Saturday, December 29, 2012

In real time

On a train, headed for a weekend with my man and our kids. On my way to celebrate life while my friend is dying. My heart sings and it breaks.

Sunday, November 04, 2012

The sound of music

People on the bus talking so loudly on their cellphones, I decide to pull out mine and play Alfred Brendel's Beethoven Sonatas, without headphones, at full volume. Beautiful old man in the seat in front of me turned and smiled, and from 34th street to 66th, in the midst of the noise and chaos, we listened together.

Friday, October 12, 2012

The best part of today

Hands down, was having tea here with my dear friend, Zsa, and laughing when the waiter delivered the check in the pages one of my most favorite little books.

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

The best part of today

Was walking arm-in-arm with my daughter to the pharmacy, singing a few lyrics from a song we used to know.

Tuesday, October 09, 2012

The best part of today

Riding the bus home from work and talking quietly on the cellphone with my sweetheart, while he talked quietly to me.

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Lesson learned

Don't ever hand over your heart to a man who doesn't live to make you smile.

Friday, September 21, 2012

1:11 a.m.


I once had a boyfriend who said the sound of my footsteps were too loud.

I once had a boyfriend who tortured me with his insanity and terrorized me on his motorcycle.

I once had a boyfriend who almost never took me anywhere, and who never gave me a gift.

I once had a suitor who made me feel like a stranger, and I once had a lover who belonged to someone else.

Now I have someone who possesses everything I want and everything I need, and what he wants from me is everything, and what he wants to give me...is everything.

I get it now. I get it all.

Thursday, September 20, 2012

The Essence of Student, by Annie Kosh


I am the essence of student
I am chins against palms,
I am eyes half closed in a place between here and there.
I am groans held in,
I am minds aching for release.

I am the essence of student
My brain is the notebook everyone writes in.
I am a notebook stuffed to capacity.
I am the cry for success, and at the same time the cry for distraction.
I am the barricade in my own path.

I am the essence of student
I am laughter echoing in the halls.
I am whispers and nudges and sideways glances.
I am tentative smiles searching for approval,
I am the constant, pounding thought, "maybe I'm not good enough."

I am the essence of student
I am sneaker-clad feet propped up on chairs and arms crossed.
I am the taste cafeteria lunch leaves on your tongue,
the same taste as knowing you failed that test.
I am mouths that spit gum into trash cans and then take more,
I am passionate voices spoken out of turn.

I am the essence of student
I am curiosity etched into every part of you,
I am the spark of interest in your heart, desperate to remain alight.
I am tongues stuck out corners of mouths, pencils scribbling furiously.
I am the first easy breath that fills you when you realize it might all be worth it.

Saturday, September 08, 2012

Defeeted

I always said I could never be with a man who wore cowboy boots, until I met the love of my life. He could wear cowboy boots, zebra stripped slippers, even florescent green Crocs and I would still love him the same.

Friday, September 07, 2012

More than words

He tells me he's by my side,

Wednesday, September 05, 2012

Fed

Blueberry jam on toast,
coffee.
Sunlit filled kitchen-
I cook for him, he plays for me.

Sweetness and fire,
breathing with ease.
nothing to want,
nothing to crave,
because everything is offered-
as freely and as often as breakfast. 

Friday, August 24, 2012

Gratitude

Because like everything, what I'm grateful for changes, so here is my current list:

