i had a true friend, his name was o'dell, he was from the deepest south, where whites and blacks still find it hard to exist together, yet alone be friends....i met him when i was a sophomore in college - 20 years ago?! he was the date of a girlfriend at bridgewater college to either our homecoming or winter formal dance....he and i clicked....he had always wanted to be a teacher and he had always wanted to come to new york city.....
o'dell became a teacher and worked for nearly 18 years in new york city. new york city became his great love. he romanced new york while he taught her children, and helped to raise another generation of kids to live and love without remorse....for almost 18 years, the little children in his 2nd, 3rd and then 5th grade classes loved mr. o'dell as they called him....he was a gentle giant to them...a very darkly complected man who might have scared them if he was walking along the sidewalk and they didn't know that he had the heart of a butterfly and the gentle nature of any bird newly hatched and aloft in a nest, featherless and flightless, only protected by the lofty height and the anticipated promise of nourishment from whatever the powers that be might bring him....
o'dell was shy, much like myself, more so in many ways actually. where i am one who has always forced myself to try to blend, to attend and even to exceed others just to prove to myself that i am almost as good as them in any way and therfore worthy of love and respect, o'dell always new he was worthy of more than love and respect and would accept nothing but his worth or better from anyone. for quiet and gentle, he was a fierce fighter for himself and his friends and his children.....
the biggest thing o'dell has ever taught anyone, including myself, and i wasn't technically ever a student of his, is that black and white aren't as defined as they would appear and they don't always combine to create gray like they do on a palet of paint...instead, he brought his childhood and the deep south, a dark, hot, dry and angry place filled with fear and nightly fires to the northern city schools of new york. by listening to his life unfold in every lesson, thousands of children learned that they were no more right by hurting each other than the men and women who had hurt the great great grandparents who slaved in the fields 200 years ago....he displaced the notion that white men are the great oppressors of all men....he discouraged the concept that black men have a right to be angry for injustices that history holds but no one owns outright....he made peace and foregiveness central to growing up and being alive....ask any of his "kids" what they loved or remember most about o'dell and they will tell you that he was their father for a year, he made sure they had lunch every day, he made sure that the man they called "father" wasn't hurting them anymore at home or that the woman they tried to hide behind didn't fall to the floor in tears after trying to put herself between the child and the anger they lived with....he coached them in what it means to love someone...he told them if they never got flowers on their birthday or a valentine in february or if they never heard the words "i love you" from another human being, that love was unescapable and that they would have him to turn to until their last breath if that was the only place they felt secure of self and loved in life....
o'dell didn't ever overstep the boundaries that teachers have been crossing for eternity....he never once raised his voice in class except in excitement....he didn't ever put his hand to a child in retaliation for any wrong doing....he never sent a child to the office for making rude comments in class or for doing the wrong thing, he instead made that child stand in front of the class and apologize to all the kids for wasting the time they should have been using to learn....he made them understand that learning sets a soul free and only a free soul can take a person to absolute freedom....
without ever asking for love, o'dell was loved by every student, every teacher and almost every parent he ever met and left an impact on....the few parents that didn't love him probably wish that they'd been able to participate in his plan for apologizing instead of the city and state's plan, because they were the abusive and the deranged few who hurt or molested their children and didn't show remorse, or worse, respect for someone who put his own life at risk daily by approaching them directly to confront and change the situation....o'dell had stepped into harms way on more than one occasion that i'm aware of personally...but o'dell's sense of right and wrong and his absolute conviction of good over evil never allowed him to falter when he was out to save a child. he didn't get paid for this, this was just something that needed to be done and he knew if he didn't do it, no one ever would, and he also knew the cycle of abuse would repeat in the next generation, and again after that.....
