Tri-state date

Today I sat by the river in New Jersey, eating a California roll, looking at New York.

Sitting at the sidebar

Some Clifford Brown for a sunny Sunday morning.

Yesterday

Sitting at the sidebar

Something for a Saturday.

Mom mob

In 1932, my mother was a little girl living in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. One summer a man was roaming the neighborhood, breaking into apartment buildings and exposing himself to lone children in elevators. The women of the neighborhood quickly banded together, set up lawn chairs and umbrellas on rooftops, and equipped with hardboiled eggs to eat, knitting to pass the time, and glass milk bottles as ammunition, waited day and night for the offender to appear.

My mother named the army of women, "The Milk Bottle Brigade," and although they never had the pleasure of catching the perp, he was eventually spotted by "The Bread Basket Brigade," apprehended and thrown in jail.

Sitting at the sidebar

Tenderly from Bill Evans, The Complete Riverside Recordings.

So pretty.

Living for the city

I could be happy on the California coast, in a cabin in Vermont or the Arizona desert. But in just one day, I've encountered enough humanity to mend a thousand broken hearts, and that's just New York.

It's no secret

Sitting at the sidebar

I'll never forget my first serious "make-out session." In a Los Angeles apartment, he was 23, had no clue I was jail bait, and this song played on the hi-fi.

Leaving L.A.

"I want to go back to New York so I can wear my baggy pants."

~Roger Bowen

Cracked

Lately I've been walking on eggshells... with myself.

Nice to now you

Me: "What is your relationship with the present moment?"

David: "I wouldn't know, we've never been introduced."

Punctuate, please

Me: "Would you eat, my baby?"

Annie: "Would I eat your baby?"

David: "See how important commas are?"

Sitting at the sidebar

I'm keeping the ball rolling with Gemini by the Cannonball Adderley Sextet: Cannonball Adderley (alto sax); Yusef Lateef (tenor sax, flute, oboe); Nat Adderley (cornet); Joe Zawinul (piano); Sam Jones (bass) and Louis Hayes (drums).

Recorded live in 1962 at the Village Vanguard, if this doesn't send a shot of joy straight to your soul, I don't know what will.




Click the sidebar selection to the right of this post.

Educating the department

The New York City Department of Education has done something right by posting 2 poems by Annie, both of them written in 2006. (they failed to title one of them at the top but hey, it's progress).

Please click here to read.

little poem in real time

coffee brews, honey chews,
my feet are bare without my shoes.
waiting for that cosmic thing
to wrap around me like a ring.
that source of solid, unshakable love,
from everywhere, nowhere, below, above.
where days unfold like layers of sound,
where nothing is lost so nothing is found.
where i'm free of belief, of good and wrong,
and whatever I play, is just the right song.

4:17 am

Annie asleep in my bed, I'm awake from a dream that I played the harmonica. Not myself these days, as if my head and my heart, my body and my voice are singing separate tones, rather than one cohesive melody.

Sitting at the sidebar

Planet Earth, one of my favorites by Cannonball Adderley, and one of my favorite places to be.

In real time

Annie home from the playground, reading beside me while I work. Dinner cooks, Honey at my feet, the sun goes down on a pretty day.

Goodnight

How did it get so late so soon?
It's night before its afternoon.
December is here before it's June-
My goodness how the time has flewn.
How did it get so late so soon?”

~Dr. Seuss

The need to be seen

When I was a little girl I used to watch a show called Romper Room, and at the end of each episode "Miss Carol" looked straight at her television audience through her hand-held hoop-on-a-stick.

"I see Johnny," she would say, "and Suzy, oh, and there's Bobby! I see Cindy, and Billy..."

And while she listed all the children she saw through the TV set, I would wave and shout, "And Katie! Over here Miss Carol, you see Katie!"

But she never said my name. Miss Carol never saw me.

I guess that explains it.

Secret

Sometimes I feel I can do no wrong, other times I feel if I make one wrong move, I will cease being loved.

Sitting at the sidebar

1974 was the year radio music rocked my world, and this song was a Main Ingredient.

Click the sidebar to listen, and here for a post that describes some of the sounds of '74.

Fact #9,015

When I was a little girl I was afraid of the Mafia, until my dad told me there was no such thing.

1) Is not an indicator that blogger is depressed.
2) Often occurs after an outburst of blogging.
3) Sometimes coincides with blogger's personal expansion.
4) Proven cures: inspiration and time.

A dog with a blog?

Why, that's almost as amazing as an elephant with a paintbrush!

Click here for the latest buzz, scroll to the bottom for the intro, and please remember to check Annie's Version from time to time.

xox,

Katie

Stop right here

After the recent post, Sexual Healing, more than one man came forward to remind me that they, as well as their friends, do want "real women," and indeed found the girl in the photograph attractive (the same woman accused by the media of being a "fat slob"). One man emailed me and said about his gender, “All we want is to be loved back.”

