how to start over again after years of neglect....

not a puppy or a kitty....

not a lover or a friend....

not even an associate or a neighbor....

no, it's deeper....

more personal....

more involved....

more anonymous and random....

and more important and intentional....

it's words....

my words....

all my words....

somewhere over the course of time, i forgot the power of my own voice.....

i neglected to do the thing that made me happiest....

the thing that made me feel most complete....

i forgot to share....

my life.....

my trials.....

my tribulations....

my stories of triumph and success.....

my tales of tenderness and tears....

i got wound up in the outside edge of being.....

part of the real world.....

yet part of nothing other than more noise in the background of the planet....

and somehow, i survived it.....

yet i left no trace....

i had no impact....

i was just another blank faceless face in passing.....

in a city,

in a world,

in a planet,

filled with strangers who become friends,

friends who become lovers,

and lovers who become family

only to become enemies and exes.....

there is no past before this moment.....

and there is nothing but future.....

and the past that didn't happen was complete and of it's own time.

yet the future that hasn't yet been to pass is incomplete.....

and is has nothing but time, but it is the time of you....and me....and many others....

yet to meet.....

yet to live.....

yet to become intertwined....

and related.....

and responsible for nothing but our own happiness.....

now i rejoin you in the living of the human race....

already in progress.....

yet previously undocumented through my own personal filter.....

the lens of my life.....

and the exposures of my longing and love.....

prepare to be exposed.....

as the future is captured,

even momentarily.....

in a snapshot of my own viewing......

here goes everything.....

good grief! i can't believe you've been staring at your screen since january for this missive!

yep.

it's true.

the more things change, the more they stay the same.

only thing is, the more things stay the same, the more a man must affect change within himself!

in my case, every always changes....

hair: blond(ish).

body: fat(ter)

life: dull(and listless)

income: huh?

location: HELLS KITCHEN....after a period of hiding, then seeking and finally finding....

before that: the private library, now studio apartment (2000 square feet of studio) at the east side beaux art mansion

and before that: el barrio....

oddly, i lived in chelsea for years...the hotspot of hotspots...that is until the wives and kids started buying it up and taking all the renovated and fabulous spaces for their own expansion....that the exact opposite corner of manhattan from the east harlem apartment i vacated chelsea for over 2 years ago....now i know that's a diagnal of approximately 9 miles, but you have to figure straightlines to cross NYC and get to/from the area...it's far and long in the tooth....

now i've done it again...i'm on exactly the same block in Hells Kitchen as I was in Chelsea, just 24 blocks north of that locale....so now i'm about 7 miles back on the opposite side of the city.

I LOVE IT HERE!

that brings me to change: pocket (lint) and piggy bank(full), followed by life(finally).....

i'm starting a business.

check out and follow along on my website: Rub-a-dub-dub.com

that was: Rub-a-dub-dub.com

oh yeah....it's gourmet for the tub.....you'll see....

stay tuned....and don't forget to write!

xoxo
wadeo

happy New Year to all of you....

As I sit here visiting Mom & Jim, it is snowing outside like crazy, the entire hustle and rush of the life in the city is almost forgotten as we are enjoying the peaceful quiet that only a blanketing of fresh white snow can offer the world....

This is when I realize I have not been on here for months, and then I realized I didn't send out my holiday cards to anyone since I had great cards printed up from a photo I took in Greece last September, unfortunately, the printers mis-printed my card, and when I was done addressing all the envelopes and went to write, sign and mail the cards, I noticed that the personally written and professionally printed interiors were 1/2 my sentiment and 1/2 the sentiment of another family, a family not my own of course, which left me a few days before Christmas with a passel of envelopes addressed and ready to mail, and a card that wished that we would all awaken to a world at peace at the dawning of a New Year, magically signed by the Postner family (whoever and wherever they may be.....)

All that said, I wish you belated holiday greetings and all the best for 2009....even the Postner family, even though they did wreck my intended holiday mailing....

I'm sure that I'll take some pictures and have something to write sometime soon. I applied for and made the interview process for a low-income, federally subsidized, new apartment building constructed in the best part of NYC. I completed the application process right before Thanksgiving, as well as had my in person interview and am still waiting for the final result -- I should know any day if I'll be able to move into the gorgeous new building for a fixed income rent versus the market rate that 80% of the tenants are paying...if that doesn't work out, I should be fully moved into a new place by March 1st, most likely somewhere in Harlem again. In the interim, I'll keep floating and pissing money away to have a roof over my head.

