another recurring dream

I get this a lot....that I'm running but can't run fast enough.....and end up in kind of slow motion. This time it was my friend and I except she got caught and put in a cage. Then I was in a wheel cart for crippled people even though I'm not crippled. I was running through the park, running from something, trying to pass myself off as a jogger even though I am wearing a white skirt, and a woman sees me....I'm trying to look "normal" to her, but can't run fast enough.

xmas

At last is over and I got some nice gifts. I was lucky I got lots of presents..... I got some nice shirts and, sure enough, mother got me white long johns and a Gap shirt. The holiday managed to go by without any family arguments, too.


My uncle Pat came to visit from Michigan and then we went to my mother's husband (Sonny)'s sister's place in New Jersey. Overall it was a good atmosphere and I got some chocolate, which I was craving, but then it disappeared, typically. In my mother's apartment that happens, because my driver's license is gone, too. I had to spend $50 yesterday getting a replacement. Ironic, I never drive. Anyway, so we returned to Manhattan, and went back to Newark the next day to drop Pat off at the airport. I spent yesterday sitting in the back seat of a car while Mother and Sonny gave my sister a driving lesson that wouldn't end. We were in this .......how do I describe this town? It was like out of horror movie. First of all, I hadn't eaten, and all we could find was a gas station with a guy selling stale bagels, no cream cheese, and the healthiest thing he had was some kind of fruit bar. This place had to be a cover for something because the food was about two years old. So we're driving around this town and it......consisted of these shingle houses with ......giant christmas decorations in front...mostly blow up Santas and snowmen. It was like a contest to see who had the biggest snowman on their lawn. Some of them were deflated. This one house had a blow up doll of ....about sixteen feet tall, or more.....Santa coming out of the chimney, like rising out of it then going back down, over and over again. Others had giant blow up snowmen in front of their houses, with these scary smiles. Others.....you always see this in these small towns....had plastic swans on their lawns, or reindeer. So Sam practiced driving forwhat seemed like an eternity with Mother and Sonny barking at her, til finally it was time to go back. Then we sat in traffic for three hours waiting to get in the Lincoln Tunnel. I said we might as well get out and walk to Manhattan and we'll get there faster. But anyway, it was eventful, yes. Our tree was beautiful with a million presents and I love the look of xmas, with the trees, lights and snow is nice, too. We also went to Midnight Mass at Trinity Church, and Episcopal services are grueling, with endless standing, sitting, standing, kneeling. But it was truly gorgeous, with incense and a choir......and communion.
I can't wait to settle into a new place and celebrate my new freedom!

biking through nyc during a transit strike

I have mixed (I'm trying different colors) about this strike. During the summer I biked everywhere and walked everywhere, so this kind of stuff won't completely throw me off. But today was rough. I was pissed, for a while. I rode all the way into manhattan from Brooklyn, then uptown, all the way to 86th st, turned around, rode alone on the west side highway by the river and it's very, very lonely there. Then on down the 28th street, and I thought I'd NEVER get there because I was shot by the time I got to this Indian restaurant I go to there (Curry in a Hurry), treated myself to dinner which I could hardly eat, had coffee, then rode to Williamsburg. These people who INSISTED I see them tonight and said I could stay there tonight (I had money to give them as well) changed their tune when I got there and said they were waiting for their roommate to talk to me who apparently had to approve of me. By then I got so pissed cause I had SAID earlier, on the phone, why don't I see you guys tomorrow because it's late.......and instead I wasted my time coming here. It was about almost 1AM by then. Well, uh, sorry.....was his response. I left there and rode uphill to Fort Greene in what seemed like an eternal ride. I try and try these places in Williamsburg and, look it's not a personal judgment call, but I just keep having bad experiences with people in that neighborhood. I guess it's cool and I'm not which just annoys me more, but hey, I tried and tried but I've just encountered one flake after another. And I'm pissed, yeah. Eventually I kind of forgave these people but, for God's sake, did it not occur to them that I had to ride a bike everywhere and this was a strain on me? And I SAID why don't I see you tomorrow. They could have been straight with me....if they had something against me or whatever. If what they told me was a lie or not.....is it me or what? I guess not.....this girl apparently waited and waited for me so it's a misunderstanding.......but this is just treacherous. The one good thing is I made some money. At least I got that. And I saved some, like $120 I would have spent there. A guy .....I think he was trying to pick me up while I was walking my bike over the bburg bridge.....then I told him I was staying with "my boyfriend" and well, goodbye charlie......but he was nice enough to guide me to these people's house. So.....I had been longing the whole time to be at G's with my computer, wine and kitties, and I finally got my wish at 2 AM. G also drank all my Chianti but I have his roommate's wine, which I'm enjoying now.

As for the strike, I believe they deserve decent wages and maybe they have a right to strike, I don't know. But I was also thinking, I am not the one who is doing this to them, so why should I suffer, you know? It's very very hard work biking through the city and VERY dangerous. I don't think people realize. But I almost got hit by about 100 cabs, SUVs and garbage trucks. I feel lucky to have survived. And G told me everyone he knows, almost, who rides in the city has been in an accident. So I'm in my helmet and glasses and G's North Face jacket looking very unsexy, but....ta da! I get hit on anyway.....

childhood, (it's not boring)!

I read an interview with someone about how she would listen to lawnmowers in this small town in Minnesota where she lived and long to get out of there, to the point where it was painful, it made "her heart ache." I had something similar, in Evanston, looking out at the lake, gorgeous though it was, past the cemetary and highway that led into Chicago......maybe it's all the bands I listened to who were British, but just looking at that vast body of water which stood between me and these other places like New York, LA, London, places that were in the news every day, it was painful. At the time, there just didn't seem to be much where we were. I couldn't live there. All I thought about was other places, and people who lived there. What was around me? Chicago is......nice, but it's big and flat and bland, or it seemed to be. But it could have been worse. My mother would take me up to Michigan all the time to visit her family. I mean, we would spend hours, days, with no company except each other and.....trees. And occasional billboards, hideous. The majority of people in these towns are overweight by the time they're 30, and my mother would constantly remark about "all the fat people." My family lived in Battle Creek which they called Battle Hick. As a kid I would repeat this, not knowing what it meant, and they told me never to say that in public....but I didn't understand why, but that it must be bad.

a few modifications

I have a couple prospects: one in williamsburg, one in the east village, with a gay hairdresser. I was at the point where I'd have to stay in a slum pit, if I were to stay anywhere.

