When there are clouds in the sky, you’ll get by

It’s been almost ten months since I’ve written here, and though I’d thought of closing this forum, today seemed an apt day to post again.

I’ve written about 9-11 many times and in many different ways. Last time I did, two years ago, I told my story at the request of a friend. That was probably my least poetic post on the topic, but it is a record of events as best I can recall them. The sights, sounds, smells of that day and its aftermath will always remain with me, as I imagine they will everybody who witnessed it firsthand or was otherwise affected—so, all of us, really.

What I first learned that day that has impacted me many times since is our collective capacity for strength and resilience, and that from great tragedy can come great beauty. After 9-11, the sense of bonding and community, the gentleness with which we treated one another, the checking in, the deliberate connections, remained for quite some time. And then, as is human nature, bit by bit they faded away and for many of us, life returned to some semblance of “normal,” forever changed though we were.

There’ve been far too many opportunities to experience this since that terrible day. I think of 11-9-16 which, for me and many people I know, was an absolute tragedy. And in the aftermath of that unthinkable day, I found my tribe.

In 2020, science fiction became reality. In the midst of debilitating uncertainty and fear, and a loss of lives so catastrophic it was impossible to grasp, new kinds of connections were forged. New survival tactics. Yes, we all spent way too much time on Zoom, but how isolating it all would have been without this dubious technology? The people I’d have expected to stay connected with during lockdown and those I did connect with on a regular basis were not entirely the same group, and I was grateful for the two-dimensional relationships I maintained and the new ones I built.

I suppose the point of this post is that out of blackness can come light, if one is open to finding it. It doesn’t eradicate the darkness or the trauma, but these things can coexist with unexpected comforts and bittersweet joys. One need only skim Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning to read much more eloquent words on this topic from a man who has weathered far worse than I have.

But I don’t want to diminish my experiences, because I’ve weathered pain as well. We all have. And in so doing, I have found meaning of my own, people upon whom I can rely, and resilience I didn’t always believe I had.

I took the photo above earlier this summer while I was recovering from COVID and feeling quite blue. I had a lovely home (not my own) in which to convalesce but I had too much time to think and feel lonely. And in the early morning hours, earlier than I’d wanted to be awake, I saw a stunning sunrise.

The title of this post is from the Nat King Cole song “Smile,” which B and I have long had a connection to. This past February and March, he spent about six weeks in Ukraine. We met in Paris for a brief respite shortly after the invasion began and the news was, of course, heart wrenching and terrifying. On a day I was particularly lachrymose (even by my standards), we walked across the Seine and stumbled upon this (click to play video):

On this most difficult of anniversaries, I send love, strength, and resilience to all who read my words.

Слава Україні!

When there was no dream of mine you dreamed of me

It’s been 43 days since my friend died, and the grief has ebbed and flowed and ebbed again. In the past 72 hours it has been quite pronounced, and its rawness has been intensified by other aspects of Life.

And this is to be expected; this is the process of grief. This weekend, tears that I hadn’t been able to conjure at times that it made sense to cry have been readily available, and at times it feels as though they might never stop.

But they will, and they’ll start again, and they’ll stop again. And new reasons to grieve will emerge and all the tears that I feel for all the people and situations I’ve lost will commingle. All the regrets (I try very hard not to regret but at times it is simply unavoidable) and all the lost promises and all the things I didn’t say when I had the chance to say them will flow from my eyes and swirl around my heart. And this will feel at times suffocating and at times cathartic. I’m not afraid of crying, I’m afraid of not being able to stop, and somehow, always, I manage to.

At dinner a few weeks ago my lovely Lata asked me what quality I think is the most important a person can possess. I landed on compassion, and she asked me to write a post about it. So here it is, sweet friend, wrapped up in sentences about grief and love and whatever else I wind up adding before I am through.

According to Merriam-Webster, compassion is “sympathetic consciousness of others’ distress together with a desire to alleviate it.”

