I realize that this is about four posts in one. Sorry. I was depressed when I wrote it. My aunt was dying. It was the anniversary of my father’s death and I have only begun to miss him in recent years. It was a very depressing week. When I write like this, I’m exploring one aspect of me.
I make myself sound friendless which is far from true. I do think that the first few years after 9/11, as they affected New Yorkers, should be discussed.
From the very beginning the “theme” was resilience. And we were.
However, the 9/11 families weren’t the only people to suffer. It feels as if talking about other peoples pain is verboten. I believe that enough time has passed to begin to talk about this because it is important to understand.
I used to date somebody who never once went back to his apartment in Battery Park City. My neighbor moved three times in the first three years looking for a place she could feel rooted in. Just two fast examples. Ultimately they did find peace.
My IVillage horoscope:
Take an honest inventory of your life. If you’re totally truthful, you’ll see you lead a pretty fantastic existence — and a pretty busy one, too. So stop beating yourself up over what you think is lacking.
I’m very sad. I feel very vulnerable. Fragile. Not nice. I miss my parents. Some of my friends left New York for other cities.
Most left this life, not willingly, but from AIDS. Their deaths might have been prevented or their lives lengthened…I don’t want to go there.
Then there were the friends, friends of years, who I fought with or they fought with me or…after 9/11. Continue Reading »
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There’s a more thought out 3WW below this post. I closed comments on this post. Please read the post below. I have family problems and…
My mother’s sister, not the cute Buddhist artist, but the beautiful brilliant loner middle sister has end stage Alzheimer’s. Continue Reading »
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My last 3 Word Wednesday in the old Courting.
The tulips were drooping in the solid lead crystal plain vase she had forever. She had read an article in Vogue years ago that showed Diana Vreeland’s apartment, and how taste could make a house appear elegant for not all that much money. Vreeland had a vase of drooping tulips over a piano. She had never forgotten how simple and interesting it was.
Her friends were Martha Stewart fanatics. She was a Diana Vreeland devotee. The simple elegance of many chairs, an unembellished velvet couch with many pillows, everything she saw in that article had reinforced her belief that true style was innate.
Dinah was devastated when the vase flew out of her friend’s hand and fell shattered into large shards on the herringbone floor. She couldn’t act angry. She really didn’t want to lose a good friend over something so banal. But it wasn’t banal.
The vase had been a wedding present for her first marriage 35 years ago. Dinah had been a hippie bride in a Fred Leighton Mexican muslin and lace wedding dress. She had thought herself heavy but the dress couldn’t be more than a size six today.
Material goods didn’t usually mean that much to her. After her good jewelry had been stolen from her apartment downtown when she was 25, she stopped wearing gold. Dinah remembers each item precisely, who gave it to her, where, when and why, but never pined for it.
Dinah was a silver and white gold type. She valued luxe vacations, and great restaurants much more. When she first moved downtown, her father had told her to write down each restaurant she went to with a small description. He was jealous that she was living in the West Village and could easily go out every night for dinner to another good restaurant.
Had she listened she could have been Zagat, but what 23 year old listened to her father? Dinah and Ethan went out for dinner every night. Life was a constant party. It was a time in her life she tried to remember clearly but saw filtered through light pink silk.
She had always thought of the vase as a symbol of their love. She thought it the purest, most simple, and in its own way, sweet relationship she had ever been in. They hadn’t divorced because they were no longer in love, but because something they both wanted but couldn’t verbalize was missing.
Theirs was forever love. Dinah’s life had been enriched by it. She hadn’t found better but different, and that was good too.
When they spoke of each other to people they would say almost identical wonderful things. Dinah had never thought about the “what if’s.” They had moved on separately to different worlds. Sometimes the worlds would easily merge but only for a second. It always felt like a roaring kalidescopic.
When the vase broke, Dinah was shattered.
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I know. I wasn’t going to blog again until the new Courting. I make up rules so that I can change them. I was just going to throw in some pictures, but, uh….The post below this one is the one I care about
On the first sorta warm, not too cloudy, no rain in the forecast, day I walked from Coney Island to Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. I didn’t include pictures of Brighton Beach, Manhattan Beach or Seagate, three Brooklyn hoods I walk through to get to Sheepshead Bay.