At some point I have to go to mother's and find my driver's license which she lost. I love mother, really.

strike and ids

Right now I'm in the process of trying to get a new passport and let me tell you, this is a fucking hassle. I have to either get a birth certificate from Ohio or find a post office in brooklyn, there's a transit strike which is making everything difficult. I'm lucky I have a mountain bike but riding around NYC is exhausting but why should I complain? I guess it's healthier. Except today I have to be EVERYWHERE and that means biking everywhere. This is so fucking complicated!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! On top of all this, I am looking for a new place and it's one problem after another. All this falls on my shoulders at once. I can't deal with it, but I have to.

another dream

This I can't completely put together or recall, but some things:

I'm in a hotel, a fairly nice one. It's room 415? Can't remember exactly. I see a picture of the door with the number on it. My mother's there, for a while, and I'm in and out of this room.

Then I'm getting milk for coffee but the milk is sour.

Freudian analysts would but sexual meanings to this. There was more but I can't totally remember.

I woke up this morning, though, and the milk was good.

I was reading about existentialism last night which is .....it could be a life long study. I don't know. But that's what eventually led de Beauvoir to write the Second Sex. Years of research and reading. But I wonder why it took so much to recognize the obvious: that women are second class and that leads to what? Mediocrity? That doesn't mean women have been nothing, or that there haven't been great female personalities in history. It's very contradictory.

I woke up again with a sore throat....and had to take throat spray, salt water and painkillers. My whole body was achy and if I am exposed to the smallest draft I get sick.

http://www.stargods.org/Born_Evil.html


http://www.stargods.org/EvilPeople.htm

This writer needs a copy editor, because it's full of spelling errors. So....someone has to do this job, right? It just won't be me, that's for sure.

The above is an interesting article....maybe this author is a little cracked in other ways, but he has a point with this one. I think I've met people who are just bad, in my life, and, studying astrology, I really think that two people in the exact same circumstances will react to them completely differently. You can say, someone had a bad childhood or something like that and that's why they're doing horrible things, to others, but there are others who had the same circumstances and are not that way. I'm serious. So some people aren't going to be educated out of their ways, nor are they going to change. And they won't stop doing what they do. Think about it......

so


dream factors:


hotel rooms
tsunamis
escape
beaches
4 something room number
picture of door
mirrors?


I am ambivalent about psychotherapy. I think women need leisure, privacy, education, and ......some kind of a good community, one that is......? Well, the right kind.

sleep

after not sleeping enough for the past couple nights plus wearing myself pretty thin I fell asleep around 7 PM and woke up at 2:30 AM. I wanted to see felix da housecat but ended up staying in as I just felt decrepit. I woke with a horrid sore throat and swallowing was excruciating. I'm still reading the Second Sex and I'm wondering if it's that book, plus how I'm living, that's affecting me so physiologically. It's disturbing, but true, the stuff everyone knows but no one admits.

So I dreamt of kind of a tsunami. I was on the beach, maybe the hamptons? And a guy was with me, though we were both dressed and I wasn't really attracted to him. Kind of like a surfer type. Suddenly, I think he called me or something, but I turned around and a huge wave had come up and half the beach was flooded. I freaked and was screaming, we have to get out of here! I managed to pull myself up a cliff of sand, and I think I helped the guy up. But in front of us, the other direction, was another lake.

I'm constantly dreaming about beaches and water. I don't understand why cause I'm not near it that often.

decorating the tree

My mother, sister and mother's husband and I all went out last night and got an xmas tree. Then we pulled out the decorations and tinsel (one at a time, I did) and next thing, beauty in the house! Already I have presents, although I told my mother I'd rather pick out what I want and have her buy it.

I love christmas and presents, the whole element of surprise, but in the end it turns into a bunch of junk. I honestly don't know what I've done with any of my presents and Mother always gets me clothes that are completely not my style, like big boxy Gap stuff.

I hopefully will be working tomorrow cause my cash is scarily low. I'm getting annoyed and edgy about it. Today was super cold and I was running around town for hours in it, then got back to Garrett's and fell asleep, before he decided he wanted to go to this new restaurant, and was pushing his roommate and I to go there like his life depended on eating there tonight. But....it was nice, a sort of Thai place and the food and drinks were pretty cool: I had ginger and lemon juice, squash soup with sour cream (awesome) and curry tofu (mediocre). Then a bunch of Entemanns chocolate chip.........I do have a sugar tooth, and finally instant coffee (I prefer that to the cheap deli coffee).


All this helped take my mind off the stress and ........ difficulties of today. Talked, also, to my ex, who's now an entrepreneur. I guess there's a job for everyone.

ok it's true

maybe it's my period or past illness ( I think I had toxic shock syndrome) or something......


but I was pissy as hydrochloric acid the past couple days. I'm a little better


I am wondering if I should delete my last post, in case anyone read it. Maybe I was acting like my family, speaking of whom, I was with Mother last night and it took a whole day to recover. But I'm ok, sort of.


So what else is going on? I'm preparing to get a new passport, ID, just picked up my coat and sweater from the cleaners, picked up laundry, hauled all that fucking shit up two flights of stairs twice, cleaned up after the cats, went grocery and cat shopping with Garrett, bought some chianti and jelly, left The Second Sex at the gym, bought some jeans and a sweater, am seriously thinking of starting a screenplay, just got Backstage, am reading a bio of Margeret Mitchell, authoress of Gone with the Wind, and am going to ask my family to just buy two things for xmas: a plane ticket to London and headshots. Everything else I can get myself! Actually those I can get myself as well......

Reading list:

Virginia Woolf's the Waves
Bridget Jones' Diary
Pride and Prejudice (for the second time)
????

maybe Willa Cather, don't know

somewhat better

I'm recovering but still queasy. I'm really getting fed up with people's well meaning but ........I just don't want anyone to analyze me or tell me what I'm doing wrong, or at least I'm really pissed at people talking down to me, or treating me like some sad little flower who needs pity and adult supervision (hello, I am an adult, making rational decisions) or "lecturing" me. I mean, no fucking kidding, my personal problems are obviously palpable and serious, and it's not like I'm not aware of them. I'm well aware of the gravity or the situation.......like, oh, actually I just thought I'd try living this way cause I thought it'd be fun. Is it a crime if I don't want to go back to another degrading, stressful, underpaid work situation? Yes, I have to work, I'm well aware of that. It's not my fault that the choices suck, or are less than glamorous. I believe that, as myself, I have a little more insight into my own psyche than anyone else and I'm aware of what advice is good for me and what is just someone playing God with me, actually, or really, so much of the time people's altruism and desire to save another person, if we want to put psychology into this, is a desire for power on their part. In part. I really have.......people aren't generic, they can't be molded like clay, and I don't believe we're all born alike or can be all made alike. I believe there are components in people you can't change, and be weary of judging others because you don't know anything about them, you don't know what motivates them. And that's true. Too many women, really, are always very judgmental of me and other females and have little forgiveness of faults or.......I'm just very angry about this, right now. I see it happen over and over again. I thought it would help me to be open and honest but it's backfired on me, big time. I have to keep living a lie and telling people what they want to hear rather than the truth, you know? But the truth is not.......so I go on pretending. Maybe, some day, somewhere out there, someone will read this and relate or something, I don't know.

god shut up laura

some of the stuff I write.....looking back....