I’ve been told many times that my desire to alleviate others’ distress comes at a cost. That I sacrifice myself, or those who need me most. That I soak up too much pain and sadness. A friend told me yesterday that I put everyone else’s needs before my own. And while I understand where this “concern” comes from, I disagree. At times I can be quite selfish, but I also know that I have the bandwidth to attend to the needs of many. We all do, we don’t all have the time or energy to put in. For me, it’s survival; I do not want to go to my grave (decades and decades from now, God willing) wishing I had been more supportive and understanding toward the people I love. And I love many people. I may not have the strongest conventional work ethic, I may not always do the right thing, I may be short-tempered and make questionable personal choices at times, but my love is real.

Having the opportunity to share in the last eight months of Tom’s life was the greatest honor I’ve had in my almost-48 years. Holding his hand at the end of his life was the most profound moment I’ve yet to experience. And while I am gutted that he is gone, I am grateful that he let me in when he needed me. I’m also grateful for the decades of laughter and music and joy that preceded his diagnosis. And he was there for me when I needed him. Every time I checked in over the last eight months, via text he’d ask “And how are YOU?” and on the phone he’d want to know what was happening in my world, and he’d ask me to give his love to my family. And he meant it.

If I have missed my marks in exercising compassion toward you, any of you, I am sorry.

And to those of you who do let me in, and who do let me try my best to alleviate distress, thank you. Because doing so helps me to feel like the best version of who I can be. It feels like one of the reasons I was brought into this world.

How I miss you, my friend. So very much.

He’s told us not to blow it, ’cause he knows it’s all worthwhile

At the time that I am starting to write this it has been two weeks and about 15 hours since my friend Tom took his final breath. I’m not sure when or if I’ll finish this, because I do not know that I will find the right words.

I have known Tom for more than half of my life and the experiences that we’ve shared run the gamut from weddings to funerals, from horseback riding in Half Moon Bay to touring the Union Pacific Steam Shop in Cheyenne. Music, food, New Year’s eves, New Year’s days, birthday parties,  bachelorettes—he was the masked, silent bartender at a bachelorette weekend on Fire Island in the summer of 2001. When I first moved back from San Francisco we went to brunch. Ten hours later we were watching exotic dancers, he in a fake mustache and me in cat ears. It was never boring, it was never mundane, there was an element of adventure to our every encounter. A flair for if not breaking the rules, then seeing how far we could bend them. There was laughter, so much laughter, and there were tears.

Today is Thanksgiving. I am grateful for many things, for many people. I am grateful for the fact that I can start to put into words some of the many lessons that I learned from Tom. Among them, to make every day matter. Tom had bad days, but I don’t think he ever had insignificant ones. He surrounded himself with amazing friends of all stripes and among the many beautiful things about him, he saw each and every one of us. He had a unique relationship with each and every one of us, a trove of shared memories and experiences and in-jokes. He made every one of us feel, on some level, invincible. He believed in us, sometimes more than we believe in ourselves.

He died surrounded by love and surrounding us with love, and I take comfort in that.

Grief is a strange and mercurial beast. Those stages don’t show up in the order you expect them to. I have had a ton of love and support in the past almost-three weeks as I’ve begun the daunting task of navigating my own, and of trying to be strong for the many, many people in my life who are grieving too. Tom had the ability to create memories with his friends of five decades and with people he met once. The second to last time I was visiting with him we sat down at a bar to have lunch. He got up to take a call and the bartender asked me who my friend was and whether he was an artist. I said yes—he said, “He looks like someone who creates really cool things.”

Indeed, he was.

To be continued. My love to you all.

 

As time goes by

I uploaded several black cat photos before choosing this one. I’m not really a Cat Person (allergies and such) but I do love the look of them. This is one of the many I’ve seen in New Orleans, and (s)he seemed appropriate for today.

