wonderings and wanderings

I came to this city to color outside the lines,
hang pictures on blank walls,
and trace the length of a song.

2010, let's be underway.
We're not going back.
The place we came from isn't about the chances we'll try.
Some will wonder why
we're wandering so far.
The heart is wild and to be a star
is a funny dream.
Perhaps we're not as new as we may seem,
still we'll chase and believe in uniqueness.
For the feeling of freedom, in faith, we'll keep this
going a few moments longer.
Perhaps we wander.
2010, let's be underway.

Thursdays

Thursdays have been my favorite day of the week for a few years now. It's a dymamic duo of a relationship, Thursday and I. Once my adopted little sister Julia said, "It's a number '8' kind of day..." Dustin, Susie and I we're paiting pottery with her and it was a precious moment in time. I started to dechiper....what is a number 8 kind of day anyway? I loved the sheer oppenness with how Julia approaced the idea. I think we may have tired to dechiper the sentiment together, and even her own definition elluded her. In between neon polka dots and glitter glaze, we determined that the number 8 is one that keeps on going, being circular and loopy and balanced.

A number 8 day is the sort of day you don't want to end...and in essence, it never does. I always think of that sunny day with friends and brushes and swirling water in glass dishes. I wouldn't be suprised if most of my number 8 days have been Thursdays on the calendar. Dad informed me once I was born on a Thursday. I started to notice that certain happy, joyful and glorious moments have occured on that fourth day of the week. I note here there was also a time when "Smallville" and "Project Runway" appeared on the airwaves those evenings and many hours of watch parties, sentimental tears and laughs we're had.

Today is Thursday. 2009 is on its way out; I see it there like the enchanted rose in the Beast's tower. I want to rush to the petals strewn at it's base. there are so many tasks we fail to achieve in the chronological sense. Can I save the lost ones? Perhaps the softness can be restored to life. Perhaps it is best that we simply start fresh. Will I feel 201o begin this time, or will October hit me somwhere in dreamlike stride? Wake up, Conly. Today can be a number 8 day. Believe.

Have faith in today, when the sky is so perfectly clear and blue, except for the scatered tufts of cloud like ideas in the mist of thought. I watch the reflections of traffic and people against shinny windows on the West Side near Columbus Circle where Christmas is selling itself like sparklers in July. Tis the season for selling. Am I giving to others today, while riding the wave about to crash into 2010 with a defaning splash? Or will I mistake the sound for regret and fear, filling my ears so I don't have to hear with champange and resolutions and 'what's new this year?' So elated with me I forget to see me's all around, each in want of love and why and how....

Remembering dear friends, rosy cheeks, painted pots and falling petals. Today is Thursday and it's a new day, shaped like an 8 that keeps going and going. 2010, ready for you to begin...

The First Unfairness...

"Sunshine" 

Chen is almost 10 and twirls her hair round the end of a pen. Then she asks me: 
"Do you have your own apartment?" 

I'm playing a role, making her a tuna salad sandwich like a mother might. 
"Yes, well along with roommates." 

She was adopted from China. She is raised by an Italian chef with rosemary poking out of his uniform pocket and a Jewish journalist who makes lists and checks them off with certain alacrity.

Once Chen was playing with blocks. "Bet you don't know what I'm building." 

I knew, but I played along at first. I'm not sure why I knew, I just did. 
"A bridge?" 

She seems to enjoy being mysterious, the most taciturn child I've every met. 
"No." 

I tended to my own block creation a moment or two, then offered a second guess.
"The Great Wall of China?" 

I don't know how I knew. 
Her almond eyes looked up at mine, the glance saying an uninspired "yes".

"Have you ever been there--the Wall of China?" 
It was a silly question for me to ask.

"Yes." She started to take the wall down. She left the walls around her heart untouched. Perhaps she didn't even know they existed.

"Well, not there exactly." she quickly continued. "But I was born there." 

"I know." 

I notice a book on her shelf about being adopted. Her awareness of the fact seems pretty integrated into daily life. The child takes three language lessons a week outside 2nd grade--Italian, Hebrew, and Chinese. 

She can't forget that she has one origin yet four separate identities. The walls of her parent's living room hold Asian art, the kitchen is filled with pasta and parsley, a wide array of jazz standard collections swing out of the stereo system, and there is a menorah collecting dust on top of the china cabinet. 

"Would you like to go there someday, Chen?"

Her wall had become a pyramid of sorts.
"That would be a dream that won't come true." 

We never forget ourselves. As J.M. Barrie said of all humans except his eternal lost boy: "No one ever gets over the first unfairness." 

Back in the kitchen making her a tuna sandwich, we talk of her sudden interest in my apartment. 

"Does your room have windows?"
"Yes." 
"Is there sunlight?"
"Oh, lots. It faces the morning sun." 