I've been really sick with a stomach flu and was bedridden most of last night, for about 15 hours. This really blows, I can't wait for it to end. I've barely eaten: just bread and jelly. I'm a little better. I think maybe I get severe pms; often I get nausea before but not this bad. Could be the stress of everything, who knows?

I just watched another French film, Romance. Not very cheerful.

obsession

I'm watching a bunch of french films. Just watched Intimate Strangers, a bizarre one. Now, Romance.

I have obsessions. With people, books. I'm obsessed with Gone with the Wind. What else? Well, I always got obseesed with guys. Eventually I got over it, but I'm extreme that way. I don't stalk them, no, but I obsess over them, think about them all the time. I had a shrink who analyzed this but it can't be rationalized; it is what it is. I want something, you want something, and that's it. But they say, watch out for what you wish for, too. Hmm.......what do you do in these situations?

fort greene is beautiful at christmas

This time of year especially. It's lit up with christmas decorations and so on, plus the park feels like the country. So I'm spending a night here and enjoying what's closest to nature in NYC. It would be nice if I could be in the country with horses and able to let my cats out and fresh apples......some day. When this current crisis has ended, and it's not ending fast enough. I take two steps forward then a step back. I haven't worked in four days now and I made decent money at my last gig, but I want to KEEP it. I've been staying at the Y in Greenpoint but this neighborhood really is so elegant. I remember last year coming back from Egypt and I was SO homesick, as much as I love traveling, I really was burnt by the end, and SO happy to see my neighborhood again. But then soon enough I wanted to leave again. I still will, eventually. But it's been an uphill battle and hard work. I study astrology and am learning some periods are good and some aren't, and the planets influence so much.....well, that's business. But to really succeed means being on top of it 24/7 and looking in all directions at once like Linda Blair in the Exorcist. My driving instructor said that to me, about driving, but it's true for what I'm doing as well. That means being always ready, cause time is money.

But right now I'm lazing off. I haven't sent out headshots and am fucking around, watching movies. I watched Choses Secretes again. This film is AMAZING!!!! Now I'll watch a Venezualen film.

other women

ok, let me modify this.......cause I don't hate other women. but they get on my nerves sometimes, some of them. Some women are great, of course, I don't want to lump them all together. Some women friends are great. I just don't LOVE them in general, and I guess this is my conflict when I was at bluestockings today. Occasionally I am attracted to a female, but I don't identify as lesbian. I'm just not. I am obsessive about men. I always have been. I turn men, absent men, into God. They are. That won't change.


I'm trying really hard to know more about them, because I know so little. I see so many women on the street every day and every where but I know nothing about them, and it's such a lonely feeling. The problem is, it's hard getting close to them, and so much of the time I'm turned off before I get to know them. I guess maybe it's the way I was raised, as an only child with a working mom, who read and let myself in the house: I just wasn't raised to be a little well behaved girl. I was taught manners, far more than most of the people I encounter here, and there were women all around me, but it was never a comfortable or nurturing atmosphere. It was like if we weren't "feminine" enough we were being made to feel punished for not being that way or having to defend ourselves or something. And out in public there's no privacy and I had a fair amount of that, like coming home to an empty apartment. I miss that sometimes. Plus, my mother was certainly not easygoing. I just never had a good relationship with other women and I've almost never had even a friendship with another female that wasn't turned into a desperate war on her part for some kind of power, superiority. I'm just being realistic, here. In a way, men's company was a relief because they were at least up front about everything. With women, if they acknowledged me at all, I never knew if I could believe them because I'd later catch them talking nastily about me behind my back. So now, when women approach me, like at the gym, and jump in my face and smile, when I'm stretching, or whatever, or "admiring" me, I just feel uncomfortable and annoyed, then I'm made to feel bad that I'm not nicer. But after a lifetime of other women not returning glances or smiles or them acting like I'm not in the room, then saying nasty things about me or plotting bad things against me when I'm out of the room, to expect me to just have my door wide open for every stranger is a little strange. I'm not exaggerating when I say these things. Sometimes I just hate other women, and I know that is wrong and I'm not supposed to feel that way. I have to struggle against these feelings. I know, I've read, that they're doing what they have to to survive in a sexist world and ultimately men are the enemy, but the problem is, if I'm supposed to feel solidarity I just don't know if that's possible at this point. I feel like all women are out to get me. i know, I'm paranoid. blah blah......

greenpoint

I love this neighborhood! It's really homey and there's lots of European chocolate, which I miss. This is a little Polish neighborhood with all these little Polish diners and 99 cent stores. The chocolate you get in NYC sucks big time: it's cheap and makes me sick, but this is the good stuff. When I was traveling through Germany and Switzerland I got hooked on theirs, and the Swiss airlines load you up with Swiss chocolates and really good cream and coffee. If I move anywhere I hope it'll be to this neighborhood, though I still love fort greene.

I slept for about sixteen hours after hardly sleeping at all for three days. I missed some work opportunities but at one point I just couldn't keep my head up. Garrett is sick with some kind of poison ivy and it's awful being with someone who is suffering but won't accept any help. So what can I do?

books and films........French and Latin film

I love French and Latin cinema so far. Maria Full of Grace I've watched three times now. Watch it, it is so well done and brilliantly acted by everyone. The character and vibe of NYC is so real, too.


A French film: Choses Secretes. Raunchy and haunting, this is a psychological thriller, and the French are geniuses at this less is more style. It's not just gratuitous tits and ass it, like so many other French films, goes heavier into the inner life of the characters.

Books: Requiem for a Dream, and the movie, too. I'm reading the book now, something I shouldn't be reading now.

to make it in NYC, you don't sleep

And I'm so tired. Like I sit down and start to nod off. I've slept maybe four hours in twenty four hours and have been running around non stop, and the night's not nearly over.

romance

There were thousands of bands in the world, but only one mattered. They were right about one thing. As soon as I saw him, I knew he was special. I couldn't pin it down, but he was different, apart from these others, all who had this sort of......blurred, almost deadened expression on their faces. He had something else in his face, eyes. And he was the one, the only one.

But that was twenty five years ago, and he's .......dead now. The circumstances are still a mystery.

And, he left, he's gone, on the other side of the Atlantic.....why???????????????

Why did he leave me?

