I've been dying for red sneakers. Which ones do you like? The ones on the left are kinda flimsy. They're almost like slippers. But the shade of red is better, and because they are less bulky, they might look better with skirts. The ones on the right are more sneaker-like. Better for walking.
Here's another shot, even though it's not a good one.
And here is a gratuitous shot of Finney's belly. BELLY! Worship the belly!
I want him to find peace and happiness in this hammock. Why oh why can't animals speak?? We could show him how it's done. (Cats love a hammock, too.)
Last night as I was falling asleep there was a commercial for Budweiser Select, with a GREAT song playing in the background, rap and Indian guitar (or some sort of string instrument). I grabbed a pen, wrote "Budweiser" and the few of the words that I could make out and found it this morning. The universe is trying to tell me something.
The song is by the Chemical Brothers and it's called Galvanize. Over and over they say, "Don't hold back." (If I could figure out how to embed MP3's I'd put it up for everyone, but I can't. It's worth getting!)
Galvanize
(Don't hold back)
cuz you woke up in the morning with initiative to move,
so why make it harder
(Don't hold back)
If you think about it so many people do, be cool man, look smarter,
(Don't hold back)
and you shouldn't even care, about the losers in the air,
and their crooked stares,
(Don't hold back)
cuz there's a party over here, so you might aswell be here,
where the people care,
The world is holding back
the time has come to...
The world is holding back
the time has come to...
The world is holding back
the time has come to...
Galvanize,
(Don't hold back)
If you think about it too much you may stumble,
trip up fall on your face,
(Don't hold back)
You think it is time you get up fresh style
like a sit-up come on keep pace
(Don't hold back)
Put apprehension on the back burner,
let it sit, don't even get it lit,
(Don't hold back)
Get involved with the jam,
don't be a prick, hot chick
(Don't hold back)
The World
The World
The time has come to -
Push the button
The World
The time has come to -
Push the button
The World
The time has come to -
Push the button
The World
My finger is on the button
My finger is on the button
My finger is on the button
Push the button
The time has come to...
Galvanize
Deb brought up a Nelson Mandela quote, that I vaguely remembered. So I looked for it. Turns out he didn't say it, it's actually Marianne Williamson. But thank you for reminding me of it, it's great.
"Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate, but that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, handsome, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God within us. It is not just in some; it is in everyone. And, as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our fear, our presence automatically liberates others." - Marianne Williamson
With that quote in mind I'm going to put together a list for my 50's. Lists are so comforting. They're also very practical, because I tend to follow them and actually do things. Not that I accomplish everything, it's not all within my control of course, but I try, which staves off the loser feeling!
I belong to a city gym that has been closed for a few weeks while they renovate. It used to be called the Carmine Street gym, but they renamed it the Tony Dapolito Recreation Center, presumably after somebody really great named Tony Dapolito. (This is also the gym where the pool scene in Raging Bull was shot, I think.) I found this great photograph of the outdoor pool. I will go by and take a picture of what it looks like today.
When I stopped by and asked when they're re-opening I was told maybe Friday, but Summer hours will be in effect.
Here's what that means. Single adults (like, for instance, ME) may not use the gym between 9:30AM and 5:30PM, EVERY DAY because those are the summer "Family Hours."
They've always had something called family hours. I cannot be in the gym during family hours. I figured it's so that for a couple of hours a day they don't have to be on guard for possible predators. I don't know. I'm guessing. Families don't like to be around single people? It's annoying because kids don't use the parts of the gym I use. Can't they just restrict me from the pool and the basketball courts and other kid favorites? Whatever. I can live with compromise.
But all day every day?? That's just not fair. And really, why can't I be in the gym when children are in the gym? What is the reasoning behind it? Weekends, single people are okay, except for "Youth Weekends," and it doesn't say how many of those there will be.
I registered a complaint with the city. The operator asked me to categorize the complaint. I didn't know what to call it so I said, "discrimination against single adults." That's because I didn't think she'd accept, "unfair, bizarro behavior on the part of the Parks Department."
(Image c/o Global Graphica.)
Last night, on my way to Yankee Stadium, some very friendly visitors to New York asked me a question about the subway map.
"What's the difference between the dots with the white circles and the dots with the black circles?"
"I don't know. Where do you want to go?"