So maybe the problem I speak of isn’t a problem at all. Maybe we are simply being tricked into believing there’s a problem (no need to explain how Corporate America would benefit from creating such a divide), and instead of waking to the truth of “what is,” we turn the matter upside down and inside out, trying to dissect and make sense, all in hopes of finding freedom. Maybe the awakening we need is not to why we are separate, but to the possibility that we have never been apart.

One comment made in response to the post was that women should enjoy their lives more, which at least for the woman making the comment meant adding cream to her coffee and butter on croissants. Although that may be another matter all together (woman’s obsession with body image), maybe she has a point. Maybe all we need is a little more cream in our coffee, an understanding that there is no problem and nothing to fix, and that beneath the illusion and trickery is what we all want: to love and be loved back.

So let's get those cows working overtime, add some sweetness to the cup, and know that where we truly long to be is the place in which we already stand.

Laundry love

This afternoon I did one more load of laundry, but when I saw the word Unbalanced appear, I couldn't help but smile.

Name your inner porn star

Ever wonder how porn stars get names like Felix Bank, Princess Fairlane or Valentine King? Well, Gary Regina, the composer of my film Cold Tea, recently let me in on a well-kept secret. Take the name of the first pet you had that shares your gender, then the name of the first street you ever lived on, and wallah! You're in business!

Based on this proven and scientific method, I am Honey Brighton, Gary is Troubles Rouquette, and David is the great Pepe Dempster.

In the "Comments" section of this post, please add yours to the list. I dare you.

Fit to be tied

My new Converse cost me three times what they did when I was a kid, and they came without laces!

In real time

Strong coffee and fragrant white lilies.

Sexual healing

The "sensitive man." A man in touch with his "feminine side." The "metrosexual" man. Up until recently, these were not common concepts in American culture. And while it's great that men can be sensitive, important for them to relate to women, and fine, I suppose, if they choose to wax their eyebrows, something else has taken place in the midst of this "male awakening," and I'm left to wonder if it's all part of the same phenomenon.

Years ago, men were just...men. Wash and dry, off to work, earn a buck to feed the family. They were not invited to witness the births of their children and were, generally speaking, not in touch with their femininity. But good, bad or otherwise, they were in touch with their masculinity, and the women they found attractive, the standard of beauty, let's say 40, 50 years ago, were women like Marilyn Monroe, Sophia Loren and Ann Margaret.

And who are the objects of desire today? If we use Hollywood as a cultural reference, it's women like Angelina Jolie, Keira Knightly and Kate Hudson.

Now, I'm not making a comment on skinny women, hey, some of my closest friends are bone-thin and beautiful. But if we accept that women are naturally fuller, softer and rounder creatures than men, and for the majority of our history that has been considered attractive and sexually desirable, then I wonder if, as men have become more "feminized," their desire has shifted from curvy to cut, from flesh to flat abs, muscular and toned, that is to say women who appear more masculine.

I recently did an image search and came across the one shown here. I thought the woman in the photograph had a really sexy body and wondered what the attached article had to say. I was surprised to find it was an angry rant about how fat and disgusting she looked in her bathing suit.

I'm not saying that men should be more like they used to be, or that skinny women are some how not "real" women, but I am reminded that there's no such thing as "the truth" when defining what is beautiful or sexy or even acceptable. I'm also left with this question: In the muddy mess that is our culture, in the aftermath of the sexual revolution, can men find their way to becoming complete and whole and natural men? Can women discover and embrace their God given feminine radiance and really start to let it shine?

I do believe freedom lies somewhere in the answer.

Photos

Annie made the Dean's list, so here she is tonight after going out to dinner to celebrate.



With Honey on the weekend.



Annie hides in my room and takes a much needed break from her puppy.

Early to bed

For some reason, the clock in my body thought the party was on again this morning at four (and you know what they say about 4:00 am.). I brushed my teeth because I can't even be alone without a clean mouth, put on Bill Evans because he's right at any hour, and made a cup of tea because coffee would leave no question as to how the following few hours would unfold.

I tried to read but my eyes said no, I checked emails but couldn't reply. When I returned to bed and contemplated love in ways it might present itself to me, and the ways in which it has presented itself to me, unlike Bill Evans, it was ineffective.

It's 5:30 now, and you know what they say about 5:30. Nothing. It's when people brush their teeth, start the coffee and get themselves ready to go to jobs they hate. But for me, at least today, I'll read a few pages, sleep a bit more until the clock in my body says the party is starting, it's another day.

Sitting at the sidebar

I'm in one of those moods again...

Permanent pressure

When the word Unbalanced appears on the washing machine, for a split second I take it personally.