She filled the tub with hot water, and grabbed everything she needed: red wine, cigarettes, a joint (heck it doesn't matter anyway, now), tea, gel, an ashtray, scented candle......and the steak knife. She sat in the tub, drank the wine, lit the joint. Music? Oh well, forgot. A few minutes went by. The wine and mj were making her head spin.......I'll end it now.....but where will I go? What will happen to me after? What will I face? What if I'm sinning? Forgive me, forgive me, whoever's there. Her face screwed up, almost pouting. She started crying again. I can't......how many girls killed themselves over him? She held the knife to her wrists, and for the first time in her life she saw her own mortality and realized she, too, could end her life. But I don't want to become another statistic, another body in the morgue. I can't, not yet, I still have to.......my mission here isn't finished. When will it be? I can't not yet.

I tried to slit my wrists over you, she told him. A gun's easier, he said. If you're going to end it, why not do it quickly? Why give yourself so much pain? Because a gun isn't a ladylike way to do it, she said.

In Gone With the Wind, the catty girls said, men may flirt with girls like that but they don't marry them. Melanie alone defended her, the girl who tried to take her husband. She was the Friday night girl, a "Chia." She was the one hidden from their wives and girlfriends, snuck in during odd hours when they were away or in clandestine meetings in hotel rooms, or at her place when they were on the way home from work, sometimes at their jobs. There wasn't one case of a married man who wasn't having problems with his wife.

Joan of Arc, child of Satan, so dark even Jesus can't save you, born under unlucky, cursed, fixed stars. Joan of Arc shall be France's saint. Child of hell. All these lines are from Lady Snowblood. It's a fascination, a "cursed" child who becomes an instrument of revenge, and a saint.

I feel just like Cindrella! In my beautiful dress on my beautiful wedding day. I go outside for a breath of air, so thankful to be alone even for a minute. I take a breath, just for myself. It's so quiet. If I still smoked I'd be smoking. And then.......there he is. I am not going to faint or have a heart attack. He's not a ghost. My lover, my "dead" lover, the one whose death I avenged on the whole fucking village, is not really dead, but standing right in front of me. You faked your death! I cry. I want you, now, more than ever, he says. You've never looked more beautiful than now, in your wedding dress. I want you, I want you now. It'll have to be fast, I say. So........we sneak into the church basement, into.......a dressing room? A pretty nice one. It happens so fast......marriage must be borne with fortitude, said Ellen O'Hara in Gone with the Wind. He's all over me......then......it's all over me. Meanwhile upstairs is my husband, looking for me, asking, where's my wife? I run upstairs to clean myself off. You can smell it, him, his fluids, on me. My husband will smell it. I find a sink, pour soap on me, am washing myself, and my husband approaches. There you are! he says. Yeah, I say. I just.....spilled something on myself, I'm such a clutz. And off the two of us go, the fairy tale lovers. I later in my designer clothes a hetaira....but married.

dream

I dreamt last night I was.....I dream this so often.......getting into a motor boat, and my sister also. I had to navigate somewhat with my arms. It was lake Michigan, maybe a NYC river, don't really know, but the water was dirty. I was skweaking a little. Then, we were on the beach, on the sand. It was cloudy, and the sand and water started rising, gathering, and we could see it was a storm, a major one. I was on the beach and others with me but???? my sister? Then water rose from the other side where before there was only sand. Then I'm back at an old friend from Chicago's house.

ok i

I was just.......a little freaked about everything, and still am. I am having a fucking freaky experience right now which........oh today has been so crazy. what has gone right? For one thing, I took an HIV test today which was negative thank Heaven, but boy did it give me a fright. Those tests are so scary it's like Judgement Day. I use condoms and don't take those kinds of risks but.....well, I had a thing with someone a year ago who was not exactly wholesome. So for two hours I'm freaking out in the clinic thinking, this is it, this is fucking IT I'm done what will I do if I test posititve oh God I just know I have it oh God, then I went outside and was crying, thinking how did I get myself into this mess? I was so naive. What will I do? What will I tell my mother? So finally, after what seemed like eternity, my letter was called (the longest forty five minute wait of my life) and the woman had this somber look on her face. I'm thinking, oh my God, I have it I have it. So I get called into the office, she shuts the door. Why did she shut the door? I'm shaking by now. Agonizingly slowly, she is asking me, what is your DOB, and I'm panting what's the result? Are you nervous? she asks. Uh, yeah. Then she says, you're making me nervous. Sorry. So......she's looking....and I'm thinking, this is it, my life is over, this is really it, now, the final sentence. So she says, it came back negative. That was when I breathed a sigh of relief. Negative? Definitely? Yes......so I ran out of there panting .......and very high ........very tired, my arm hurting from where they drew blood. Nowadays they scrape your gums and you get the result in forty five minutes, which helps, but that forty five minutes really blows. I don't want to go through this again! I want to stay negative. So........with that said, the question is where do I go from here?

I know I have to get back to my family story.......I can only write a little, but here's my dad's side. I hope this is interesting.


Carl Christian was my great grandfather, born in Germany raised in the US, whom I never met. His wife, my great grandma Alta, lived to be about 100 years old, but I don't recall meeting her. Both of them were gorgeous when they were young. I saw their wedding picture at my aunt's house and am really intrigued by it, can't stop looking at it. There's just something about both of them that fascinates me, their faces. I even look like her. So.......they had four kids and lived in what was basically a mansion in Illinois, on farmland. One of the kids was my grandmother, who grew up to marry someone of the "wrong" religion, Methodist, and this was enough for my great grandmother to oppose the marriage (they were EUB) which started a feud that lasted........sixty years. My other aunt Julie apparently hasn't forgiven my great gm for this........as she was close to my grandfather. Sadly, I never met either of my grandparents, they both passed away before I was born. But they were world apart from my mother's family except for one thing: an interest in writing and journalism.

i wrote

I have to spend a weekend in Indy and not looking forward to it, but the comforting thought is that it will come to an end in TWO DAYS. Just two days with them.

No, I love my family. But we're so different. I read this article in an astrology magazine about Courtney Love's family legacy of .......fucked up situations or something. I have so much to write on mine, but an abbreviated version is this:


About four centuries ago, the Ellsworths left rural England for Massachusetts, USA. Like all the millions of immigrants to the US, they may or may not have known that they were forever giving up their culture and identity to become Americans, although they could at least keep their language. Slowly they moved inland toward Michigan and settled in Alma, a tiny factory town. This is several generations down the road. The Ellsworths, Zieglers from Germany, Beardsleys (who settled part of Michigan, though how is uncertain) and Conklins made up the towns of Ithica and Alma, two lower middle class dots on the map, if they're even on there. From Liberty Tanner Beardsley came John, who was sent to live with the Gerbers for a time, but left to strike out on his own, meeting and impregnating Alfreda Ellsworth. John married and subsequently divorced Alfreda leaving her with a small daughter, Donna, to raise, in the Depression era in the farmland where there was really not much of anything. John later met and married the love of his life, and the two of them made something of a life together and managed to escape to Europe from time to time. Meanwhile, Alfreda found another man, Dan, who raised Donna as his own, more or less. Dan worked in an oil refinery and.......it was not an easy life. There was very little money and Alfreda made most of the clothes, but also cooked and made jam, quilts, collected China and various trinkets, and kept Dan as best she could out of bars. That is, she did her best, but a big part of Midwestern life is drinking.


