Saturday, January 01, 2005

Despite the fact that I was shadowed for a long while by the man in the gold lamé jacket, I had a fine time at the biannual Kootsie Ball. I directed a small group of revelers to follow me towards the what I thought was an onion filled with go-go dancers in one of the Statler ballrooms to discover that, at the striking, it was filled with those cheeseball mylar balloons so prevalent at the checkout stations of grocery stores everywhere. Where were the go-go-goers.
Liz bought me a stiff scotch that sent all party wheels into turbo. The man in the gold jacket finally left me alone but kept lurking in the shadows, waiting for a moment when he might pounce. yipes.
Been making and receiving the requisite hi and happy new year to you messages, the touchstone of a new year being making contact to check in to see how is it, how was it, how will it be.
All for now and off to the resolution of making art.

Love Now.

Friday, December 31, 2004

Soul Train hits from '72 right now, a throwback to all the AM band songs from my kid room as I read novels or played Barbies. For this in the car in the Middling City it's AM 1400, same. Last night, en route to a Lackawanna-based restaurant specializing in what's so Island, looked to the left while waiting for a red light and there was a most perfect sight - something I've been looking for, a blend of industrial and living, a lit plant of some sort at the end of a street. Kind of like the wooden grain elevator that Catherine Parker brought me to one wintry afternoon, at the end of Koons Avenue along the tracks. Speaking of tracks, went with one Jim Fitzgerald of the Shiny Apple and Kennedy to the MC's fading Central Terminal where tracks are laid and trains don't stop. According to the footprints in the snow there are plenty of men who go into the terminal and when I stuck my head into an inky hole I heard water running running running. This is the joint where Spencer Tunick had several MC denizens drop their clothing and stand in the main lobby as if. So while Fitzgerald is admiring the decrepitude, a sheriff department helicopter flutters overhead and I start to thinking they're going to tell us to move along, get away from the expensive new chainlink surrounding the place. They hovered in ovals and then finally left. I have heard from a reliable source that they were looking for - and did ultimately locate - a missing person. Actually, a missing body at that point. The body had ingested a bunch of meds and meandered into the snow when it was ferocious. Helicopter brought back the September memory in Shiny Apple when Bush was in town and there was much surveilling and reshuffling of pedestrians.
In a short while it is a new year.
Happy. New. Year. Good bye to a year of tumult, change, challenge, newness.

Love changes, train changes.

Wednesday, December 29, 2004

Perusing a magazine that gives nature mad props mere moments ago I learnt a few fun facts that I must now share with You:
1. wolves/dogs have 25% more sniffing cells than humans - mag said sniffing cells, I did not.
2. wolves travel in packs that number approximately, according to my calcs, 15 members.
3. writing for nature mad prop mags reads sort of treacly.

In direct contrast to the hard-hitting piece I'm in throes of writing for the Shiny Happy Mag - You know, the one on televised Let-us-decorate-all-swoony-shows. Whilst on an errand ran into a person I know who shall not forthwith be named. She asked about my writing. Funny you should ask, I began. I tell her theme. She confesses that she is one of the bazillions who are addicted to these shows. As she tells me this fun fact a man next to her reveals that his wife is of these masses. Now they are part of The Story.

This is what art is: you begin, make, art becomes what it wishes to be and suddenly you are along on its ride as you ride it to the deadline's sundowny and rosey finish line.

Lines around Love.

Monday, December 27, 2004

Let us discuss something Perfectly timely and necessary to boot.
It is that time, that time that crushes us, when we must think of our resolution, our plan of attack, our modus operandi, for the new year.
This is not some frivolous gesture but, I propose, a chance to secretly or not so secretly indulge a desire to acquire a skill, a new thing, a new outlook.
So last year Yours Truly opted for this rez:
TRAVEL MORE.
And, ferfucksakes, I did.
Now. This year.
MAKE MORE ART.
Art can easily slip to the bottom of the to-do pile and Yours Truly is a Happiest Yours Truly when art is slipping forth with not only abandon but with regularity.
MORE ART.
Managed to squeeze much time in for the onslaught of travelling others, in keeping with the theme of wind in the hair, etc.
Turned Justy on to the favoured near-airport joint, Jim's. A place of bad coffee by the jug, truckers lugging small shaving kits and towels, the domain of the silver naked lady (this should conjure Westerberg).
Regarding new(er) music bought some Stevie to put my money where my heart is. And Le Tigre who found themselves on a mixCD by another and now it spins merrily.
And more.
And now time to work upon the next installation of wise words emanating forth from Yours Truly for the Shiny Happy Mag.

Magpies of Love.