socks, shirt and real shoes for a change trying to get down to midtown for a meeting with my attorney....it had been in the mid to high 50's for the last week and half, which means, with my bedroom windows open and my kitchen window open, the breeze through the apartment has left the place chilly and very much comfortable for sleeping and bundling up in real clothes again.... that said, i found out the other day that while my apartment has great airflow and maintains a goodly chill, it's not the best predictor of how to dress for outside weather....

it's supposed to be torrential rain here tomorrow. i can hardly wait, that's always my favorite weather to sleep in or do anything else in.

i've been trying to visit my brother p.j. all week, but have yet to make it out of the city....i did manage to speak with him twice on the phone the other day and of course, this is the week he's home and available to hang out with me...go figure that i couldn't get beyond the doctor's office, the lawyer's office and bed bath & beyond to get into port authority so far....i'm supposed to go to new hope in pennsylvania for the weekend. my dear friend brad and i were going to a halloween costume party and pig roast on saturday night. so far, i've managed to not be ready to do anything halloween related, yet alone get my spare hair washed and set or any costumes/beads/bangles/etc. fumigated enough to wear on the weekend. now i don't even have time to bead and feather a pair of wings to wear over my underwear (always a hit with the new hope church ladies).....

i figured out what i'm going to do for a quilt for mom's sister, my aunt patsy...i've decided to create a quilt of "my green garden" for her. i know that green has always been her favorite color, and is mine as well, so i thought squares and patches of verdant, lush, mossy greens and creamy whites would be pleasant, soothing and easy to match with other jewel toned greens for a real impact on a simple quilt design...now to start cutting and stitching...i'm not so much looking forward to this part of the project...picking the colors and deciding what to call it was one thing...easy-peasy since aunt patsy always had a great garden, a green thumb and a thing for all those items in green...but the stitch-witch has left the building when it comes to my personal desire to hand sew and quilt anything ever again...after 3 major quilts, the making another one was really the last thing i wanted to do, but i MUST do it for aunt patsy...she needs it and she deserves it.....

more later.
xo
wadeo

i made some homemade gingerbread men this morning...i set out tea and cookies for you to enjoy as you catch up on reading my blog.....

i hope that milk and honey is ok for your tea, that's how i'm having mine.....

don't worry, i didn't go out and buy those gorgeous lilies just for our visit on here today...they're left over from mom's visit last monday, tuesday and wednesday....wow, they were absolutely the freshest, most gorgeous, un-stank lilies i've ever bought! i was a little worried when i bought them since i only bought four stems of them and not a single bud was opened yet...by the time mom and i returned to my apartment from the port authority bus terminal and a few bead shops in the garment district several had started to burst open.


you should have seen mom's eyes pop out of her head when she saw the first bead shop one - picture cartoon creature with eyes popping out in surprise, add the boing-oing-oing noise and you almost have the right picture of that moment....there are about 14 beadshops around a single city block (seventh avenue, 37th street, 8th avenue and 36th street). by the time we left the bead shops, after being thrown out with bags and bags and bags of beads (and might i add tons and tons of luggage), it was raining, and i of course, once again, could barely stand up, yet alone walk.











it was suddenly pouring buckets on us and it was hot for a combined effect of misery on my part - sorry mom! - we managed to walk around the block - AGAIN - towards the east side subway (the green one - you know, the 4/5/6 line) at grand central station. we only made it as far as bryant park which is the beautifully maintained jewel of midtown's busiest commuter crossroads...directly behind the new york public library, the famous one with the lions, it has a terraced garden that comes down from the back entrance to the library for 4 small flights of ornately carved marble steps and lands in a great lawn, the size of an entire huge city block. the great lawn is surrounded with an italiante garden fence, a leaning fence if you will (you can sit on, or lean on it for hours taking in the beautiful people and the busy streets around the park). the far end has a great fountain that has been repaired and is once again spraying anyone that dares too close. they've put in a restaurant and a bar on the terraces all with huge tables and giant umbrellas. it's great. it's also a wi-fi hot spot sponsored by AMEX so you can sit there with a laptop and be connected, the best part is it's free....they've also got a garden "reading room" which was new to me...it's sponsored by the HSBC banking company. you can give them a piece of i.d., choose a book, newspaper, or magazine and take it anywhere you like to read it (i'd say in the park since you want your i.d. back and why would you want to leave?)