OK, to be continued, but this is the beginning........don't worry there'll be more

well well I'm just so busy

Running around all day today like a hen with no head. What else? Once in a while you fall in love and can't help it. It's not something you can help. I have so so much to write and there's a hell of a lot going on with me now but too hard to put in a blog. I had a crazy time of it last night.



I have to take a trip to Indianapolis and I'm dreading it, arggghhhhhhhh!!!!!! Visiting my family, who right now I am pissed at and don't want to see at all. It's kind of like I love them but don't like them. Sometimes I hate them. And that's not good. Why can't we be like a sitcom family.....but even they're not functional, really. Interesting how you can share the genes with someone, and be biologically related, and have nothing in common with them and you may as well be from opposite sides of the earth. Someone was talking about six degrees of separation, or less, and I'm seeing it now. But really, I love my family but we're strangers in so many ways. Same thing with people who come from the same ethnic background as me. I've found that I'm not anything like them. Reading the Second Sex, she divides women into categories in history, but I don't really fit any of these. I'm the Other that you mark with an x and fill in the blank. My kind is rare indeed, honestly. Women who change the world are one in a thousand. I really think that. Most women don't become great thinkers. They don't have the leisure or privacy necessary. It does happen, however.

vagina dentata

http://www.faklen.dk/en/the_torch/vd.shtml


if I dare post this here GASP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! what is she doing? Is she dangerous?


but they have such good points, man. Why should I not go out at night? I'm a night person (tho last night I stayed in like a wallflower). Mistress Hekate, if I were a dominatrix. Goddess (would like to think I am but I guess I'm not) of the night. Able to walk around, go into a coffee shop, go to a guy's house, take the subway, walk around the Hudson river, go to school, go to bed..........

sexual harassment and dominance

Go out it's late need time haggard angry depressed a mixture of things I shouldn't be I'm a mess not what I should be........


everything happened so slowly and so quickly what will I do how could they have done it how could they get away with it is there a God/Goddess or anything right well sure but where are they if they're here how can they let them get away with this?


Eyes on me bodies too close I know they're looking I go into a coffee shop just need to rest somewhere and he's behind the counter I know he's watching me I try to give off signals that I'm not interested but even that takes so much extra energy all I want is food...............................why are you in such a hurry? Where do you have to be? Where do I go to get away from it? What do I do? Sit in my room forever? Why can't I go out at night, anywhere?

reading second sex

and it's bringing up all these not so nice feelings in me. I'm really pissed at how corrupt human beings are toward one another. I can give examples, plenty. Problem is, men oppress women, but women oppress other women. I've found that the fact that someone comes from a disadvantaged background and has been beaten, or whatever bad experiences they had, doesn't necessarily make them a saint, or even moderately decent, quite frankly. No, it doesn't mean racism, sexism is right. But the problem is, bluntly, sexism exists in the "ghetto" as much as on Wall Street. It's what people don't want to admit, because any sign of weakness in blacks, women, or any other oppressed group turns people against them, but it's true, sadly: evil incarnates all life forms. I've been at the end, along with some women I know (other women) of extreme aggression and hostility from other women. I mean there are women out there who are vile creatures. They can be brutal toward others. Well, it's hardly news. And for how long can we keep excusing what' s not excusable regardless of race, religion, gender, ect? I've had bad experiences with blacks, male and female, quite frankly. Does that mean all women, all blacks are evil? No, I'm not saying that, though others would see it that way......but that's not what I mean. Margeret Atwood started this in part when she raised the idea that if women are to be truly equal then they should have as much potential for badness. THat, however, doesn't mean women should all be fired from their jobs. But these are the things going through my mind all the time.......and sometimes anger just wells up in me and I wish I knew what to do with it. It's really a struggle to use it right.....even if it is justified. So cats toture their prey, but it doesn't justify animal cruelty. But people need to reconcile these things, somehow. There are weeds in the otherwise perfect lawn.......

I miss college

Can't believe it was so many frikking years ago I was living, fancy free almost, in the Hunter dorm. I never should have left!!!!!!!!! What was the purpose of graduating? Just so I could go out into this too-expensive city and work cruddy jobs, barely scrape by, with no security or benefits? Then spend four years doing the same repetitive work I'd have been doing for eternity, and never getting anywhere? Equal opportunity employer? Possibility for promotion? More like, menial, unsatisfying, tiring work that you have to get up at the crack of dawn every day for, lose your looks due to lack of sleep for, and for a salary you can't live on, oh, and no free time and if you're lucky two weeks vacation. Right now I'm not comforted by hearing about the perks in Europe. Well, I'm not there, I'm here. So what are the other options? I know what they are.

I don't mean to sound negative. The last thing I want is to turn cynical. But I'm thinking college was great.....yeah, it was flawed, but I was FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And I miss that. I just wasted time obsessing over this silly guy who wasn't worth it ultimately (but I didn't know that then) but other than that I did get so much accomplished. I was acting in movies and I had easy access to all of nyc, no curfew, no one telling me what to do......I miss it. And I'm ready to go back. I'll be the oldest co-ed in the world, but I'm ready. I'll be a student forever.

sitting in the hunter library

but I can't down load due to security problems and in order to save anything I have to get a floppy disk don't know where to get one......

I had an interview today which went pretty well! The job isn't too exciting-sounding but if I get it I'll be getting a good salary and it's temp, which means the benefits come out of my pocket and I pay my own health care. So it'll be hard work for a few months but I'm thinking I can save up and go to Berlin for a few months, maybe back to Egypt. From Berlin all these other places are accessable. England is an hour flight, Egypt maybe four hours, Thailand 8 hours. I'm thinking I can live in Alexandria for a few months. I loved that city.
And I miss London, don't know why......it's ugly and the people aren't too pleasant plus it's expensive and dangerous. So......why am I obsessed with going back? Well, I know the reason. Sort of.

But ......that's also not permanent. I know that at some point I'll have to work again no matter where I am and......I have a million emails and job possibilities. Just today I can send 100 resumes. But the question is, at what?

sitting in the laundromat

and on the web figured I'd change my cheezy ass url title and .......so now it's this. SO what's new....spent too much money on clothes but am obsessed with buying boots. I need to make some money I'm freaking out a little. Let the dinero come my way................the waterfall flowing toward me ...................

been a while

since I've written......


but I've been so super swamped

little things, must be mercury retrograde or something like it. got a new phone, but it's not working, neither is my old one. had to go to a sprint store to get it fixed and now I'm waiting in a cyber cafe in the east village. I'm sending out, or pretending to, my resume, and marketing (uhum, should I say, whoring?) myself. But I am in need of some dinero now so I need to do this.

