Steve's Inspiring, Intriguing, Uplifting & Very Cool Movie Trailer

http://www.shiftingages.com/trailer.html

Say Wha?

PEMA: Oh yeah, I started a blog called "Park Bench Daily."

STEVE: You have a blog called PUNK BITCH DAILY ??!

Affair of the Heart

Street outside SHOE STORE
EVENING

SUZY and PEMA EXIT shoe store and WALK down the street.
They WAIT at the light.

PEMA: They were beautiful.

SUZY: They were very sexy.

PEMA: They were perfect! I miss them. I feel like fell in love with them.

SUZY: You fell in love with yourself in them.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I was thinking about Allen today. Each day of the two months and some that we dated, I coached/coaxed myself into being open, loving, focused on love rather than fear...of whatever neurosis du jour that clams me up. As a result, I was happy. I had a GREAT time with the guy. I really really liked him.

But after we stopped dating, it became clear all the ways he wasn't a good fit for me.

"So why did I like him so much?" myself asked myself.

I was pondering this a moment when my inner sensei said, "Ah, Grasshoppa, you fell in love with yourself when you were with him."

Write This Poem, Continued

Here's some more to go on. See also Nichol's comment from yesterday for more possibilities.

Words like money
Words like wine
If truth were currency
Would we be fine?

Would we be spent
by all your lyin'?
Would we be drowned
in all my cryin'?

Pennies in the palm
Grapes on the vine...


(...now you, my reading friends!)

Write This Poem...

Words like money
Words like wine


(drop me some lines. we'll finish it together.)

Eating Your Expectations

You know how when you've gotta do something important...like write or study, or have an important talk, you can think of a hundred other things to do before you do it? Worst of all these is the hunger. When all else fails, and all procrastinates are out of the way, in kicks the hunger.

Imagine my surprise, then, upon entering the reading room at the New York Public Library. Mind you, I've been romancing about this place since I was old enough to dream of books and broad tables, marble and storied ceilings, and pages turning in the collective quiet.

I'm here. I've passed the SWAT guys with machine guns at the front door (can you believe? now that's value placed on books), made a tour, used the ladies' room, and passed three posts of internal library security to enter this innermost chamber. I ogle, I saunter, I finally sit. I open my backpack, my books. Ready my pen. I'm full. Full of New York, full of anticipation, full of age. I'm ready.

It smells like bread baking in here. Are they piping it in? Warm, sweet bread.

Can they be serious?

My pen stares at my page, totally indifferent.

Is it coming from outside? No. It's a warm, inside scent. It's soft and inviting and not exactly dusty, more dusted, with honeydust. It is croissant-scent laced with the promise of marzipan.

The page yawns, blank. My pen looks up at me like a Basset hound.

I get up to ask the nice security man who checked my bag on the way in, "Does it always smell like this in here?" He looks vaguely like a Basset hound, too. He regales me with the charm and mystery of this daily, eternal scent. I picture parchment pages between aging leather bindings, on shelves of aromatic wood housed in beautiful marble with great care.

I return to my chair...heavy wood to match the table. Pen sidles up to paper.

No, it's Grandpa's homemade bread that would rise in a dark corner in its crock for hours till he baked it and we died and went to Heaven with every bite.

I'm in the New York Public Library. I'm a writer. An adult. I made it. I have time enough on my hands to be that. Do that. Be here.

I want a pastry.

Express Yourself

C/o your favorite Apple and mine.

Um, Foodstamps?

I'm standing at the corner of State and De La Guerra in Santa Barbara and a gold-rimmed Mercedes slides up. Inside, the driver in a sharp blazer and dashing turtleneck leans to his window to ask:

""'Scuze me, can you tell me where the welfare office is?"

Fed Back

I copied this into my journal on 9/15/07, from the NY Historical Museum guest book outside the "Chelsea Jeans" memorial, "Elegy in Dust." The exhibit is a store front of jeans and clothing, preserved in its post 9/11 state, colors gone gray with PILES of dust all over the racks, the floor, the clothing.

