everything old is new again...

new year's eve...a little over a week into official winterland and i am trying to resist the urge to hibernate...i imagine that if i locked myself away...with pen, paper, laptop and coffee brewing...that suddenly my eastern european roots...those of the suffering russian stock...would run through my veins...out my fingertips and i would be the next tolstoy or maybe pasternak...but this has not come to pass...mostly i would eat and get fat...because the russian stock would send me in search of bread...i would dream of lush pumpernickels and such...as 2012 closes i promise not to beat myself up so much...the stack of poetry rejections will not define who i am as a writer...certainly not as a person...maybe there will be a few unspoken resolutions..ones i know i may partially keep...such is human nature...as i catch a glimpse of my reflection in the window i wonder what i would look like...a russian writer 100 years ago...getting it all on paper while revolution swept like a blizzard around me...well, maybe the moment hasn't arrived for my inner-tolstoy...but i bet i'd rock one of those big russian hats...lara and anna karenina would have nothing on me...wishing you peace in 2013....

Death, be not proud...

as i sit and write, it would seem those mayans were wrong...or were they?...it has been a week of death, so to speak...an unfathomable tragedy at sandy hook elementary...which left those of us with no direct connection to the victims with a punch to the stomach and a catch in our throat...not with the personal task of a burial, a wake, a shiva...but then this week death started creeping from the perimeter...a lovely woman i have had the fortune of knowing from my writer's group lost her husband of many years to alzheimer's...i embraced her at shiva and saw her loss, her pain, and relief as well...her wish for his peace was answered, but what of her peace?...and then a funeral for a cousin, whom i had known so well as a boy, so much less as a man...a contemporary, born five weeks apart...sitting at his service and thinking about loss...what does it mean?...the eulogy and accounting of his life muffled by my memories of so long ago...the ones we try to grasp before they too are buried...memories of unspoken dreams of youth and sometimes in the pure bliss of having lived for the moment...i promised as i was handed the shovel graveside, battling a cold december wind, that death would never wrestle my memories...when it is my turn my soul will fly intact...floating with the unsung songs of all who went before me...

the root of the matter...

tuesday...the sun makes a return...i should be sitting at a large rectangular table at the old church in huntington...listening to stories, essays, prose, poetry and all in between...all delicious...served up by my fellow writers at the women's center...instead...i am seated in a dentist's chair...root canal...i am told the presentation of the roots, canals, etc. are unusual...rare...and i am laughing on the inside thinking what a waste...the unusual and rare in the base of some forlorn molar and not my head...the tooth is stubborn and i need many shots...i will probably drool till at least new year's...but i am not worried...even with hopes of being in the city a few times for the season i know that this look will allow me to blend in with the masses...really, does anyone flinch when they hear horror after horror...subway pushings, shootings in broad daylight...even lady liberty must want to put down that book and puke these days when she gets a gander at these masses...yearning to breathe!...yes, i'll move my lips with purpose editing my latest poem...drooling...smiling on the inside when the row of subway seats is given in haste to this mad poet...

We are such stuff as dreams are made on...

sleep...the curse of mid-life...we either get too little...or too much at the wrong times...or more precisely, find it easier to sleep at any time other than night...on a train (past your stop)...during a play...a movie...a sermon...through the last crucial 5 minutes of your favorite tv show...sometimes the very act of sleep becomes...well...tiring...because of dreams that leave you anything but rested...lately i have had vivid dreams...and i am the goddess of all creative in them...i create an amazing campaign slogan for a product...footnote...i am neither a copywriter or marketing exec...i am taking curtain calls while being showered in bouquets...ironic as i have not been involved in theater since freshman year of college...yet, when i sit to write...there is nothing...when did i slip into this parallel universe?...where are the poems?...and as i wait for creative divine intervention...you will have to forgive the kvetching stream of consciousness (or unconsciousness) of this blogger...sweet dreams...