Halloween was crazy nyc as usual. Maybe elsewhere in the world there are awesome halloweens but here they are anyway. I lived on 4th street and 6th ave when I was a teenager, and the parade was right outside my window. that was back in the punk days ....... hmmm...... I think the thing with punk is that we (or they) came from all different backgrounds, but really ......were they middle class? MTV plays at my gym. I didn't watch MTV; we didn't. We went to shows and hung out in the park and......that was our entertainment. I don't watch TV nor did I nor will my kids, and I don't see what we're missing. Madonna is right at least about that.

RIght now I'm mad at my landlord and I'm obsessed with the theme of revenge, want to incorporate that in my art. What it comes down to is "the right to revenge" that Vagina Dentata wrote about. I watched Lady Snowblood again, and there was a line in it about.....something like, the seeds of karma are so strong they affect even the unborn sometimes. I think in my case that's so damn true.....if karma exists, which I'm back and forth about. But .....the civil rights movement of the 60s and 70s and the punk movement had a lot to do with determining my life, and neither of my parents were much involved in either. My mother had zero interest in punk, but that was the 70s when she was my age. But I was reading all this redstokckings material that was written around the time I was born. I guess that's what got me wondering; that plus looking at old Clash photos.

intense day

four hours sleep, if even that, a head cold, all three cats woke me up this morning, then the dog. I worked three gigs today, ran through the park, then came home to find cat shit on the blanket cause the dog won't let the cat go to the box. Oh, and these people I'm working with have a dog which jumped on me and knocked my head into a rock, and it hurt like hell. It's lucky I'm OK but the dog didn't do it on purpose. And I still have to catch this feral cat. So I made some money today which I need, but man I'm so damn tired and I can't wait to get my life back. And I have to .....


I watched the Seventh Sign last night, and it freaked me out. I am really interested in things like the occult. I was seeing a lot of parallels between this film and Sept. 11.....my mother and I were talking about how there's something Biblical about that event. I put it together: these are a bunch of religious nuts or devil worshipers or something who want to bring about the end of the world. People like Bush.....I really don't know what religion he is but I don't think it's Christian. My relatives in Indy are so out of their fucking mind.....but you know, they think they're right and I'm wrong so go figure.......

some things about me

I don't do drugs

basically straight edge

quit smoking two years ago

drink red wine, that's it pretty much, xcept for the occasional cocktail

don't spend much money on cell phones

prefer fort greene, and downtown manhattan

like walking

am addicted to my ipod, cell phone and internet


Venus was the goddess of prostitutes? You know, I never knew that til now. I just thoght she rules beauty and romance. My one Greek friend, a guy, said she was a slut. Personally, I don't use that word or believe in it.....welll....ok, yeah, I do. I'm guilty, too. I say, she looks like a slut. I have said about myself when I got dressed up to go clubbing, "I look like a ten cent whore." Well, it was a joke. But no, I don't want to use that term: an ugly stereotype. I am not, to myself, a "slut." Though some may see it differently.

complacent

http://www.concreterituals.com


http://www.complacentnation.org/



This is such an amazing organization (the above link: Complacent), whatever it is. Stuff like this gives me hope amidst all this ....all this. I have so much to write on this subject, much of which I'm preparing. Of all the 99 percent horror that comes out of free speech, there is the other 1 percent that is meaningful. Is that the point? I'm not sure I believe in absolute free speech, and I agree that it belongs to the powerful and wealthy, ect. And there are truly dangerous people in whose hands it's a scary weapon. Complicated subject.....

So Garrett was teaching me self defense techniques last night. I hope I'll never have to use it, but that's just it, you never know. I saw a boxing class at the gym I wanted to take. Tai chi, martial arts, it can take over your life. Knock wood of course, I've never been raped or hit by a guy.....all these horror stories I hear haven't been my experience. Believe me, I've had my battles and I've been in bed with the devil, really......but what I've gone through isn't what I've read. I've turned guys away, I made my choice freely. A certain line hasn't been crossed. But I've definitely been in risky situations. I put myself there. At the same time, that's why it is important to know self defense. I don't think I had always much choice other than to go into these things, either. Still, in other parts of the world, there is relatively little of this random violence from strangers, or on the street. In Berlin, you don't hear about not being able to walk around after 1 AM or whatever it is. Then again, most "respectable" women don't go out alone after 11PM. The world is still that way. Personally, I do go out after 11 pm or 4am and....... I guess I'm not a respectable woman. I'm a freak But I prefer nighttime. And so far, so good. I read an article in my astrology mag about the goddess Hecate, who rules nighttime. Maybe I have some kind of tie to her.

back into the loop

So I've been sending out resumes for job jobs and acting. I think I'll only focus on what I want.....I won't work in a cubicle, or at least I know I don't have to now. That's right! I will work with people, for beauty and glamour, making people happy.....I don't have to be stuck in an office doing something I hate and working with.....well I won't say. I can be in a job where I look nice and am out in the world socializing and in which aesthetics matter, cause they do!!!! And I don't miss getting up at 6 AM but if I work on films' I'll have to, but that's different from an office job. So much of acting is unglamorous, too, though: the hours sending out resumes and writing them and making phone calls, alwasy rushing to be somewhere, always late for something else, and now I have to be available at all times, if I want to make any money. But I'm making progress, slowly, but I am.

new life

has me up crazy hours and I'm so tired. Quite a lot is going on. I think I'll just save save and then jet. I'm really serious about this. I want to move to London. And see Ireland. Or is that just running away? Don't know. My astrology says there's a powerful time coming up for me.

Right now I'm trying to catch this feral cat of Garrett's that it's my fault she's loose, and I'm sick of it. So tired now. I've been up all night with little rest.

chicago house

I'm from Chicago originally. I'll say this much: the music's great. The radio exceeds NYC's by gazillion. There's a house party in the park outside.

But this is Brooklyn. There's quite a lot going on but I need I will demand some time just for me, just to put my feet down. Just to breathe. I've made at least 30 phone calls in four hours. It's gotten to the point where I'm sick of my own voice. I have hundreds of emails to answer. I demand time just for me.

right now

I've been through my own personal battles, and it shows on this blog. I want to write more cheerful stuff; well, it's not that things are bad, but I'm working extremely hard more than ever in my life. There is a potential for good, but I have to make it work somehow. I hope to spread good vibes, though.

what next?

This being a response to something written, and said ........

