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.

Seeking: Felicity

I often sit and watch the hem of my gown take shape along the tops of my shoes. 

How is it I can find such pleasure in the curves of fabric, the angles of a corner, the wisp of a cloud in the sky? 

Symmetry and fluidity, each captured by the lilt of my hands; perhaps the task of hand to paper, pen to ink will make this life more apt to stay.  

Beautiful things dance all around me. I am young and life seems delicious as custard pies; rich as the crimson hue of this blanket I sit upon. Every pinpoint my eye can absorb moves in a fantastic rhythm and it is all I can do to follow its meter. 

I must draw quickly what I see before me, lest it disappears forever.

A pair of lovers sit outside, across the courtyard. See there, two at rest on the bridge above. I take a moment to examine the scene. Notice how he leans into her dainty frame, like a willow drawn to the water? He seems to drink her very essence. She sways ever so slightly, he a mere ripple in her eyes so blue. The tip of her bonnet tilts up, as if to catch the first available sight of something new.

She plays a tricky game, hoping to catch his attentions more so by aloofness. What a grown-up way to be romanced. It seems, the moment I land in the way of someone's interested glance, all servility is let loose. To hold back as she, a flower to his weed--what wisdom.

How nice to be quite sure of yourself at one and twenty, with eyes like sky.

My father says I am too young for love. I peer into the mirror before me and believe it is not my youth that is undeserving, but my looks. My eyes are too round and mouth horribly pouty. The hair round my temple is wispy like tangled wheat in a field. How long will I have to ponder over the heath of my complexion or grimace at the endless ramblings my mind can produce? I have all the time to capture the world on paper, but what good will those captive colors or moments do? 

Will I ever be who I'm meant to be? A girl can hope for nothing more than what she has--attentions that lead to marriage. Then in marriage, a chance at felicity. 

What more can a girl hope for? 

Felicity is a remarkable word, for it sounds as its definition implies--free, with the slight crispness of expectations met. Here I sit, expecting. 

What more can a girl expect, but the promise of expecting? Only trouble with expectations--sometimes they are painfully mistaken.  

Here I sit, still. See the charming way the hem of my gown takes shape along the tops of my shoes? I think I shall title my drawing, "Seeking Felicity." 

Do you hear the crispness of my breath as the words dash onto the page...felicity.

________________________________________________

Marie-Denise Villers was the subject of the above painting, "Young Woman Drawing." She lives in the Metropolitan Museum of Art here in NY. 

My favorite thing to do here is visit the museum and write poems and short pieces based off of the faces and characters depicted along the exhibits here. This young woman has always been an inspiring image to me--my last trip to the Met I was so excited to find her at among the art work.

"Seeking: Felicity"  was a gut response to the above mentioned painting. 

Someday

I once knew a girl in the years of my youth
With eyes like the summer: all beauty and truth
But in the morning I fled, left a note and it read,
“Someday You Will Be Loved”

And I cannot pretend that I felt any regret
‘Cause each broken heart will eventually mend
Just as the blood runs red down the needle and thread
Someday you will be loved

You’ll be loved you’ll be loved
Like you never have known
And the memories of me will seem more like bad dreams
Just a series of blurs: like I never occurred
And someday you will be loved

You may feel alone when you’re falling asleep
And every time tears roll down your cheeks
But I know your heart belongs to someone you’ve yet to meet
And someday you will be loved

A death cab for cutie song........love it. speaks my thoughts right now.

As the morning rises above the east river, clashing with the buildings silvery, I know my heart belongs to someone...somewhere. 

Same Colors: Different Patterns

 

Same Colors: Different Patterns

To my Huckleberry Friend.

They know who they are. They found me at such an interesting point in time. A time where you finally discover that you have inner thoughts that turn into actions. It’s a time where you finally start to feel alive. Before you were alive, but your inner monologue was too busy being alive to listen to itself.

I met this friend at a time when I began hearing my inner monologue. The realization is like discovering a soundtrack playing overhead, underscore to some ironic moment where you begin to forget that life isn’t a movie with a full orchestra score to cushion the blows or warn of impending troubles. 

The monologue takes shape and form and you begin to relate to it.

This story isn’t about the inner monologue though. This story is about my friend.

Being found at the right time and place is a rare gift life sometimes grants us. So often we don’t realize it has happened. We watch Harry meet Sally up on some dark screen. We become promoters of these perfect meet-cutes.

Funny when we’ve totally missed our own improbable collisions of paths—too often we’re daydreaming or editing our inner monologues.

I can’t even remember the first time I “met” this person. I suppose it was at school, 10^th grade year, during lunch or after a shared class.