Check back soon......

xo
w-o

this was sunrise after a n'or easter and the beach was astoundingly coated with shells and driftwod.....

this is the pool at Ned & Michael's - it's a tad bit quirky but pretty with the autumn sun and leaves.

this is the long winding walkway from the main boardwalk to Ned's house....

This is one of my dearest friends in the world, Ned....

Ned (short for Nenad,) is originally from Croatia, but I met him when he and his partner, Michael, were living in NYC where Michael was on the partner track with a consulting firm across the street from my job at Booz Allen & Hamilton and Ned was doing his PhD in Paralinguistics. They moved back to europe about 8 years ago alrady...and now that Michael is a partner and Ned is a house husband, they spend most of the year in London while Ned visits his elderly Mother in Croatia often. This past february, Ned beat me to the big 40 and as a grand way to celebrate, he and michael bought a house on Fire Island in the Pines....what a great gift idea if anyone has a million + dollars to get rid of !!!!I am one of the single most fortunate people I'll ever meet though because due to my friendship with first Ned and then Michael, they have always got a bed reserved for me in their house at 631 Fire Island Boulevard. Granted, they rent the house 1/2 of the season to pay all the expenses, but they're here for atleast 4 weeks or longer in the summer and so far, I've spent nearly 4 months of 2008 at their beach house, usually alone, and when i'm lucky, with Ned, just enjoying the wild life and the beach....I took Ned exploring, he'd never sat in the giant chair on the other side of the island from where they bought their house (the "poor people side" of the island....) Ned looks just like a little kid all the time, but the chair really was a great prop for the photo opp! Thanks to Ned, he found the 22 point buck I'd been trying to photograph the entire month of october while out there, but i seemed to only run into him after dark without my real camera and my telephone camera and video equipment just didn't capture him so he was visible. Great call on this one Nedella!

this is a nose to nose shot, same buck but i was nervous and it is blurry

have you ever been literally face to face with a 22 point buck?

yesterday i managed to turn 40 without any fanfare....

and yet somehow, it seemed like there should have been music, or atleast champagne and roses to mark my final passage from childhood and innocence to adulthood and the cold hard truth of what it means to be alone in the world.....


this picture...the single most perfect photo i've taken in a very long time, from last month on fire island, pretty much sums up the entire journey i feel i've completed by turning forty....everything is perfectly clear, life is totally in focus and yet, with all the ebb and flow of the violent waters of life pulling at my roots and tearing away my support systems, i'm very much like the storm fencing that washed ashore after a n'or easter and just managed to cling to the shoreline long enough for me to get this one gray and sad but totally beautiful shot......

this is david...he was so serious and deep...yet even with all the pain from the broken ribs, his sense of humor pervaded everything!!!

some people make you laugh and laugh and laugh...david is another of those people....witness barney in the photo below....between david, barney and chris, the majority of my photos came out too blurry to be salvaged...yes, i was laughing that hard for my entire holiday!!!

this is barney....he's from croatia and lives in london....he just laughed and laughed and laughed the entire holiday!!!

my attempt at green graffitti...you know, rock art that didn't hurt anything but still showed i'd been there....

can you see the sailboats...?

i thought it was clever of me...of course i'm biased...but when i looked out of the bedroom and saw the cascade of sheared off rocks coming out of the cliff side, i couldn't help but want to leave a mark that i'd been there....as have hundreds, maybe thousands of goats and probably tens if not twenties of monks and possibly sailors as well....no matter who was there, they couldn't help but be in awe of the simple yet overwhelming splendor of the sailboats entering and exiting the port....this is my tribute to the greeks, the romans, the phoenicians, the turks and the egyptians who all traded and trod upon this particular sea route since before recorded time....

even bright and early, as barney and david slept in, christopher and i, along with a pantheon of strangers were out and about.....

this absolutely idyllic scene is a little cafe about 30 or 40 minutes from the house by car...up and over the mountains....

first morning, eager to explore, i asked if chris wanted to go to town with me, never thinking it would be thriving....needless to say, this is where he navigated us to as i drove the little wind up car....how exciting....turns out this is near the secret steps leading to the heart of the town which was astounding when i finally had the chance to walk them and explore on my own....this day, i was on a hunt for a bakery....where the loaves whole wheat free formed loaves were just coming from the oven...too hot to hold without wrapping in brown paper first....too delicious and fragrant not to rip into it immediately - sans butter or preserves...and i'd carried the best lime marmalade ever found on the planet earth all the way from london just so i could eat more of it on vacation...that says a lot about the bread (and the fortnum & mason jams!)