I think I need to...I don't know.....but I'm really not satisfied with any of the groups I've been involved in, online or otherwise. I sometimes feel lonely, frustrated, but I know I can't possibly be alone. But I will remove myself from certain people and situations. I am not going to just look the other way when I see wrongness being done, or pretend it isn't happening. If a guy is disrespectful to me on the street, I have a right to confront him. If I confront a harasser and he turns out to be a plainclothes cop who turns the tables on me and threatens to arrest me, then insults me, when he and his friends harassed me and I did nothing to them, nothing violent, then I can't just walk away from it trying to only see the good in people. If we just looked at the good then nothing would ever change, and change needs to occur.

I need to have more in depth discussions with people, mainly other women, who understand how I feel and when like minded people get together and really bond in a positive way, then that is going to create effective change. If we preach to eachother and the converted, it doesn't matter! Some things can't be said enough. I am not going to engage in endless busywork just so I can say I'm "doing something" if it's pointless, menial and repetitive. And I have finally realized I can never go back to the corporate world, and the answer to my problem is not to get, if I ever can, a job that is low prestige, which has no growth opportunities, which teaches me nothing and provides no satisfaction, allows me no opportunity to leave my mark on the world, in which I become frustrated, depressed, angry, and that has me crying or yelling from the strain of it. It's wrong, but life carries much that is wrong. And for me, the solution is not isolating myself in the woods or on a mountain trying to reach nirvana because that is not facing life and the world, the problems that need to be fixed, it's an evasion from a battle for justice, among other things. Right does not automatically happen, the courts know that.

And finally, even if I do get arrested for some stupidity, the idea of spending so much energy on a lawsuit that is flimsy, that will be very hard to prove in court even if I am right, is not comforting right now. I've said this before and I mean it: until there is real unity among women (which is definitely not happening) then I don't see how things can get better. But women are divided and I've even said I just don't really love women necessarily, but what happened in SHP is the prime example: women who turn on other women, hurt them, really stab them in the back, are what is a hindrance to "solidarity." But realistically, women haven't bonded, we haven't gotten over differences, and not all women are great or even good. So what do you do? I know I have to find something else, a more substantial relationship, and not even a sexual one. I believe there is hope. But I'm not going to deny what I can't.

an army of lovers

like I've said b4, I am not a lesbian, and not about to stop having relations with men. I don't despise all men, though I do get infuriated at misogyny, and I don't want to be around only women. I really do try to reach out to other women, but they either start annoying or embarassing me by asking questions I consider personal, too personal, or else try to play "God" (or Goddess) by either obsessively fault finding, picking fights, being judgemental, or else, the other side, acting like if they hadn't come along I'd be hopeless; with constant advice and "if I were you" or "what you really need to do is" as if I hadn't thought of that, you know? Like the other night, I was trying to talk about a major issue with this woman, and out of the blue she starts telling me I need a rug for the bathroom. Look, it's not like I hadn't thought of that, and it really pissed me off. I don't want a rug because it'll get wet and mildewy, Jesus, if I have to explain myself. Inevitably it becomes a contest, a power struggle. Or, the other side is silence. They don't respond when I do try to be friendly; then suddenly, six months later when I'm actually preoccupied with something they (intrude?) approach me and expect me to drop whatever I"m doing to socialize with them, my long lost friends. I have to be honest here, because I'm feeling really angry about this situation and can't pretend there are no problems. Maybe I just need to get out and experience more life, or something, and not stay in this apt with all the problems and difficulties I'm dealing with here, and now. But I'm gaining back my strength, slowly.

here or there

is my best option to leave the US? I think very very seriously about it every day. I posted a subject like this on b and a a while back and was bombarded with .....well I'm under no illusions and I believe in what I am doing, and am not so naive I expect it to be a stroll through the park. But I'm not joking. I want to move to the UK. When? I'm just not happy here. I don't know how I can ever be. I'm suffocating. I need a different society, a different kind of life.

hurricane katrina

I'm looking at the pictures. Guess I'm not the only one with problems. I've been to New Orleans twice, and it's one of my favorite places to visit. When I start to solve some of my current problems I'll start traveling again; this time to LA, oh, I don't know. Or a small trip to philly.

So....guess not all in nature is benevolent.

women't sex lives, their rights

I went to a morning after pill demo today, to protest the FDA delay on getting it available over the counter. I just can't believe how fucked up things are in this country and that not only do we women, the majority, not have access to affordable housing, health care, decent jobs, really, but we can't even control our reproductive lives if things keep going how they are. Abstinence only sex ed? When I was ten, our school had sex ed, and it was girls, boys together, a full year class. This is what men have, what women have, what happens, how babies are made, what a period is, how a baby is born, ect. And this was evanston, illinois, not some "free love" environment. I just can't understand these conservatives: they don't give us national child care or maternity leave which we need and which is available elsewhere around the world. We don't have national health care. We have no means of living without a good job and those too are under threat. There are no day care centers in the work place. A woman's decision to have a kid is her problem. But everywhere else in the world, practically, the government aids women who are expecting. So we have no means to support a child, but they're forcing us to have them. I am so pissed. If I get out of the dilemma I'm in, or if I reconcile with this guy I started seeing, he can marry me and I'm so out of here. But my friends and family are here, too. I can't take this place. The housing system is corrupt, wrong. Everyone should have a place to live and not be subjected to the fear of losing their job and ending up homeless, or ending up homeless at all. They shouldn't be forced to live in shelters or on people's charity. I'm so disgusted with the state of things here. Those who have gone to Europe, I'm tempted to say don't come back. I'm so mad right now.

I'm hesitant

to edit what I just wrote. It shouldn't be read by the light hearted. I really don't want to beat men up. It's not that I don't feel like it at times. Just that I felt really taken for granted by different people. I'm.....

trying to hold it together, under the circumstances.

the right to fight

men who take advantage of, trick, disrespect us, use us for sex, cheap labor....the list goes on.....


I've been thinking, that women who fight back are branded as dangerous, as criminals. In fact, men are physically bigger, have much more advantage in the world, are backed up by the government, the police, the law, tradition, religion, money and.....am I forgetting anything? Try miliatry power. So a woman should have a right to hit a guy who insults her, tricks her into sex and uses her for that, who refuses condoms or responsibility for either STDs or pregnancy, who treats her like a prostitute (no offense toward prostitutes) in a brothel who is supposed to be there at their beck and call, who shouts at her and violates her physically or verbally when she asks for him to do what he is supposed to, when she demands her rights, when she complains and her complaint is valid......I really think girls and women have a right to beat these men up. The way things are now, if a woman yells, fights back, hits a guy, the cops or whoever, really, don't think, (and unfortunately many women take their side) she may have had valid reason to be pissed, what did he do to her? Did he throw trash in front of her apartment, refuse to clean when he was supposed to, throw her out when she had no where to go, trick and use her for sex, hit her, assault her, but that's only the most extreme, I mean it's the day to day violations in small way that hit the hardest, that are the most permanent. But people and authority (and again, I emphasize, other women often) will say, the woman is a criminal and should be locked up. They don't think maybe it's the men who are criminals, who are hurting women, that it's men who are harmful.