I'm grateful for Tai Moses, my friend of 38 years who, though the 3000 miles between us never gets shorter, I feel closer to than ever. I'm grateful that my daughter, although she is typical in the teenage ways she challenges and aggravates me, is also kind and loyal, self possessed, confident, and radiant. I'm grateful that although my father has been gone for 16 years, he left me with a love I feel whenever I think of him, and I think of him every day still. I'm grateful, though I didn't stay married to the man I married, that he and I have a respect for one another that cannot be broken. I'm grateful that my mother, who is now 84, still walks, and works, and sings, and every so often has a second shot of vodka that makes her ridiculously and beautifully childlike. I'm grateful to have brothers, and work that I love, and for knowing I'll return to London and to Rome, and enjoy them both so much more next time around. I'm grateful to live in a beautiful home with a shiny bathroom floor and hot water when I want it-grateful for the man who's name is tattooed on my ankle, who, although we never made a life together, gave me a taste of what real love could be. I'm grateful I stopped giving myself to men who weren't there on New Year's Eve, or on my birthday, or who never made me feel like I was the only one. I am grateful to have found a man who's already thinking of how we'll spend New Year's Eve together, who shows me I am the only one, and who, if I dare to look forward, I can see on my next birthday, holding my hand on a plane to Bora Bora, that place I've been dreaming of for so long.

Thursday, August 23, 2012

Loveworks

Most of us don’t just get to have the love we want because we want it. We get to have the love we want because we first spend a period of our lives squandering our love on those who can’t receive it, or don’t appreciate it, or don’t deserve it, or who abuse it. And then we spend more time searching our souls for answers, asking ourselves in what areas we could have been better. We meditate, we pray, we wonder, we cry, we blame and we take responsibility. Then after years and years of being on what only seems like a hamster wheel, we realize that love feels good, not bad. We realize that love is completely attainable, that it’s not the thing always out of reach. We understand that a person who makes you cry, or doesn’t respond to your touch, or isn’t with you on your birthday, or who doesn’t want you to meet their friends, or who doesn’t treat you like the gift that you are, is the wrong person to spend your precious existence with. At some point, the time in which you reside in wrong relationships gets shorter and shorter, until you come to a place where you can smell the wrong one coming from a mile away. And then, when you discover you’ve been looking into a trick mirror your whole life, seeing things not as they are, but as you believed them to be-when you finally put forward the love in you that calls for, requires, and gently demands it be reflected back just as it’s being given…

…love walks into your life as effortlessly as if you never had to do any of that work at all.

Monday, August 20, 2012

0 to 60

You ride in your car with your friends, you're seventeen. The music blares, the road is unknown, and the next song coming will be better than the one playing now. So much wonder, so much hope; vacillating between loneliness and euphoria, always on the verge of tears or something big, and then you blink your eyes and you're fifty.

Saturday, August 18, 2012

Love whispers

I have written so much on this blog over the last six years; mostly I've written about love. And I can see now that my preoccupation with love, sex and romance came from my hunger, and that hunger came from being starved. Not because I was denied by others, but because I denied myself.

Perhaps it was simply a matter of timing; perhaps I was just not ready for more. Clearly I was ready to hold myself back. I was ready, not for someone to arrive, but for someone to leave and for something to break. What I craved was the thrill of uncertainty, of being kept in the dark, kept on my toes, guessing, even mistreated. I was ready to continue my rein as the queen of Broken Hearts.

Last winter, a man resurfaced into my life after twenty-seven years. He had been enamored with me for a brief moment in time, and when we were young we kissed one night on the church steps, then he left a dozen red roses outside my door.

Twenty-seven years later, the old flame, that for me had barely been a spark back then, was ignited. And if I'm honest, I saw red flags the night of our reunion that would have made a wiser woman run.

After we dined together in New York in spring, I went to him in summer. I went because I liked him well enough, because he wanted to see me again, because after he returned home he called me "My Love," and paraphrased Shakespeare in an email, and because he said his Sunday would have been sweeter had I been there to share it. I went to him because he couldn't schedule coming back here, and because he wanted to take me to the seaside. I went, not because I knew he was The One, but because I knew if I didn't go, I would always wonder if he was.

I went to him because I ignored the voice that kept telling me, Don't go.

I don't need to relive the moment I saw him again in summer, how, after all those miles I traveled and all that money I spent, there was hardly a smile on his face when I arrived. I don't care to remember, but I do remember, how he didn't offer to help with my bags, ran five steps ahead me, and flinched when my arm brushed against his in the car. I don't need to describe how I felt when he made it clear, that although there would be plenty of wine this time around, there would be no more roses and no more romance, because regardless of how remarkable a woman I was, he was as closed to me as a New York City liquor store on Sunday.