across the park, on the south side which is 41st street, they have installed an antique, hand carved, wooden carousel which if i recall correctly was originally built for children in the city of Paris. it has been totally restored, right down to the calliope pipes that jut from the center of the vaulted roof over the carousel....








by the time we got this far into our visit, it was about 7:30pm monday night. you can see it was dark out. mom isn't a huge fan of the city at night. i can understand her fears, since she's not used to constantly being swarmed by droning children rushing too and from school or soccer or whatever...and when you're rushed by the clackers, (the beautiful women, career girls if you will, all wearing huge stilleto heeled shoes, and tightly fitted business suits) it can feel a bit like an attack of the amazon women....especially as you try to navigate the cityscape with a rollaboard suitcase as they pelt you with umbrellas and laptops in oversized fashionable tote bags, or worse, their own luggage on wheels...sometimes, the crush of tourists and businessmen in is tantamount to swimming upstream against a very strong rushing current, and it feels like you're going to hit rapids any minute...frequently, you do, as most people don't pay attention to who they run over with their luggage....i try to be more conscientious than that myself...but that's me....sometimes, when there's construction on the street, particularly near port authority, along 42nd street, the sidewalk is narrowed due to scaffolds and safety fences...often, they've got concrete jersey barriers up blocking a lane of the street from traffic and redesignated as "sidewalk" while the sidewalk is completely lost behind a wall of boards while they erect yet another concrete and glass monolith as a tribute to man's ego and his need to reach ever higher heavenward, all while maintaining firm footing in the bedrock....these sidewalks are the worst to navigate. in fact, they have given me panic attacks, and that means i am forced to climb the barrier and walk in the on coming traffic lane which is really a menace and a dangerous endeavor....

for those trapped between the scaffolding, the boarded wall and the jersey barrier, it is down to single file foot traffic in each direction. if you're the unfortunate one dragging luggage, it becomes the slapstick re-interpretation of the classic western battle, good versus evil, as you go along your direction with your competitor coming right at you...bags down and guns blazing...it's a shootout to the death....you steady your resolve, take aim and propel 10 paces forward and suddenly, face to face, breath smoking from the humidity and lungs chugging from the effort, heart pounding with uncertainty and hands gripping luggage for dear life, you find only one of you can make it thru alive and with luggage in tact...the loser of this shootout is the one who steps over to let the victor pass...unfortuntately, the loser now has found his or her luggaage flipped over sideways/upside down/on it's back or worse, face first in the grime puddles that riddle such western outposts (west side of manhattan atleast). the victor rushes onward to either port authority and climbs with pride into his bus and gets home clean and on time for dinner, or rushes back to grand central where she can mount her train towards the place where all victors go (no, not heaven, but west chester county, which i'm told is sort of like achieving nirvana.)

