Today – St. Patrick’s Day – against my own resolve, I dashed up to 45th Street and was lucky enough to cadge a ticket to see Glenda Jackson in Albee’s Three Tall Women, a dull American rumination on womanhood, death, greed, disappointment that ends with the lines ” .. You’ve got to keep battering your(…)
Had Vivien Leigh lived into her eighties, she would have looked like my friend Carol*** does at eighty-five. Carol, who grew up in Manhattan, with an Irish mother and Scottish father, who ran a boarding house on the Upper West Side, met me today at my corner so that we could lunch together. She carries(…)
Once the freshly washed laundry has been pulled from the washer and carried across the laundry room, it gets stuffed into a dryer. No big deal. Just now, though, as I loaded wet teal-blue sheets, underwear, dishtowels, socks, cloth table napkins and more, hand-over-fist, I gripped what felt like a scissors buried inside a twisted(…)
It seems that a few of our so called ’emotional supports’ and/or ’emotional comforts’ are turning into strangers; some with, some without, consent. Service peacocks, turkeys – out of the blue – (willy-nilly) just now forbidden on airplanes, on trains, cruise ships, in halfway houses, gyms. Also ‘under review’ for possible expulsion – ‘hedgehogs, ferrets, insects, rodents,(…)
For years the numbers 2*2 or 2*2*2*2 or numbers that are multiples of two brought me luck, often with my writing (sales, translations, a prize …) or with safe travel, and in other arenas. They still do. The origin of this superstition: James Joyce’s birthday – 2/2 – the publication of Ulysses – 2/2/1922 –(…)
“Was I sleeping while the others suffered? Am I sleeping now? Tomorrow, when I wake, or think I do, what shall I say of today? That with Estragon, my friend, at this place, until fall of night, I waited for Godot?” [from Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett] [- see visual -Barry McGovern as Vladimir(…)
Needing cash, on a “bible-black” night (to borrow Dylan Thomas’ phrase) I veered to the right off 9th Avenue into my local (open-round-the-clock) Gristedes Super Market. Along the path to onions and avocados, a fee-less ATM machine. Password tapped, grinding of gears, out fluttered crisp bills (a pack of $20s) that I swept up, thick(…)
[- Jan Steen, “The Sick Woman” 1665 -] I never get sick. I’d be the first to tell you that. But then, once in a blue moon, I do. Like now. Throat closed, frogs voice, sweaty, hot/cold, achy, sleepy, sleeping, sleepish. Sheets damp, new sheets, damp sheets. Its been this way for a week while,(…)
Dear Lily, The memory of our long day together in 2009 in Athens remains lodged in my viscera. Though I’m not one for remembering dates, or years, or who wore what when, as you are/were, I am certain of the date because – after thirty-nine consecutive years of friendship – I never saw you alive(…)
Your downy head against my cheek, your toasty bottom resting in the palm of my hand while your miniature fist surrounds my index finger all morning, all afternoon, until night falls face down across Los Angeles. Then, into evening. Awake. Asleep. Sometimes in between. A choo-choo train of gas toots, a tremulous sigh, your grip(…)
