look back in anger

i close my eyes...and dream of november 9th...please let this nightmare be over already...make america great again...i'm with her...both slogans offend me...as a writer...really?...this is the best money can buy these days?...but seriously...last night the third and final debate...hallelujah...as i watched the great pumpkin vs. sisterhood of the traveling pantsuits...i began to boil...these are the days of uncivil discourse...style over substance...and the world is watching...and we are watching but not listening...because we are numb...and guilty...because this is not the worst of it...what passes for senators, congressmen, legislators, and yes, now in nassau, county executives is appalling...so few really grasping the meaning and intent of serving their constituents...so go ahead and read the facebook posts ad nauseum...line your wastebaskets with endless campaign mail...mute the tv commercials...as for me, i'm dreaming of peter finch...crazed and ranting..."i'm mad as hell and i'm not going to take this anymore"...i reach for the window latch and pause...cause really, who the hell would listen these days?...

cause i gotta have faith...

it is that time of year again...baseball playoffs in the distance...football stats mounting...and brisket...rosh hashonah...days of awe...yom kippur...hours of atonement...they loom as summer ends...then fly by...but faith is that elusive feeling deep within...and i have to admit that i am green with envy when i see those so sure and steady in their belief...because for me it has always been much like the ocean...ebb and flow...rocky and tranquil...dark, then luminous...and so much emotion tied to memory...and family...and joyous dinners in tight places...and then to all who are gone...no longer at the table...i think ultimately, for me, my faith is not really within temple walls...although there is sweetness in prayer and peace in the silence...for me it is in the writing...and the determination to share memories...feelings...of what came before and where i wish we could be in this lifetime...and so i will grasp that this holy season...take it with me into the new year...wishing everyone reading l'shanah tovah...a sweet and happy new year...and yes, i really do want world peace...

leave it to cleaver...

september in the city...in our city...nyc...which for new yorkers is, and will always be the only city...we now live in the long and painful shadow of 9/11...and so like many people i was perplexed that last sunday the miss america organization chose that night for airing...albeit the talent competition...or lack thereof...was a welcome relief to the sadness that permeates that day every year...the baton twirler should have had flaming batons a la "miss congeniality"...yeah, that would have been fun...but what really opened my eyes was the question and answer segment...20 seconds to answer rather hard-hitting questions from celebrities (a stretch as some of them wouldn't even make the "d" list that "dancing with the stars" scrapes around)...and yet, they weren't awful in their 20 seconds...tanned, teased, taped and starving these young women made me shake my head...multi-million dollar matt lauer should have taken notes...the pretty boys on the left and barbie fox girls on the right also...november looms in the distance and we deserve better...from candidates and pundits and the media and ourselves too...and then there it was...while having dinner with friends thursday the news broke with the story of the man and his meat cleaver...and bedlam a block from penn station...my commuter hell hub as it were...but i didn't flinch this thursday... in the shadow of the lost towers i am numb...i just came up with the hope that police would be all over that hub...and i would get out of dodge...did you see that blur at the city line friday?...nah, it wasn't the road runner...it was bratton...leave it to cleaver...a farewell for bratton...from this beloved city...our big apple with insidious rotting at the core...

summer breeze...

sweet days of summer...the jasmine's in bloom...and the halloween decorations are out...santa will be schvitzing in aisle 13 before you blink...as labor day weekend bears down...and tropical storms with names we cannot, or do not care to pronounce swirl in the atlantic...there is a sadness underneath...one you almost think you brought on yourself...yeah, someone caught you peeking at the burgundy and other tempting earth-toned sweaters spread in display in 90 degree heat...and smelling pumpkin spice scented candles...yeah, you did that...you cheated on summer...the shortest, sweetest, sweatiest season...so much expectation in such a short time...and poof...although we all know warm air will swirl for several more weeks before that first early-morning-where-is-my-freaking-sweater moment...so, push back...hold on to bare feet and tall drinks...early morning coffee on a porch or terrace or outside table...inhale the bliss of emptying bottles of suntan lotion...walk the beach before sunset...hold it all in...all that heat...to melt the blues of booted feet in cold dirty slush on a faded january afternoon

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