one of the things i can remember o'dell telling me as recently as last september or october was that one his greatest personal accomplishments in life was that in all his years teaching in new york city, not a single one of his students had ever been picked up and sent to jail for any reason....i don't think that many, if any, public school teachers are able to say that in this city, especially in the neighborhood where o'dell taught...one time i think he told me that only about 7 of the kids in his class in any year would probably graduate from high school, but that entire number would also graduate from college. he never looked at it like the other 23 students were lost by not graduating, instead he considered that they were somehow saved and inspired by having learned survival doesn't mean stealing and caring doesn't mean not-beating you today....
i found out on saturday, from an acquaintance who had been one of o'dell's students his first year teaching in new york city, that he had heard o'dell died right before christmas....i saw o'dell right after thanksgiving when i was so heartsick and alone that i needed someone's shoulder to cry on....he invited me over as he had a million times before and we sat over cups of really bad coffee (he learned to make coffee in the teacher lounge of a city school - he seemed to think that's what coffee should taste like), while i spilled my lonely and empty heart to him....he was silent but paying attention, and listened to me through jags of tears and flair ups of anger that came from a deep hurt that he knew so well himself...he hugged me and told me that if someone couldn't love me for me and that they only wanted a part of me or two parts of me that were "perfect" and the rest was just something that needed drastic change or replacement altogether, then in fact, they should have ordered a pizza because that is the only time you can get what you want and only use the parts of it you like and discard the rest...the fact is, you can't love a pizza....but a person is not a pizza, and all the parts are worth loving....i thought it was funny when he compared someone not loving me for some reason or another to me being or not being a pizza....it made me laugh...which lightened my heart which i had thought was almost empty by then.....
when i left o'dell that night, i stopped and had pizza....the fact was, i didn't want pizza, so i ordered the two slices i thought i might make myself eat, but in the end, there was no part of that pizza i wanted and i threw it away before i got to my apartment....and that was when i realized how simple and true o'dell's words were....i am far too delicious and good for someone not to want all of me, yet alone for anyone to even try to throw part of me away....and i wasn't hungry anymore, somehow my soul was fed for the night and i was sated....and smiling....and i got home and didn't cry when i went to bed right away....
that was the last time i saw o'dell. i sent him a holiday card, one of the handful that i'd made. i left him a voicemail on his mobile phone over the holidays thinking he'd gone back to see his family down south as he loved to do for every holiday...i didn't hear back from him and put him on my list of folks to call in the new year....the last time i saw o'dell, i was begging for his help and he didn't ask for a single thing in return....he hugged me goodbye....i think my hugging him back was halfhearted and exhausted at best...i never got to tell him how much he meant to me and how much i loved him for being my friend....i never got around to asking him how school was or how his life was going and had he been dating anyone new....i was so selfish and he was so much himself that for that night it was ok....
yesterday, i called his school and told them i was a friend who'd known him forever and hadn't been able to reach him, but could they give him a message for me....and they told me that they were sorry, but he had passed away....the lady on the phone didn't have all the details to share with me, but she told me he didn't show up for work the entire week before the christmas holiday and he didn't call in sick --- o'dell missed only 1 week of school his entire career because he had a death in the family and had to be out of town --- the school finally sent someone to his apartment and with the help of the police, they finally got in and found him dead....o'dell died of an overdose - someone left him alone in his apartment, dead or dying, and didn't even have the courage to call 911....o'dell would have had that person stand infront of his entire classroom and explain why that would be wrong to do and how things might have been different if they had only made an anonymous call for help before leaving....o'dell's death might not have been completely in vain because atleast then his students would have seen the value of a human life taken from them and perhaps more, they would have had the idea reinforced that hurting others and themselves with drugs or weapons is wrong....after all, o'dell was a grown man and made grown up choices that he dealt with....but his choices were never to be repeated by his kids....if he told you to do something, it didn't matter if he did it or not, he told you to do it right and ignore all other influences....do as i say, not as i do....o'dell you taught me so many things, about myself, about friends, about life and suddenly about yourself and about death...i wish you were here.....i don't know where you are given my discontent with man, with cities and with god right now, but wherever you are, i know there are children being guided along to a better place and there is definitely a brighter light in the heavens because i assume you must be up there...i know the streets of my city are darker without you here and my heart has dimmed with the loss and the inability to help you not get hurt....
goodbye o'dell - i love you and hope i will see you again whenever my time here is over, but don't sit around waiting for me because i'm not rushing to meet you, this is one time i'm going to have to make you wait, and i have no idea just how long i'll be, but i'm sure that you'll understand if i run late in finding you - but this time my friend, you will just have to wait.....