Today is Halloween, which means that the rest of the year is around the corner. I’m generally loathe to lament the passage of time—like the weather, it seems a futile thing to complain about—but at this point in the year it’s difficult not to notice. I thought of a metaphor this morning. I was a fairly clumsy child; it was not uncommon for me to take the first three-quarters of the staircase in my childhood home at a steady clip, and then inadvertently speed up and run/trip down the last few steps. This seems an apt comparison for the pace of the years … we move along through the first many months, summer comes and goes, we start to embrace autumn and then BAM! it’s Halloween, and immediately after we prep for Thanksgiving, and then the holiday season. And this year we have the added seasonal pressure of midterm elections, the results of which so crucially impact this country that it’s hard to breathe in anticipation. If you are reading this and are NOT planning to vote, you are a big part of the reason we got to this point in the first place. You don’t have to share my political views (though today we are far beyond politics and into the basics of humanity), but for the love of all that is sacred, please vote.

I digress.

Someone asked me what my favorite Halloween costumes were when I was a kid and I couldn’t really think of any. We have photos, of course, so I remember being a prom queen (I was about eight years old and in the photo I’m holding my middle finger to the camera. Delightful child I was.), a movie star,  Cleopatra—that was one of my favorites. But the one that’s really coming to mind is a princess, when I was three or four. Not because of what princesses represented—I don’t think I was cognizant of that, and we weren’t inundated with Belle and Jasmine and all the rest—but because the costume was pretty and shiny and I liked those things. Of course, it being the 70s in the suburbs of New York, no costume was complete without the requisite long pants and down jacket. A kindler, gentler, colder time.

I’ve been having conversations lately about how much Manhattan has changed, how much “better” it was before (speaking strictly of the logistics of living on and getting around the isle; state of the world notwithstanding, I like my life these days). This morning my Lyft driver said that people have told him the city is much more crowded than it used to be and I said that yes, it seems that way, and that I think I preferred the way things were in the past.  He said,  “Oh, like in 2013?” Thanks to good genes (and Botox and hair dye), I don’t think he realized that no, I meant more like 1993. Which lead me to the realization that my satisfaction living here is probably as much a product of my age as it is anything else. Yes, it’s more crowded, institutions are closing, rents are increasing, but that was happening back then too. Back then I was part of the crowded, and part of the new guard that had moved in. I was hanging out in packed bars in the east village and waiting on line for brunch (actually I pretty much avoided that then, too). It was easy to be 23, but I didn’t realize it at the time.

And still, I wouldn’t trade the wisdom and the experiences, good, bad, and ugly, that have led me to this point. It helps to be one of those weirdos who believes in a master plan and an afterlife.

Speaking of both, I spent last week in my beloved New Orleans on what turned into a fairly successful creative retreat. I spent my days writing and my evenings with friends and it was delightful. It was my first trip there this year and I’m glad I  made it in time to celebrate the city’s 300th birthday.

This is a photo from a year or two ago, in the séance room at Muriel’s. It is in this room that Antoine, the resident ghost, allegedly took his life after losing the building (which was his home) in a poker game.

Happy Halloween!

VOTE.

In the secret space of dreams

Yesterday’s beach plans were thwarted as we neglected to check the horsefly index. They had commandeered our stretch of sand and were relentless, so we spent the day inside and reemerged before sundown to hear live music and watch the changing view above.

Went to bed early and woke in the inky darkness. It was windy and the doors were creaking (it’s just the house settling, Jan) and the place felt heavy with spirit. I lay awake for hours in my fear-of-darkness.

Just as I wrote those words, “The Sound of Silence” came on:

 

Because a vision softly creeping

Left its seeds while I was sleeping.

 

Exactly, fellas.

I fell back asleep as it started to get light again, and then the birds outside our windows began cawing.