breakfast in the sun on the front of the house, steps from the entrance of the chapel of the monestary....

christopher and i were up bright and early every morning in sifnos....sometimes it would be barely 6 a.m. greek time, but the sun would already be burning fiercely over the mountains behind us, even though it wouldn't cast a shadow for hours...

i really enjoyed the early mornings with christopher the most, since he would make a pot of fresh greek coffee (so finely ground that you couldn't help but either toss out the bottom of the cup or drink the grounds...tradition says you don't swallow the bottom of any coffee drink here....) as we sat and talked, or more likely laughed riotously (can't even tell you what we laughed about so much...) we were sure we were waking up barney (in the bedroom right behind us with the windows shuttered) or david, in the bedroom right behind barney...alas, they weren't bothered by our good time....

this is a series of photos to show you the scale and scope of height from the house to the swimming hole in the aegean sea below......

this is the path behind the chapel and the monastery leading away from the old donkey shed and dove coterie to the well house (corner barely visible just above on right corner of picture)...see how the house looks all flat and tiny??? it's not...it's actually high ceilinged and very airy inside...which shows that i've taken this from a distance...

i particularly love the series of pictures of this one black and white wild mountain goat...


as i managed to figure out the telephoto feature on christopher's new digital camera even as the wind blew up his fur....










what you can't see from this series is that even though he's perched (yes, i was able to verify on his departure that he's indeed a he....!) atleast 300 feet above the aegean on a huge boulder with nothing holding it up, there were like 50 more of his friends and family bleating him on....which may be what he's turning and looking for, but i chose to believe he's looking to see what moron (i.e. me,) was bleating from the house trying to get him to laugh and/or smile for the camera without running (or worse, falling into the sea!)

the view from the monestary over the aegean sea to the port of kamares where we got off the high speed ferry and walked the donkey trail.....

this was our first day out on board the "doris"....a new power boat named after a sea nymph of ancient mythology....or so we're told.....

the second table from the left is us, christopher in bright teale, david and barney in the straw fedora...i of course and making nice with the lobsters in the harbor....this is how you decide what's for lunch.....

if you go out for lobster and they ask which one you want....

if the lobster aren't sitting in the ocean with net, you aren't actually getting the freshest seafood of your life....that said, the lobster consumed on this day after taking the boat out of port in kamares and anchoring in couple of little harbors over, was succulent, larger than life and just the right accompaniment to greek salad with sifnos cheese, hummas, house wine and tziki...why don't i eat greek food every single night? this does make me wonder....and now, i've got a hunger that must be sated!!!

this is christopher with the sunsetting over the aegean behind him.....

we were on our way out to dinner and i just happened to think to snap it in passing....the little dome topped chapel is immediately behind Chris to the right (just at the top of the steps) with the house straight back from there to the edge of the earth....

my homage to the sea faring ways of the ancient greeks....little sailboats....

the cliffs around the house were sliding into the Aegean at such a clip that at one point as i was rock climbing and dangling a good 100 or so feet above the jagged waterline below, i felt the rock in my hand above me give way and pummel through me to crash and bounce over everthing in it's path to the sea...luckily, i had firm footing and was able to cling into the rockledge for shelter and dodge the majority of the impact...i did however eat silt, sand, goat-poo and god-only-knows what else as the dirt drifted into my nose, mouth, ears, bathing suit and anywhere else it might fit....oddly the rocks tumble and break into almost uniformly symetrical pieces that i found made lovely sailboats when balanced on themselves....to give you an idea of the size, again, the base of most of these rock boats was about a foot in length and 5 or 6 inches wide....i left a trail of boats from the top of an out cropping down to the edge of the aegean, in all, there were 9 flat surfaces that i put them on, cantilevered and cascading from several hundred feet above the water to just where the waves became petulant....i'm curious to see future pictures from this area so i can see just how stable the arts community is.....

barney, david, christopher and myself in the late afternoon heat....