"9/11/07

Six years. I've seen many of the images before, but not for a long time. First reaction = sadness, a terrible, aching, naively unexpected sadness. However, that eventually gave way to anger--not the red hot anger of the folks in the photo telling Bin Laden they were coming to kick his butt, but a dull anger at us, for how we as a nation responded. Cynical people took these events and used them to accomplish unrelated goals. But we let them. The USA is still a democracy, crippled though it's been by the politics of the past several years. We get the leaders we deserve, and I so want to believe we deserve better."

Bob ____, NYC"

And another entry:

"We all need to STOP questioning the motives of our own country and GREAT leaders and remember that this was caused by those who WISH they have what we do.

N.Y.C. Atty!"

A Habit of Lists

Because I said I would, here are the quotes I copied from the 9/11 photos at the NY Historical Society exhibit. Days have passed between my being there and being here, and I thought for a few minutes that I might not post the quotes after all. Am I bombarding people with 9/11? But it strikes me over and over again that what I'm doing is healing. And others, from what I hear in response, are healing along with me by watching, listening to, or being a part of mine.

It's raining outside here in Santa Barbara. Land of the Maxfield Parrish sunlight and clouds, views and mountains, sky. It rained in NYC last week on 9/11. Interesting to me that out of two galleries of walls filled with 11" x 17" photos, the one that struck me the most was a simple cityscape, point of view looking down an EMPTY avenue, its even more distinguishing factor being the absolute clarity of sunlight the photo caught. That is the photo I got stuck in all those years ago, and that's where I've been walking around since.

Going back to NYC last week was the first time I "faced the music" so to speak. Went to the observances. Let my grief surface. Let myself be someone who grieves over this trauma. Before I returned, I was so interested in how it is we move on from grief. How it transforms us, and how we in turn transform. But being at the World Trade Center site, as the names were being read, as the rain was falling, across the water as the lights were shining upward into a black sky in remembrance, made me realize there is no hurry. There is no scramble to be fixed. Grief takes its slow steady time, unwinding like the coils of a snake languishing in sunlight, loathe to leave the rock that has been warming it. Grief transforms. We are changed by it. But first grief is grief. Its own spirit and will and breath. Before it moves through, it inhabits. The exquisite journey is to cohabitate.

"Not in our name."
"This is no time for cowboys." (Sign around the neck of a life-sized John Wayne cut-out.)
"The news makes me cry."
"Patriotism scares me."
"END WAR" (Written in block letters inside a ONE WAY sign.)
"PWPD/FD Meet Here - FLFD" (Written in the ash and dust on a van window.)

Names from some of the photos, that were on missing persons flyers:

Farah Jeudy
Antoine Jeudy
Mary Ortale
Peter Ortale
Barbara K. Olson
Melissa Vincent
Jonathan Ielpi
Deanna Galante
Patrick Sullivan
Tonyell McDae
Samantha and Lisa Egan
Jupiter Yamblen
Carlos Mario Munoz

Later, after the flyers that were captured in the photos were rained away, lists like this got compiled. A few phrases about each person, serving as a public memory.
www.september11victims.org/

Relationship Advice

From Jared's cousin's grandma:

"You know how people will tell you not to go to bed angry? That's a load of crap. You're gonna fight, get angry, get tired. You're gonna go to bed angry. The important thing is don't wake up angry."

If You Are Lucky

If you are lucky in this life
A window will appear on a battlefield between two armies

And when the soldiers look into the window
They don't see their enemies
They see themselves as children

And they stop fighting
And go home and go to sleep
When they wake up, the land is well again.


by Cameron Penny
(Cameron Penny was in 4th grade when he wrote this poem in 2001)

Kidnapped Baby Reclaimed

She has grown into a different little lady than we expected at birth. But she's ours.