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
today is day 23 without a cigarette...2 weeks without a phone call....
some things in life will never be able to be understood...atleast by me....
if you meet someone, love them, like them or loathe them, why would you ever waste your time in misleading them? if you love them, tell them and let it be, or try to be, whatever it may be or may become....if you like them, talk to them and support them in whatever way they may need or however you are able without short changing yourself or deluding yourself into thinking that you will be getting something greater in return by giving so much of yourself away - you are selfish and cheating yourself if that is how you "like" someone else....if you loathe them, don't bait them or give them any false sense of hope for a love or a friendship that you neither want nor will put out for them....that is downright hurtful and wrong on so many levels that no one will ever even understand how much damage it can do to the other party...that is until that other party is yourself.....
i am saddened for having liked many people and found out that friends are not the same as acquaintances....i have thousands of acquaintances but not a single one of them will ever be there when i need a friend, i know because i've got almost no friends to speak or, yet alone write of, anymore and i've needed a friend for a long time now....
there have been a few people that i have loved in the last few years....it has only been selfish in the way that i would hope by loving and giving of myself without asking or expecting anything in return, i may have been given respect and perhaps even real love....what i have been given is a handful of empty words, a string of broken promises and a welcome mat covered in bullshit from people that have walked right over me on their way to who or what they truly wanted....it has not been me, i have merely been convenient and perhaps a beacon in a dark night for a few lonely souls that wanted to keep on sailing past....most recently, that has happened and love turned to loss and loss turned to longing and longing turned to lipservice and lipservice is going to turn to loathing....and loathing almost always turns in on itself and brings me down to fear....i am afraid that i will not love again....
if you meet someone, love them, like them or loathe them, why would you ever waste your time in misleading them? if you love them, tell them and let it be, or try to be, whatever it may be or may become....if you like them, talk to them and support them in whatever way they may need or however you are able without short changing yourself or deluding yourself into thinking that you will be getting something greater in return by giving so much of yourself away - you are selfish and cheating yourself if that is how you "like" someone else....if you loathe them, don't bait them or give them any false sense of hope for a love or a friendship that you neither want nor will put out for them....that is downright hurtful and wrong on so many levels that no one will ever even understand how much damage it can do to the other party...that is until that other party is yourself.....
i am saddened for having liked many people and found out that friends are not the same as acquaintances....i have thousands of acquaintances but not a single one of them will ever be there when i need a friend, i know because i've got almost no friends to speak or, yet alone write of, anymore and i've needed a friend for a long time now....
there have been a few people that i have loved in the last few years....it has only been selfish in the way that i would hope by loving and giving of myself without asking or expecting anything in return, i may have been given respect and perhaps even real love....what i have been given is a handful of empty words, a string of broken promises and a welcome mat covered in bullshit from people that have walked right over me on their way to who or what they truly wanted....it has not been me, i have merely been convenient and perhaps a beacon in a dark night for a few lonely souls that wanted to keep on sailing past....most recently, that has happened and love turned to loss and loss turned to longing and longing turned to lipservice and lipservice is going to turn to loathing....and loathing almost always turns in on itself and brings me down to fear....i am afraid that i will not love again....
Friday, January 18, 2008
can you beleive i haven't had a cig in 18 days and counting?
sometimes when the clock strikes midnight, and the entire world shifts into a new time zone, even as i cling to life as i know it, all the hardest to avoid vices are so easy to walk away from....i can quit smoking...i can quit wanting....i can quit joking...but somehow, i can't quit needing a hug and friend or two to share my life with on a daily basis....why is it so hard to meet people as a grown up and not scare the hell out of them with the intensity and honesty of who i am and where i am in life?
