cliff notes for life...

so there we were...the wonderful women of my writers group...on a hot tuesday morning...lamenting the lack of real reading in schools these days...handouts not books...abbreviation over interpretation...and as it were, all things that hold our attention longer than the millisecond it takes to tweet...or post...or snap...time moves faster...our losses multiply...are paraded on social media for impersonal empathy...and then buried deep...i joked that it's almost like cliff notes for life...should we really sweat the small stuff...or even big stuff...when it will be something so easily forgotten in the time it takes to microwave your morning java...but then i had to pause...and the sadness was real...some student this fall will read "the grapes of wrath"...in twenty-five snippets or less...the rapturous beauty of americana swept away like the dust bowl that roared almost a century ago...some school district will put that mad dane "hamlet" on a shelf while drilling common core or other standardized bullshit that no one will remember years from now...not like my memory of the passion and joy passed from my teachers...even during the lean budget years of the seventies in the city..."twas brillig, and the slithy toves. did gyre and gimble in the wabe"...i can still hear the delight in our recitation...close my ears and smell the textbooks...musty...heavy in my hands...ah, life is short enough...burn the cliff notes...bonfire of insanity

What I saw at the revolution...

week two of conventions...i am watching hillary's coronation while visiting dear cousins and my aunt in bernie country...there is a sad poignancy to that..cause probably the only thing mr. trump said months ago that resonated was how the system was rigged against bernie...Americans have torched the system this year...for better or worse...last week I kept thinking about how i wanted a beer at an indians game with kasich...i am not republican and as a woman many of his policies leave me boiling mad...but through the circus of this year there was a decency about how he ran things...as was with bernie...so the best i can do is breathe in the green mountain air...listen to those speeches crafted by a multitude of ghost writers...look for a glimpse of passion and hope from both sides...ivanka on the right...cory on the left...and maybe all of us writing our future in between...

i can't breathe

it's the beginning of july...unofficial first heat wave...lack of deodorant on the subways...no air conditioning in the stations...and i can't breathe...isis is shitting on the world...america is a powder keg about to blow...police shooting civilians...civilians shooting police...in one of the most gun-friendly states...food for thought...but mostly just profound sadness...when i close my eyes...i am a child again...no social media...no immediacy...sanitized news for the most part...the newspaper or walter cronkite...black and white...but the images...the riots...the anger...it remains to this day indelible...and it haunts me these days...and ironically i am craving that black and white set...i don't want a minute by minute update on my phone...i don't want to read the tweets of celebrities who need to crack a book once in a while...and listen to something other than the sound of their own voices...politicians...who need to self-edit and rethink their hiring process...i want the assault on my senses to stop...want to put this country on pause...we are so efficiently doing the job for terrorists...pointing the gun, as it were, at our own heads...maybe this weekend...turn it all off...hug your family and friends...and pray to whatever it is you hold most sacred and holy...pray that you can rise above this...that we can rise above this...so that we can breathe

it's the bitch of living...

i have decided that i should not be afraid of the zika virus...because i have used the women's bathroom at penn station...and i am still breathing...although, i am still trying to shake the image of various homeless women and their life's belongings in carts...and trying to erase the sound of the woman screaming in the booth next to me from my memory chip...although it could have been a lirr commuter rejoicing in the fact that a truck didn't hit a queens overpass at 430pm, that a distracted soccer mom didn't run a crossing at 3pm, and that someone did not feel a track in suffolk was a great place to check out...ah, penn...east side...west side...pee around the town...welcome to new york...de blasio's new york...or as i now refer to it...urinetown...the new york post...i cannot really call it a newspaper...it is really required reading at trump university...however, when they published pictures last week of various people peeing into subway tracks...parks...streets...well, i thought there's hope for you yet...someone needs to blow the lid off this bullshit...because the city council approved easing punishment for public urination...littering...and other "little things"...those little things that impinge on daily quality of life...whatever quality is left...and now...2016...well, you need rain boots and an oxygen mask to walk the streets...before bed last night i caught a story about a poor woman walking on the east side...6pm...a man came behind her and shoved a bag of shit down her pants...i just can't...the pretenders had it...just not ohio...i went back to new york...but my city was gone...watch where you walk out there...although it just may be the tracks of my tears...

prose like a butterfly, blog like a bee...

and so the poetry spouting beloved boxer is gone...supreme athlete...poet if you didn't know it...american...muslim...conscientious objector (look that up if it's before your time)...husband (several times)...father (of nine!)...muhammad ali...finally succumbing to parkinson's...the ultimate price he paid for his prowess...the mighty are falling...the musicians...actors...writers...and so many who have shaped the worlds we have lived in...but tell me...what athletes today would truly defy status quo...be so eloquent in the shadows of a beautifully violent sport...can you imagine coming home with olympic gold...and not being able to sit down to eat and celebrate where you wanted?...we have come so far...or so they say...how can so many sing his praises...post pictures of his face...and hate who he was at the same time...and here i am railing against the machine...because i am not painting pictures with poetry here...no, this blog is for the day to day...the tedious...the nuance...the things that hurt...and anger...and sometimes if i am lucky...the fleeting moments that sing me to sleep...and so tonight i am hoping that muhammed ali's soul is drifting peacefully to a better place...where he is loved and admired for all that he was...the messy imperfection that is the human soul...and for that we say...amen

sisterhood of the tan pants

last night at dinner with friends the conversation went to clothes...and the dismay over favorite pants that don't fit...did the cleaners shrink the pants?...would they shrink them if i cheated on them and took up with another dry cleaner?...was it the winter?...age?...the case of pinot and cookies?...i laughed inside...because this seems to be a ying yang constant for me...my body is wreaking havoc on my soul...and self image...the scale is up and down faster than the latest roller coaster...the fine art of camouflage is useless in summer...i give up...and so back to dinner...there is shorthand that exists between dear friends...the shared angst of aging parents...and the emptiness for parents who are gone...the worry over children and nieces and nephews...what kind of world are we handing over to them...and the disbelief over how much time has gone by...how many shared meals and stories...and as i thought about this only one thing remained...fuck the pants...i don't care what size they are as long as these "mamashanas" will be there...and as long as we can bitch and laugh together...there will always be this sisterhood...searching for the perfect tan pants!

pie, with a side of life...

yesterday, i saw the new broadway musical, "waitress"...and if it weren't for a little show called "hamilton", then this would be the musical announced again and again tony-time...quite wonderful...when i had read way back about the musical adaptation of the movie i was very excited...and yet, the quirky independent film...the vision and artistic achievement of the equally quirky adrienne shelly...always brings tears to my eyes...her brutal murder, which was at first thought a suicide...and most definitely not...her movie...writer, director, co-star...would open to raves at sundance...and she would never live to see it...artistically, i am sure her talent would have soared further...but her little girl...the beautiful cherub as lulu in the movie...robbed of her mother so young...and so, as i watched this version...i felt tears well up...yes, for jesse mueller's soaring voice...sara bareilles' haunting and uplifting score...diane paulus'  beautiful interpretation of at times funny, but mostly very serious subject matter...no they welled up for ms. shelly...her delectable pie of a film...and for the life she should have tasted