And the gal's got legs! Stay tuned.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lrdp1CxtwEk

Disjointed Thought Buffet

I'm back from New York. For the first time, I'm having to transition back to Santa Barbara. Usually, even after coming back from a paradisical trip to Panama, I get home and am immediately acclimated. But not today. I keep hearing or seeing things that take me back to NYC. Today it was a distant screech that sounded like a braking subway train. Earlier it was the sound of sirens headed down State Street. Having a hard time materializing back on the West Coast.

Dream image last night:
Hummingbirds inside a tree. Scores of them, sitting on branches.

Saw Lisa's pictures tonight of vultures in Guatemala City, that took the same pose as the hummingbirds in the dream.

Dream image a few nights before:
Smoking a cigar or a pipe, the kind of thing you're not supposed to inhale.

Next day Lisa says she bought a pipe in Latin America and smoked it last night.

Mental lint indeed.

Art Juxtaposes Life

Subway Train Billboard #1:

"After 9/11, we were there.
Now a lot of us are sick. More may get sick later.
But it's not too late to get help for a current or future 9/11 illness.
...Free medical care or lost wages from New York State Workers Compensation."

Subway Train Billboard next to it:

www.donatelife.org

here is new york

The quotes below (Sept. 14 post) are from photos at the New York Historical Society photographic exhibit, "here is new york: remembering 9/11."

The photos are simply exhibited, no frames, 11" x 17" hanging on string with binder clips, filling all the wall space and strung above-head across the rooms as well. The exhibit covers two large galleries of space with photographs taken by scores of photographers at or in relation to 9/11.

They show survivors, rubble from the WTC, layers of dust, writing in the dust on windows of abandoned cars, emergency workers, onlookers, blast views, planes headed into the towers, jumpers, distressed onlookers, stunned, dust-covered survivors holding their foreheads in one hand and a water bottle in the other, the international sign for grief and disbelief--the hand over the mouth, missing flyers, impromptu memorials of candles and flowers and cardboard, butcher paper, chalk on the sidewalk overflowing with sentiments, shopkeepers and volunteers feeding emergency crews, prayer stations, revenge signs reading "Wanted Dead or Alive" with a picture of Bin Laden, a humvee squeezed onto an antique, tiny downtown street, more dust, papers scattered about a church graveyard, countless tears, that clear clear 9/11 sky, nyc concrete corridors every last person facing the direction of the smoke, watching in disbelief, subway stop memorials, people staying together, strangers in each others' arms, firemen holding hands on their way into the pile, kids' drawings, sisters and fathers and migrant workers and traders missing, blood, twisted metal, mettle, post-apocalyptic organization, blue sky....

I will post more of the quotes later.

Not Worth My Tit

The overarching theme in the 9/11 interviews I've lead this week: New Yorkers see the crushing need for peace more than anyone else. War is reiterating, on foreign soil, the death, destruction, fear and anguish that knocked the wind out of our nation on that day.

The more life we extinguish, the less ground we gain. The more death we espouse, the less distance we travel in healing our grief and, in so doing, the schisms of the world.

"Our grief is not a cry for war."
"We were born innosent and kind." (sic)
"One Love. People get ready."

Your Tat is not worth my Tit.

Backwards

In pajamas tired and dizzy. Traffic noise outside the first floor window.

Little cookies that come with the check.
Pasta with duck ragout
Artichoke calamari torte
Lemon Drop martini
Reading material: Life of Pi

Four camisoles
Three sweaters
Four cotton tops
One pair of jeans (vs. one jean, which would be, what, one leg of denim?)
No tax
$294.
Dept Store shopping at Zara.

Finally.
Comfort without bandaids.
After purchase of pair of shoes number !!!!FOUR!!!!
Ahh. Thank you God for sneakers.

Pickle stack art at the Old Town bar.
Lunch with NICO!
Yippee!

Farmer's market breakfast at 12:30pm.
Local grown honeycrisp apple and homemade oatmeal cookies.
Late start to the day.

Random factoid: Did you know that New Yorkers suffer 30% higher incidence of hearing loss than the rest of the country?

