Well, since my last epinw blogging I turned 40 and before that, the day before, to be très specific, John Lennon's birthday happened.
There was an ultra-fab party tossed in my honor and held at Big Orbit Gallery on John's b-day. While I was talking to some guests I began noting that the artwork on the walls was made by Yours Truly. I looked all around the white walls. All me. It was shocking, a gigantic surprise, a retrospective of sorts. And, as I described to members of Janet Reno Fan Club last night over dinner, like being in a room with several of one's past lovers. Intense. Self-reflexive. And so much more.
To the party I wore a Peach Berserk dress from TO, given to me by an MIA older friend, Marilyn. I have my theory that this very dress is what got the ol' divorce ball rolling in her life: her husband Mark HATED that dress, forbade her to ever wear it again and she presented it to me in a shopping bag, bolero jacket and crinolines and backup dress all in there. What does it look like? An upside down psychedelic phantasmagoric yet somewhat vintage tulip.
During my hungover condition on the 10th, thee 40th b-day day, I had to drive out to my niece's grammar school with cake and soda and cups and the like. Why? Because I did same for nephew on his b-day, my niece and I share a b-day and her mom/my sister forgot to make cupcakes and my niece said That's OK, mom, Auntie will come to school... Auntie always saves the day.
With that kind of familial pressure I loaded me and my champagne-soaked brain into the Forester and trundled off to discover that the school had no idea that I was showing up, DMB shirt on and shopping bags in hands.
The office lady had to speak to the principal and this is where the story gets really interesting, how it illustrates my truest, authority-hating self.
I had to go into the principal's office and stand before him, seated at his desk. A fat and bald man wearing a cheap shirt who had apparently been doing nothing in his office. There was the overarching vibe of non-productivity in that office.
At one point I minorly snapped and said Look, I'm a really busy person. I just drove 45 minutes out here, am I going to get into my niece's classroom... or not? While he blopped off to see the office lady in her office area to give my sister a call I called her myself on her cell phone. Hi. The school doesn't know I am here, I said very very loudly. Mr. Fatso Principal came back into his office, where I was standing and talking. It's OK, go ahead, down the hall to the left, room 111.
For the love of Educational Gods, I didn't have a blanket and rope in my hands. What the fuck? They let teens with guns into schools and not aunts with cake.
For the record I dig being 40. It means being ever-more the real.
If you don't understand this you are too young to know.
I rest my middle-aged ass. I mean case.
Love.

"Lethal injection is now the dominant way Americans are executed. It is used in all 38 states that have the death penalty except Nebraska, which uses electrocution. In 10 states, prisoners may choose between lethal injection and a second method, including hanging, firing squad, electrocution and lethal gas."
- New York Times, 10/7/03, Adam Liptak story on how the fangled drugs hide suffering

Fucking firing squad?
But, this being a democracy and all, you do have a buffet of endgame choices post-last meal.
Give me Ol' Sparky
and give me Mort.
I am hardly willing to march with Susan Sarandon & Co. but do find the above one of the most abhorrent American things.
If pro-death penaltiers were regulars on the Middling City protest scene I would stop my car and verbally abuse them much like I do at anti-choicers in front of WomenServices on Main Street.
Thanks, NYT, for this evening's blog rant.
Justice Love.

Saw the historical epic Luther with Laura tonight, it starring Joseph Fiennes who at moments looks very much like my pal Justin, who called me moments ago in a tipsy condition as he wandered down a Brooklyn street.
So in the midst of the Luther cinematic experience I'm trying out my new analytical gradstudent skills (Benjamin, in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction: "While facing the camera he [the screen actor] knows that ultimately he wil face the public, the consumers who constitute the market. This market, where he offers not only his labor but also his whole self, his heart and soul, is beyond his reach." whew, there's some real gradhood for your perusal and edification. You're welcome.), transposing this Luther's story to that of MLutherK, Jr - that lusty nun at the end becomes Coretta Scott King and the men in geometric hats and capes straight out of the Catholic Church costume department represent the KKK and other American Apartheidists and civil rights marchers are peasants et al on Luther's team.

As I finally read the article that Pam sent me, concerned about me always, now I am terrified of eating tuna fish. Mercury. Memory. Mercury. Memory. What was I writing?
Love.