Sunday, January 13, 2008
i was so busy calling everyone i know to share my great news that i forgot to put it on the blog for all of you read.....
picture it if you can, october 2002, a phone call from the hospital to tell me that really serious tests i'd had six months earlier had been mis-transcribed while they filled in my g.i. chart history....
32 polyps removed during an unexpected stay in the hospital( for non-relevant reasons) had been biopsied. i was informed that while it was a high number and i was a particularly young age for such a polyp colony, it is also common for younger men and women to not have any reason to have their intestines, colon and so forth delved into yet alone searched by floodlamp and hidden camera) while a team of prissy nursing students and over confident first year residents sit watching from above on a wide screen tv in the surgical ampitheater....all said and done, the results had come back as all 32 polyps being benign and needing no further follow up other than a full g. i. series every 12 months due to my crohn's disease....
fast forward...suddenly, a beautiful and temperate october afternoon, i got a call from my friend and doctor, armando caccierelli who was the head of the g.i. area where i went for crohns treatment...he told me it was urgent that i get in to his office that day if possible as he needed to sit down with me and discuss the seriousness of something that had happened somewhere along the line between surgical theater and lab transcription folks and that idyllic indian summer day i was so far living up in my own meager and somewhat mild way....
when i got to his office several hours later, i could have been knocked over with a feather boa....he explained the error and subsequent consequences of the error in my polyp count and biopsy transcription...where i was told 32 were benign and end of story, in fact, 3 were MALIGNANT and due to the lapse of time and the area of my colon (about 14 - 17 inches in from the end of the road, so to speak), this loss of time for treatment was more than dangerous, it was potentially deadly....i was told that i would be having surgery 3 days from that exact day, armando had one of his friends from mt. sinai offer his assistance as the lead if armando would be his second in charge for the potentially radical and physically invasive procedure....
i was numb. i was not scared. i have cancer....i have colon cancer....i am 34 years old on this day and suddenly i'm told i may not live until next month for my 35th birthday because of cancer and human error....i did not cry....i did not scream....i did not have time to register what exactly this would mean and i did not have time to die....i did not have time to find mom and jim in wyoming and i needed them to be here. i did not have time to have a will drafted and filed....i did not think i would soon be so sick that fear would be secondary to wanting to be dead....i did not know that within months, i'd be so thin that people would want to help me with my addictions which were actually chemo and radiation....i did not know that chemo can send you flying on a delirious and acid like trip....i did not know that radiation is normally aimed only at the area where you are being treated...i did not know that my 3 MALIGNANT growths had had enough time to grow from individual areas ranging from 3 - 5 mm each into one intersected growth of over 17 mm....i did not know that when i told them to just perform the colostomy procedure while i was in that my friend, the doctor would hug me....and tell me that the difference between being brave and being alive is being healthy enough to make an informed decision when there is so much life to live still and so little happiness with knee jerk bravado....
the story goes on, but i will not bore you...it is pretty similar to most cancer patients, but one thing you should know is that colon cancer is predominantly a retirement age disease, with most cases occurring after the age of 62....younger patients, in the 40 and under range, have only a 17% survival rate because they so seldom have a reason to have any type of invasive testing done that area until they either experience such severe pain or horrible symptoms that they are rushed to the e.r. and generally don't last for many weeks after that trip to the hospital since the disease will have probably run it's course and crossed into the organs and other horrible things....
fast forward 5 years....i lost my home. i lost my possessions...i lost my friends...i lost my sanity...i lost my pride...i lost my youth...i lost my dreams...i lost my hope....i lost my will to live....i lost my mind (literally in 3 small areas, perhaps chemo related...) i lost my hair but i'm happy to announce it's come back to visit...i mean it's now on my back but i can visit it by turning and looking in a mirror on occasion....
