Ritual or not

Skiing, like flying, changes my essence. I can soar down a mountain and I don't feel quite so mundanely human at that moment. I'm another species, and I've torn out of the mold of my daily routines and boxed spaces. My body is curving down gorgeously white slopes, and I'm singing to myself. The rhythm is just too good at those moments. It's at those times that I know that this life is so excruciatingly worth it. 

I spent today at home and slept in, slept off some booze and a jazz-filled first date, nursed the cramps that rock my body into submission. At least the timing is good. A Red Tent phase between my travels and work days and lovers. I call my grandmother who has severe Alzheimer's. She picks up and we have essentially the same conversation that we've had for the past year or more. But it never gets old because it's still her voice and we love each other ever more painfully and well, sometimes you find that you are a packaged little matrushka set of emotion. I'm the little doll inside my mother inside my grandmother inside my great-grandmother. Inside of me is a painful little empty space waiting for a doll I suppose. Thanks for the Cavity within, Woman-Maker in the Matel Sky Factory.

I should really be writing or something so this is a low-commital kinda start....

Vanilla Whipped Honey in the Twilight Zone

The sun doesn't really exist today. The sky is just an impenetrable white blur of snow and the snow comes down and sweeps over everything, a ghostly kind of snow. A ghost. 

Somewhat solution? Coffee as can be seen in the picture below, plus honey, plus brand spankin new chalk pastels with which I smudge happy colors onto whiteness. I look at a beautiful photo from Pelhourinho last summer and I draw. It's Carnival there right now, it's the white ghost of nothingness that keeps on giving here right now. 

Send me a serotonin boost or a flower...smile against the white 

unprecedented chill

The more I remember my melancholy imaginings of what this Chicago winter would be like, the sillier it seems. Ok, so I imagined it would be this poetic misery, me sitting alone in a cozy apartment, huddled over a laptop with a glass of wine with enough memories to pretend to be an old geezer writing her memoirs.

Except the problem is this: to get to the poetic, the sweet nostalgic poetic, you have to get past the misery. And the misery my friends, the frigidity that covers the Chicago streets and penetrates the soul, is awfully hard to get past. You have to cross a frozen Styx to get to a place where you can have enough hope to express yourself.

Misery. Misery. Misery. 

Self-delve

I'm not even remotely afraid of jumping into my own psyche. I'm a psyche-bungy jumper and have been since childhood. I will talk about the deepest, most seemingly embarrassing crevices of my mind and honestly, I just don't mind swimming through my id. An id scuba diver. Yes, I happily, enjoyably, speak Idish.

I know this is a language that for many seems too appallingly private. Why strip it all away and stand so naked in front of the planet? I'm an Id Nudist and I'm proud.

How can one write poetry or anything in which one strips for the reader, without being an Id Exhibitionist? I think this is simply part of the process. I yearn for the social mirror and damn it, don't we all seek a bit of this freedom where artifice is stripped to reveal the mess below?

I was in NYC all weekend. It's a kind of delving into friends that I adore and haven't seen in far too long, and yes there was a guy, a lovely one. The streets of New York, always magical, grumbling, full of possibility especially when the heart wanders, filled me with hope and excitement. I've never seen New York under so much snow. It was a mess but it doesn't matter, it's the same fantastic city full of every kind of person in every kind of establishment on every corner. I even heard a Carioca singing in a bar. Her voice was beautiful, I could tell almost immediately from her pronunciation that she was from Rio. I went to the New Museum for the first time and it was a little breathtaking. I saw an adorably painful play with Ethan Hawke about American middle-of-no-where blue collar family psychological dysfunction. Dysfunction and gaudy couches and too many phony kodaks on the walls. I reveled in my old friends. I felt a little overwhelmed because it never feels like there is enough time for the best moments in life. Moments need to be rewound, extended, slow-mo'd.

I had conversations that scurried and galloped into an enjoyment so high pitched it was excruciating. It was excruciating because I knew I couldn't put it in my pocket and bring it back out any time. Bring it back into my life...because some things are not portable. My old friends. A lovely guy who didn't turn out to be receptive to my openly emotional scuba world. Despite the conversation bliss. Or the clearly yearning kiss. A bit disappointing, this. Mermen welcome and wanted.