I love getting lost and always put in some getting lost time. Alas I have begun to know these neighborhoods too well. Continue Reading »
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Buffy Holt who is one of the best writer/bloggers I know, sister will be walking the Susan Komen Walk to stop breast cancer. Please read Buffy’s post. It’s very moving and very needed.
There will be a new Courting shortly. It will be way different yet similar. This is my last post until the new blog. I am so out of here–it’s 65 degrees.
There’s a less depressing one below this. I had consumed the better part of a bottle of wine when I wrote the post below. I actually still like it. This is me hung over.
She was lonely. When he left he had told her that she was both a pity f–k and a pity friend.
She had come to New York for him. Helped him get established. He had thought that as soon as he arrived in New York, his star would shine and he would be discovered.
They never lounged around. She went from gallery to gallery with photos of his work. She bought the loft that they lived in and he worked in. Of course she put it in his name. It was the 1950’s. The bank told her that she needed him to cosign though she put down the deposit and mortgage payments. The bank strongly advised that they keep it in his name. She put the money in the bank, and he signed the checks.
She was a temp, going from law firm to law firm, wherever they needed legal secretaries to work the graveyard shift.
She trusted him to use her money wisely. In her heart she knew that the investments were foolish. Legal secretaries made good money, but he could spend money so quickly. He told her that he was spending for success. He told her that one day they would live in riches and glory.
In high school and college people had raved about his canvases. She knew one day he would make it.
After two decades she was tired. Her legs would be swollen from making the rounds during the day. Her eyes were tired from pouring over legal documents at night, and writing the press releases he demanded of her. Continue Reading »
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Have you guessed the time Gonzales is going to resign to get a free years supply of Ben & Jerrys? My younger friends, in their teens, are very very into this. So are their parents who were totally apathetic because they didn’t believe change would come. They became apathetic after the Florida election, because democracy wasn’t working.
It would be incredible, amazing, wonderful beyond belief if the firing of the prosecutors is the one action that brings down Bush & Comp and more than a lot ironic.
I bought a new camera to replace the one that went into the sea. It’s not a simple point and click, so I practiced on objects as it was too cold to practice on the street.
I love glass. It’s pure and calming to me. This is just a bit of the glass objects. Some are Scottish paperweights. Scottish sand’s supposed to be the best for glass making.
I disliked Murano until they began to make door knobs
These pictures only reflect one side of me. My blog feels the same. When it’s made over, issues will be on a sidebar as Courting’s really about stories.
I can tell real stories about each object and I can make some stories up. When I first began blogging, I was “forced” to defend the veracity of my stories. At the time I had only written one fiction post, but it wasn’t clearly marked “fiction.” As the woman kept morphing into different identities, well, it was obviously fiction.
I have never had a wonderful feeling about blogging. It doesn’t make me all warm, happy and comfortable.
I deeply regret getting so deep into issues because it wasn’t fun, and began my love hate issues with comments.
The new Courting will be a more peaceful place. One where I can feel comfortable telling stories, whether true or fiction.
Lately I have been very reflective and wondering why I even call myself a writer. Yeah, I have had over 50 articles published, but I can’t say that I have been trying to be published.
Before I did become a professional writer, many people including my mother would ask why I wasn’t one. I had a stock answer:
There are nine million people in the naked city and 8.75 million think they’re writers.
Maybe I was right. I just don’t know.
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Happy Birthday MizzyB
My grandmother is in the purple. It was taken from a photograph that my aunt painted. My grandmother was a suffragette. My Mom was very proud. This post is in my grandmother and mother’s memories. My aunt’s a great artist and I think I will photograph her stuff and sell it here.
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EC is NOT the same thing as Mifeprex or RU-486. EC will not terminate an existing pregnancy. EC will not work if a woman is already pregnant.
To women from my generation, the first generation to grow up with the pill, this is a miracle. Because you’re not always on the pill. Other contraception can more easily fail.
I do remember giving condoms the balloon test. I remember one July 4th weekend with my boyfriend Zachary.
I really really would have gotten this pill had it been avaliable and then I would have never had to make a decision I have never regretted but found almost impossible to make.