I said, DID YOU KNOW THAT NEW YORKERS SUFFER 30% HIGHER INCIDENCE OF HEARING LOSS THAN THE REST OF THE COUNTRY??

If You Come a Knockin'

Meet Sxip.

We love Sxip. LOVE SXIP.

YouTube Sxip Shirey.
Play this while you read. Do it now. You'll get a prize.

Sxip makes music.
Sxip tells stories.
All of which make you want to puke up your lunch for the sake of love.
Gut wrenching getting it everything that ever made sense and didn't love.
Sxip knows the art of olive oil.
Sxip is a circus composer.
When we met, Sxip shared a subterranean West Village apartment, shitting you not, the size of three small broom closets.
His roommate made intricate mechanical wings that crowded the place and they subleased the apt from a legendary drag queen who tricycled through Greenwich Village on inspired serenades.
Sxip was my FAVORITE first date ever.
It was a blind date of sorts, and we set out to find each other in the crowds of Bleecker Street. He started at the tea seller's and I started at the Italian pastry shop, and we were to find each other in the middle, I with my pink pastry box and he holding a tea pot.
Our first date was so good, and historical second dates so dismal, that instead of proposing a doomed second date, Sxip proposed another first. That was the second best first date ever.
Sxip is as bosom buddy as Tom Hanks and as musical master as Tom Waits. I know. You pause at that one. But just listen a while.
Listen to the velour of his voice and the flight of his stories, the lift of his love for the worlds he spins and the spaces where they land.
We love Sxip.

Show me the money and the milk and the honey.

9.11.07

S-H-A-I

A New York day is comprised of New York Minutes. Here are a few from today.

ACT I



I got FOUR HUGS!! Totally made my day.


ACT II

I met a guy named Shai. S-H-A-I, he said. I noticed him in Union Square, in his fine leather shoes and dress pants narrow enough at the ankle to make him look foreign. He had on a pressed white shirt and navy blues. Investment probably.

Now I have smudges on my glasses and I'm dizzy from the wine. Did I mention he is my type? Tall. Yep. Dark. Yep. Well groomed. Yuh-huh.

Shai was not shy. "Shai" means "present" or "gift" in Hebrew. And he meant to give me one. He kissed me at the wine bar. And if I allowed myself to think back to 20 minutes earlier, on a terraced step at Union Square, when, as we left, I thought, "Huh, walked up. Exchanged pleasantries. Laughed. And left the spot a generous 7 minutes later...looks like a lady-market up here and he just picked his produce," maybe I wouldn't have been surprised by that kiss. Nor by the suggestion we spend the two hours before my next interview at the W Hotel on the corner.


ACT III

I'm underground on my way to the interview. Did I mention how humid and hot it is? I'm sweating like I'm bleeding out my pores.The subway drummer helps ease my mood.

Not so small miracles, the train is air conditioned. A middle-aged white man (MAWM) in Gap jeans, fashionable Tee, wire rimmed glasses and headphones...is rapping.

Across the aisle, impeccably timed, a kid's arm is being tickled by a stranger's open newspaper. He responds.

MAWM: "Gonna kiss this bitch. Gonna hit this bitch."

KID: "That makes me itch."

Addicted

PEMA: He's such a handsome guy. And he's happy to see you, too.

REGINA: I know... the dog has a hard on 24/7!

PEMA: Maybe he was a Viagra puppy.

Day One

I'm in New York.
I used to live here.
9/11/01 was my second day of grad school.
I watched flames and smoke from a street corner near class.
Many students left soon after.
I didn't have an apartment yet.
But I stayed, realizing that I had prepared for this day so thoroughly that I sent one set of storage boxes to my parents in the Midwest, and the other to Suzy in California: In case I died, I didn't want my parents to have to wrap their heads around the evidence of a life lived creatively.
Being here was a dream realized.
There was no better place for me to be in the world.
Where would I go?
Eventually, the grad-school-in-NYC part of my life ended.
I've been back lots of times.
But I'm nervous now.
Because it's the first time since I lived here that I've allowed myself to feel the trauma of the events.
Don't act surprised. I'm a late bloomer.
And I had an iron cage around a tiny heart.
Since nearly losing it--and by losing it I mean comparing myself to homeless folks on the street and finding that maybe the only thing that separated us was charity--I started a slow return.
This visit is part of that return.