"86th street."
"You're fine."
Then, for a while, I was tortured worrying about them. What if the train doesn't stop at 86th Street?? Things are always changing around with the subway lines, and I usually walk everywhere. I'm not up on the current status of the subway. What if 86th Street is under construction??
Here's my problem. I take questions tourists ask me very, very seriously. Whether they're asking for directions, or suggestions about where to eat, shop, or walk around. I take it so seriously the minute they ask me I panic. Sometimes I just blank.
"Where did Carrie Bradshaw live?"
"Um ... it's ... close ..."
I live exactly one block away.
And they always ask me. Last night I was listening to my ipod on the subway platform. I must have looked like I was a million miles away, and still, of all the people on the platform, they asked me. They always do. I could be walking down the street a thousand miles per hour, with my sunglasses on, my ipod blaring, and still they will ignore everyone else and flag me down. I think it's because I look the least likely to hurt them. And they are right to ask me. I take it like it is my life's mission to help them. I must get them where they want to go. I must come up with the best restaurant.
Every once in a while when giving directions I realize a minute later that I got one part wrong. This is the worst. I've gone chasing after people to provide corrections, but I don't always find them and then I am in anguish, thinking they'll think that I got them lost on purpose, confirming all the bad things they've heard about New Yorkers.
This is a picture of me and the band I play with, the Manhattan Samba Group. It was taken yesterday. I'm the one in the glasses in front of the guy in the blue shirt. Playing in this band was one of my goals when I was 40. (Part II of that goal was to not be the dorkiest looking member of the band.)
What will I do with the next ten years, besides, hopefully, writing a best-seller? I love a list! But I'm sitting here at 8AM, and not a whole hell of a lot is jumping out at me, aside from "fall in love again," which pretty much goes without saying. I think I will put that in boldface. 1. Fall in love again.
I wish I had money like Warren Buffett or Bill Gates so I could dedicate the second half of my life to giving it away. Which reminds me. I have never been a regretful person. I've made mistakes, but I can always see the path to them and given who I am they were almost unavoidable and sometimes you have to make mistakes. But a couple of times lately, I've felt bad about not acting on a number of business ideas that went on to be VERY big businesses for others. I console myself with the fact that I'm not really a great business person and I probably would not have pulled them off. But what I'm wondering about is, why I am even thinking about any of this now?
I think because it reminds me of this. When I was in the 5th grade, I had this amazing teacher, Mr. Beeshaw. He was wonderfully encouraging and inspiring. And he loved music. He taught us some beautiful songs. He was trying to get the boys in the class to get into it, they always sang so quietly and timidly. One afternoon he had me sing a round with the boys in the class. It was a contest -- all the boys in the class vs Stacy. I think he picked me because I was the one person in the class who loved music as much as he did, and had no problem singing out. I was not shy.
They were losing. All the girls were cheering me, but I didn't have the heart to beat them. They looked so miserable and dejected. And scared. I started singing more quietly and when they felt themselves starting to win they got excited and then they finally started singing outloud and happily.
It should have been a happy ending. I didn't care about winning. I have a healthy ego, already loved music and now they did, too. But I couldn't shake the feeling that I had done the wrong thing for me. I feel that to this day. This business thing is kinda similar. It's not that I didn't "go for it." I go for it all the time, you can't go for them all. It's something else.
Maybe it's that I didn't chose the right things to go for? I'm just certain that I should have sung out as loud as I could and beaten all the boys in the class. I shouldn't have held back. FUCK. I know what it is. It was because it was the nice thing to do. Which is all very ... nice, but sometimes the nice thing to do for others is the wrong thing to do for yourself.
Maybe there's an element of holding back to my character that made me not successful at business. Or, maybe the only thing thing these things have in common then, is regret. You can't have it all. Maybe I should feel glad that there's so little in my life that I regret. (Of course, I could just be in very deep deep denial.)
Hell. I meant to make a list of things for my next ten years. Tomorrow.
What do YOU regret?
I watched this really bad, kinda ugly, reality TV show. I can't remember the name, but it had the words "America" and "talent" in it. I'll never watch it again, but there was a ventriloquist act that kinda blew my mind. You know how in dubbed, Japanese B movies the dubbing never matches the lips? The guy, Kevin Johnson, does a thing based on that called Godzilla Theatre.