"What the tiger, along with a four- to five-foot reptile called a caiman, was doing inside a cluttered apartment in the Drew Hamilton Houses at Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard and 141st Street remained a mystery yesterday. In a news conference at the scene, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said the police became involved in the case on Wednesday when the apartment's resident, Antoine Yates, called to say he had been bitten by a pit bull. When the police went to investigate, Mr. Kelly said, Mr. Yates met them in the lobby. He went to Harlem Hospital with bites on an arm and a leg. On Thursday, the police got an anonymous tip saying a wild animal was somewhere in the city. On Friday, another call directed them to the exact address. On Friday night, the police found no one home, but talked to a neighbor who complained of large amounts of urine and a strong smell coming through the ceiling, Mr. Kelly said. The neighbor said her daughter had seen the tiger. Yesterday, the tiger's existence was confirmed. after a hole was cut in the apartment door."

First the Siegried and Roy tiger debacle yesterday, now this situation.
Coincidence? I think not.

Had a full-tilt art day this day what with being one of a group of featured artists at a benefit for Burchfield-Penney Art Center and think I sold one of the 13 Conflagration steel silkscreens. I gave one to Liz (sneaking it into her home during a party and installing it myself) and I don't know if I can bear to part with another. It's a syndrome following creating one-of-a-kind pieces.
After the BPAC benefit did another Penney-related, art activity: delivering work to rep myself for an upcoming show of Charles Rand Penney's massive art holdings. As a prop to us the gallery co-conspirators are having each of us sell/show more more more.
A new slogan to put in your car's tailpipe and smoke it:
MAKE EVERY DAY AN ART DAY.
So, at the art cocktail-fueled (read: turbo-powered) Albright-Knox Art Gallery, enjoying SCOTCH and a smattering of mixer, I was approached by several who wondered just what in hell has happened to my photo column WhatHasHappened. One person, a scholarly type who digs on gin, asked thee question and then complimented me on a piece I wrote for a mag about a Middling City landmark. Then he said Well, with your expertise and all and connections to the university I wondered if you might come by the building where I work and look at it and give your opinion about its architectural style.
This was one of those beautiful moments that my life seems to gather like hued pearls washing up on an autumn beach on a windswept night after a slight white wine buzz: a moment when Yours Truly is confronted with a slight dose of Surrealism and maintains composure.
He's explaining the building in great detail, inside and out.
Finally I said, in my most authoritative tone, the one which sort of propels me outside my self to regard myself somewhat incredulously, Well, I'll come by and take a look at it and tell you what I think.
What I think. Here's what I think. Lots. But I am more interested in snooping about the mysterious third floor he mentioned more than anything. Then maybe, if I get busted snooping, I'll mutter things like Ionic... Doric and some Late-Gothic flourishes over the obviously Sullivanesque Moorish touches of stately Republic lines, just to throw them off my course.
Actually now I'm on the prowl for a rickety old stage, with musty velvet curtain, for my video sequences.
During the man in the snippet's ramblings I was transported back to my days as a temp at an arch firm, when I'd eat a sandwich or something in the en plain air boardroom while paging my crumby fingers through catalogues of arch suppliers and other building-related bric-a-brac. How one time I thought I'd follow along that crafty path.
Moving, along.
Last night I told Kate (of Kate and Tom, The Apple Maker, fame) Well, Kate, you know you've had a good party when you end up with a two-foot skid mark across your hardwood floor.
I won't even ask you to guess who created said skid mark. Or to what internationally-renowned rock and roll band it happened. Or how many brazen femme dancers happened to be around in a circle when said skid mark occurred.
Most memorable, to date, post-party artifact of a party thrown by Yours Truly:
(in the famed Richmond Avenue house, where I was den mom and cruise director)
(a mere moment of many of that home's untold, screenplay-worthy tales)
From the basement, packed with oddities left behind by several, including the wacked Viet Nam Vet landlord, Ralph, I procured some antique lamp parts, including stands. One after-party-morning I discovered that one of my guests had lost a still-buttoned shirt cuff around a lamp stand.
The End.
Love.