i did not lose my family...i did not lose my smile...i did not lose my ability to step beyond my own problems to help someone else with theirs - they call that escapism....i did not hurt anyone....i did not make any promises i couldn't keep. i did not forget i was sick for a minute. i did not live. i did not ignore death, but found that i had embraced it long ago....in fact, i recalled every day for the last five years that when we are born we come into life screaming while the world around us is joyous with music and dancing but when we die, the world beats its breast at the great injustice suffered by dying so young, yet dying brings us full circle into our own moment of joyous music and peace....i did not lose my sense of humor....god makes me laugh - she's a funny guy!
friday night, my doctor called while he was driving home for the weekend. i have had ongoing extensive, invasive and not so comfortable tests done nearly every week since november 1, 2007...i had been unable to find a single result from any source which leading up to my december 24th anniversary for having finished chemo and radiation was making me a bit paranoid....december 24th came and went with no test results....
december 24th should have been a major milestone...it was 5 years....i was sick the entire month of december and thought it was cancer related...december 25th i sat alone in my apartment for christmas and i cried because i felt that i'd been beaten and would finally have to admit i've lost this battle with an enemy that is part of my own body....new years came and went. i slept through it and barely left my apartment, i had nowhere to go and no one to see and no will to seek any opportunities out....the grim reaper is less than cooperative when you really have your life in line for his convenience....
i am officially, a cancer SURVIVOR....i am 5 years clean of colon cancer....i am 100% cancer free....if i wasn't pickled by chemo and radiation, i'd probably be labeled organic....i am now going to live....and i must say....i'll be damned if i'm going to let life and those who run it and those who administer it stop my making up for the life i've already lost....i will never live the last 5 years again....i hope to never revisit much of the last five years again...but i am going to wear my badge of survival as a license to live for all the world to see....i can't believe that i've been from the top of the world with education, careers, travels, loves and possessions, yet, only when the planet took a sudden shift, and made a quarter turn to the right without me, did i learn that by losing everything that ever mattered in the world to me, i not only gained strength and wisdom, but i got every single thing that will ever truly matter back while i was sleeping at some point...you see, a job is good, money would be nice, tailored clothing is pretty and who doesn't like to be at home in their own cozy nest, yet when everything is dark and you are alone, you find that no one has ever made wishes come true with magic....wishes and dreams and hopes and love and life and anything you will ever truly want or need or cherish beyond belief, is simply right there...it's in your heart and in your soul, and no one can take that away from you for any price or any reason....you might give your heart or share your hope and if you're truly blessed even further, you may share you life, but these things that are so valuable and undeniably precious only increase as you possessions for the simple act of giving and sharing them with others.....
i am so blessed and i am so thankful to the universe that has given me everything i could ever need to survive, including all those fucked up lessons on how to do without, because today, i sit in tears while i share this with you, i know that my life has more beauty, love, compassion and hope than any one person could probably realize is possible....
32 polyps removed during an unexpected stay in the hospital( for non-relevant reasons) had been biopsied. i was informed that while it was a high number and i was a particularly young age for such a polyp colony, it is also common for younger men and women to not have any reason to have their intestines, colon and so forth delved into yet alone searched by floodlamp and hidden camera) while a team of prissy nursing students and over confident first year residents sit watching from above on a wide screen tv in the surgical ampitheater....all said and done, the results had come back as all 32 polyps being benign and needing no further follow up other than a full g. i. series every 12 months due to my crohn's disease....
fast forward...suddenly, a beautiful and temperate october afternoon, i got a call from my friend and doctor, armando caccierelli who was the head of the g.i. area where i went for crohns treatment...he told me it was urgent that i get in to his office that day if possible as he needed to sit down with me and discuss the seriousness of something that had happened somewhere along the line between surgical theater and lab transcription folks and that idyllic indian summer day i was so far living up in my own meager and somewhat mild way....