This all seemed a great big, universal reminder that we are the new kids on this planet. The horseflies, the birds, the sharks, they were all here first. And we’ve come along and, in a very short time—because we are, by and large, quite intelligent—invented things that make our lives easier and theirs more confusing.

I’ve seen one firefly this summer.

All creatures great and small. Remember that series? I read a bunch of those books when I was young.

I lost the thread of what I was going to write about. There was one.

I’ve been keeping morning pages again, since August 12, and I’m reminded of what a valuable exercise this is. I highly recommend it—it’s a great way to clear the night and kick off the day. You do not have to be an experienced writer to benefit; you just have to have pen, paper and a mind.

One thing they’ve helped me do this time around is remember my dreams. If you’re one of the myriad people who find other peoples’ dreams boring, skip to the last paragraph.

I go through phases with dreams, thematically. For many years I had the recurring one where I’m giving someone a tour of my house and at the last moment discover, or remember, a hidden room that is much larger and more opulent then the rest. A room that is under-utilized.

There was a dream bar I frequented, located in an amalgam of the East Village, San Francisco, New Orleans, and Paris. It had two rooms and live music.

For a fairly long stretch my dreams involved global travel, the kind where I could walk from London to Indonesia to Cameroon and back.

And lately they’ve involved time travel. Never future, always past, and often I am self-conscious about the access I have to technology. Last night I followed a friend into a nightclub in 1978, and it was large and dimly lit and I lost track of her. I realized I had no way to get in touch with her because cell phones wouldn’t work in that space or year.

I think I just found the thread—the technology conundrum. The fact that the animals were here first (most of them). The experience, last night, of being in this beautiful outdoor space with beautiful live music, surrounded by people texting and Instagram-ing and Checking In.

Yes, yes, I recognize that I am pointing these things out via WordPress and The Facebook and on my laptop computer. I’m not judging; technology is important. I’m just advocating for a little more analog in this digital world we’ve so deftly created.

Write something by hand. Watch the band with your eyes and ears. Have three-dimensional relationships and experiences. These, my friends, are the most important things.

 

And you who had the honor of her evening …

I’ve been thinking about this post all day and I’ve been wondering whether or not I’d write it. The title here is from Leonard Cohen’s “Alexandra Leaving,” a song that, like so many others, breaks my heart in the most beautifully devastating way.

Kate Spade. I think many of the women I know who are my age-ish have at one point been familiar with her wares. I knew very little about her; I was gifted one of her handbags in the early-to-mid 90s and I wore it proudly, always aware that I was handbagging out of my league.

She killed herself this morning. And of course the social media-verse is full of “WHY?!?”s … and that is a valid question. The answer, I’m certain, is fairly complex. When we try to distill the why’s of suicide into explanation we fall short of the bigger picture which, more often than not, is my old friend and foe depression. Family things may well have been happening, business things may well have been challenging, but what drives someone to take one’s own life is rarely quite so tangible. “But she had …!” and “But she was …!” don’t apply. I am not diagnosing her, I do not know that she was clinically depressed, but I do know that some variation on depression plays into many suicides.

And I also know that depression does not care whether you are young or smart or famous or rich or beautiful or powerful or none of the above. Depression, like cancer, chooses its path quite democratically, and while there are things one can do to stave off both, there are no guarantees.

I know what it’s like to feel alone while surrounded by people, to feel stuck despite options, to feel empty when the judgmental voice inside tells you you shouldn’t. And I know the value of facing these possibly tamable demons and coming out on the other side.

If you are reading these words and you feel empty, alone, despondent, suicidal, please know that there are resources available to you. If you need to, reach out to me. Ours is a very challenging existence. As one of B’s photos from Love City says, “Don’t jump. Somebody, somewhere, is waiting to love you.”

Very few things are insurmountable. If I can help you to realize this, I will.