Chen's building is like a brick peninsula, with three other buildings towering above it on three sides. Their apartment is at the backside, so despite windows, only indirect light can come through. As such, Chen goes to sleep and wakes up in the same sort of dull, grey light as the day before. 

"Wow...lucky." 

She smiles in a rueful way, then goes back to swirling her silky hair around a pen. 

One Book, One Special Book...

I realized why I want to write just one book....one book that can translate across the world one single idea. Like Harper Lee in "To Kill a Mocking Bird." Step in someone's shoes, feel the stretch of their skin and the rhythm of their heartbeat before judging them. We all have a Boo, a May-Ella, and a Tom Robinson in our lives--let's step in before we step out. 

Harper Lee only needed one moment to voice it all and those pages speak forever--resounding as an echo. 

I want to echo in some corridor of someone's heart. 

I've spent a lot of time feeling misunderstood. I doubt my instincts in a moment, wishing I'd spoken one way or another. The next step is discovering what needs to be said. So much being covered and re-covered before, like a family heirloom that sits in the same corner, yet is transformed every other decade to save face. 

Though I don't want to be self-indulgent. Daily I seek to find the truth, speaking through my voice, without being blind to it's sound. I've known mostly good things in my life thus far; others know and see the worst that life can afford. How will the stories I tell be relevant to many? 

These are the questions I face, yet they don't deter me from writing. Although, I sing and never regret a moment of it, writing is an art form I cannot shake. I'm discovering that I can live for a day, a week, or even a month without singing...but the minute I realize I've not written a thought down in the course of a day, I start mindlessly searching at the bottom of my Mary Poppin's carpet bag for a spare page and pen. Life becomes a haze until I've relinquished the thoughts swirling in my mind like one of those home made tornado machines from grade school. 

I write and then I sing, because I have again reconnected with the voice that used to only speak through my singing. Now, they can flow as one and the same. There is a strange juxtaposition and reliance upon the other--like the love affair between the moon and the sun. Singing was my platform of self expression from early childhood to today, 2009. Writing was a revelation that has taken several seasons and growth spurts to reach working status. Now it is a catalyst and I am thankful for it. 

I want to echo in some corridor of someone's heart. 

UWS Slide

Hear that melancholy slide                                                                                                       of a jazz clarinet on the UWS? 

Endless books sold here for a dollar

titles thought unworthy of bother. 

Autumn whistles, wrestles lost leaves; 

foreheads wrinkle, people roll down sleeves. 

The player has talent; As Time Goes By.

Throw him a coin for an evening's lullaby.

A cap in his lap, but his name won't fly

like sparkles across a marque wide.

Hear that melancholy slide 

                  of a jazz clarinet on the UWS?

They've all got wishes to hide

behind day job desks, shirts well pressed,

walls of steal & loss of jest. 

Like the memory of a well lit flame,

eyes yearn for the familiar warmth of fame.

Who knows from where this idea came?

Keys to success, yet who guards the lock?

For now, meander a forgotten block.

Folk or funk or love will be playing

the price of Art, though no body's paying. 

Hear that melancholy slide 

                  of a jazz clarinet on the UWS?

Irony

It was you and me and a little thing named Irony....

all bundled up in hats and scarves the shade of sea. 

Just you and me and Irony along for a ride. 

Lets lift up our heads and cover our eyes—the sun pierces, the air slides. 

You better learn the things you’ve been told.

I shouldn’t forget to be nothing but bold.

Irony watched our disaster unfold—the swift current of demise.

 

This sounds all too dramatic, lets talk more of sky.

It was a reflection of water, the Hudson beneath the statute green.  

Why, those we’re sights I’d yet to see; 

you, me and Irony hand in hand towards the Bowery.

You’re taller than I’d like you to be.

You seem rather short, is this how it should be?

They both have a hang up, that’s easy to see.

 

You, me and Irony--what a funny song we weave. 

Us three, two we’s, one chance to be.

Each woe can now be shared with a smile.

No use rewinding the pain, it’s not worth the while.

Bowery. Hudson. Your keen sense of style.

The sky and it’s blue.

Irony, me and you. 

intrepid whim

Why does one cling 

to a moment altogether brief?

Time can't provide relief 

for the silly wants we weave, 

strung out in solitude as widows who weep.

How can all our hopes be met

like poems each to pet 

with strokes of a petty pen?

Not all rhyme schemes score a win.

Take Keats, a failure at 5 & twenty.

Later, still, his words in plenty we keep--

tokens of intrepid whim.

Perhaps, old loves will rise as him--

ashes prove the right to begin. 

To begin and then to begin again. 

Perhaps, our love will rise as him--

ashes prove the right to begin. 

To begin and then to begin again.