I found a clip of him doing it, although it's not as breathtaking on this little internet clip as it was on the TV the other night. But you can get an idea. It was really quite stunning, though. Plus, Kevin Johnson is quite endearing in the act.
This is Kevin, Clyde and Matilda.
My favorite just-plain-fun TV show is Big Brother, and it just started up for the summer. God, I love this show. I always get the 24/7 feed--you can watch and listen to the people in the house bicker and plot, anytime of day or night via webcams. I participate in fan chats. I talk about it on Echo. It's insane how much I enjoy this. Right now 20 people from past seasons are vying for 12 spots in the house. I know only other Big Brother obsessed fans are going to care, but here are my choices, roughly in order:
Kayser, Will, Janelle, Nakomis, Howie, Lisa, Monica, Erika, Allison, James, Jase, Diane.
Meanwhile, a box of the paperback edition of my books arrived today!! They look great. I have to tell you it still blows my mind, to hold a book I wrote in my hands. It just feels all, "oh man, I did this. No way! Way! Way? Way!"
My brother Peter told me he has a vivid memory of me when we were children. We were outside, and I was coming around the side of the house carrying a kitten, while a turtle was following behind me, and a bird was trying to land on me. For some reason I could accept this except for the turtle, although I have always loved turtles, have written about turtles, and even have a series of photographs I took of turtles I found in a church garden in New York City.
The reason I wondered about it was because of the ability of a turtle to keep up. Peter agreed it was a very strange sight, but he remembers it clearly nonetheless. For him, the bird was the stranger part.
I found a quick moving turtle on YouTube, so maybe it's possible. This is Koopa from www.turtlekiss.com. I'm only telling this story because I find the Stacy as St. Francis image very flattering. I hope it's true. Maybe it's true. I've always had an intense love of animals. When I was young I was kept home a lot due to illness. So while everyone was out playing or at school, I befriended anything that moved. Including bugs. I love bugs. (Except spiders, cock roaches, especially flying cock roaches, and june bugs.) By the way, I learned that many writers were ill as children. It makes sense. Forced to stay home and live in their own heads.
Anyway, back to the adorable Koopa.
Tonight, I may or may not go to a summer sing of Brahms Requiem. (Summer sings are things choral people go to, so they can sing their favorite pieces while we're all on summer break.)
Brahms Requiem is a favorite of mine, as are all requiems. The first time I sang this though, was right after a cat of mine died, and yeah, a cat, but it devastated me. I was singing it again about six months later when my mother died. Usually requiems are redemptive, but because of the timing, this one reminds me of bad things you can't do anything about, and how some things suck no matter how you look at it.
This reminded me of a piece I wrote which was killed, alas, by the magazine I was writing it for. It was about change. At the end I talk about a time in my life when I was spending most of my time sitting on my couch in a stupor. Something happened that just flattened me. Here's the part I like:
I would have been thrilled to change and end my suffering, but I didn’t have a clue about how to begin. So I just sat there, trying to watch television, with this ever present ache. Of all things, a TV movie about alien abduction called Taken came on, and the main character said, "We're all standing on the edge of a cliff. All the time, every day. A cliff we're all going over. Our choice isn't about that. Our choice is about whether we want to go kicking and screaming or whether we might want to open our eyes and our hearts to what happens once we start to fall." For the first time in months, the ache began to subside.
Sometime after my alien-abduction-TV-movie-epiphany, I was watching a rerun of Sex and the City. (I get all my best wisdom from TV, apparently.) At the end, Carrie Bradshaw comments about her imperfect, ever-changing life. "Maybe the best any of us can do is not quit, play the hand we’ve been given, and accessorize the outfit we’ve got."
It was time to get up off the couch. Don’t quit. Embrace the fall. And wear a nice outfit.
Ever since, whenever I feel bad, I just chant this over and over: don't quit/embrace the fall, don't quit/embrace the fall, don't quit/embrace the fall.
I bring this all up because sometimes it's hard to tell if singing Brahms Requiem is equivalent to laying on the couch in a stupor, or embracing the fall.