we had no such drama, or luck, if you will...with a strong knack for avoiding showdowns at the cross-town-corral, we followed the narrow, winding paths left by the early rising workers of the garment districts' concrete and glass tee-pees towards the interior of grand central station, here, once again, i was forced to complain, an admission really, that i was having such severe pain in my legs and feet that i couldn't stand any longer, yet alone keep walking....we were so close to getting home by now and yet 100 paces to the train were out of my range of motion and we had to sit in the midst of all the hubbab. mom enjoyed sitting and staring up into the bright blue cerulean sky of the vaulted ceilings in the station...there, she tried to identify each of the constellations that were clearly outlined and sparkling in the early evening darkness. i found less consolation in the 10 story high "heavens" since i had the great good fortune to have worked on the renovations that rediscovered and recreated the original ceiling fresco....i sat there trying to stretch out my cramped and screaming feet...the only thought that even remotely passed through my mind was when i asked mom if she remembered that i had worked on this project when i worked with LaSalle Partners (the 3rd largest corporate real estate company in the u.s.a., the merged with jones lang woonton, a london firm, the largest in europe, about 7 or 8 years ago now, and combined they are the largest owner/manager/retailer and renter of property in the world, under the name of Jones Lang LaSalle). hard to believe i worked with them 12 and 13 years ago already! i loved that job. not only did i work on the renovations at grand central station, but i also was on the core team for the top secret disney project (project simba - no longer a secret,) to find a pre-existing historical theater to be bought by the walt disney company, totally renovated to within an inch of it's life while maintaining the historical accuracy of the interior and the public areas...all for their up coming project of The Lion King. the project was amazing to work on - we wound up on 42nd street, buying the crumbling and decaying theater once owned by florence ziegfield - the home of the infamous follies and the lesser known "hanging rooftop gardens," (unless your a theater devotee and perhaps you've seen the movie "ziegfield girl" starring judy garland and a slew of other famous names). the rooftop itself was collapsing and the rooftop of the building had been covered in net to stop animals and birds from coming into it. there was 40 years of water damage to the inside, (it had been converted to a movie theater in the 50's and by the sixties the entire place was vacated and repossessed by the city of new york for tax liens and such), yet disney, true to their pledge, kept the reconstruction absolutely 100% accurate to ziegfield's orginal design and construction a hundred years before. because of the roof's collapse into the theater, they were able to create fly space above the stage (which had been boarded over and we weren't able to access before purchasing - we could only imagine it from design files submitted to the city by ziegfield a hundred years earlier....boy were we in for surprise after surprise after surprise!) due to the machinations of the anticipated musical piece to be performed in this space, disney and co. insisted that they needed a much larger space than any modern theater could offer, yet alone one built to put on a show that had it's technology limited to a man pulling a rope that had pullies attached....even the lightening in the theater was a challenge since when it was built, electricity was not the norm for the theaters of the city and it had gas-lamp fittings visible along the balcony as well as under the stage along what had once been an orchestral seating area. disney prevailed....after the sale of the building we immediately started on demolition which took six months. so careful not to remove a single seat of the balcony without making sure to find the largest and best piece of fabric remaining of the original upholstery, we were able to have it cleaned (and cleaned again, then again, and again) until we had a general idea of the true original colors and fabric design...then we had thousands of yards of matching fabric hand woven over seas to reupholster the 1,800 seats that would line the balcony, the par-terre boxes that lined the walls and the seats that would be hand carved to replace the ones installed 60 years earlier to make it a movie house...the costs were staggering!

the woodwork in the entire building was ornately carved in an early rendition of art decco. ziegfield was ahead of his time on this decor! when we were finally able to remove the boards covering the proscenium arch across the stage, this had become the projection screen, we found an amazing remaining red velvet curtain....in tatters of course, but you could see the quality of the hand stitching and the expense that was put into the silk fringe lining the bottom edge and the sides that would have drawn back diagonally towards the ceiling to reveal the ziegfield girls as they descended from their fantastic underground lair via a detailed cast iron staircase that descended 3 stories under the city sidewalks, and that catwalked 3 stories above street level for the ladies to get onto the stage or up to the rooftop theater for the fabled hanging garden where every night tuesday through saturday, the after theater rush of famous people and theater stars would come post dinner, (wrapped in ermine and pearls, chinchilla and diamonds, fox and emeralds, mink and rubies or any conflux of the finest silks, wools feathers, bows and patent leather,) here 1,000 of ziegfield's closest friends (atleast for the evening) would see a "private" 1AM performance of his most famous and highest paid girls...among them the fabled Fanny Brice (of jingle bells fame...or funny girl...depending on how gay you truly are ;+D ). the 1AM show would also feature an orchestra as well as several guest performances, never pre-determined or announced, instead, they were culled from the celebraties in attendance that evening, and always, the orchestra was so talented and well rehearsed, that they would know the exact music, the right key and be able to accompany someone they'd never played for, but who's song was the big one of the hit parade....i wish i could have been there....even as i stood there and dreamed it into vibrant colors and noisy, smoky applause in my head, i was overwhelmed by a sense that i had missed the place in life i was meant to be....