Organic

I walk into the Soj today to pick up lunch, and Leo the barrista's long dreadlocks are all shaved off!

PEMA: Your head looks great!

LEO: Thanks. ...My mom made it.

PEMA: She did??

LEO: Yeah.

PEMA: ...Oh... like... a long time ago.

LEO: Yeah.

Ann Gram

TANIA: Pema, do you know the Enneagram?

PEMA: Not intimately. More...down the couch.

Ex-hilarating

I met Allen on Match.com. Doofy pic for what turned out to be such a handsome guy, but his ad was funny and original. Got me engaged. Said something like "Choose your meta-ad," and he had five small ads in one, all clever and appealing...little bitta intellectual, whole lotta dork.

So last weekend, it's 2am, I can't sleep. I'm cruising Craigslist and I see "Choose the ad you like best - 34." I think, "Don't look at it Pema, it'll piss you off," when I realize, wait, I'm looking at the "Women Seeking Men" section. His ad wouldn't be here. So I look at it. Dude, it IS his ad, copied and pasted by a woman, and filled in to match her specifics. What are the chances of that?? Of me seeing that?

I did what any self-respecting dumpee would do. Assumed Allen's identity and wrote to her fawning over the fate of us meeting this way. We're meeting next weekend.

Just kidding. I did forward the ad to Allen, though.

Yes, I realize I may be an instrument in their fate.

Stupid Fuckers

Buttons and Biscuit are a lesbian couple I know trying to get pregnant. I know, you thought they were a jazz duo or a plantation lullaby. Nope. Just a couple trying to bake a bun.

They do run in accomplished circles, however. And they've been getting a few calls lately from straight friends that have turned up pregnant. Oopsy daisy style.

Buttons has her cycle down to a personal science. She can feel it when her womb so much as looks sideways at a pickle jar. So on her off days, Buttons is pretty pissed that her Ivy League astrophysicist type girlfriends can launch a rocket but can't for the life of them figure out how they got pregnant.

My Friends

…on the other hand, are CHATTY. Or in Tania’s case, chirpy.

In a heated discussion over the best seller, EAT PRAY LOVE (because it was 90 degrees in the house today), Ivonne defended in detail her disdain for the author’s “chirpy” and self-absorbed voice on topics as weighty as loneliness, depression and spirituality.

Tania, who loves this book, and whose tireless joy shames even the birds outside our windows, must retort.

TANIA: I don’t know how you stand ME being so chirpy.

IVONNE: You’re both chirpy AND substantive. A lot of people only want the chirpy.

My Lovers

Spring, 2002. Kira and I are walking down the street in NYC after voice class. I’m a little loopy and Kira’s asking why.

It’s because three days ago, this crush I harbored since day one of grad school suddenly stopped torturing me from afar, and started inviting me to her bed (i.e., torturing me in closer proximity).

See, I go for the dark, broody, withholding types. Chatty and open as I like to be, their reserve signals intensity, mystery, depth. Forget the guesswork I have to do, wondering where I fit in, how they feel, what they think of me…that’s like a dance and who doesn’t like a good dance? I’m three days into the thrall, all crickly and crackly in the electricity of it, ooey and lightheaded and deep into the secrecy…did I mention this is a secret? Too dazed by the sharp smack of her beauty to note that her less-than-forthcoming nature is working against me rather than for me.

But Kira’s not standing with me in the lobotomy line:

“Pema, just because she’s quiet doesn’t mean she’s mysterious. It could be she has nothing to say.”

Dinner

Dessert