Talked to one of my several editors today spouting forth a fab story idea. And if I tell YOU what it is howinhell do I know that I willn't be scooped.
Therefore a smoke screen:
The story for the glossyhappy mag is to do an in-depth profile of the several Middling City fluffers employed by the region's burgeoning porn industry.
Had a coffee break to the max with MQM, better known here as Marky Sparky, Boy Colleague. He bought me not one - but two - jumbo coffees and I am roasted.
Amongst other things we discussed music, the pending re-re-re-union of 10,000 Maniacs (according to Blair W better than ever + with a new vocalist to boot), the state of my grad studenthood, the state of the Middling City photo industry, our various hilarities and firings & hirings about town.
Good to the last drop, I thought nearly aloud as I just completed coffee number two, dripping the ultimate spec of it into my awaiting and exuberant self.
I must mention that Ryan Adams is a-playin over there to the east of the room and as always he's got my heart all wonky poetic.
Reading The Necessity for Ruins, collected essays by a JB Jackson, rec'd by The Man, JR. After reading from the online course's reading packet, an expensive amassment of xeroxes from copyright-cleared books, it's a fucking pleasure to read hard copy from a real soft book. Texture! No keystoned words floating into a binding's replication.
I remain.

So I'm a photo phly on the wall today in the 30th floor boardroom, actually not, as I had been Perfectly snapping photos all about said room and en route to the room, as the Canadian Ambassador to the USofA and the Canadian Consul Général are looking over the Middling Cityscape before them/us.
The latter is mentioning how the streets are designed for three times the population, that that's why there is never - ever! - a Middling City traffic jam. Then he points out the crumbling Deco train station to the east, trying to be architecturally uplifting. A small Canadian woman says Well... at least they aren't destroying it, tearing it down, yet.
So the Ambassador is being walked in to his next speaking engagment by former Congressman/Perfect Nancy buddy John LaFalce when LaFalce sees me in the front row. He marched Mr. Ambassador over, gave me a big hug and kiss and said Michael, THIS is Nancy...
Mr. Ambassador looked at me quizzically, maybe not so sure that I was one and the same as the boardroom silent gazer.
During his big talk in the former church owned by the Catholic College Mr. Ambassador quite deftly answered the former Congressman's question of the American soldiers friendily firing upon the Canadian soldiers and our unfortunate country's presidential snubbing of the post-9/11 aide that Canada supplied - airspace for thousands of stranded travelers heading to American cities.

Onwards.

I have some serious posting to do for the online class. I don't simply want to do a reworking of the ideas but have to prove I'm still e-there. I've noted that about half of the class is eerily absent. Spending the cashmoney to get to NYC/PSD is well spent as it makes the online experience less distant, helps me to connect to that nouveau world.
Met with JR for advisement and he forced those struggling art ideas out of the folds of my (then hung over) brain lobes and miasma. I think he was getting frustrated but when he talked about my pending work I kept seeing, previsualizing, images that I described. I did my best to explain my main focus or concern: to document or to create to capture the essence of life, the desire and touching that we all are imbued in. The sensuality of everyday life that is not discussed. Life energy. Sensuality. The "gravity" (to borrow one of Jim's several quotes) between people.
And then.
And then.
He had me describe scenarios... Write a play that is one minute long.
I described three scenarios after explaining that they were inspired by Samuel Beckett - spare, minimal in gesture and staging.
Aside: Sam's work is about memory, our meandering through life, our inevitable encountering of our selves, our marriage to our memories and ourselves, breath, passion for the idea of passion.
I don't want to describe the three plays I created.
Jim said Let's make a video of the middle one.
I could weep for the feeling of elation, of being freed from the boundaries I created for my creative self.
I am going to make a series of digital videos of the middle play made yesterday. Variations of gestures.
And I am going to make *GloryBe* breaks in the variations that I am also not going to explain, yet.
I left Parsons and smoked a smoke with Jim before trundling off to the nearby french joint to be greeted as the regular that I am by the Victorias et al.
And then.
And then.
I realized Holy Pixels, this camera around my neck makes videos and I made my first video. Not so good. Then I made a surveillance video, a study of a couple interacting in front of me at the counter. Because of my framing you see only a triangle of her face, mostly her eye, and her man friend's back. At some point he stands and removes his coat and it's like a giant curtain over most of the frame and then her eye is visible again.
I really dig this video.
I am on to something and I have JR to thank for this.
Now to get the cast, the stage, the video camera.
I've outlined the gestures, it's even Sam-like in its numerological concerns.
All.
Love of All.