we had to drill into the proscenium arch to get core samples of paints used in the building by ziegfield. this was a complicated task. the arch is exactly that, an arch...but it was 2 1/2 stories tall. the floor of the stage was partially collapsed into the underlying dressing rooms - these were the dressing rooms of the stars, nearest the stage. we had to erect scaffold the width of the entire interior of the theater so no one would be in danger of falling thru a weak spot in the floor. once the scaffold was in place, much like giving a boneless chicken some bone structure, we were able to climb like the theater monkeys we were becoming, up to the top and secure mesh wire from one end of the theater to the other as well as from side to side. this was time consuming, difficult and very, very expensive, but without it, we were in equal danger from the collapsing roof as the collapsing floor. now we were safe with tons and tons of weight distributed through the entire building, we weren't going anywhere near the basement until we wanted to descend there, and there was no chance of the remaining hanging gardens becoming the famous falling garden that crushed a crew of hundreds....we were happy....but soon, we were to become ecstatic!

six of us climbed to the very peak of the arch, up hundreds of rings of scaffold, to stand on a floating island of wooden planks....it was terrifying since i'm afraid of heights and climbing scaffolding is not high on my list of favorite things to do...heck...monkey bars are scary to me....i still have a hard time believing i ever faced my fears with so much reckless abandon and came thru it not only unscathed, but with some of the most valuable memories a person could ever be lucky enough to own, yet alone to share....this is one of them...and it's priceless....we are all standing in the center of the scaffold on a step ladder to reach the woodwork we're about to drill. the head of my office, who happened to be my boss, since he was the director of TRG (tenant representation group), that was peter, a senior partner that i loved working with (ruth ellman), an associate (frank small), another one (phil liebow), myself and another young consultant. there were several disney folks in the building overseeing and working with the contracting and architectural teams...we had our core sample materials, a drill, packaging and lables as well as a gridded architectural rendering of the arch, set to scale so we could precisely mark where we had drawn each of the 50 or so samples from. you have to remember, the building was now over 100 years old, and in 100 years, there was water damage, there was fire and smoke damage (a normal thing when gas lamps are involved, fires happened on stage all the time since the foot lights alone would have frequently caught curtains, scenery, fly-ropes as well as sandbags used for fly weights (a tie off for the ropes) would catch quickly when even millimeters too close...and this doesn't include the fires started by costumes that were often bursting into flames due to trains and capes of feathers singeing and igniting as someone would rush offstage to change (and be extinguished!) - that's why the stage hand workers still have such a strong union - they used to be very necessary and had a very dangerous role!

that said, peter and ruth each began to drill on opposite sides of the arch. phil and frank were packaging the samples and sending them down the scaffold while i, and my colleague both marked the samples and the graphs with precise coordinates as well as going back to the drilling spot to leave a marker that matched the marker on our charts. this process took us 2 or 3 days. it was back breaking and tedious...then, the most amazing thing happened.....

to the lower left hand corner of the archway, the drill stopped getting anything in the core. it came out with 1/2 inch of dirty, rotten, wood...the exact, but random location of that core drilling was hollow. we didn't know what to make of it. we didn't get what we needed so peter move a few inches to the left and drilled again. the noise was weird coming from his drill....everyone stopped what they were doing because of the noise...it sounded like the drill was twisting into metal, but there should have been no metal there, it was carved wood. again the core came out with 1/2 inch of dirty, rotted wood....we were there for the same reason, but we were asked to mark this spot on our grid so we could go back to it later with a flash light and see if we had hit a beam or structural piece of the room somehow, but it seemed unlikely since we could see the roof where we were at that moment was still balanced above us and looked fairly secure. moving 4 more inches to the left, peter drilled again, expecting the sound of metal or a clean buzzing sound as we got another core. these cores were anywhere from 2 inches to 6 inches deep generally, 1/2 or 1 inch of wood used to cover the arch, and several inches deep of layer after layer of paint, and an occasional bit of the actual carved wood of the arch...it's amazing how many layers of paint there were...and every single one could be clearly seen in side view...so many varying shades of white. then white again. then layer of gray which meant it was fire and smoke damage, a another layer of white, some yellow, more gray and then black which was a fire in the arch itself...someone had pulled the chandeliers too near the arch at somepoint and the radiating heat had resulted in a large area of damage that had been painted over several times to cover it....fascinating.....