when i got to his office several hours later, i could have been knocked over with a feather boa....he explained the error and subsequent consequences of the error in my polyp count and biopsy transcription...where i was told 32 were benign and end of story, in fact, 3 were MALIGNANT and due to the lapse of time and the area of my colon (about 14 - 17 inches in from the end of the road, so to speak), this loss of time for treatment was more than dangerous, it was potentially deadly....i was told that i would be having surgery 3 days from that exact day, armando had one of his friends from mt. sinai offer his assistance as the lead if armando would be his second in charge for the potentially radical and physically invasive procedure....
i was numb. i was not scared. i have cancer....i have colon cancer....i am 34 years old on this day and suddenly i'm told i may not live until next month for my 35th birthday because of cancer and human error....i did not cry....i did not scream....i did not have time to register what exactly this would mean and i did not have time to die....i did not have time to find mom and jim in wyoming and i needed them to be here. i did not have time to have a will drafted and filed....i did not think i would soon be so sick that fear would be secondary to wanting to be dead....i did not know that within months, i'd be so thin that people would want to help me with my addictions which were actually chemo and radiation....i did not know that chemo can send you flying on a delirious and acid like trip....i did not know that radiation is normally aimed only at the area where you are being treated...i did not know that my 3 MALIGNANT growths had had enough time to grow from individual areas ranging from 3 - 5 mm each into one intersected growth of over 17 mm....i did not know that when i told them to just perform the colostomy procedure while i was in that my friend, the doctor would hug me....and tell me that the difference between being brave and being alive is being healthy enough to make an informed decision when there is so much life to live still and so little happiness with knee jerk bravado....
the story goes on, but i will not bore you...it is pretty similar to most cancer patients, but one thing you should know is that colon cancer is predominantly a retirement age disease, with most cases occurring after the age of 62....younger patients, in the 40 and under range, have only a 17% survival rate because they so seldom have a reason to have any type of invasive testing done that area until they either experience such severe pain or horrible symptoms that they are rushed to the e.r. and generally don't last for many weeks after that trip to the hospital since the disease will have probably run it's course and crossed into the organs and other horrible things....
fast forward 5 years....i lost my home. i lost my possessions...i lost my friends...i lost my sanity...i lost my pride...i lost my youth...i lost my dreams...i lost my hope....i lost my will to live....i lost my mind (literally in 3 small areas, perhaps chemo related...) i lost my hair but i'm happy to announce it's come back to visit...i mean it's now on my back but i can visit it by turning and looking in a mirror on occasion....
i did not lose my family...i did not lose my smile...i did not lose my ability to step beyond my own problems to help someone else with theirs - they call that escapism....i did not hurt anyone....i did not make any promises i couldn't keep. i did not forget i was sick for a minute. i did not live. i did not ignore death, but found that i had embraced it long ago....in fact, i recalled every day for the last five years that when we are born we come into life screaming while the world around us is joyous with music and dancing but when we die, the world beats its breast at the great injustice suffered by dying so young, yet dying brings us full circle into our own moment of joyous music and peace....i did not lose my sense of humor....god makes me laugh - she's a funny guy!
friday night, my doctor called while he was driving home for the weekend. i have had ongoing extensive, invasive and not so comfortable tests done nearly every week since november 1, 2007...i had been unable to find a single result from any source which leading up to my december 24th anniversary for having finished chemo and radiation was making me a bit paranoid....december 24th came and went with no test results....
december 24th should have been a major milestone...it was 5 years....i was sick the entire month of december and thought it was cancer related...december 25th i sat alone in my apartment for christmas and i cried because i felt that i'd been beaten and would finally have to admit i've lost this battle with an enemy that is part of my own body....new years came and went. i slept through it and barely left my apartment, i had nowhere to go and no one to see and no will to seek any opportunities out....the grim reaper is less than cooperative when you really have your life in line for his convenience....
