Morningish, Morningesque, Morninglike

This morning's excitement: an ambulance in the apartment parking lot. Getting my car out and onto Suydam Street proved challenging, and by this I mean I wanted to smash an ambulance windshield with a crowbar at 7:20 a.m., which I would never, ever do without a court order.

Yes, I've been avoiding you. Last week should have been the kind of happy writing-fest I live for, but there was too much to do, and not enough rest. Essentially, my brain was too busy to chat and the body was too tired to move much. Picture this torpor. Picture it well. Now picture it with healthy red highlights and a fab coat of nail polish. There now. That's hardly disturbing at all.

White Light, Ben Gay Heat

If I were to say I understood anything, I'd probably go on for a minute or two, then begin stuttering, then admit I probably don't understand a thing. Life is too complicated to go on with the idea that we can understand what might be happening in factual terms anywhere.

Fortunately, tomorrow a bunch of us wild art gals are gussying up and going to KGB in Manhattan to see Alan Parker read. I haven't seen him in years and years. Don't know where he and his family moved to, but I suspect we'll find out. We have that magical power - as a group - to go, and do, and be awfully glam. This requires mascara.

As an Italian Princess, I may Nair my mustache. It's a stretch, but a gal's got to do what a gal's got to do. This could be funny.

The Essence of Comedy

Re: folding sweaters for six hours with my ancient, arthritic body on a busy afternoon in a discount department store: to quote the great sages A Halo Called Fred, "It could've killed me but it didn't so it's funny." And I go do it again on Friday. That's Black Friday to you, smart shoppers!

Me, I can barely move. It's humbling to feel so vulnerable. I'm grateful I never made enemies with hammer fetishes, I am so small.

Good thing we read with our eyes or fingertips. My eyes and fingertips don't ache.

Frontier Justice Department

Tomorrow, I start folding sweaters for a discount department store with snappy commercials. To be honest, I'm not sure my back and my joints will tolerate the hard, physical work, but I have to try - and begin shopping immediately. While I have an employee discount, i have some necessities to pick up. For one thing, if I spend one more day with an underwire poking me in the ribs, I'm gonna take a hostage. For another, I hate when my friends' parents had marital relations in February, dozens of years ago, and now November birthdays stomp me, annually. I love my friends, possibly because they were shaped by having been born at this time of year, who knows, but every year in November I feel like my head's pinched in a vise.

Back from the hairdresser with hair that's shiny, healthy and a surreal wine color. My hairdresser, who is quite a character in her own right, is about three weeks from the birth of her second child, How she had the patience to spend two hours painting my hair with a couple of pink dyes and trimming the little curls, I'll never know. I'd tell me to shove it and be grateful I wasn't ninety months pregnant.

Bullseye, Blind Mice

Just waiting for coffee to brew. My work day starts so early that by the time I'm on my second cup it's time for everyone else to show up and take off their coats. It's so improbable that a nocturnal creature should be one of the first to darken the doorway every morning.

Plus, you'd think I'd burst into flames at the first hint of sunlight, and I wait, but it keeps on not happening. Any tomorrow morning could be it.

I haven't the faintest idea what I'm doing, and often wonder about people who do. Is there a special store with a two-for-one sale on clues, and I'm just the cheesy comparison shopper? I don't know, but I see there really are people who know what they're doing. It's a puzzle.

The Cheese Factor

After Saturday's dinner party, I'm seriously thinking about purchasing cheese online from the Italian cheese masters in Philadelphia. This is pretty bourgeois for me. It's a stretch. I still haven't worked out factors like how I'll tolerate my own presence after I've thrown a fit about on-time shipping.

Still, delicious cheese - anywhere with a mailing address. Now, that's progress.

The domain name's up for renewal. Must chat with Paulie about it. Maybe local art goes POOF! again. Maybe it's time.

Accentuate the Positive

You know, all this could be a dream, or the Cathars could've been right and reality is merely an evil distraction in the life of the soul. Either way, I probably didn't eat enough breakfast to be sure I'm not having low-blood sugar hallucinations if I didn't know no one in my office is a giant bunny.

I mean it. No bunnies!

Twice in the last twelve hours have I hit the send button before checking to see where the email would travel. This is highly unusual. I got over that kind of faux pas ten years ago. What's my problem, have I gone tech-mad?

At least, I have on comfortable socks. It's raw and rainy out, but I am in, and wearing the soft socks. Mamie's got meetings all morning, so I'm entertaining myself by padding around the office shoeless. It's a scandal!

The Outer Child

A letter written to the very vegetarian Audrey, whose imagination astounds me always:




"There is this one thing, and I have neglected to tell it to you throughout 2004 at least, and possibly longer. I can't see how, but it's true. Several years ago, a commercial came out with a little girl, waking up her parents on Christmas morning. Santa's been most generous. There are toys floor to ceiling and a box of puppies. Dad says, "Those must've been *some* cookies you left Santa." The little girl twist her hands in the air. She says, "I didn't leave him cookies. I left him CHEESE." Now it's a funny thing, seeing someone else be you, but that little girl is me. Even though she's not. She's me. I love seeing me vivacious and scheming.

"Thus, I should have called you immediately, and how did I not, when I first saw the Oscar Meyer bologna commericial in which one little girl is you. She's you, in one of your simply joyful moods. She even resembles you a bit. And when she holds the bologna sandwich up to someone off camera and makes a distinctly Audrey-y face, I wish the bread held something not made of snouts."

One Way Or Another

My smoking buddies are in their mid-twenties, and one of their favorite hobbies is to bring up songs from the seventies and early eighties that have context in my life but not theirs. Ten minutes ago, they regaled me with selections from "Grease." I hate this movie with my whole black heart, hate everything about it. Hate it. They were hoping one of these songs would get stuck in my head and I'd be whining about it until Hell froze over. Instead, I bet they're fighting the urge to sing along with the Olivia Newton-John songs repeating on their mental jukeboxes. Ah, revenge.

Zoom Zebbatab

Too much to do and too little time, or at least too little uncommitted time. Yesterday, a Jonathan Richman fan blog re-published one of my Altrok articles about seeing Jonathan at the Court. This is the third time since September that I sat still and publication came to me. It's a strange feeling. Too bad the fee is a link to Altrok and all the glory I can nibble.

An A Halo Called Fred song stuck in my head. Oh how I love those boys.

I'm in a bit of a mood since last night. Fired off a snarky email at the public art group that's been sending me event announcements. They know me, I suppose. It's just too weird to be singled out and turned into a target, not a comrade-in-arms.

Or are you just happy to see me?

It's true. I've been avoiding you, which is to say me, and blogging. I'm engaged in a semi-rational part-time job search and a semi-reasonable new home search, and a semi-authentic search for a new life. All of it is too ridiculous to document semi-publicly, where I would have to call me on my true lack of effort. And I hate me, when I keep hanging up on us both.

So. How've you been?