finally done with all the required core samples we shipped them out and could move on to doing the same thing in every other area of the theater, the bathrooms, the lobby, the balcony, the side walls and the back hallways....all in hopes of finding the exact begining of the woodwork and the very first color to ever be applied in the theater. when the core samples were chemically separated in a lab and scientifically analyzed for lead content as well as other chemical make up (basically, trying to recreate the recipe used by those hired by mr. ziefield), they were recreated in the lab to see if the resulting color was anywhere near the actual oolor visibly separated from the core....an amazing thing to see and fascinating to experience, but it was like magic when you witnessed how it all comes together....each core sample was plotted, right? so as each color was recreated, there were two copies of the plots given to the labs. the dirty, orginal sample pulled from the core was attached as a sample to the plot chart, which gave a variety of hues, all within the same color scheme...varying due to smoke damage from fire or from patrons smoking in the theater.... then the recreated colors, made from scratch by chemical analysis and recomposed by the labs were applied to a chart in the same way...we found the base color was the right color and would be maintained by disney, albeit, without the lead content...here's where it gets most interesting and memorable though....

we now have analyzed and determined which of the samples was truest to ziegfield's vision for his follies house. we took paint samples in that color up the scaffold ourselves and painted a large square of color over each core sample marker so we could see which color would truly help light up the space. we remembered to take our flashlights back with us somehow....it was probably almost 6 months since we'd put up the scaffolding inside. the theater, very slowly, and still unknown to the passersby outside on 42nd street, was coming together and looking like it could possibly raise from the dead to offer new life to the theatrical masses...it still needed major surgery, not just a face lift but major reconstruction, but the walls and seats were swathed in streaks of color, paint samples, new fabric samples, pieces of wood brought in and fitted to missing molding and waiting to be blended into the walls...we had uncovered murals on the walls, they were being carefully documents and plotted to be recreated...but this one day we found buried treasure!

when the ziegfield theater became the new amsterdam after mr. ziegfield died, it was no longer a show palace and home of burlesque reviews, but instead it was the equivelent of today's broadway theaters. it had been wired for electricty, retro-fitted for the newest in stage lighting and revamped to remove excessive fixtures once required because gas lamps were not as strong as other lightening for the theater. at the same time, the stage area and the arch had been modified, which we were unable to see from the architectural renderings borrowed from the city files. as we stood on top of the now second nature scaffolding and step ladders, we took turns peering into three extra holes drilled for core samples, but yielding nothing but mystery, that is until now....remember, we had heard metal being ground into. it wasn't structural, we were certain, there was not a single support beam to the roof or on the roof that would correspond with our current position in the building. the first hold showed darkness, but deep darkness, close to two feet in depth. the second hole showed the same thing - but this is where we'd heard something odd...we could see nothing but darkness...the third hole showed the same....we were confused. maybe the metal was somehow attached to the arch and we'd scraped it drilling thru? was it attached to the boards that had covered the arch and the stage opening? someone got a piece of rebar that was up on the scaffold. we took this 6 foot long piece of steel meant for reinforcement and pushed it thru the first hole to see how deep this odd opening was. easily 1/3 of the rod was swallowed up the same with the second and the third. this was a uniform opening. peter got a small lead weight from his bag, along with some twine, he pushed it thru the opening and let it go. softly we heard an echoing thud from all three holes. the space behind the wall was hollow and it was deep in bepth as well as height. we had no idea how wide it was other than what we knew, we drilled every 4 inches so it was atleast 8 inches wide probably more than 12 inches wide since looking in with the lights, we'd not seen a wall or structural piece near the hole, the rebar couldn't be angled properly to find where the next solid side wall was on either side....we got the sawsall and ran a 100' extension cord up the scaffold and under the arch. the disney folks were not happy and the contractor was about to have a fit. we needed to see what this was before someone else found out the hard way and got injured...this is our job, we're in charge, it's what we do....the dirty work and the delegation...disney execs were busy climbing the scaffold so they could stop us. peter didn't listen, he was not about to take direction from the cartoon climbers. instead, he put the jigsaw type blade in the first hole and joined it to the second and then the third. then he gently allowed it to follow a fairly straight line down from the third to approximately where the weight had thudded in our non-scientific test. he repeated the same process at the first hole and the carefully and slowly worked across the bottom in a jaggedly straight line. the large chunk of rotting wood was starting to tip out of the hole he'd created and with blue sky shining thru the falling ceilings and all kinds of spotlights and flood lights aimed off the scaffolding down to the workers beneath as well as those of use above, we all gasped as ruth ellman screamed the single most blood curdling scream i've ever heard in this lifetime - behind the wall was a woman's head.

