Thursday, December 30, 2010

out with the old and in with the new

look for the silver lining

when er a cloud appears in the blue

remember somewhere the sun is shining

and so the right thing, to do is make is shine for you.

A heart full of joy and gladness

will always banish sadness and strife

so always look for the silver lining

and try to find the sunny side of life.


Here's to closing out a year of pitfalls and mishaps and unexpected joys and surprises.

To pushing oneself to the limit and realizing that sometimes your best isn't always good enough

here's to discovering new and amazing people, sometimes buried within your own heart,

here's to finding multiple ways to irritate government officials in new jersey who are use to shoveling out bullshit in the hopes you will go away ( look forward to seeing ya next year too!)

apply line above to those individuals in new york city, it sucks for them cause I live here.

here's to learning to be still and silent and listen...sometimes too much. You may not like what you hear but it's better than standing at the bottom of the hill with the snowball gaining momentum. I'm the loony one pushing it back up the slope, battered and bruised in the process.

Here's to discovering in surprising, humbling and sometimes frightening ways that you are on the right path though it may be twisted and unclear.

Here's to doing it all over again.

Hope everyone gets everything they want in the New Year. Good health, a chocolate bar or mega millions.

I'd settle for my book to be done and an oatmeal cookie. Hope to have both :)

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Merle



She always bounces into a room and greets everyone in sight. I've known her since I first came here, she was one of the first people to come up to me when I ventured into a place I did not know looking to connect with someone.



This past weekend over pizza and salad I got to listen to her talk more than usual.



" When did you first come here?"



" 1962...in a snowstorm, it was one of the worst snowstorms in awhile."



" I met this nice spanish dancer in Toronto who said that if I ever came to New York I could stay with her. So when I arrived, I got in the cab and gave the driver the address. He turned and looked at me and said 'Are you sure you want to go there?' I said yes, my friend lives there."



" So we are driving up through East Harlem and he says again 'Are you sure this where you want to go?' I told him yes and that started it."



" I met my husband at a party, a little later on he said 'Do you want to move in together?' And I said ' You mean get married?'. He replied 'Ah, sure why not?"



You can read more about Merle here. She is quite an amazing lady.

Saturday, December 18, 2010

the ghost will be happy..

It's been a couple of weeks of writing in notebooks and taking a much needed break. ( which I did enjoy, the former and the latter) That changed today when a dear friend said she had the program I needed to make my new electronic "typewriter" type. So besides the excitement of being able to open stuff not asking for a 25 digit cryptic code is the possibility of dragging this typewriter to my second home on 42nd street, sitting under that ornate ceiling and spread out with as many research books as I want.
And this will most likely be the only place I take this thing to.
Cost of a laptop that I get to figure out day by day: no comment
Cost of Office software: indebtedness to a friend
Opportunity to sit in the Rose Reading Room of the library till at least 9pm during the week in silence and write: priceless!

Thursday, December 9, 2010

turning inward

Be Still.
Listen to the stones of the wall.
Be silent, they try to speak your name.
Listen to the living walls.

Who are you?, Who are you?
Who (be quiet)
are you(as these stones are quiet.)
Do not think of what you are still less of what you may one day be.

Rather be what you are (but who?)
be the unthinkable one you do not know.
O be still, while you are still alive, and all things live around you speaking ( I do not hear)
in your own being, speaking by the unknown that is in you and in themselves.

-Thomas Merton

Thursday, December 2, 2010

forced stop on the side of the road

It's one thing when you procrastinate from working on something because you get distracted by life or just don't feel like sitting and squeezing every last morsel out of one's brain. It's quite another when the very instrument you use to write something on puts up a road block...though I guess in a twisted way that is a distraction by life also. Old computer gave signs that it was going to go to electronic heaven soon so there wasn't much I could do besides be paranoid until I was able to save everything and meanwhile write everything down on one of the gazillion tablets I have lying around as an alternative.

Then a very generous gift from a family member gave me my new computer which for me is learning how to use something that speaks a foreign language. And once that final program known as Word can be installed I can go back to writers block, breakthrough, frustration, writers block, breakthrough and frustration. Actually looking forward to it.

In the meantime I got to go back to wild goose chases and special surprises along the way which has been a nice alternative in the daily chaos of life.