Yesterday was all about the parties. First I went to my friend Cricket's party. (Actually, before that, Jonathan and I saw The Omen, which wasn't very good.) Cricket works at the medical examiners office and she was having a going away party for one of her co-workers. I didn't take a lot of pictures there, but I got one of the doggie love of my life, Bean:
And the fabulous Cricket and the amazing Anne. This isn't the greatest shot of either, but I include it here as proof that yes, I do have friends and here are two of them:
This is Lawrence's tatoo, which is not finished, but it's of an autopsy and in it someone's about to get their skull removed. It pains me that my path in life didn't lead to the medical examiner's office. The work is SO interesting and I love the people.
Onto my very last birthday event -- my family came in from Long Island and Vermont to take me out to dinner. It was great, and such a pleasure to not be the one who has to take a train home at the end of the evening! This is my brother Douglas's family, Greg, Robin and Ellie:
Now, I must apologize to my brothers, but they were sitting closest to me and the angle was not flattering. For the record, my brothers are handsomer than the scrunched in faces you see in these pictures. This is my scrunched in brother Peter and his wife Karen and their son Chris. Hey, Karen's a little scrunched in here, too. Sorry Karen. Chris escaped the scrunched-in look.
This is Pete and Karen's daughter Nicole, with my father and step-mother Arlene (who have been married 30 years!):
And this is my scrunched in brother Douglas and my father. Actually, Doug doesn't look so much scrunched as totally drunk and tipped over. I swear he wasn't loaded. We're all probably too old and gray to be able to tell anymore, but my father and brothers all have light hair and eyes and coloring. I am SO adopted. Thanks family, for coming into the city and for the dinner and presents!!
Last night was the Loser's Lounge tribute to Abba, it was great. I'm going back again tonight, and it may not be too late to get tickets for tonight or tomorrow. Don't miss it!!
Here are pictures from previous shows. The middle one is my friend Lianne Smith.
We are putty in this kitten's paws. Bow before the sleepy kitty. (First seen on Cuteoverload, thank you Cuteoverload, then downloaded from YouTube, thank you YouTube and Catheroo. I got some writing done, but that's it so far on my to-do list. It was the most important though, so now I can goof off for a little while.)
- Write chapter.
- Work out (in new work-out outfit!).
- Get caught up in email and phone calls.
- Buy flowers and food.
- Go to this show at Aperture:
And this one at Steven Kasher:
Kiss these wonderful fur-piles:
I had breakfast with a couple of the detectives from the Cold Case Squad, Tommy Wray and Steve Kaplan. Steve wouldn't let me take his picture, the BIG BABY. Tommy Wray is retiring this week. Breaks my heart. And his. He doesn't really want to retire. Hopefully I'll get to write about why. The really sad part is he's retiring with the Christine Diefenbach case unsolved (this was one of the cold cases I wrote about -- Christine was a 14-year-old kid who was murdered in Queens almost 20 years ago now). Talk about heartbreak.
I love TV. I take enormous comfort from TV when characters like Calamity Jane from Deadwood says things like, "Everyday takes figuring out all over again how to fucking live." A-fucking-men, Jane. Thank you David Milch and Ted Mann for writing that. And Robin Weigert for a great delivery. And yay summer TV! Deadwood! 4400! And soon, Big Brother!
Meanwhile, I went to my second boxing class. Still love it, although my leg cramped up at one point and is sore today. The teacher had me hit him IN THE FACE and into pads he wore on his hands. That was fun because on him my punches must have felt like they were coming from a drunken gnat. I don't think it would be fun at all if I was hitting someone my own size. That said, I want to get good at this. [Update: it occurred to me later that it would also not be fun at all to be hit. Interesting that that image didn't occur to me when I first imagined it. I guess I see myself as always winning. Even though in life, I don't always win.]
Diane and Brian were married yesterday at St. John the Divine. My flash messed up when they came down aisle, and I didn't recover quickly enough. You can't see Brian. (I got to sit behind the choir! My favorite was a procession by Ludovico Grossi da Viadana which they sang at the beginning. I'd never heard anything by this composer before, but I'm not terribly knowledgeable about early music.)
Here is Brian later!
And my friends Tom, Cori and Jim. Isn't this a great shot?
And here's a freaking peacock that was outside the church! There's a picture of a peacock on the church's website, so apparently peacocks are a thing there. Hello peacock!