I didn't expect to fall in love when I was there, but what I expected even less was to be treated like, and even told I was a stranger to him. When I woke up on the fourth and last day of what was to be a week-long visit, I knew I could not spend another moment in his company. I also knew he would be the last man on my list of wrong men.

Then, almost immediately following what I would call that "Awakening," I met someone. At first I couldn't recognize him. He wasn't married, or half my age, or unemployed, or emotionally damaged, or neglectful, or toxic, or unsure how he felt about me. At first I fought him, gave him a little kick, then I tried to bite, but he wouldn't go. Then, like a wild filly after her first hours trapped inside a pen, I slowly began to surrender. Me, the neglected and mistrustful mare and he, the steadfast, determined, and gentle Whisperer.


After a lifetime of being fascinated, confused, thrilled and tormented by love, love is no longer my story. Love is no longer my theme or what I do best, or something I crave, or the thing that eludes me. Love is mine, and whether this particular love lasts a lifetime or for one more day, it's as it should be:  kind, passionate, and present.
  
When I comb the pages of this blog, the pages of the last six years of my life, I can now see a trail, a path. I now have a detailed map of my journey to love, and all the roads and roadblocks it took to get here.

How Deep is Your Love was the song playing on the radio when I had my very first kiss at fourteen, and all the kisses since then have shown me just how deep, and just how shallow love can be.

Love is no longer what I look for or long for; it's what I give and it's what I get. Love is not a Shakespeare quote recited by a man with a Do Not Disturb sign on his heart, it's waking up beside a man who's heart is wide open. Love is not given in promises, it's the promise of being seen, and when we no longer accept swimming on the surface, love is not shallow, love is the deep water we find. 


Friday, August 10, 2012

Note to men

The secret to having a woman who isn't needy is simple. Give yourself to her. She requires a lot less than you imagine or fear.

Thursday, August 09, 2012

The way things aren't

While the train conductor informs passengers which cars to exit from, I keep thinking he's saying, "Please look for a unicorn member of the crew." He's actually saying a uniformed member of the crew...obviously.

Thought in real time

He's not a  prick, and he's not a pansy. He's a man.

Tuesday, August 07, 2012

Just not white

Annie: Mom? Could we do something fancy and white-peopleish, like take a vacation in New Hampshire?

Saturday, August 04, 2012

Thought in real time

We have so many dreams in one lifetime, and the most important thing is not to dwell on the ones that never came true, but to rejoice in all the ones that did.

Thursday, August 02, 2012

Reason #456,997 why I love New York

Because when my kid is out and about with her day-camp, she gets to randomly run into and meet people like Spike Lee.

Wednesday, August 01, 2012

In my dreams

Last night I dreamed of tidal waves and kisses.

Monday, July 30, 2012

Working title

This is all so unfamiliar to me. The absence of confusion, the quiet way I feel curious now. I told my mother the other day that I missed being tortured. She laughed and said it was a great line. Only trouble is for me, there's too much truth in that line.

I know that peace doesn't equal death, but I don't really know it. I know that love is kind, but I don't really know it. I know I've been with men who keep me at bay, keep me down, or just keep me, and I know I don't want that again-I know that.

I know I'm supposed to want what my brother says I should want, or what my friends think I should want, but the truth is, I don't know what I want. I do know I'm not going to want anything until I want it, and until I want it, I just want this. The sound of waves, just me, alone and always on the verge of something big.

Friday, July 20, 2012

The way things aren't

I thought I saw a sign that said Shoe Liquor, but it actually said, Shoe Liquidation. Then I thought I saw a sign that said Creeps and Waffles...