i am officially, a cancer SURVIVOR....i am 5 years clean of colon cancer....i am 100% cancer free....if i wasn't pickled by chemo and radiation, i'd probably be labeled organic....i am now going to live....and i must say....i'll be damned if i'm going to let life and those who run it and those who administer it stop my making up for the life i've already lost....i will never live the last 5 years again....i hope to never revisit much of the last five years again...but i am going to wear my badge of survival as a license to live for all the world to see....i can't believe that i've been from the top of the world with education, careers, travels, loves and possessions, yet, only when the planet took a sudden shift, and made a quarter turn to the right without me, did i learn that by losing everything that ever mattered in the world to me, i not only gained strength and wisdom, but i got every single thing that will ever truly matter back while i was sleeping at some point...you see, a job is good, money would be nice, tailored clothing is pretty and who doesn't like to be at home in their own cozy nest, yet when everything is dark and you are alone, you find that no one has ever made wishes come true with magic....wishes and dreams and hopes and love and life and anything you will ever truly want or need or cherish beyond belief, is simply right there...it's in your heart and in your soul, and no one can take that away from you for any price or any reason....you might give your heart or share your hope and if you're truly blessed even further, you may share you life, but these things that are so valuable and undeniably precious only increase as you possessions for the simple act of giving and sharing them with others.....
i am so blessed and i am so thankful to the universe that has given me everything i could ever need to survive, including all those fucked up lessons on how to do without, because today, i sit in tears while i share this with you, i know that my life has more beauty, love, compassion and hope than any one person could probably realize is possible....
sometimes life and art are as one and adults become their inner child again.....
you are like puppy
when i see you
thru a window
i want to bring you home
with me
again and again.
somehow
every wet sloppy kiss
makes me love you
more and more.
you deserve a treat....
let's go for a walk.
when i see you
thru a window
i want to bring you home
with me
again and again.
somehow
every wet sloppy kiss
makes me love you
more and more.
you deserve a treat....
let's go for a walk.
Friday, January 11, 2008
oh this year is going to be so long...why do we always need a year built on 365 days?
i think if barack or hillary, or heck even mccain or romney win the next election, they need to change us onto an american calendar instead of the roman calendar that is oh so blah and accepted as the universal standard (that is unless you're chinese or jew....then you count your chickens when they hatch as a year or a monkey or whatever, and the jews. good grief, are they even up to the disco era of the 1970's yet on their offbeat calendar? thank goodness for manashevitz wine....atleast you can nosh and slosh while waiting for the era of poly blend and tie dye to end and the era of shoulder pads and even longer dreidel curls and yarmalukes of neon green to hit the pages of Hasid Today Magazine...kind of like highlights for children, only it's for jews, children wouldn't be caught dead reading it and the bazooka joe comics from the back once coveted by kids the world round would be replaced a stick figure named mordachi awaiting the messiah...high art and drama at it's lowest ethnic ebb....)
my personal suggestion would be a very slight but easily managed change which would segment a year into periods of 50 days....yeah the months would be off and who cares, most of them suck rocks anyway...and with seven years to ever current one of the accepted variety, perhaps we'd get that next idiot out of the white house in a mere 400 days instead of the more acceptable version of when hell freezes over....
that said...maybe i'm cranky because it's been 11 days since i've had a gosh darn cigarette and dagnabbit, so far, no one has been injured but in all fairness, i've been afraid to really stray from the apartment for fear of having a panic attic or an anxiety meltdown or perhaps a bit of a mental migration from sane to not....thus necessatating smoking 10 butts all at the same time to hit my system with oft missed rush of nicotine which we all know does make the world go round....