When you’re lost in the rain in Juarez

I was thinking about travel songs because I’ve been thinking about travel and that one popped into my head—though if I understand it correctly it’s about an extremely ill-fated trip. It’s a great song, and I went through a phase somewhere around 2003 of listening to Bob Dylan’s and Nina Simone’s versions back to back, along with a somewhat random assortment of other songs that were part of my greatest hits collection during that stretch. Nick Cave’s “He Wants You”, Marlene Dietrich’s “I May Never Go Home Anymore”, Tom Waits’ “Old Shoes and Picture Postcards” were all on that soundtrack. Along with many others that will come to mind as soon as I hit “Publish.”

I got to travel a bit last weekend, a long weekend in Florida where we lay on the beach and floated in the gulf and it had been a while since I’d done either, particularly the latter. Sometimes, often, you don’t realize how much you need to get out of New York until you get out of New York. On the one hand, stepping outside of your life can help you to appreciate it; on the other hand, New York is a really effing hard place to be. It is also a really exciting and interesting place where the vast majority of my friends and family live. Now that dog care is no longer an issue—and you know I would trade the freedom for more time with Louie in a heartbeat—but given the confines of my reality, I am realistically fantasizing about leaving town for an extended period of time. Not six months—but a couple of weeks feels like just what the doctors have ordered.

I feel like New York has a way of deciding who you are and what your life will be like without your having as much say in the matter as you might elsewhere.

We sat in the exit row on the way down to Florida, and it occurred to me that I should be more vigilant about knowing who is in the exit row on future flights, for they have the power to hinder or expedite my slide to safety.

I’ll be traveling again the week after next, to Colorado, to see Tom. I don’t have any idea what this trip will be like but I am grateful that it will be, period. There was a time quite recently when early-May seemed an impossibly long way off.

At the office today, three people asked me how Louie was doing. I’d kind of assumed everybody there, and in my building, knew—but this was not the case. B and I have fantasies that Louie is hanging out with the Roosevelts; not sure where this came from, but it fits.

The photo above is from last summer, Louie’s last trip to Montauk with us. I don’t think his death had really hit me for the first couple of weeks—something about being present for it, maybe. Or about the enormity of his spirit. I’ve hung out with him many times in my dreams since he died. “He died” sounds so very strange, and was made much clearer a few hours after I landed in Florida, when I got a message from his vet’s office—his vet is wonderful and most of the people who work there are too, but this message came from one of the front desk people who is not the most delicate or empathic.

Picture (aurally) this in a New York accent:

Hi Laura, it’s xxxx calling from West Chelsea Veterinary Hospital. Just letting you know that Louie’s cremains are in, so if you want to pick them up we’re open from 8AM to 7PM. 

I guess this means he’s never really coming back except in “cremain” form. Cremain, criminy, craisin, Crimea … I miss that boy.

Much more to say, must go to sleep. If you knew Lou, look for him in your dreams. He’s around.

 

 

 

 

In the secret space of dreams

This post’s title is from “Attics of my Life” by the Grateful Dead, a song that will forever remind me of a very poignant and emotional time in my life, coming up on its 20th anniversary at the end of this month.

Next year, as has been well-publicized in the past couple of days, will mark the 20th anniversary of the Columbine massacre, and while I needn’t point out the obvious, as this blog will live in cyberspace indefinitely, I will: this past Wednesday, Valentine’s Day, saw another massacre at a high school carried out because a young man had access to an assault rifle. This time it was in Parkland, Florida, which happens to be the home of one of my oldest, dearest childhood friends. I contacted her as soon as I heard the news, and she was on her way to the school to pick up her daughter, who survived the carnage and was barricaded in a classroom.

Conflicting reports list the number of shootings at schools since 2018 began and the number itself, in the double digits, is irrelevant; one is far too many.

Somehow I managed to inure myself to the other incidents that took place, and that is on me. It took emotional proximity—a term I learned in the aftermath of the Bataclan attacks—for me to really react.

Not something I’m proud of, but something I understand.