Why Your Perfect Nancy Loves Technology: Item 316

Technology, in my non-humble opining, fucking rocks. This is due to the simple fact that pixel molecules can be transformed while in card readers into email molecules after some simple friction and commands. Therefore one is able to make an image, say, in Manhattan, carry said card of images from one point to another and "send off" images, in jpeg format, to one's editor approximately 400 miles away in mere moments.
Previously, as I discussed with subject matter, a person, in the aforementioned images, a photographer had to (and this is back in the day, about two decades and even one decade ago) rush to the darkroom, process film, make contact sheets, select frames and then make prints and then deliver these to wherever the hell they needed to be.
Therefore technology rocks.
I rest my case.
During yesterday's study session in the rearmost table in a subterranean diner near Union Square with me, Philip, Sienna and Beth, we came to the following non-scientific conclusion:
postmodernism, to appropriate what Jim Ramer said on the front steps of Parsons this afternoon, is a slippery fish.
Or what it a slippery something else?
Whatever the hell it is, it's damn slippery.
All.
Love of All.

Due to my slight mistrust in the turns of buses I was doing some late-night walking, a healthy and thought-provoking 15 blocks are so and the elegant, and true, phrase
Beth puts me on buses
intermittently chimed in my head.
But because Beth puts me on buses that are never too close to my destinations I discovered about 12 hours ago a handful of wondrous things like a 24-hour florist where lilies chosen are wrapped with topnotch cello and tied with tri-colored ribbon, on a corner lurking is an old-school diner with tuna sandwiches under $5 and I laid eyes on a building that looked, at least in last night's light, like it had dropped in from Roma.
It is time for me to lunge off to an unnamed caffeine destination where nobody knows my name (a clue that it's not the French joint where I have been shuffled to the Regular column) and force theory about images down at the same same time.
New mantra:
Grad school is what you make it.
And here's hoping that none of you Perfect readers find that echoing in any way a tag line of an armed force.
Grad school - where you're not armed and are a force to be reckoned with.
Love.

In my ongoing hunt for online course clarity (not to mention the small list of MIA readings) I found myself in a B&N bookstore, the one that sells the crappy versions of Parsons School of Design t-shirts - 90% cotton, 10% nylon. Whothefuckever heard of such a blend? These shirts suck and on the ongoing to-do list is inquiring whether I can produce another version of this shirt in a more quality fashion, or perhaps simply a closer-to-home, renegade PSD Photo & Related Technologies model.
That is probably the sartorial way to go.
So I'm in the fairly feeble (yet so close to school as to render it convenient) art theory and criticism section when, 180 degrees to the left is this perfect gem: Overlook Illustrated Lives: Samuel Beckett, by Gerry Dukes. A photo assemblage, and writings, about Sam. What a great treat, what a balm for this Perfect soul.
*
Production shots, family snapshots, some garish color photos, some ramblings, some little-known facts and a clear-up, once and for all, of the great birthdate question/fiasco. April 13th, 1906 the answer. And Dukes's book prints the birth announcementas irrefutable proof of when Sam sprung onto the planet.
Onwards.
So we, we Parsons Photo and Related Tech grads, are meeting en masse this Sunday as a study group to non-e-discuss, our readings.
Now I am digitally editing images and then finding the braincells to meander through the readings for this week for the online course/discourse/discombobulation.
Love of Knowledge.

Hints as to what I consider to be one of thee most bodycentric, unaesthetic images - experienced live - to date.
Hints:
1. it involves toes
2. it involves open-toed sandals
3. wedgey, vinyl and white open-toed sandals
4. it involves frosty mauve nail polish
5. it involves overhead, flourescent lighting.
Do you glean the picture.
I wish I had not.
For the Love of God.

But I don't want to wait until 2005 to see the Diane Arbus retrospective.
I was thinking of canceling American Photo until I got past the usual titshots to read about the Arbus show as well as the technical (painters take note: photographers talk about technical matters... f-stops, films, papers, contraptions. why? because we fucking rock, that's why) (oh, but painters are okay, too) notations about several shots. What other feature do I dig? The one where they have a famed photog empty out their bag and list everything. From Sharpies, to mints, to lenses to fuzzballs at the bottom. I finally ditched Rolling Stone. Who needs RS when one gets Spin and Alternative Press and can breeze through RS in about 15 minutes at a newstand.
Today has been a day of interesting emails, let me tell you. Just like a photo bag, all diverse and interesting: all-femme Qi-Gong classes, Olympic-style bragging by a Middling City megalomaniac, acknowledgement and thanks from someone who received his packet in one day (one day!) via US Postal Service, and a few more.
Off to make and do and venture forth to sink into grad student matters.
Love.