I was a “mistake.” Never to me, my entire extended family and friends, but always to my birth mother. I lived in a foster home, just for four months. I know how amazing and random life is. I strongly believe that all women and girls should have access to birth control.
This pill prevents the egg and sperm from ever meeting. Girls and women are raped.
This pill is available to women, eighteen and over,without a prescription. Younger girls can get it with a prescription. Don’t ever be ashamed of asking for it.
It can save you from the most difficult decision you will ever have to make whether you decide to keep the pregnancy or terminate it.
You can make the choice to be pregnant or not.
That’s power.
Real power.
Please use a condom until you know everything you need to know about your partner. But accidents happen. Rape happens.
You have one modicum of control. Control equals power. You can choose not to become pregnant if you’re raped or didn’t use birth control or suspect that it might have failed. And I don’t know why but women usually know. We just do.
Make yourself powerful.
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When I looked at the list of popular subjects, today being the fourth anniversary of the war didn’t even make the cut. Second Life did. Sometimes I feel as if I have been living a version of Second Life over the past 28 months. I read about Second Life being a therapeutic tool. I would buy into that, if I didn’t know how many obsessives use the Internet as a substitute for doing. It really makes you feel as if you’re accomplishing something. Sometimes it’s necessary. Sometimes, it’s the opposite. It’s very hard to tell when you’re actually online.
I would say that it’s a lot better than Texas Hold em, but many people play Second Life for real money. Spring is sprunging and there’s nothing better than real life for practicing techniques for real life.
I will be at a candle lit rally tonight against the war. Four years. We have to get out. We have to get this country’s priorities straight.
Here’s a Times select article for all of you who think if only Reagan were president
When Courting’s redesigned I will have a space for newspaper articles and will copy the select ones. I will also emphasis my fiction as I think it’s my biggest strength
A link to my latest fiction post. It’s steamy and good. Want to highlight the fiction in my new blog.
These are clickable
This is a firehouse in my hood. Count the plaques. In the hood, another lost eleven and still another thirteen.
I will never forget. Continue Reading »
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Leahy wants Rove to testify over the fired prosecutors. My heart be still. And here is one of the loves of my life, Frank Rich, on four years. Read the Barbara Bush quotes. She’s a model of compassion. It’s a Select article so read it quickly
My new blog will have a place for rants and for articles so I don’t have to muck up the post. I will copy the select articles as I pay enough.
The silent auction was held in an overly dressed hotel reception hall that made Delilah
feel as if she were choking.
It was very noisy as the dinners with stars, and weeks in far away villas hadn’t been auctioned yet. When they were the room would still be noisy as most people attending were stars who owned far away villas.
Delilah made the opening speech. She was the only senior nursing home staff member who wouldn’t stammer and lose their ability to speak.
Or yell out “oh my god, there’s Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick,” or scream about how horrid rich people were.
She didn’t want to be here. Her voice was hoarse from crying. She had made the biggest mistake of her life six days ago and it couldn’t be rectified.
Her eyes weren’t puffy as she had kept real cucumber slices bended around her eyes for hours.
Delilah loved to look pretty for just herself or a crowd. Especially one that included Kevin Bacon and her long time girl crush, Kyra Sedgwick. She loved to get her hair done, have a special mani/pedi as opposed to the $19.99 Monday-Wednesday specials that seemed now to cost $50 with tip. Might as well have Joan of John Barrett’s at Bergdorf’s do it.
Delilah loved coming home and slathering her newly facialed skin in La Mer as she sat in the steam shower. She loved putting make up on and off until she achieved just the look she wanted, as she loved putting on a beautiful dress and admiring herself.
Tonight her co-admirer wasn’t there to tell her how beautiful she was.
Co-admirer? Was that what Drew really was? Had they been a mutual admiration society for twenty years, fifteen of them married?
Drew was everything Delilah wasn’t. Sturdy. Respectable. He managed a hedge fund downtown. He had nerve. Lots and lots of steady nerve.
She hated to admit that one man was her rock. Delilah believed that every woman should be able to live well on her own under any circumstances. But Delilah had never lived alone. When she was a teenager she married Rick, and they remained married for fifteen years.