this photo captures us almost to the top of the kastro....we've had a very rough day of it so far in this shot....without a single complaint from david (it's now 3 or 4 days since the boat incident caused by very high and choppy waves), i found that the on-going pains in his chest around the heart area have slowed him down considerably and find myself insisting that we take him to the doctor for some medical attention...only then do i discover that he's been concerned enough with the discomfort to have already scheduled an appointment for a week later once back in london....why is it men won't stop for directions and seldom can admit they're in pain??? the medical attention here was fantastic - that is once we climbed through the language barrier and got to the second floor of the clinic instead of waiting for another 2 hours with all the village children who were apparantly having their eyes tested....note to self, buy a greek phrase book so i can distinguish between eye exam and chest exam...

david got some lovely pain meds as well as two souvenir (not to be confused with souvlaki, also greek!) xrays of his chest....one broken rib and atleast 2 fractured on either side of it....turns out that doris, the sea nymph (and speed boat) is one with a vengeful take on foreigners on her high seas!

a "small" 3 masted schooner laid anchor on it's way into kamares...later we would get up close and learn it had more than 150 passengers on board....

just to give you a sense of scale between the arches and the distance down to the water and across to the boat...all very grand and very wide open...it's the kind of sight that makes a person fall in love....no matter if it's a boat or a goat....when you're standing right here and watching this day unfold, you know in your heart of hearts it's love like no other!!!

the back terrace, overlooking the swimming hole, far ,far, far below....

the shutters were to one of the front bedrooms....this back terrace opened out from the living room and the bedroom i was staying in on the back of the house....quiet except for the non-stop bleating of the goats as they trekked along the ridge of rocks making up the cliffs...every once in a while, you could hear a lone boulder dislodge and crash it's way from it's pediment to the sea below...the rock scape was something to behold...and every day it offered up subtle changes that only the most observant eye could discern....i tried unsuccessfully to document the shifting landscape through my camera lenses, but even with christopher's new 35 mm digital camera, i was unsuccessful....

a late night view from the house at the monastery looking back down over the harbor to kamares

sunset over the aegean reflecting off the white of the monastery

this is the sun coming up over the chapel at the monastery....bright and early....

some of my favorite folks from sifnos.....

left to right: kate mailor, lady jeanne campbell, peter & cusi hirsch, normal mailor....

this is the wedding photo from cusi and peter's wedding about a decade ago. they live in nyc. lady jeanne passed away last year after a long illness....normal mailor, if i'm not mistaken, also died in the last year or so....kate is just huge and makes the bride look slim....this was in a copy of "hello" magazine in lady jeanne's private apartment in sifnos...

we uncovered it while looking for the lease she had signed on behalf of the smallwood family when they took over possession of the monastery we were staying in...we didnt' find the lease but i'll be darned if i don't adore lady jeanne after the search!

this is the front door of her "villa"....i've never in my life walked into a space and felt so immediately and immensely charmed and overwhelmed with wanting it to be my home....i now understand first hand how a person can say they love their home....for someone who doesn't get attached to material possessions generally, this space, on this island, at this time in my life, really threw me for a loop!!!

you can't imagine the scope and size of this cliff and our swimming hole below.....

telling you that we had to hike down 75 steps carved into the cliff's facade (or was it 175?!) to get to a flat-ish rock over an incredibly deep tidal pool where we could dive in and still manage to get back up from the Aegean without stepping on the spiny sea urchins and maybe worse, the poisonous blood red sea anemones...yet somehow i did manage to de-goat-poop the steps upon arrival, over-heat while still dressed and strip to my undies and dive in all without even thinking about the fact that i didn't know how to get back out or what i might be stepping in as i did so....another braniac moment!

the harbor on sifnos....behind the fishing boat and across the inlet is the monastery we were staying in....

you may notice that there is a severe lack of roadway to it...just to the right of the photo frame is wear the chip & oiled roadway runs into a red clay/dirt pathway which in turn becomes a parking lot which has 2 unmarked but easy to find GOAT paths....this is how one treks from the big boat, the small town, the windup car and the glaring sun....at least 1/4 of a mile to the oil lamp lit monastery we called home....

rush hour on the greek island of sifnos...there must have been over 1,000 goats....i was driving....

this is a close up detail of a naked man supporting a corner of the structure's roof...he's probably 15 feet tall....or taller!

these are the lovely ladies of the parthenon....you can't imagine just how grand they are when you're having brunch across the city of athens and enjoying this as the view....then you climb the acropolis, step by step on the time trodden and weather worn marble paths, slick with perspiration from the thousands ahead of you today....all you want to do is take off your shirt and allow some of the still, hot air to wick away your sweat...but alas, the gods would frown on the gesture, so you keep your shirt on and keep to your sticky and stanky self as you climb....ever higher....