I started this journal -- and I got the idea from Oprah, God help me -- where I write down three things I accomplished each day, and three positive things from the day. The instructions where great. Oprah said something about how some days it's hard to find a positive thing and she'll make entries like, "saw a squirrel." So, here are some of my positive things from last year. You can tell when I was scraping bottom.
- my tooth fell out and down the drain, but the super retrieved it [it was a cap, actually].
- my new calculator works.
- a blizzard has begun.
- the Frick.
- MacDonald’s french fries.
- the water that Ruby gave me at the movies.
- the headless bride painting from Cricket.
- my newly replaced shower water filter.
- Bill Owens wrote me back [photographer I admire].
- Finney not being poisoned.
- The Half and Half is still good [oh man, what kind of sorry-ass day could I have been having when the fact that my Half and Half wasn't sour was the best thing I could think of that day??].
- Eye contact with the Mayor [Bloomberg, he spoke at an event that I performed at and totally checked me out].
- the pizza guys know me and usually give me a good slice.
- the cover of my book is up on Amazon!
- Deadwood.
- nobody I know died [really scrapping bottom that day].
- Naveen Andrews dancing.
- figuring out the higher level ipod shuffle.
- I could afford to pay my taxes.
- purring.
- New pjs, a quiet night, lovely breeze blowing in the scent from my candle. It’s like childhood with that nice long stretch of summer ahead.
- was able to give decent directions to three sets of tourists.
- Really nice visit with Dr. Shaler, love that guy.
- my tweezers are pink.
- Love love love love (to the infinity power) my new top, even Howard commented on it.
- Lovely lovely cruise up the East River, which is a tidal something or other, not a river, it turns out.
- Kim and Oscar Wilde people screaming for me [these are friends from a bookstore, I was drumming in a parade and they screamed out my name when I went by].
- It’s hard to remember after the fact three nice things so I’m going to let this one go, and just say: cats, cats, cats.
- Great idea from an editor at Ecco, I want to write this book BAD [and now I am!!].
- getting some medicine into Buddy without getting killed.
- Shaun of the Dead [this movie has appeared three times so far in my journal].
- Figured out Hark the Herald Angels descant.
- dinner didn’t suck [that's when I was in Durham and couldn't find a decent place to eat, I'm talking about a veggie burger from Burger King in this entry].
- people knowing my order at Burger King [I started going there a lot].
- Realizing I’ll be in good shape for my 50th birthday, at least I’ll have that [and I did!].
- Cats are totally eating [they were sick].
- Sean of the Dead [again! I don't know which spelling is correct].
- remembering how wonderful a good book is.
- the parking garage guys across the street carrying the machine up, yeah, I had to pay them, but just having someone there to pay was a godsend [I couldn't lift the computer Echo used to run on, much less carry it up five flights and no friends were around and I was STUCK so I was very happy].
Okay, now I'm back in the present. Today I'm going to the wedding of two people I met while volunteering at ground zero, Diane and Brian. Hopefully I will be back with pictures! I meant to buy a new dress so I'm not wearing the same dress I've worn to every warm weather event for the past three years (in fact there's a picture of me in it up on this blog), but I forgot. I'm a pretty girly-girl, I think and then I have these lapses. The wedding isn't until 2PM. Maybe I could go quick and get one before the wedding, if I didn't freaking live in we-don't-open-until-noon part of town, that is.
"Someday they're going to write a blues song just for fighters. It will be for a slow guitar, soft trumpet and a bell." - Sonny Liston
I enjoyed my boxing class so much the other night. Except after watching the instructor help someone who, unlike me, seemed to at least know how to fight a little, it was clear even to me that the instructor knew what he was doing. I had to ask him, "Why are you here, teaching people like me?" He said he used to train real fighters, but boxing was just too corrupt and he preferred what he was doing now. I remembered hearing that, that boxing was corrupt. Apparently I'm the last to know.
I just finished reading The Shame of Boxing by Jack Newfield. Good fucking lord in Heaven, what a heart breaking state of affairs.
It was written five years ago. Can anyone tell me if anything at all has been done? Has anything improved? I can't believe this goes on, everyone knows it, and it just continues?? I see that Senator John McCain has been making an effort to reform boxing. Where does it all stand?