...but it didn't really say Creeps and Waffles. :)

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

In my dreams

Last night I dreamed I poured a glass of water and drank it. Then I poured another glass of water, and a human heart rose to the top. I put the glass aside so I could show it to my father, so that maybe he could fix it somehow. Then I poured a third glass. The same heart appeared again, and again it floated to the top. I left the glass on the table and went to put on my shoes; I was already aware that the heart was now in my shoe, but I slipped my foot in anyway. I was watching myself from the outside now, and it was clear that I was under duress-standing on this human heart.

Was it mine? I don't know. It was a dream. 

Saturday, July 14, 2012

Creating space


In my life and in my heart-for something different, something real, something more.

Perhaps.

Thursday, July 12, 2012

Go figure

My spam folder consists primarily of offers for a bigger penis and a better tortilla.

Unsolicited advice from me

Don't believe a man when he tells you all he's going to do for and to you...just be open, pleasantly surprised, and appreciative when he shows you.

Could you be loved?

Although it's peculiar, how easy it is for me to open my heart to men with closed hearts-yet easy to close my heart to men who are open, I'm starting to believe that though it's unfortunate, maybe even tragic, this is far from an uncommon human experience.

Thought in real time

Everyone wants a piece of what's sacred, until nothing is sacred anymore.

Monday, July 09, 2012

Sweet dreams


Owls


Sunday, July 08, 2012

The signs were there

His door was shut long before I ever arrived.

Mystery (movie) solved


Me: I've been seeing a lot of good movies lately.

Elisa: I saw a really good film about a paraplegic and his African attendant.

Me: I heard about that one-Mom, you saw that didn't you?

Mom: Yes I did-it was with Dustin Hoffman.

Elisa: The one I saw wasn't with Dustin Hoffman-we must be talking about two different films.

Mom: The movie I saw was about a man in a wheelchair and the relationship between him and his African caregiver. The man in the wheelchair was played by Dustin Hoffman.

Elisa: That's so strange because that's the same story of the movie that I'm talking about, but the star wasn't Dustin Hoffman-it was a French actor.

Me: Wait a minute! I watched a French film last night called "Tell No One." It was sort of a mystery-thriller and I thought the male lead bore an uncanny resemblance to Dustin Hoffman-even his mannerisms were like Hoffman's. If Mom saw a film that appears to be the same film as the one you saw, Elisa, and you are certain the lead was a Frenchman, might it be possible that the actor in question is the same one that starred in the film I watched last night?

Mom: Maybe, but I would be very surprised.

Me: Let me Google his name.

I show my mother and Elisa a picture of French actor, François Cluzet.

Elisa: That's him!

Mom: That's him!



In real time

In a room with closed windows and no air conditioner on-I am perfectly cooled by the fan overhead. No one home, quiet outside-I am at rest on the bed, looking up at a cracked yet solid white ceiling-feeling my still back, my body flat and stretched-street sounds, a car driving past, the steady hum of the fan going round-peace and me and nothing more.

Saturday, July 07, 2012

Beauty


Wednesday, July 04, 2012

In my dreams

Last night I dreamed I was being held captive by a man who I soon discovered had stolen a human heart. I found the heart hidden behind a plank in the wall of the little room in which I was trapped, and once it was in my hand, I laid down on the floor by the door.

Stand up, I kept telling myself. If you don't stand up, when he discovers you have the heart, he's going to kill you.

I suddenly found myself outside of the house in the night. I had the heart in one hand, a set of keys in the other, and I ran toward a metal gate that surrounded the compound. I fumbled with the keys until I realized there was no lock-I was free to go, but my car was gone-my captor had taken it so I wouldn't get far.

Fact #1,203,316

A man who makes it a habit of walking 5 steps ahead of you on the street, and standing 5 steps above you on the escalator, is not a man you should spend 5 minutes of your time with.

Tuesday, July 03, 2012

Loud and clear

Lately I haven't been feeling so good about my body, and as I stood in my underwear and bra, looking through my closet for something to wear tonight, my mother said, "You're so beautiful."