at the top of the acropolis....

the acropolis and the parthenon have long been one of my most favorite places on the entire planet...despite the on-going reconstruction and reinforcement of these age old structures, i couldn't help but be moved close to tears as i thought of the human struggle they have witnessed in 4,000+ years....

it's all greek to me.....

i'm pretty sure this was something witty ....but then again, with all the linguistic differences between ancient greek and modern greek, not to mention plain old american english, this may have well said "please deposit 2 euros for access to the ancient grecian temple area..."

oh my god, it's pouring buckets at 4am, my laundry isn't dry and i'm flying to l ondon in a matter of hours....

that said, YEAH!!!!

by saturday night, i'll be destressed and undressed, not to mention tanned and loving life more than ever as i'll have finally arrived in greece....by sunday lunchtime i'll be on sifnos for an entire week of donkeys carrying luggage and people hiking the cliffs to get to the market, not to mention 170 steps carved into the cliff the house is perched on to get down to the rocks and beach area for the boat below us.....

then back to london and home to new york city, life, LOVE!!!, and of course photoshop, blogging and the new horrid reality of finding a new space to live in as well as figuring out how exactly to orchestrate it all as quickly as possible without getting myself into a bad situation of living where i will not be happy as i've had happen once before....

ok, enough idle chatter. time to run to the 24 hour tanning place for 10 minutes before i shower, shave, go to jfk and fly away for some fun, sun and a bit of home cooking (i'm cooking...)

wait until you hear what happened to me and WHO i've met in the last few days....you're going to be so delighted to find out that something wonderful and incredibly beautiful is happening in my life in the most unexpected way and without even having to think about it....but that's enough of that....i don't want to say any more for fear of being giddy and coming off like a 14 year old girl....again!

talk to you all soon!

love you.
xoxo
wadeo

first it was a spinal tap (again), then it was a ton of i.v. as an inpatient.....

and finally it was intervention radiology with a surgical i.v. picc line inserted so i could come home and eat and sleep like a human while wearing a constant flow of drugs via a pump on my belt....3 days after i got home i finally heard from the visiting nurse folks - they forgot to tell me my picc line needed flushing with saline via syrringe every day as well as a syringe of blood thinner to avoid getting a clot going to the heart....



then after a week they still hadn't come to see if i was dead or alive, yet alone to hook me to pump or i.v. stuff....they left me swinging....

some brilliant woman, an r.n. no less, actually had the nerve to tell me i should be grateful that her people even bothered "with people like you"....i.e. those on medicaid and medicare......too bad for her that i asked her about flushing the line in front of my friend who came to pick me up and he quite clearly heard her tell me that wasn't her job and i'd learn that when they showed up at my home in a few days....what a bitch! i told her at the same time i don't have medicaid but i'd already spoken with someone and had fast tracked my own out patient issue with medicare - did she want the name and number of the person with whom i'd spoken? nope...i was walking out and looked really healthy so i was obviously not homebound...so she invalidated my medicare coverage for any and all prescriptions affiliated with a required hospital stay.

fact....a bitch with an rn degree is a dangerous person when she has a little power to wield.

super fact....a fag with 47 centimeters of picc line stitched with 6 stitches to his right tricep just a bit too tightly by the surgeon is far more dangerous with his pen and his words, especially with his witness and his doctor....i think miss hoi-paloi forgot i was the client....and her job is to work for me....so after a week as an inpatient and 11 days with a painful and insufferable picc line paid for by medicare but never used except by me to inject saline and blood thinner at an expense of nearly $4,000 was never used due to a dillweed of a bitchbag....that's of course after the $2,000 a night for the hospital visit for a week....all because the sum total of $990 for antibiotic and set up tubes and the pump rental weren't to be covered due to her opinion of someone able to walk out and anxious not to be wasting the tax payer dollar......

fact in point....the letter i'll be sending, and the doctor is sending and the witness are sending will have said dillweed wishing she were eligible for unemployment when the karma and the system catch up to her....turns out you can report gross negligence to the AMA and the NY Medical Board...and she'll very possibly not ever bother anyone but family again....that said, i almost feel bad....wait, no i feel great....the stitches are out and now so are my bitches.