We live in world in which late adopters reign unchallenged as our tastemakers.
By Stephen Metcalf
Posted Friday, September 19, 2003, at 2:49 PM PT

This quote rattles about this morning as I multi-task, sipping coffee from just yesterday (Laura, my dear friend, is wretching as she reads this), procrastinate and send off jpegs to interested cliental parties.
Metcalf is writing about VH1's series Where Are They Now - Ford Supermodels, kvetching how the once-focused network has become more MTV in its fashion sense. I think the phrase 'late adopters' is grand, really jabbing into the complacent ribs of the producers and vp's out there attempting to sate celebrity-obsessed viewers. OK, I can be obsessive about the music makers of our world (in the alternative sphere, usually not seen on such networks - and the writer writes about one of the all-time favs, Flaming Lips, whose brilliant Do You Realize is appropriated for a promo and who barely have appeared save for the whatwasit She Don't Use Jelly which everyone thought was their saving commercial grace at that time before Wayne Coyne romped off to parking ramps with multiple boomboxes to create symphonies of echoed noise), and Johnny Depp, but fashion and H-Wood has creeped much too up the asses of the music world. Of course rock stars will always fuck models and vv but what about those of us who, before floating off to REM world (and I'm not talking about those men of GA), want a piece of rock and roll greatness.
Wow, there is con/destruction happenig right outside the building where I now blog (my home) and it sounds like the apocalypse is nigh. Just looked out the window facing west, from where the infernal noise is coming, and no, not the apocalypse, just some city workers who obviously don't comprehend that behind this modest window is a blogger, a churner of words, a thinker who needs to not be embedded in their workday chaos. I have enough of my own, thanks.
Love.

I put the AHHHHH! in adrenaline.
Last night I attended, late, in rockstar fashion, the well-meaning yet poorly-attended benefit in & outside of Mohawk Place produced by Robby Goo et al from his recording studio, Chameleon West. There I saw The Kid, the model-to-be, and we discussed my pending series with him which went swimmingly until he began tossing in his four or so cents about how he likes to be photographed. From what he described it could not be further from my aesthetic intent, but was interesting nonetheless.
He is, remarkably, one of thee most spatial and unanchored rockstars I've talked to in a long while and thoughts of mine drift to how difficult it might be to pin him to the schedule of a shoot. Onwards.
Off to NYC again later this week to scramble to fix the chaos of the online course.
At last night's wedding gig, deep in the ski hills of an area south of the Middling City, I met a man (with seven wives? nope) who is a self-proclaimed DreamWeaver master. Imagine my glomming, my joy, my tunneled vision that this man will be sitting with me and tossing me a veritable electronic life preserver to make my Parsons School of Design website the beautiful and lush landscape I intend it to be. Actually, this man offered to do just that, in so many words.
And then... and THEN... the kid/model/flakey rockstar also knows DreamWeaver and I thought OhHappyDay things are e-lookin' up.
I was artfully inspired this weekend by these items:
1. chance encounter with a picture book on religions that I picked up ferfucksakes I don't know when and turned Zenstyle to the pages devoted to Zen Buddhism and there on the section's first page was a gorgeous repro of Buddha giving his Flower Sermon, holding up a lotus flower.
2. in the current Art News, in the hoaky piece on ten to watch, there is a piece on Adler Guerrier, a photog who makes images in NYC and Miami - lush semi-peopled landscapes. "The images evoke a playful and fluid sense of transit." and on.
3. in the lav at Cybele's this AM there, at the top of the heap of ancient lexicon, were the exposed endpiece pages, botanical illustrations. For me, clearly. They are in my back pocket, moldering and perfect gems of the green world.
All the above are to be inserted into my journal for artwork's sake.
Grad school. A wild mental ride.
An expensive wild mental ride.
An expensive expansive wild mental ride.
An expensive expansive chaotic wild mental ride.
An expensive expansive chaotic wild mental rock & roll ride.
All.