today i think i will buy some of the cheap cigs that i have never smoked because they taste like ass....this is of course to help dimish, disguise or dissolve the owe so unpleasant odor bombarding my entire kitchen as the house of mouse has become the melting mouse mortuary....trouble being all that poison that they finished 4 months ago seems to have had it's desired affect and i've not seen hide, hair or turd of a mouse in atleast 3 months now...unfortunately they are slow to explode and they had plenty of time to be pissed about they internal ruptures and excessive ability to dissolve while walking the floor of the place....so they've obviously hidden where i'm unable to find them, yet alone reach or neutralize them....i.e. i think under the flooring of my new kitchen cabinets....i've asked anyone i know to help me figure out how to get rid of that oh so summery scent of a scene right from "deliver me from a trailer in wyoming" and all to no avail...if the scent continues to fester and apparantly spread (what the hell, are they melting in there thus allowing the scent to continuously roll further around the kitchen? i'll be a monkeys uncle!) i'm about ready to rip out the cabinets but i'm afraid of what i'll find if i do so....live with the spreading and oh so liquid stench of melting mice? or stay in my bedroom and eat take out in front of the window where the fresh air comes in regardless of opening or closing the glass....
any suggestions?
my personal suggestion would be a very slight but easily managed change which would segment a year into periods of 50 days....yeah the months would be off and who cares, most of them suck rocks anyway...and with seven years to ever current one of the accepted variety, perhaps we'd get that next idiot out of the white house in a mere 400 days instead of the more acceptable version of when hell freezes over....
that said...maybe i'm cranky because it's been 11 days since i've had a gosh darn cigarette and dagnabbit, so far, no one has been injured but in all fairness, i've been afraid to really stray from the apartment for fear of having a panic attic or an anxiety meltdown or perhaps a bit of a mental migration from sane to not....thus necessatating smoking 10 butts all at the same time to hit my system with oft missed rush of nicotine which we all know does make the world go round....
today i think i will buy some of the cheap cigs that i have never smoked because they taste like ass....this is of course to help dimish, disguise or dissolve the owe so unpleasant odor bombarding my entire kitchen as the house of mouse has become the melting mouse mortuary....trouble being all that poison that they finished 4 months ago seems to have had it's desired affect and i've not seen hide, hair or turd of a mouse in atleast 3 months now...unfortunately they are slow to explode and they had plenty of time to be pissed about they internal ruptures and excessive ability to dissolve while walking the floor of the place....so they've obviously hidden where i'm unable to find them, yet alone reach or neutralize them....i.e. i think under the flooring of my new kitchen cabinets....i've asked anyone i know to help me figure out how to get rid of that oh so summery scent of a scene right from "deliver me from a trailer in wyoming" and all to no avail...if the scent continues to fester and apparantly spread (what the hell, are they melting in there thus allowing the scent to continuously roll further around the kitchen? i'll be a monkeys uncle!) i'm about ready to rip out the cabinets but i'm afraid of what i'll find if i do so....live with the spreading and oh so liquid stench of melting mice? or stay in my bedroom and eat take out in front of the window where the fresh air comes in regardless of opening or closing the glass....
any suggestions?
Monday, December 31, 2007
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).....
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).....
- 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.....
- 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.....
- 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....
- 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....
- 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....
- 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....
- 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....
- 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....
- 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....
- 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.....
- sleep in heavenly peace on a nightly basis and enjoy the days while the sun shines.....
- be less sappy....
- no number thirteen....unless you want to be less superstitious.....
- end on fourteen and let you all go about your way....happy new year.....
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
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....
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!
Friday, December 21, 2007
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
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!
Thursday, December 20, 2007
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.....
not a single iota.....
Saturday, December 1, 2007
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!
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!
Saturday, November 24, 2007
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....
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
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.....
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!....
Sunday, November 18, 2007
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.....
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.....
Friday, November 9, 2007
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....
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....
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
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 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....
Sunday, November 4, 2007
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.....
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.....
Monday, October 29, 2007
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!
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!
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
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
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
Sunday, October 21, 2007
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....
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....
Thursday, October 18, 2007
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
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
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About Me
- © wadeo 2012 (every last word, part, and pixel)
- New York, New York, United States
- part mad-scientist (it's kind of like being an angry bovine only i'm still not that heavy!)