i've got to go and pack my bag....i'm heading to london in a matter of days and then on to the greek isles....come back for all the pics and bon mots of the shenanigans and other fun after the 18th of june!

xo
w

some quick but meaningful images from my week at the beach on fire island.....it rained every day until right before i left, then it was 80 and sunny.

my ocean which is a world away from anyone else's atlantic ocean...yet mere steps from anywhere i was the entire week....love it!

cherry trees were in full bloom from harbor to ocean...i didn't know cherry trees were indiginous to dry and sandy regions...hot!







and of course, our renewable resource, bamboo, which is everywhere since there's a severe panda bear and/or koala bear deficit on the barrier island...nothing to naturally eat it back but the dear...which i didn't really see this trip so pics will have to wait.....

i'm off to hide in the sand dunes for a bit.....

my very dear and much missed friends, ned and his partner, michael, now living in london, bought at house in the fire island pines to celebrate ned's 40th birthday this year. since they don't live here anymore and it's a million dollar plus property and mortgage payment, they've rented out a "b" schedule for when they're not using it. that's 10 weeks of the 20 week year on fire island. that said, they have it rented starting on 7th may and until then there are things that need to be done and i've volunteered myself for the task as it will earn me brownie points and a guaranteed bedroom anytime the house is not rented or when ned and michael are here. how exciting.

so, now in the midst of the gloomy rain and gray of the city, i'm off on the stomache turning and nerve racking train trip to sayville where i'll catch the ferry ride that i fell in love with two summers ago...as much as taking that train out of manhattan terrifies me, being all by myself, hidden deep in a nest of trees behind the dunes and far from anything but the feral deer populace, i'm going to read, write and maybe even make some phone calls....that is if it's too cold and windy with rain to take a proper walk along the ocean to comb for shells and money in the surf....

consider me on holiday....and i'll be back with photos before 7 may, so stay tuned.....

wadeo

there are years that ask questions, and years that answer.....-Zora Neale Hurston

i love when the little things finally start coming together to present a bigger picture....

as a huge fan of, and more often than not, a victim of, irony, sometimes when i find a common thread i can't help pulling it.....

quite frequently that means my rubbish is filled with strings and bits of thread from varying sources....sometimes, i wind up with good yarns, that i work on knitting into stories for you on my blog....and then there are days, like today, when i need some guidance from those wiser and more time tested than myself...that's right, there are days when i turn to william shakespeare's greatest book -- THE BIBLE.

here are the threads i pulled today as i was seeking...for what i can't really say...but what i found...i think maybe this could be considered proof that willy did indeed write the big book (no, not the yellow pages....)

the general overall takeaway learning was that the BIBLE is filled with people that are low-brow and a bit of a scourge on society...this was so intriguing that i actually forgot what i was seeking guidance about....here are some great examples (the characters are right out of shakespeare...come on, and the plot? how can you doubt me here....)

• noah was a drunk
• abraham was too old to be productive (anyone would be after the first 2 or 300 years)
• isaac was a daydreamer
• jacob was a liar
• joseph was a victim of abuse
• moses stuttered
• gideon was a chicken
• samson was a womanizer
• rahab was a hooker
• jeremiah was a bullfrog
• jeremiah (see above) was too young, so technically, was a tadpole
• david was an adulterer
• elisha was suicidal
• isiah was a proselytized in the nude
• jonah ran away from God
• naomi outlived her husband (wait, isn't that a blessing to many?)
• job went bankrupt in more ways than one
• john, the babtist, ate bugs
• peter denied christ (today he'd get coal in his stocking!)
• martha worried about everything
• all the disciples were bored to the point of falling asleep during prayer
• the samaritan woman couldn't hold a relationship together, despite many marriages
• zacchaeus was too tiny, which today would be considered disability, not a character flaw
• paul was a religious zealot, which today would make him a jehovah's witness
  
• timothy was too young (again with the discrimination) and he had ulcers (from being discriminated against by the big Guy, no doubt...)
• and my personal favorite: lazarus was dead

sure i forgot what i needed advice and guidance with, but i came away realizing that the BIG BOOK is still a great dramatic read if you're not afraid of a little discrimination and finding out how much you have in common with many of it's main participants.

wit and wisdom for today: everything works out in the end....if it hasn't worked out, it's not the end.....

ok, it turns out that this week is not just about searching for answers and inner peace.....