When will the madness end? When the NRA stops buying politicians. When gun owners and enthusiasts recognize that gun violence prevention is NOT about the abolition of the 2nd Amendment, but rather about updating it so that its intent bears some semblance of reality to what is possible and impossible in 21st Century America. When the children of Parkland and other afflicted schools turn 18 and exercise their rights to vote.

Maybe.

To the victims and survivors of this and all the other mass shootings in the past 19 years, I am sorry. I am sorry that I don’t always pay attention. I am sorry that of the devastating number of such incidents, only a handful really stand out for me: Columbine, Sandy Hook, Aurora, Pulse Nightclub, Parkland. I pledge to do much more than hope and pray. I pledge to vote responsibly and to encourage others to do the same, to support affected communities if and when I can, and to not let this issue fall to the wayside. I pledge this as an activist and as a human being. This should never happen again, but it will. And to quote someone I read today, who’s escaping my mind at the moment, while I am not necessarily optimistic that this incident will be the one to turn the tides, I am hopeful. I am hopeful because of the strength and grace and determination of generations of future voters.

A friend asked me the other night why I keep this blog, what purpose it serves for me, and I really appreciate this question. I think the answer is manifold; I keep this blog because it keeps me writing, for one, and because it forces me to organize my thoughts. It forces me to try to put them into words, and in so doing, to really crystallize what I feel and think and why. When I started it, coming upon five years ago, it was a way for me to manage an intensely transitional and uncertain phase, which has always been difficult for me—for most of us—and at the time I felt as though I were writing myself out of a rut. And then, as I mentioned a couple of posts ago, I realized that talking about my stuff was a way to connect to others who are going through stuff, and that was richly rewarding. I am a connector—it is difficult for me to have superficial friendships because I need to talk about things. And I like to hear people’s stories and, as I said last time, to help and support if I can. So this blog feels like a tangible manifestation of the emotional connections I strive for on a regular basis. There you go, AG, that’s why I write this. Thanks for making me think about it.

Hug your loved ones if you’re a hugger, think warm thoughts about them if you’re not, never go to bed angry if you can help it, apologize for your missteps to yourself and those you hurt or inconvenience along the way—but do NOT apologize for being imperfect—be kind to strangers who don’t seem creepy, be gentle to the ones who do, and remind yourself that all that is certain, as my friend said yesterday, is this very moment. Nothing else really exists. So make this moment matter, and if you hit snooze, make the next one matter, or the one after that. We are living in a fractured world, and we are all lonely, and we are all connected. If you are reading this, I have love for you. Unless you are an NRA-funded politician or a white supremacist; if you are, I have faith that you can change. But that’s up to you.

 

I prayed that he would finish, but he just kept right on …

The title of this post is from “Killing Me Softly,” which I am now learning in my voice lessons. For reasons that needn’t be stated, it also kind of fits with this photo, which I took at the women’s march in D.C. last weekend. It was a wonderful, bonding weekend spent with five other women at a lovely home in D.C. where we cooked, talked, drank wine, knit (I’m learning) and marched at the event itself, which I’m not going to describe in depth on here as I was told that as a writer I don’t want to alienate potential readers by being too political so I will just leave it at this.

If you want to hear more about it, call me.

I like talking on the phone. Kickin’ it old school.

Today I got this message, from my dear L, who now lives too far away but with whom I’d grown very close shortly after I started this blahhhhg: “Did you know I saved some of your blog posts throughout the years? They help me when I’m feeling blue.”

It’s funny, L, that you sent me that today, as I’ve been heavily contemplating putting this thing out of its misery. You were one of the reasons I kept going in the first place – and we reconnected through it, and we got to a place in our friendship that we might not otherwise have gotten. I see you only once every couple of years right now, but you are never terribly far from my thoughts and I love that I can text you out of the blue, “L, they put raisins in my salad” and you will text back something like, “Are you kidding me??? DO THEY KNOW WHO THEY ARE DEALING WITH?!” and then we might not speak again for a few months but I know you’re out there and you know I’m back here and we, together, transcend time and distance.