I've examined my subconscious and am fairly certain that what happened last last night was not some sort of retribution. My elder stalker, a richly brought-up man who is perpetually slumming as a barkeep of a low-rent, scuzzy joint, and who obsessed about me at one time enough to send several bouquets of long-stemmed roses to my office, rushed out of his own bar last night with a smoking microwave oven in his hands. Muttering, as he moved towards his car parked in front of his shithole, Try to be nice and people try to burn the place down. I had left the smokey back room where my pals were still playing pool and trying to open windows and was sitting at a crappy plastic table talking to a few random people. Polly had given me a rose. I wondered what happens when a rose is microwaved. There was a microwave in the corner, unplugged. I plugged it in and set it on cook or whatever after putting the rose in the middle of it and concurrently noting that there were several paper towels stuffed in there and a rim of thick white grease was around its door. Cooked and imploded, that's what happened. Then, after a few minutes, I smelled smoke and the paper towels were smoking and I said to Mark, Well I didn't think anything of the paper towels, don't people use them for microwaving. I know nothing of microwaves and am a firm believer that slow cookin' is good cookin'. So eventually we all left the shithole and it was way time to be sleeping and the owner/stalker had been watching me and I was not certain he knew it was me or not as he was in his cups and I was purposely sending out the vibe that I was not who I am/was at that moment - a scientist, a just-off-the-dancefloor-across-the-way hellion.
I remain.
The microwave does not.
Your Perfect Nancy.

Well I'm at ol' Peace Bridge, at the one Middling City fringe, and fishing about for quarters to pay the $2.50 toll when I was suddenly startled by the manic and very loud voice of the man toll taker. TAKE YOUR TIME... FOCUS... FOCUS... YOU'RE DOING FINE...
At the end of our transaction he handed me a small plastic packet the size of those crack baggies you find on the ground. Now with his kooky behaviour and all I admit in a flash I thought he WAS handing me a crack baggy. It was one of those giant LifeSavers. Wintergreen. Tasty. I sucked on it for about three minutes and tossed it from my moving vehicle, over the side of the bridge.
I went to Orangeville, more specifically, Hockley, Ontario, to have needles inserted into my accident-addled shoulder, to be snapped and cracked and popped. I feel different now, more... focused (or was that the toll taker) and postured.
My online class is a bit of a flaming fiasco and all of us 15 are apparently in the same chaotic boat.
All.
Love.

As I was logging in to Blogger saw that one of the 10 most recently written to included one entitled Boobs Are Good. Failed to investigate that one.
The men of Blogger are sending all of us Blogger Pro pioneers Blogger hoodies for being such, a very nice treat.
Reine just sent me a very hilarious advert for a tech company, great cgi images of cowpokes herding kitty cats over the plains, wrapping balls of yarn, lamenting their facial scratches from their charges.
Speaking of charges.
Look, whomever granted me those several student loans, I'd appreciate not hearing from you for at least another few years. Why keep sending me paperwork telling me where to address any concerns? Do so in two years, okay? Thanks for your attention in this scholarly matter.
As my 40th approaches, and so does all the charming chaos of change, I remind myself Hey, Baby Poet (and all the other semi-secret self-nicknames) this is what you wanted. HAPPY FUCKING BIRTHDAY.
Time to rock on and chase down the book that mentorJR recommends, The Garden in Ruins.
Love.

As she was in her ivory wedding gown, tea length, she opted out of crawling across the dance floor at her wedding reception alongside me and Michele. Hungry Like a Wolf. Duran Duran. Michele looked at me, Remember? I did. It was a dark and tipsy night at a gay bar with karaoke. I had been banned for over an hour for doing Leo Sayer's You Make Me Feel Like Dancin' in an authentic style of his high-high falsetto. The karaoke mc was not impressed, snatching the mic away from me as my last tortured and disco-ridden note hung in the smokey air. So, about an hour later, when I was unbanned, my selection was Hungry Like a Wolf, which I performed with aplomb (as well as bumps and grinds) to the delight of several. Suddenly yesterday's bride/Annie and Michele were crawling across the floor before me, on the gay bar's small dance floor/karaoke staging area.
So last night's dual re-creation apparently resulted in gasps from those who noticed it, according to another Michelle (note the 2 l's), Michelle Gigante, a famed dancer/choreographer/actor. Gasps. At a wedding. And their wedding photog, one I do not know but by name, snapped it all up into his Canon.
More to tell.
Suddenly, minding my own business and all, after a few more cocktails, the same Michele (1 l) came up to me to propose a new dance move. It somehow resulted with us rolling atop each other à la Madonna's Like a Virgin performance on the video music awards show of yore. This amid some other questionable dance moves by other guests, some vintage pogo-ing by Gary, schemes to catapult guests off the nature-induced wavy dancefloor by other mischievious guests and cross-genre mixing and matching.
We were busting loose, sending the newly-linked off on a plane of freeform expression and unbridled passionate movement. Giving their guest list, vendor and site selections, engendered and biographical leanings, their fateful happenings along life's path, their ensembles, the Swedish Fish favours (yes!), the deluxe florals, their scents and their whole day a collective, celebratory high-5 - all this under the hyper-planned and overhung and irascible spiritual presence of the whole site's daddy, Frank Lloyd Wright, creator of Graycliff Estate.
FLW's most triumphant building still standing there, according to Perfect Me, is the heat house, a small and semi-sunken structure which housed all the mechanicals of heating the main and guest houses. Now it is a bunkerous shell perfect for a studio with one window facing trees and a small and wide door painted with chalky lead paint.
All.
Time to caffeinate.
Love.