instead, i've found religion in a flower, salvation in the pattern of blocks used to lay sidewalk in the park, rest in running around with the masses, and on this late friday afternoon in mid-april, i've also found myself radiating some sort of peace and light because for all my faults and wicked wiles, today i saw the face of god....and then i saw that wrinkled little old man who heads up the christian faith for the planet which some consider divinity (to me, divinity is fudge, and i think i'm divine, so he's on his own for this adjective!)...that said...here are the actual photos of his holiness en route to his passover sader, which only stands to reason...after all, so far the pope has apologized to the sexually abused masses for making them millionaires many times over as well as for getting caught...and i respect him for addressing that...and i pity him, as we all know he's sexually abused since he's not allowed to ever lay with the man he loves yet alone marry a woman...and we all know that chastity and lack of interaction with another human being, whether man, woman or inflated is the worst kind of mental, physical and emotional cruelty that anyone should ever endure....so he knows the sins of which he speaks...what is the saying, hate the sin, but line up for the metal detector if you think you're going to throw stones at the sinner....." something like that....




this is crowd control as i sit and wait for some sort of revelation...i.e. when they're going to let me cross the street and start walking towards home again....it's been over an hour stuck in the crosswalk...thank goodness no crying babies, dogs or people on motorized chairs are around me in this throng...oh and thank goodness the woman in front of me is shorter and appears to have bathed and washed her hair today!





as they say, patience is a virtue....and i've always been a man of easy virtues!!!

thus the wait...the people...the bottle of diet pepsi with lime in my man-purse....all worth while when the security started zooming at us....damn, couldn't they slow down so we could see him waving maybe instead of flying.....


and now, after all that waiting, and trying to stand without sitting on the filthy sidewalk and getting arrested for doing what the police have told us not to do....and drinking all that diet pepsi with lime (don't you love that drink....) i have got to take the most wild pee in this lifetime...to make it worse, it's almost 80 degrees out here, i'm dressed in denim and wool to avoid getting sick, and i'm nearly 30 blocks from home and from the subway (but i am still not allowed to walk across the street so i can't go home anyway...




oh yeah, and then of course, i forgot that i was having a pee myself moment because his m&m's the pope is right there....nice car...i was thinking i'd be getting popemobile...only reference point for that was the south park episode with kathy-me gifford...will have to look it up online...thought it would be white for some reason....


and finally, home and drained of physical exhaustion, urine and religious longing, i find that i have inner peace...and here's a picture of me as i realized it's not inner peace that makes a body and mind comfortable in life....it's inner springs on a pillow top mattress...and this is divine....see how much happier i look...and i thought i needed to have tithes and offerings or the church approved souvenir pope-pop in one of five fruit flavors...nope...i had peace at home all along...i just needed to close my eyes and look underneath my mortal self....

is it sacrilage if i ask it outloud and it's kind of funny....?

so, in the movie "the adventures of priscilla, queen of the desert", there is a grotesquely humorous moment involving ABBA poop....if that is as good as a relic to a drag queen....

is the pope's poop considered holy shit?

what is the proper etiquette for being in the presence of a particularly cloying and clinging papal constitutional?

does one need genuflect while uttering a silent our father and trying to not exclaim in shock and awe a loud and inappropriate "HOLY SHIT!"....

see it's not life that's bad....it's just a lot of organized religion that stinks....

the pope has come to nyc and fans everywhere are seeing his aura....

somehow i think this is wrong and in very poor taste --i'm not sure if it's my innate inner spirituality and overall religious predilection....or if it's just common sense and enjoyment of a bargain.....(like anyone is going to pay full price after this week...um hello, once he's gone from nyc, isn't when all the stuff goes on discount? granted the church does want to bulk up sales while it has a draw for the gift shop, body bread and jesus juice are only really picked up en masse during high holy days versus regular shabat consumption for such things as manashevits and mazza for the jewish....you'll notice their both available at your local market, try asking for jesus juice at your local liquer purveyor, or better, ask the baker for body bread....see if you don't find yourself seeking new places to pick up holiday supplies....that said, i know i'm looking forward to next week when once again i'll be stocking up on pope on a rope soaps....but not before they're divinely discounted....)

duke ellington!!! i knew there was another famous black man in nyc who wore suits, played piano and lived near me in harlem ....