Life is a pale bitch sometimes. A scrawny bitch with dirty fingernails who scrapes your chalkboard and laughs like a mean little demon. Sometimes you have to wait for that bitch to shut it. You drink some wine, you get all artsy fartsy and try to write, draw, think your way out of it to some higher Platonic existence. Get me out of the fucking cave, already. Please?

Hope for the hopeful

Thank goodness for my eyes. I can see. And my fingers with which I type.
And my mind, my mind best of all with which fine words I write
thrilling sights I see
happy soul can be

Placing the placeless

Well December was eaten up by the country of Israel. A place so incredible and always so dear to my heart. I belong there, if I belong any where, if belonging has anything to do with looks and genes and the rage of jewish mothers.

I miss it again already. Like a brother, Israel is my brother - it is the most fraternity I feel for any particular nation of people.

My wandering heart, as usual, is torn by the people I have loved and love all over the globe. My heart has a map inside it, a spinning wheel of places that matter and sting with emotion, like a jeopardy wheel - who will I feel and think of next? Spin it. Not just places but faces that in themselves are placeless except that we all belong together, my virtual community of dear ones.

Moonlit nights in Jerusalem on the back of a motorcycle...I'm holding tight. I'm holding tight in my head.

I'm back in Chicago (a little over a week now,) where I have my own beautiful apartment and completely autonomous life. I feel a split inside myself...I'm opening the house of my soul up and letting a crying little girl walk out. The little girl has been fighting with her mother since she could speak. The little girl has been crying since she could make tears and screams and casualties inside her mind. It's time to love her. It's time to calm her down and let her play and enjoy being a cute little girl. I love kids and my inner kid, I definitely love my inner kid. Time to forgive my mom for thinking that little girl was less than awesome...it's that tiny, pained, dazed little fighter inside of me who still gives me much of my strength and insight.

There was a point when we were walking through several thousand year old ruins in the North of Israel that it became clear that I simply can't take it any more. Maybe this was the problem: I was used to heart break since childhood. My mom was always my heartbreaker. That's just how I saw and felt it for many years. I could never be good enough, I could never line up inside those blurry dotted lines, wherever they were. Mirror mirror on the wall, love me. Implicitly, heart break was normal. Not just heart break but the breaking of myself into little insufferable pieces. Painful little shards that just yearned to form a whole. Whole
some
of us are luckier than others. But in the end the power is in the hands of those who take it.

raining in Chicago

I've been dreading the winter for a while. About a day ago I finally pulled my thick Northface out of the closet, it's so well padded you don't need much else until it truly freezes and Chicago becomes tundraland.
I've been traveling a good bit around the US in the past few weeks - a lovely trip to New Orleans followed by Thanksgiving in Miami. I meet so many interesting people when I travel, even if it's in the US and New Orleans turned out to be such a spectacular city. I visited the above ground tombs, (Nicholas Cage already has a giant pyramid sized tomb waiting for him it turns out, talk about delusion of penile grandeur) a voodoo temple where the priestess actually hugged me, drank in the jazz that flows as freely as the booze there.... I met Tim Robbins, that was quite a silly celebrity encounter in a jazz club. I also met an adorable Canadian. I was there for a conference and made some interesting contacts...all in all as perfect as a trip gets.
Now just a little more coursework and writing/revising to get through before I'm free for December in Israel. How lovely that will be!
I feel that I have been pushed around like some imperfect little drudge in a program for genius wannabes. I'm done wannabe-ing, I'm just gonna do and be and I'm going to follow my own damn path.
I have listened to too many self-satisfied white haired men in hefty positions with big books that bear their names. Too many self-applauding people in my life, cyclically, telling me what to do and who to be. Fit me into this box, looks kinda coffin-like that's funny. This supposed drone is no one's clone she owns her cell-f like it or not. I'm falling asleep, I'm dreaming of all the wonderful places I'll go, the beautiful people in my life, the sunshine that will touch my skin in days to come.