I remember the first time I saw this person. I remember feeling sorry for them. They we’re new among 51 other people who had almost all known each other since Kindergarten. I would soon see this person would hold their own just fine, without my help or opinions!

I don’t remember when this person and I first met, but I do remember when they finally entered the script of that famous inner monologue we’ve been discussing.

It’s a dangerous thing to be involved with someone’s inner monologue.

I could be the main character in a script I know nothing about, playing a part I’m totally not suited for. But there I am, star of someone’s monologue.

It can happen to us all, be ye warned.

This piece started as a letter to a friend. I’ve written and said a lot of things to this friend. We’ve talked for hours and hours and hours. We’ve spent going on 7 years playing varying roles in the other’s lives—like a spinning kaleidoscope placed up to the sun; same colors, different patterns.

At the end of distance, time, hurt, laughter, dances, plays, dinners, mornings, lockers, cars, classes, churches, lunches, and even mountains we’ve come a long way, with one through line to boast—friendship.

Now over 2000 miles apart, with no promise of a reprise to our contrasting roles, here I sit in contemplation.

Thank you, friend. You have given me happiness and sadness alike.

We haven’t always made the right choices. So often we failed each other and ourselves in the process. Other times, we were like I hope to stay now—the best of friends.

I didn’t always deserve you and you certainly didn’t always deserve me! 

You’ve been the Copper to my Todd; the Clyde to my Bonnie; the Ricky to my Lucy; the Mickey Rooney to my Judy Garland; the Scarecrow to my Dorothy.

Ha…all gender specification aside, you have been a blessing to me.

I love you, friend.

May God fulfill His purpose in you.

I am thankful He brought you into my life during that precious time when I was becoming the person I’ve yet to fully embody. We’re both on a journey.  

Different patterns, same colors.

-Bitsy

 

“LIFETIME relationships teach you lifetime lessons; things

you must build upon in order to have a solid emotional

foundation. Your job is to accept the lesson, love the

person, and put what you have learned to use in all

other relationships and areas of your life. It is said

that love is blind but friendship is clairvoyant.”

 

Author Unknown

 

 

Wishing

                                                      

I’m trying not to put expectations on things, because I’m pretty sure the only garrentee in this life is that nothing turns out like you think it will. So, you let your self be surprised. You cover your eyes and say up to the heaven’s, ‘Alright, look—I’m not looking.” Meanwhile you’re bumping into things and are so intent on being surprised that you miss moments completely or worse, you’re left terribly un-surprised. You’re sitting in a room with rainbow streamers and balloons and a sign with your name on it…and no one is there. No one showed up to your own surprise party. How could this have happened? 

Basically, you can get burned lighting the candles and not lighting the candles. Either way, the moment you wish for something its out of your reach forever. So don’t wish. I’m not gonna wish, even though the one guy I’ve loved since 3^rd grade may show up in New York City all the way from Arkansas on a random summer’s afternoon with only the intention of seeing me, the one of three friends he has living in the city now from back home.

If I wish this to be the moment he realizes after all these years that I am the perfect person for him…..then I might as well never have gotten on this train to meet him at Port Authority.             

You know, I used to close my eyes and imagine all the things we’d say and talk about together. He lived in a neighborhood next to mine and we shared the same classes and friends and lunch tables. We stood in the same place for 13 years and never knew each other. Maybe he wasn’t looking my way or maybe I was just too damn afraid to be myself before him. Perhaps he isn’t as beautiful or kind or interesting as I’ve always pictured him to be.  (beat) I don’t care.

You just love people, and no matter how impossible it all seems, you get to choose it.  At least that’s one thing in life you have control over.

I’m planning this party....and even if no one shows up and the evening’s a flop, at least I’ll have an uneaten cake to keep me company until the next chance for wishing comes my way.

 

a little monologue that maybe will be in a play someday. Its actually one of the first monologues i've written that can stand on its own.  

I've been writing a lot since I moved to NYC. More to come....

Magnolia Moments

Underneath the magnolia tree the dead leaves gather like some leaf burial ground.
Once a deep, Scarlet's picnic dress green, they are now brown and curled up along the edges like small boats. If dropped in a creek or pool of water, they could easily float.

As a child, I used to pretend these leafy vessels were floating in some heart of dark, darkness. The impression must have been stirred from the only VHS my grandmother kept in her house, a copy of "The African Queen."
She was a huge Humphrey Bogart fan.
"He's old!" I used to protest.
"He's dreamy..." she would object. "And he wasn't always 'old', you know."

We would drink hot cokes from the can and watch Bogart fight against the fiery Katherine Hepburn. Somehow the pair ended up loving each other at the end.
I assumed, at the time, this was how all boy-girl relationships resulted--in love.

Every time my grandmother took a sip of her coke, she would let out a raspy, extended "ahhhh," as if each individual gulp was a refreshing experience.