I woke up dreaming some bizarre dream about Osama bin Laden, and helping the military catch him and then I saw the news about al-Zarqawi. The TV was on while I slept so the news must have penetrated my dreams. I wondered what kind of difference it would really make and my friend Jonathan rightly pointed out that it's going to be a boost to the military's morale, and it's certainly good for the people in Iraq. Then someone else disturbingly pointed out that clearly al-Zarqawi has enemies within Al Qaeda so we have only done their bidding.
Please forgive the juxtaposition, but meanwhile, I was an absolute failure at picture taking last night. This is the only one I like. From left to right: Jim's hand, Marianne, Rachel, and Ellen. The people you're not seeing because the pictures came out badly and they'd thank me for not posting them if they saw them: Liz, Max, Ruby, Ellen T., Lianne and Luce. Everyone is prettier than I managed to capture.
You know what? Turns out, 50 doesn't suck. I've been getting more smiles from men on the street in the past week. I think that's because:
1. I've been in a good mood and all smiley myself.
2. The gym. My whole posture and carriage is different. Here is me in one of my new birthday shirts.
Tonight I'm going out to dinner with some friends, to celebrate my birthday and my friend Ruby's birthday. I get to extend my birthday still one more day! Then I promise to stop talking about it and go on to other topics that might be of interest to people other than ME.
Like boxing. I took a boxing class, and I have to say I loved it. If anyone can recommend a good place where I can really learn to box, I'd be most grateful. It was the most exhausting workout I have ever had in my entire life. Good Lord, they make you work. But it was worth it to get to the boxing part.
I just remembered the 666 thing, due to a really bad review of The Omen, which called it unnecessary. That would kill me, if a reviewer called one of my books unnecessary.
Today is the last day of my extended birthday. What shall I do to start the 50's off right? And honor this symbolic day? I could bite Finney, who has nipped at me 60 thousand billion times. Look at this evil little face!
[From the Parapsychology Foundation.]
SEATS FOR THE JUNE 6TH LECTURE GOING FAST . . .
Walter Meyer zu Erpen of the Survival Research Institute of Canada will deliver his talk entitled Do Tables Tilt, Turn and Float? Table Levitation Phenomena, 1850-2006 on Tuesday, June 6th, 2006 at the New York Academy of Science in New York City as part of the Parapsychology Foundation's Perspectives Lecture Series. An historian and archivist by profession, Meyer zu Erpen has participated in a Spiritualist study group since 1998. The group has experienced strong psychokinetic phenomena in good light. Through video clips and still photographs, he will illustrate the history of physical phenomena in the seance room from the notorious 19th-century Italian medium Eusapia Palladino through the ingenious induction methods of Kenneth Batcheldor to the Hamilton Group and on to the group in which he sits, among others.
The New York Academy of Sciences is located at 2 East 63rd Street in New York City (just off Fifth). The lecture will start promptly at 7:00 p.m. The check-in desk at the back of the 4th Floor Meeting Room will open at 6:30 p.m. LAST MINUTE RESERVATIONS ARE BEING ACCEPTED. Call 212-628-1550 or e-mail to: office@parapsychology.org to reserve. Donation is $15 at the door ($13 for Psychic Explorers Club Members). For more information on both of these lectures, and how to get to the lecture hall, go to the following website address: http://www.parapsychology.org/dynamic/050200.html.
Although many are disappointing, they're so quaint in their fakeness, I love photographs of the paranormal. These are of British medium Colin Evans, and they were taken in 1938 with infrared film. It's not obvious to me how he's doing it!
I was worried that going on and on about my birthday was going to make everyone want kill me, but now I'm glad I did. I woke up to all this nice email, and comments here, and an IM from the guy I had fallen in love with bigtime, but it didn't work out alas, in fact, he broke my heart worse than ANYONE EVER, but apparently I'm doomed to love the guy until the day I die (typical, right?) because it was nice to wake up to an IM showing he remembered and was thinking of me. (No need to point out I'm a loser. I KNOW.)
I go to the gym and come back and my best friends on Echo completely surprised me with a gift!! I had recently re-discovered these pearl stud earrings my sister-in-law Karen picked out for me and I was wearing them everyday, I loved them so much. Then I lost one down the shower drain. I unscrewed the whole thing, checked the trap but it was GONE. I couldn't believe it! I was so forlorn. But my first gift of the day was a new set of pearl earrings from my Echo friends!!