I turned around and saw her there smiling.

"I don't feel so beautiful these days," I said. She looked at me up and down and still smiling she replied,"You don't know the value of your youth. Someday you will."

Realization #467,912

There are people who are artists who don't make art, and there are people who make art who aren't artists. I believe, if I ever expect to be seen and appreciated again by a man, it won't matter if he makes art or not, but he will most certainly have to be an artist.

Never stop smelling the roses

"Being tender and open is beautiful. As a woman, I feel continually shhh’ed-too sensitive, too mushy, too wishy-washy, blah blah. Don’t let someone steal your tenderness. Don’t allow the coldness and fear of others tarnish your perfectly vulnerable beating heart. Nothing is more powerful than allowing yourself to truly be affected by things-whether it’s a song, a stranger, a mountain, a rain drop, a tea kettle...a footstep-feel it all-look around you. All of this is for you. Give it and feel love."

~Zooey Deschanel

Monday, July 02, 2012

There can be such freedom...

...in not caring about someone you used to love, and not loving someone you thought you could.

Sunday, July 01, 2012

Beauty

Time of my life

With nothing in order I'm well prepared
More closed and more open
Without Him with me.
I have a vision of home now
And I'm almost there
Courageous,
Rare and radiant.

Thursday, June 28, 2012

The lotus flower

It floats upon the water-it is, among other things, a symbol of rebirth. But regardless of its beauty and fragile appearance, its roots are buried deep into the mud. Despite its constant state of openness, it remains one of the strongest flowers in nature.

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Although I can’t even really explain this image, this is exactly how I'm beginning to feel about men.

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Just like that

After experiencing disappointment away, and then a loss (separate) when I returned home, I had my first moments alone tonight, and the effects of it all came through in a flood of tears. It felt as if it would never end, this feeling, this me lying on top of my bed, curled into a position that one might be instructed to assume in a trench while bombs were dropping overhead-as if that would save you.

But then without a conscious thought, I got up, went into the shower and washed myself clean. Later, as I stood wrapped in my favorite pink towel, I looked in the mirror and my heart lifted.

No doubt before I'm old and then gone, my heart will be heavy again many times over. But it's that moment in the mirror that I know so well, and that reminds me of how, for no apparent or obvious reason, the spirit can be freed-just like that.

Thought in real time

I didn't miss out on a great big love...I just dodged a great big bullet.

Monday, June 25, 2012

Unsolicited advice from me

Never consider someone a friend (and certainly not a potential lover) who, when you mention to him that you're writing a book, doesn't ask a thing about it.

Don't travel 6,000 miles because someone you hardly know tells you how much he wants to see you.

Try not to share your loveliness with someone who doesn't appreciate your loveliness.

Only have almond milk with your morning coffee if you really like that sort of thing.

Sunday, June 24, 2012

This Woman Wonders...


...if there is such a thing as a Super Man.

All in a day

Yesterday I met a man named Dallas, drank a bad Margarita with salt, and watched a little boy skipping through a field of fireflies.

Saturday, June 23, 2012

Reflection

Today when Annie and I walked from 42nd Street to 86th along the river path at sunset, it was like magic. Silent and cool, a breeze blew the flowers and willow trees against the backdrop of sunlit water. My daughter was radiant and the love we share, the connectedness we feel cannot be described. Together we laid our eyes on the face of a sweet puppy, a regal dog, a family of geese and a stunning black couple. Our mutual affection traveled through our holding hands-my daughter, an unusual and magnificent creature, an exotic bird who was born to fly, and me, her mama-the lucky one given the chance to love a girl as rare as she.

As I know who Annie is and what she is worth, I know who I am and what I am worth. As I know I will only ever want her to accept the love of a man whose heart is open, a man who is deserving of her, worthy of her, and who sees her as the gift she is, I know I will only accept the same for me. A man with an open heart and a playful mind-and who sees me as clearly as I see myself at sunset-being reflected back through the eyes of my child.