I loathe raisins a) on their own and b) in savory food. In the occasional baked good, I’m fine. I don’t have the aversion to them that Trump has to sharks This is not a political blog.

As many of you know, I have a love/not-sure-how-I-feel-about relationship with NYC, and I am here for the foreseeable future. This past week has been one that’s reminded me of some of the things I love about this place.

It’s been a busy and exhausting and emotionally draining week with some beautiful moments interspersed.

I returned from my girls’ weekend in D.C., which had no particular agenda RESIST!!!, on Sunday afternoon, to a sick Louie. There has been a doggie virus going around our area, apparently. We brought him to the vet and gave him some meds and he did better for a day or so. Wednesday evening I went to see my voice teacher, the inimitable Jamie Leonhart, perform at Joe’s Pub. She was phenomenal. I got home to a sick-again Louie, and so we rushed him to the vet first thing Thursday AM. They took him to the back and after a little while his vet called me into a room to talk. She had tears in her eyes – she loves Louie; obstinate weirdo that he is, it’s hard not to. She told me that as he wasn’t responding to treatment, there seemed to be other things going on. And that she wasn’t sure they could do much, but they would give him fluids and tests to be sure. I asked her if it was possible he wouldn’t be coming home with us again, and she said yes.

I trust this woman implicitly. If I could send every animal I know to see her, I would. She talked me through what the process entails – because I asked. I had to go to work and B had a job and so we couldn’t come back until the end of the day, at which point, she said, we could spend as much time as we wanted with him and she very gently explained what would happen. But, she said, of course they would check him out to be sure of things if that was the route I wanted to go, and of course exhausting all options was the route I wanted to go.

I wanted to cancel my day and B convinced me not to. My first order of business was my voice lesson with Jamie, who has become a friend. How delightful it was to sit in the studio singing with this fabulous woman I’d seen perform at Joe’s Pub the night before, a woman who also loves dogs and gets it and allows me to be weepy when I’m weepy or scattered when I’m scattered – basically, a woman willing to meet the people in her life wherever they are at the moment.. This is a trait I try hard to cultivate.

So we started learning “Killing Me Softly”, and I know last time around I said I was going to work on “Windmills” but this song was played at an integral moment during my no-particular-reason NOT MY … OH F**K HE IS trip to D.C. and Jamie loves it too and we decided to learn it.

And halfway through my lesson the vet calls. And she says, “Well, he tried to kill me, and I was so relieved. We checked him out, his pancreas in inflamed again, but there is no cancer. He was so feisty that I actually had to give him a mild sedative. This boy is not ready to go anywhere.”

Long story no shorter, Louie is home with us this weekend, on new meds, has spent a few days on fluids at the vet, and we are delighted and bewildered and exhausted. We are loving him and spending as much time with him as he will allow; Lou affection entails his letting us pet him until he’s had enough and then walking into the other room. And I love him for this and for so, so much more.

You know the inevitable post will come, and I thank you in advance for your love and warmth, and I think they were wrong, he’s actually either a cat or an android.

Then more reasons-to-love-New York came to light. Because he’s had issues that affect his cleanliness of late we needed to figure out a way to clean him up. He made it very clear that this was not something we could do for him. This morning I called his former groomer, Elly, who hasn’t seen him in years, probably since before his knee surgery. I explained the situation, she said they were slammed but could fit him in between 11 and 11:30. We brought him in, they were familiar and loving to him, they cleaned him up, he screamed – SCREAMED – bloody murder the whole time, we brought him back out and when I asked how much I owed, Elly waved her hand and said, “We’ve known him for years – this was an emergency – it’s on us.” It was an incredibly kind gesture that almost made me weep (I wept).