I've since realized that Bogart was perpetually old, no matter the circa: forehead wrinkled, eyes droopy, a tired sort of grin.
He didn't share the youthful essence of a Jimmy Stewart or Fred Astaire.
Now I understand the dreamy qaulity with which he grabs Ingrid Bergman's shoulders and speaks those immortal words: "The problems of three people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world."

It was just like the humble, stalwart Bogart to point out an ironic truth. Audiences so desperatley wanted the star-crossed, Paris-lovers to forsake duty and country and run off together into that smoky sound stage beyond.
Meanwhile, the real world was falling to pieces; WWII an unavoidable reality.

Still, "We'll always have Paris" simply never cut it for me.
It raises an inevitable question: are memories enough?

As the character Sally argued to Harry on their 18 hour drive to New York in "When Harry Met Sally," perhaps Ingrid didn't in her heart of hearts want to stay:

Harry: Of course she wants to stay. Wouldn't you rather be with Humphrey Bogart than the other guy?
Sally: I don't want to spend the rest of my life in Casablanca married to a man who runs a bar. That probably sounds very snobbish to you, but I don't.
Harry: You'd rather be in a passionless marriage -
Sally: - and be the First Lady of Czechoslovakia -
Harry: - than live with the man... you've had the greatest sex of your life with, just because he owns a bar and that is all he does.
Sally: Yes, and so would any woman in her right mind. Women are very practical. Even Ingrid Bergman, which is why she gets on the plane at the end of the movie.

I love that scene.

Despite the piano's haunting melody and the way the moonlight cuts through the blinds against the walls; despite the warmth of a moment past....we all have to realize sooner or later that we cannot stay in Casablanca.

Sometimes, we have to leave the past behind; being happy enough with the memory of simply wonderful.

Besides, as Sam reminded us, love will replay itself--like the VHS on my grandmother's televison--as time goes by.

loosing faces

One looses faces and voices in a lifetime, as one looses the passage of time. 

"Has it been six months or seven?" a lost lover might ask themselves.  

Was it his laugh that had shook her, or his eyes? 

A moments pause and one recalls--the memory returned by the turning over of a picture or hearing the familiar tink of a song. 

"Of course it has been six--you swore you'd never forget the day." 

Eyes and laughter flash against the backdrop of your eyes--slow and colored in the shades of remembrance, brown and gray.

You give a lot to make things stay--you give love and kisses and long stares. You forsake better judgement for it--living with out taking account. All attempts to rewind and replay time, like some VHS out of sync and date. 

Now, instead of embracing today, your letting tomorrow go on and on and on in pursuit of yesterday.  Like a record player on a starry night; the party guests dance and lap up minutes like champagne. They cling into the night--their rhythms fantastic. 

I've learned in my loosing of faces and voices, discovering the freedom of beginnings and ends. 

Why let the music drone on and on--you can't neglect the coming of Morning. 

She peeks her eyes over the horizon; she rolls out of bed and with sudden purpose, wakes the world. 

You drink now like ambrosia--you believe in its relevance. How much safer to believe in something that has a measure of beginning and end. Even the god's, with all their nectar, rallied and fought for time. 

I find safety in the temporary, seems to keep my heart less open to the black hole of the moment--the moment where you give and give in hopes of forever. 

Nothing is forever. 

Be careful of being sucked into the void,  loosing your sudden purpose to wake the world.

ceb

 

A new world, 

this blog. 

A friend mentioned 

once not liking the word

"blog." 

Well, it was more that

it was just such a mundane 

catchphrase...at least I think 

that is what they meant. 

Anyway, I sorta agree. 

I write endless scribbles 

on endless pieces of paper and napkins

and notebooks. 

I have a love affair

with notebooks. 

I can't stop buying them. 

I'm actually writing a story based off of that very dilemma. 

A girl can't stop buying notebooks. She has dozens of them . The only problem...she hasn't written in a single one. She can't seem to allow herself to begin writing in them. Somehow, she is afraid. Still, the newness is addicting. 

Just like her empty notebooks, she is also afraid to start her life.

She is afraid of the newness, because its something she can't control. 

Unlike a notebook bought at the last moment in line, placed on the shelf, and left to wait till an appointed time.  

I hope to have the book printed so that one side is the book....then you turn it upside down and it is a blank notebook....so that the reader can write in it....or something symbolic like that. 

Well, I'm breaking down my barrier to this digital, clicking, spider web of an Internet, blogging world. Perhaps, when I embark on that new, blank life before me....this might be like a map of how I got there. A click away, so that I can't loose the poem or paragraph dashed upon some random page or half a napkin on my way down to the subway, or at the bottom of my bag.