Did she come with a fifteen year marriage expiration date?
The milk carton was way too old and spoiled now. Only Delilah would think of love in terms of milk cartons. She kept telling herself this wasn’t normal.
To think of wilted roses with thorns or something inspidly romantic, was normal. Delilah wasn’t a romantic. She was a fool for love. And a fool, she thought.
Drew had been having an affair for over a year. He told her. He said that it had been stupid, and it was over. That Delilah was always at work or working, even on their wedding anniversary, and he felt slighted.
She didn’t care what excuses he gave her. So she hadn’t been around on their anniversary? Drew had worked a few himself. She hadn’t had an affair because he was “emotionally unavailable.”
When did men become so expressive?
Wasn’t that the province of other women, not her? To drag out discussions and use psychobabble? Maybe she should have this time.
She was not “emotionally unavailable.” They were both busy with Blackberry filled lives. Oh she detached herself often. Maybe, just maybe his words had some validity.
Why did she have that knee jerk sick reaction? Why couldn’t she accept his apology?
He did admit the affair. If he told her didn’t that mean he wanted her to kick him out?
She hadn’t told Rick about her affair with Drew until they decided to leave their spouses and get married.
Drew’s first wife contested the divorce and didn’t want him to share custody. Rick wanted half of the assets though she had brought in much money.
Getting married had been hard.
Staying married was easy she had thought until last week. Maybe that was it. Maybe she had taken it for granted. She truly believed that she was with the man she was meant to be with.
Delilah believed that a person was given one real chance for happiness, and she blew it. She had never stated this belief. It was against everything a good post-feminist should believe in.
Life with Rick had been hard. They had differing expectations. Life with Drew was easy. When she sang loudly off key, he would join in. If he wanted a dinner party for his clients and associates, he took care of the details.
How could she fault him when they slept together the first time they met?
Rick was away. She and Drew sat staring at The Water Lillies in the old Museum of Modern Art. It turned out to be something they both did when feeling stressed. They found that out when they went to the Sculpture Garden cafe and shared a carafe of Merlot. Then they shared another….
They kept a huge Water Lillies print in a guest bathroom, and a small one in their bedroom, and told nobody of its significance.
They naturally adapted to each others rhythms without any explanation. Sometimes she thought there was a god, and god was at MOMA that day.
How could she have thrown him out and have already seen a divorce lawyer? The world was filled with lonely women and she didn’t have to be one.
She loved a man and he loved her. He made a mistake and she made him pay.
Really she had forgiven President Clinton for more; a faux affair with a woman beneath him in status. Drew had slept with a managing partner of another firm. Two equals. If she could forgive Clinton, and talk about the Impeachment being over a blow job….
Her parents would have told her:
“Sex, Delilah, it was about sex. He felt guilty. He ended it and confessed. End of story.”
But her parents weren’t here.
Drew was the best lover she had ever had. He pleasured her….the thought of Drew making another woman moan was sickening. But the affair was over and had been for three months.
Delilah had told him she was cancelling some engagements so they could go to Drew’s friend’s wedding in Venice.
He looked so strange that she asked if he was sick or in horrible pain.
No, he just had to confess something she really didn’t want to know about.
When he told her she had to act. Every bit of her scholarly, over-educated, graduated college in the 70’s, womanliness was at stake.
Stupid, she was so stupid. How could she be so stupid. She couldn’t stop obsessing over her stupidity.
Delilah wondered if he was as miserable as she was. Was he staying up all night smoking endless cigarettes, something they had both given up years ago?
Was he spending the time he was pretending to be working watching his mind circle over his head thinking endless repetitive thoughts about true love.
True love? She never used that term. They just were good together. He was the crushed cookie in her ice cream Or she was in his….
She always thought things like that and never understood who went where. Maybe because they just went together.
Damn she missed him watching her get dressed tonight. She missed watching him get dressed. She missed him, OK, she just missed him and wanted to end this whole stupid divorce. Even the lawyer had told her to wait several months, but she was getting ready to formally separate. She had to move quickly.
Delilah was always decisive and fast. She never wasted time mulling decisions. Until this week she hadn’t made one she regretted.