We brought Lou home where he has been Netflix-and-chilling all day. I spent the afternoon with one of my best friends, the first friend I made in this big city back in 1932, and we had lunch and went to galleries in my neighborhood, including the Pace Gallery for the Thomas Nozkowski show.

And now I’m home, I’m in for the night, I’m tired, I’m emotional, and I’m aware of how incredibly lucky I am to have the circle of family, friends, and acquaintances that I do.

Thank you for reading – this was a rambly one. It’s a rambly time for me.

xo, L

 

 

 

 

Words that jangle in your head

Hello mesdames et messieurs, and welcome to 2018. I’m behind on this post; usually my tradition has been to write an end-of-the-year post listing all the things I did for the first time that year and some of my goals for the new one. For various reasons, I was not inspired to do so this time around.

What can I say about 2017? By and large, it was horrible. To quote one of my favorite shows, “Broad City,” “a sexual assault-bragging steak salesman became our president” … and those are his accomplishments. I’m not going to delve into everything that is despicable about that man and his administration because you already know, and others have voiced it much more calmly and eloquently than I will. However, I will say that as much as the political situation in our country disheartens and infuriates me, on a personal level 2017 was quite decent. I woke up, I contributed to the Resistance, I met likeminded (i.e. empathic) people and solidified existing friendships. I saw theater and opera and went to concerts. I did interesting freelance editing work. I wrote, I traveled a bit, I continued with my voice lessons, I upped my exercise game, and I figured out the timetable I need to stick to to stay one step ahead of my roots.

I wish I’d framed the photo above better so that the entirety of the doorknob were visible. This was from Paris last year, sometime around New Year’s Eve.

It’s only been 12 days, but it feels as though 2018 has yet to get off the ground. I don’t really know what I was expecting, but it feels kind of sluggish. I think part of the reason for this is that I’ve yet to sit and dedicate several hours to my own writing, and I plan to do so this weekend. Among the many projects I hope to work on are: another revision on the novel I (thought I) finished last year, a series of short stories, a short film idea I’ve had, and that second novel that I started last summer and have taken a long break from. What I need to do, and what I did while I (thought I) was finishing Novel 1, is to schedule writing time in my week as I do other things. Actually put it in my calendar and stick to it. Because I feel much more human and connected when I’m writing, and this is probably why this feels like a non-year so far.

I also have the goal of recording some of the songs I’ve learned, and a talented friend who knows how to do these things has offered to work with me on this. The title of this post, by the way, is from “The Windmills of Your Mind”, the song from “The Thomas Crown Affair.” I want to learn it. It has a lot of lyrics, but I’m pretty good at memorizing.

I want to keep up this exercising thing, because I’m liking the combination of strength training, Pilates, and yoga. It’s good for my brain. At this point in my life, that is the far more important reason to exercise than is fitting into my old jeans. But in case the Gods in charge of these things are paying attention, I’d be happy to fit into my old jeans, too.

I want to read more books.

I want to continue my language studies – Spanish, Russian, German, and recently I added Haitian Creole to the list. One of the beautiful things about the Internets is that one can learn languages, at least the basics, for free.

Of course I want to travel, but for now big travel plans are on hold as Louie’s comfort and wellbeing take precedence. I don’t mind this at all; I am happy to spend these days with him. I have a couple of short trips coming up, one to D.C. to celebrate acknowledge the completion of one year of this pitiful, hateful excuse for a presidency, and then one solo restorative healthy retreat in early February.

I’ve thought about ending this blahhhggg as I didn’t write in it much last year and I feel as though it has served its purpose, which was initially to help me through a strange and difficult time. A lot of my writing energy has gone to the Resistance and my book and such, and so I’ve let this fall to the wayside. But I don’t think I’m ready to throw in the towel yet, so bear with me a bit longer while I figure out what I want this to be and what I want to write about.

I hope that you all have productive and peaceful 2018s, and that you meet the goals you set for yourselves. Onward and upward.