we skipped the light fandango...

this morning I turned on the news...for which I, at first, sighed with relief...yes, we had power!!!...and then it was Mueller Monday...a little more than 9 months of 45's term and I am freakin' exhausted...it is relentless...turn off the media and then there's Mother Nature...pissed as all hell...and those musicians...those who would sing me to sleep...or croon to me in my car, literally keeping me from going insane driving on Long Island...well, they are all leaving for that great wide open...and now it is just about Halloween...and there is no movie, costume or creature that is scarier than Kim Jong Un and that haircut, and his sadistic rhetoric to match...and so I find myself digging in a bit...getting ready, like the proverbial bear, for hibernation...but that Procol Harum lyric has become an earworm..."we skipped the light fandango"...and I ponder the meaning...but realize how incredibly stoned the writer was and laugh...yep, laugh...cause whatever the hell it means, I know that as the DC fan spews shit on all of us for the next few months of Mueller Morsels...I know I want to skip that light fandango...do cartwheels across the floor...and I laugh once more till I see this week's Rolling Stone cover smiling at me from the coffee table...Tom Petty and those baby blues, and mocking grin...and those tears well up inside...trick or treat...as winter beckons...

Travels with my aunt...

I put on my lipstick...and there are tears...”you have to wear lips”...my late, dear Aunt Harriet’s voice in my head...memories flood my heart...my yearly summer visit...a week at Lake Carmel with my beloved cousin, Jennifer, and aunt and uncle...the daily adventures...the late afternoon chase in the car after that Good Humor truck...giggles way into the night...then, paintings at the MET...oh, yes...Harriet and art...paintings throughout her home...her beautiful oils of ballet, bullfights, portraits...then I am 15...and she takes me to my first ballet...Nureyev!...the music, the lights...the climbing in to our seats after the light are out...always late!...and all those wonderful, spirited discussions...with bagels...with chocolate...around tables...in my grandparent's house...in Vermont...in Florida...and of course, Montauk...she was so intelligent...the best sparring partner...she was one of the strongest people I ever knew...I do not know how she kept going when life hit her so hard...maybe, it was for the pure joy her grandchildren would give her...and for the love and life lesson she would give them...now if I pause...I can hear them all laughing and yelling around that table...Harriet...my dad...Sharyn...my dear Uncle "Boss" (Godfrey) and her beloved Nicole...all those giggles tossing the waves of Montauk...rest in peace and love...

heart of darkness...

I read the news today, oh boy...here we go again...you know how it goes...you turn on your phone...or the tv...and today's disaster du jour greets you...I'm beginning to hate my phone...and this new tragedy demands a response...in  a twitter second...sadly, we are a numb society...we try to put back pieces in rote movement...we hang on to our own sanity by very frayed threads...but this morning...my mind raced and kept going back to the same thought...how could one person be so evil...was he always like this...how did it remain so invisible to those around him...or was it there, underneath, too ugly and terrifying to confront...I truly believe that when we climb out of this cesspool of despair in Vegas...that it is imperative that we focus on the heroism of every day men and women...do not glorify evil but elevate the good...and when this becomes another horrible footnote in our new narrative...maybe it's time to examine...to carefully and quietly examine the heart of darkness of twenty-first century mankind...after all...if we do not find the root of this disease we surely cannot survive...and I want our survival to be that film that leaves me crying tears of hope...not some over-budget, bloated disaster burning a hole in my pocket and leaving me empty...and now as I prepare for a cavalcade of faces...those lost in an early October night raining bullets...I say for all of us...rest easy, the faithful departed...and viva Las Vegas...