She should have told him to sleep in the guest room that night. Why punish him at all? He confessed to something that was over. She knew it was because she and the woman had a friend, Liz, in common.
She should have screamed at Liz for not telling her, but she wouldn’t have told either. Liz said she knew it was a fling. The woman was constantly crying because Drew was obviously in love with Delilah.
Delilah knew her speech went well because there was a lot of laughter and applause. She gave the speech by rote as she was busy castigating herself. As she never wore contacts when giving a big speech, she couldn’t see the attendees..
When she left the stage, and walked to her table, her friend Rosanna greeted her:
“I thought you and Drew were filing for divorce, but we were supposed to tell everybody he’s away?”
“Ha?”
Then she saw him sitting at the table. For a second she wanted to be angry. Continue Reading »
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The other day New York City released almost a million debts because the collection agencies couldn’t show the back paperwork telling the history of the debt or if in fact money was really owed.
Like I would buy a subscription to Car & Driver? I paid the $47 I turned out to “owe” because it was worth it to me to make the phone calls stop.
And I have a blog. I don’t get mad. I do get even. I’m very proud of my Allied Interstate page
I don’t know how many comments there are in the page and two posts, but they make for much interesting reading than the actual post. All comments, rants etc about Allied belong in that page
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The words come from Bone.
“I’m the wanderer, yeah the wanderer.”
Dion had been popular when Delilah was a little girl, now he was popular again. She had been too young to think him cute or sexy then. Later he didn’t have long hair. During the late 60’s, or early 70’s he had reemerged for a hot sec, and she thought him a joke.
Something happened in the early 80’s. She developed a secret love for early rock. Delilah’s coop was in a building that had housed some of the biggest musical stars during the 30’s. It was soundproofed so fully, a resident had been killed in the 50’s by his wife’s lover and nobody heard the screams.
Nobody could hear her singing Dion songs until she was hoarse. When she would buy early rock & roll CD’s at Tower, she would change her hair, her clothing style, her makeup and wear RayBan’s instead of her collection of vintage designer sunglasses.
Most were so old that they had become vintage. Delilah had learned years ago never to throw sunglasses away. They would come back in style within the decade at three to ten times the price.
Delilah was a clinical social worker who ran three halls for demented nursing home residents. She would constantly sing “The Wander” to herself. Most of the residents tried to leave. Rose wanted to go downtown to resume her flapper days.
As Rose worked in a sweatshop double shift before she was married, and single shift after having two sets of twins in sixteen months, Delilah envied her imagination. Delilah wished she had known what Rose had really been like. Her eight kids only knew her as a tired bitchy woman who would come home to Williamsburg and ordered them around. Most of the kids, all of the grandchildren and great grandchildren refused to see her.
Her oldest daughter, Ann, a staid Larchmont matron did the speaking for the family. She wore amazing Chanel suits during the year, and original Lily Pulitzer dresses in summer. Delilah coveted her wardrobe, and was amazed by the bitterness in her voice when talking about her mother. Ann was in her late 70’s and really should have worked past this by now.
“It’s all an act. My mother wouldn’t be nice unless she’s getting something out of it. We bended to her will every day until we escaped. I vowed when I had children, they would be treated with love and dignity.”
Delilah had lived with Ann’s youngest son, years before. None of the kids knew their grandmother, but they all suspected Ann was a rich better dressed version. Ann’s children saw her on major holidays.
She didn’t like working with people from her personal life, but nobody else in the nursing home staff saw anything wrong with it.
“Ann, we have discussed this before. Your mother’s too demented to act, or cover. Maybe she dreamed when sewing the dresses. Maybe this was the life your mother wanted. Maybe she became bitter because of her circumstances. There are too many maybes to count.”
“Delilah, you always looked for good in people. My mother had no time for dreams. That’s one thing we had in common. It’s very hard for me to think of you as a professional. You were the one who dreamed and still do.”
Ann still thought of her as a 20 year old hippie anti-war agitator with good manners. She would invite them over and always invite some single girls who looked like Richard Nixon’s daughters. Ann had never forgiven her for being the one to leave. But she knew that Ann insisted Rose be placed in this nursing home because of Delilah’s rep. Continue Reading »
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