well, back when harlem was the trendy hotspot for blacks because the wealthy whites moved to westchester and the the city dwelling jews didn't move fast enough to overtake the entire northern end of manhattan island....thus causing the very high percentage of the population in the judaic arena to become isolated and later, even segregated, amongst the up and coming free blacks of nyc.

the newly visible black population of nyc enjoyed the wealth of beautifully built townhouses (built for the white collar whites from wall street and midtown), suddenly vacated, and on fire sale, by developers who'd overextended while developing the area, and the upscale white owners (originally intended inhabitants) -- who found they didn't like the element of society that was also attracted to the new and glamorous area -- thus leaving the jewish working and service class behind, as the every "evolving" aryans moved north, east and west of the island to the "country".

thus, circuituiously enough, an area that was originally a large single family's land grant from the king of england, and mostly orchards and fields, sparsely cut through with wagon ruts and foot paths, was denegrated into the hottest, hippest, most exlusive and luxurious, pre-planned, urban construction in the the brief history of america....suddenly, fields, trees, flowers, chickens and cows were replaced with the elevated high-line train (now underground, except along park avenue right near my apartment which still has 125th street train station stops on all trains into grand central station from points north of city), streets, pockets of public parks secluded like gems in a sunken treasure chest just waiting to be discovered, avenue after avenue of stately houses with the best quality work, inside and out, each telling a story of who built it, who would buy it (well, so they thought), and what the area was meant to be....well, everybody makes a mistake at one point or another right? so the generation of engineers and urban planners miscalculated the high-class white man's desire to live on top of his neighbor and seek out hidden treasure after working AS THE MAN all day....so what if they jews saw an opportunity and jumped but couldn't jump quite quickly enough to satisfy their desire to be the "other white meat", i think it's pretty damn cool that the blacks ironically induced terror in the hearts of those who remained here for esthetic or financial reasons, thus establishing black as the new white....

so it is, sort of, even today, except that hispanic, particularly mexican and mostly puerto rican, are the new black which was the new white which leaves white as an utterly un-distinguishable shade of palsy gray nowadays....but once again, i've digressed, the point of this was to let you know that the larger than life black man in bronze a top the columns near the grand piano at central park north and fifth avenue is none-other than mr. duke ellington. and that's a man who does indeed deserve to immortalized in bronze for nothing other than his music and his human spirit...the fact that his black was actually high-yellow is an entirely different blog (and i'll probably not revisit this topic again since almost all blacks of slave ancestry in the u.s.a. are technically high yellow, and that in turn will set me off on how annoying it is for anyone to need be identified as african-american -- um, hello, you were born here, you were never a slave, hell, you've never had a job in the time i've known you, you're lucky to be a freakin' american....so technically, if someone needs an adjective to identify an ethnicity in america, i'd be irish-american --atleast i've been to visit the country --but more likely identafiable as pasty-american, where as all those annoying folks using african-american, sorry, haven't seen the place person, you'd best choose to be maybe black, or just high-yellow if you must, but i think african american should be reserved, with much respect intended, for the very hard working class of truly beautiful dark skinned people emigrating to nyc and elsewhere from third-world conditions of africa for betterment of their lives and those of their kids....these folks are african-american and every day they do the jobs no one else can bother or likes to do, without complaint or high wages...we're lucky that they don't ask to be called mexicans or canadians after all the bullshit that comes along with the mis-nomenclature given by the overall use of african-american as adjective."

when you first start submerging into the north end of central park...you turn and look back for the city and this is what warms your soul .....

it's of course merely an amuse bouche before the park serves up a veritable 5 course gourmet feast for all the senses, but right now, mostly the eyes, and happily, very little assault on the nose at the moment as the heats low and the meer hasn't begun to emit a rank or fishy odor as of yet....nice!

follow the belgian block road.....

you'll never get to kansas, but you will find wizards, witches, liars, bears and probably many a rusty old woodsmen somewhere in the bushes!!!

as i look across the meer, deeper into central park.....

i'm struck by the ravishing beauty that is my oh so natural yet totally man-tained and created woodland....merely several blocks from my current home....i love this picture....

this is the fantastic bronze statue of a man and his baby grand at the top of fifth avenue on central park....

of course i want it to be gershwin, but it's not, and for the life of me, i'm blanking out on famous black american pianists from the 1920's and 1930's (no, it's not jelly roll morton...yes, it's the other one, but who the hell is he....damn....)

notice how i accidentally caught the airplane perfectly centered overhead of the man? just saw it when i downloaded the picture, what a trip!