the saw stopped, the hole gaped open as a few guys lifted away the rotted wood and we all crushed in to the viewing area to see why ruth had almost gotten hysterical - we knew her well enough to know she was a tough cookie and not prone to hystrionics. i'll be damned. a head. covered in soot, in rot, in chips of paint and sawdust, but obviously a very beautiful woman when she'd been alive...a ziegfield girl, perhaps a ziegfield lover, immortalized forever in bronze and left to her own lonely devices these last hundred years, sealed into the walls of a theater that should never have spoken again, yet alone given up such sad secrets!

the disney executives, rushing to the sight of the scream, screaming and ranting themselves, were about to fire anyone they could (as if...good luck disney guys, you're powerful, but the theater was owned by lasalle for the privacy and secrecy of your project....no way were you pulling anything on us...you'd have been singing circle of life on the circle line if you hadn't backed off and shut up! contractors were called up to help remove the head from the ravine. as they tried to lift her out they realized she wasn't fully intact....she had been more than a head...and she was lying in a pool of some of her own parts....

this beautiful creature had been a fixture in the theater somewhere, but where...her various loose parts were a puzzle to be recreated on the floor with too many helping hands...then it dawned on us. she had been a gas lamp fixture. the beautiful face would have covered the gas pipe fittings and the loose pieces were branches each containing a gas fueled flame that would have been covered with a brightly colored hand blown glass globe....these were not found in the carnage....but where did she belong? this mystery would plague us for several more weeks....that is until the day the demolition of the reconstructed arch began....

the idea was to remove the overlaying rotted wood that been the movie screen. then we would visually and physically inspect the underlying original arch. professionals were to be called in to assess it's structural integrity and to find how much would need rebuilding/replacing/rethinking. three boards into the removal (remember, this is 2 1/2 stories above ground and boards were floor to ceiling as well as wall to wall - that's a lot of boards to pull out especially when you have to fear falling forward and thru to the floor on the opposite side, since we'd yet to explore that side or set up scaffolding . the only thing in place on the other side was the netting on the external rooftop to prevent the animals and other debris being added to the interior disaster area already in place.

three boards into this labor of love, we had our first clue to where the beautiful head went...there was an arched recess in the archway itself...in this recess however, we found a body....a bronze body....life size, a woman's body in a diaphanous gown. no arms or hands though. we found them later. as the boards continue to be jettisoned into a dumpster below the scaffold, more recesses were uncovered, it wasn't a fluke. the stage had been lit completely from above as well as below, with open flames. that explained why we had found so much fire damage in the paint cores along the top of the arch, so close to where the ceiling should have been. they must have used these lights for the theater before the performance began so the audience could read the playbill and people watch in the boxes....when the show was set to start, a gas line must have been turned off from some central area, dimming the entire theater and allowing the gas lines that lit the stage to be brought up. if you know how gas lines work, you can't run lights on one line in one part of a building at the same time as those on the same line in a different part of the building. if you do, the lights will drop drastically in one area as the gas is diverted to the second area and neither will have very good lighting as both are residually splitting the available gas which causes the lights to flare and drop, or worse, occasionally extinguish, and then create a fire as the gas pours out of the dead light then suddenly explodes above another lighted flame, catching anything light and flammable nearby to burn (an a-ha moment for me - it explained all the smoke and fire damages we'd encountered and couldn't put a solid reasoning to).