Speaking of blindness and veracity in advertising.
onwards
Working at Parsons as that is my wont these weekdays and inundated today and yesterday with Middling City confusion and chaos, oh so non-productive for one who must teleport oneself to another galaxy to benefit most from a graduate undertaking of thinking and art making.
Fi(r)stly.
The publisher of the paper. In a blink of a chintzy eye there was an economic squabble between yours truly/newspaper over a $50 portion of a cell phone bill, incredibly. The incentive to say hello! to a two week sabbatical ensued. This concept was greeted with a big gigantic I told you so (to take a leave from the get-grad-go) from said publisher.
Then there was his post-summer inability to meet with me because of inter-office construction. Then emails were sent by me to set up a time to meet. Today I heard from Lead Boy Colleague that the word on the street is that I quit - my job description shifted radically in my absence.
Item 1.
I am/was/will be forever and ever a columnist.
Item 2.
I am not a photo editor.
Item 3.
Photo editors edit photograhic content of newspapers.

Future: I told publisher pal that I am interested in special features, continuing column and perhaps even being a senior editor with occasional feature writing. No reply.

Dear sweet grappling blogreaders.
This is a time of transition and your openmindedness and fairmindedness regarding me, my commutes, my undertakings, my shifts, my dilemmas and my goal-seeking are greatly appreciated.
Some of these posts are poetic riffs, some blend fact and foe and fiction.
Dig?
All my undying and photographic and artful Love.
You know what that is.
ps: met with Jim, my nouveau advisor who fucking rocks. He told me to distill my ideas down to five items. Still and distill. Be still, no way. Knowing his audience/me he gave me a big categorical metaphor in terms of musical genres. And, dig this, I dug it down to its note-addled core.

Saturday, as I posed a wedding couple on a V-Rod Harley in the midst the of rose garden of the Middling City's Delaware Park (okay by the cop on the watch as he loves - and who really in love with a uniform, the power of firearms and the whirr of power in one's ears does not - a great fucking powerful machine), heard a familiar voice from the east, from the midst of the pink roses in the dusk. Mary Ramsey, my heartmate, soul revivor, of John and Mary fame, of one-time 10K Maniacs fame. I was at wedding B. She was at wedding A in the same dang building. As we were both en route to our respective social obligs we had a speed meeting/talk. Interestingly, just as effective.
Off to document the exhibition of Parsons Dream Weaver Mistress/Instructor Robin at Middling City Art Studios. Had a dream about it. Can I ever have a night of reverie without them attaching to this other world. I think not.
Just re-read Sam's That Time, aloud, as it should be read.
Perfection.
Love of the Perfect.

*Ding* *ding.*
Muses versus Perfect Nancy... round three.
Just marathoned, birthed a truly excellent drawing - frame & all - for the charity auction ce soir. Based on a b&w print my moi made a while back and, all intuitively, I made the drawing and then checked my cache of frames and lo and behold there was one so parfait and even a decent pre-cut archival mat in there with green inner mat (as opposed to the polymat(h)) that I nearly screamed thanks luck thanks luck thanks luck. And I continue along that thoughtal plane to here:
partaking as I do, lunging out into the energy that is the world, one is as bound to have near-death vehicular experiences as one is to locate a perfectly sized frame for a charity art auction when one is giving giving to a venerable institution worthy and musty.
And tomorrow *ding* *ding* round four or maybe five when I drop another piece to another org, Burchfield-Penney Art Center. Then a charitable break fer fucksakes.
I have embraced an old perfume fav, Calèche, a hard fragrance to wear, but fitting my Ryan Adams-besotted and autumn and change-embracing heart.
Love.