See!! (Sorta!!)
Then, I went to meet my friends Emily and Clive's new baby Gabriel (who of course was gorgeous, and if you saw Emily and Clive you'd be like, "yeah, well, of course they have a beautiful child, hello"), and they had cake and raspberries waiting for me!! So this amazing chocolate cake was the first thing I ate today.
More to come ...
4:39PM
I've been opening up cards and email. I love it! Thank you everyone who sent me cards and email. My plan was to go a couple of galleries and maybe to MOMA. Forget MOMA. But now I'm feeling too lazy to go the galleries. But if I don't, all I will have done for my birthday is SHOP.
Which reminds me, I went to get a new pair of my favorite brand of jeans and I went down to size 0. ZERO. Happy birthday, Stacy!!
4:50PM
I just realized I can use my isight camera to get another picture of my earrings, and less blurry.
4:57PM
Ohmygod. Mr. Worst-Heart-Break-EVER sent me a generous gift! Sigh, sigh, sigh, sigh. Sigh to the infinity power.
5:16PM
Okay, the galleries all close at 6PM, so I am forced to extend my birthday until Tuesday, when they open again. I had already decided to extend it until tomorrow because Howard and I mutually agreed to change birthday dinner tonight to lunch tomorrow, because lunch is more fun.
5:51PM
Ohgod. I looked and I missed the boxing class I was considering, too. So, I ran out, got a fruit smoothie and a slice of pizza and for my birthday I'm going to watch the movie Shaun of the Dead, which I have already seen at least ten times, but apparently I will never tire of it, and I will laugh at all the jokes like I've never heard them before.
I have gifts to open! And I've got more coming because I have two birthday dinners coming up!! Here are the gifts I have left to open. The pile to the left are the gifts I gave myself. The SIZE ZERO jeans, and a couple of tshirts.
By Monday I should be normal. I swear. But today is the day that I talk about the fact that I still have no idea what I'm going to do tomorrow for my birthday. My favorite suggestion is "do something you've never done before or learn something new." I still like those ideas but the problem is, I have a lot of faults, but not doing things I want to do and not learning new things are not among them.
I was trying to think of a new place to explore for old archives. I love going through basements, attics, closets and old file cabinets that no one has looked in years or decades. My first real job after college was working as a photographer for the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. They let me look around there, and I found a collection of old glass plate negatives in a closet. No one knew they were there or what was on them, so I started making prints from them in my spare time. The best was a picture of Halley's Comet from 1910. Pictures of the comet from 1910 are, of course, the first pictures in existence. I gave all my copies away, damnit.
I found a picture of Einstein. I don't know who he is standing with. There were no records with the plates.
Compare that to a picture I took of M. K. V. Bappu of the India Institute of Astrophysics in Bangalore, standing with George Field, who was the director on the Center. I feel like one photographer in a long line of photographers who took pictures of visiting dignitaries. Note how the visitors look happier than the hosts.
Sadly, Bappu died unexpectedly on August 19, 1982, just a few days after his 50th birthday. Oh god.
Here's another print from that collection from the closet. I don't know who these men are or where this was taken. The scanner cut off a little on the right, but I'm too lazy to re-scan.
So, what to do, what to do. Things I'm mulling over:
- Find new place to explore (running out of time, this kind of thing takes preparation).
- Go to the drumming gigs.
- Ask Howard to lift my bed so I can go through what I've stored underneath. (I've got a bunch of stuff stored in the space underneath my platform bed, but I can't lift it myself to get it.)
- Go to a boxing class. Or, start learning a new language or a new instrument.
- Walk around the entire perimeter of Manhattan.
I can't think of anything else. It's official. I no longer have any imagination.
Last night I went drumming on the West Side Highway, across the street from the Hudson River. A practice I started although no one is this photo except the head of the band (Manhattan Samba) is aware of that.
I wrote about this two books ago. Actually, there's a nice synchronicity to me drumming last night. I learned to drum in response to turning 40. It was too loud to practice in my apartment so I would practice down by the river and annoy everyone there. (Most of them were very nice about it, especially the construction workers, which I wrote about. It was a sweet story.) One day I brought Ivo there to help me with patterns I was having trouble with. Now he holds classses there in the warmer months. It's so nice to drum outside.