over the course of several weeks, we recovered the bodies of four such woman. each, decapitated and with arms and hands missing. often times, when we found another of the female heads, we would find branches for gas lamps but no glass work to accompany them. then one day, we found the mother load. the arch was nearly fully exposed and we were working near the bottom of the scaffolding. on either side of the arch, there were recessed areas for the gaslamps yet again, if i recall, we found 12 or 18 of them between stage left and stage right, each 2 feet deep, 2 feet tall and just under 2 feet wide. near the base of the arch was suddenly discovered another random treasure trove of body parts, it was a mass grave, a jumble of tumbled arms and severed hands. fingers missing, forarms cracked in half or smashed flat. they had been lovingly maintained for years of the theater being a jewel in new york's crown and one day, these lovely doyenne's of a by gone era had become obsolete and out of style...their art deco clothing and antiquated hair styles and poses, once mitigated by the follies themselves, had become relics of what had been and not at all the forward thinking ladies who were now asserting themselves and changing the rules of history in america.

in total we found 4 full statuesque bronze woman, and when we laid the parts out prior to sending them off to a foundry (a spa if you will, for the bronze woman in each of us!) we discovered that indeed, there would have never been more than 4 of these woman...the branches that held their glass globes of fire were each representative of a season in nature...so that was it, buried treasures from nature as envisioned by flo ziegfield. but what of the two extra heads found? well, i'll tell you...once the arch had been optimally uncovered and the theater beautifully and historically recreated to within an inch of most of our lives, these heads were the lightening fixtures that once had lined the upper balconies of the theater, surrounded by painted and carved, gold gilt and leaf, these heads had shown down on the wealthy people with all the radiance of the noon-time sun.

as for the 4 women, they were located in the main entry, as soon as you had handed your ticket in and crossed the foyer threshold into the main lobby area, you were walking into a semicircular carpeted cocktail bar that then descended gently into a plush theater and the best seats in the house. these for beauties had held dominion over those who entered and those who left, bidding each patron a good evening a glorious welcome to the most spectacular even to grace the stage. the bronze foundry was employed to recreate the missing fingers, correct the broken arms and smashed arms...since there were 4 nearly complete pieces it was much easier to recreate them since we had pieces to be copied from. the bronze ladies alone were nearly $5 million to excavate, repair, rewire with electric lighting and the capping glory - they were each fitted with custom made tiffany and company stained glass globes....we were never able to document if that was correct or not, but it certainly fit the grandeur and the feel of the theater. in the end, we had a second set of these ladies cast for the theater - bronze understudies if you will...they would have also lit the 3rd floor rooftop area where the patrons enjoyed the hanging gardens...unfortunately, disney and co spent several hundred million dollars to fix, refinish and repair the theater, that is prior to the expense of actually installing a show there and making it ready to run as a theater again, so they put recreating the rooftop garden theater on hold. that was 13 years ago. the rooftop is till off limits. the lion king is no longer the king of his once proud domain in the new amsterdam theater (i believe he's living over at the broadway now that beauty and the beast finally closed, phew!) one day, i hope they do finish the rooftop and open it to the public again, but for now, all i know, secret project "super-cali-frag-il-ist-ic-ex-pe-al-i-dotious may all ready be underway with them (can you tell from that clue that mary poppins is currently the disney tenant at said theater?).

i hope you enjoyed my most exciting and priceless memory from a job i loved. it's now taken two hours to type it up and i'm sorry that i can't share the pictures of it, but when i left my job, they were property of the firm....if you have the chance, go see a show at the theater, and witness first hand a piece of my personal history. yes the tickets are too expensive now, but the opportunity to walk on ground once tread by untold celebrities and to sit in the very seats of the infamous ziegfield, you will almost certainly hear strains of rehearsal piano if you sit with eyes closed and listen intently for a minute....and it's true, you might even have the exhilerating scare of seeing your own ghostly follies girl...they're in their, and not every beautiful girl is in bronze.