Women's rights have been under constant attack since 1975 whatever it was, but it snowballed in the 80s. If you voted for Bush or Reagan, or especially if you're a "liberal" who nonetheless tells women non whites the poor, that they shouldn't do anything to change the world they're in and not to bother making any demands (and some of them were my friends) then this is your fault. I hold you responsible.

I am being difficult here. I have valid reasons to be mad. I can't keep pretending everything is great, when it's not, when there are serious problems in the world and in life. Sure, it's easy to go from one suck ass relationship, job and living situation to another which I can find anywhere in the world, but that's not what I want. I want real answers, a real improvement. That's what I have to make.


I know it'll be an uphill battle but what choice do I have? Others may judge, and will. There's only so much in my control. I will, if I solve these current problems, leave here. Either way I'll have to. But I want to move up, not sideways. That's the tricky part.

fuck housework

I'm sick of doing work I never get credit for, and I'm sick of staying behind to do the slum work while others (who I won't mention) go out and party. I'm done with it. It's over. And, hopefully you'll understand why I'm using this expression, I'm done with being the charwoman nigger around here and at work. Not that anyone should be that, you know, but that's the point. I'm no longer doing shit work and not getting pay or credit. But the thing is, it has to get done, so who does it? I guess everyone equally, I don't know. But I refuse to be a mop. I fucking refuse. This is it for me.

cell phone miracle, maybe?

stupidly, I got my phone wet. It wouldn't work, and the button kept ringing, there was no picture. my friend was supposed to meet me but there was no communication. shit!!!! I kept saying. I put the phone on the stove to dry it out. I put it back together: still not working, and it said "emergency download" (well, this is a condensed version of this.) I figured if I turn on the stove the phone will dry out faster. I turned on the burner (I know you can say it's not that smart but I was trying to dry it in a hurry). Suddenly, the phone was in flames. I turned off the burner, blew out the flames, and my phone is charred now at the edges with part of it burned off. Now I think I have to get a new phone asap. I tried turning it on to see if maybe it works, and the same message "Emergency download" is on the phone. I take it apart again, and leave it. I found it five hours later, put it back together, and pushed the button to turn it on, and amazingly it came on, and the regular picture is on it. THe buttons, though burnt, still work. But it's a mangled mess. It still works though (knock wood).

erotic writing and porn

I am sexual and a feminist and I can say with assurance I know the sex industry pretty well. I love sex, when it's right. I read erotic literature and art and ......sex is great. However, I am not a fan, to say the least, of any kind of writing, art, pictures, whatever, that demean females in any way or degrade them. Much sex-oriented pictures and writing does. I am an enemy of misogyny, which absolutely creeps into a good deal of sex stuff. It's more about females being inferior. Where do you draw the line? Fantasies are fucked up, all about what's wrong. You can fantasize about being in a concentration camp, turn that into something erotic, but it doesn't mean you really want to be there. You can fantasize about rape or, well, use your imagination. I does not mean you really want it.

Maybe there is no simple solution. Sometimes lines have to be drawn. A snuff film is not protected speech. Nor is forced pornography. Someone should have the right to express something if it's consenting adults no matter how despicable. It doesn't mean they have a right to display it in the workplace, or at school, ect. If someone wants to read it they should be allowed to, on their own time.

I am a feminist and sexy, sex-positive.

punzy 

how to deal with

life's issues. as of now someone is throwing fireworks outside my window (guess my neighborhood isn't totally gentrified yet) and I hate it. I don't know why they're doing it.

Right now I am dealing with some problems, personal, which are too much for this blog. I will pull out of it and live, I don't doubt. I have to remember there are good people and there is good and right in the world.

But there's more to life, thank god/dess the stars whatever. Last night I went to a house party a really awesome one. I cleaned up my garden. NOw I just want to get out of the house. Go for a walk, across the bridge, just remove myself from my life and familiar stuff.

G got me an ipod for my bday which I'm trying to figure out how to work. It's my best bday present so far! Dad also gave me a nice one: money.

So, I have to go back to work, and I may have to take an office job. I mean, I don't want to live in the streets. No, I don't WANT to work the corporate world, and this job sounds frikking bo-ring, but.....I am under pressure to do it. It doesn't have to be forever. Yes, I will travel, I will perform, I will maybe live abroad one day (most likely), but not right now. A year ago I thought I had it worked out and I did travel, but it became more complicated than I had imagined. I will return to Egypt at some time. But I need to deal with stuff now, and it's not going to leave.
I think to myself though, I can make the same or more money waiting tables but those jobs aren't at my feet right now....I mean it's possible, but I'm not 21 anymore, either. I need a career I can feel proud of. I don't want people's pity or condescension. Seriously, I have to figure out my "thing." It's there. I have to get it.

new york

I've been going out a lot: to Crobar to see Sandra Collins and DJ Rap (it was awesome awesome!), then with my sister and her 18 year old friends in the Hamptons, Bridgehampton polo (a fashion show, really. They wear stilletto heels and cocktail dresses on the grass), and another party Monday night. I have been going to consciousness raising groups (I love it), and working on the monologues for the show so....I'm still unemployed, working off the books part time, there are other problems, I would love to be in London, Berlin, Alexandria again but, you know, it's I'm here and have my hands more than full. My life is here, and there's so much that is important. There are highlights as well. I can't believe summer is almost over, and there's always so much to do, it's endless. I do want to leave, at some point, but also I'm going to have to face life and work as well. Still, by going out I'm learning so much, meeting new people, and realized I don't think I can sit in a cubicle all day; but what's the solution? I can't wait tables forever; I need to be proud of my job. HOwever, there's so much money to be made waitressing, bartending, and really, shaking your tits and winking at guys, that's the truth. Some variations of that, but that's it. It's hard work though, extremely, but why work 40 hours in an office for $400 or $500 per week when you can make the same money with fewer hours? Off the subject....
On the good side, CBGBs won't be evicted.....yeee!!!! I know people who work there, and I'm glad for them. They came very, very close.

So yes, I would love to get out of the US, and I will at some point. But I still have to deal with work and careers as well and that's where the issue is. I don't think I can take another job like my last; I ask for better, I've changed.

another dream

From what I remember: I am in a movie theater, a make-shift one, alone? maybe, or with others, don't remember. I'm watching this film about people doing spells or seances, some kind of African one, with drums and chanting. It all starts to escalate and this creepy imagery starts coming up, like faces, gargoyes, something like that. I start to get freaky, but tell myself it's only a movie, keep watching. I try to say this is a good spell. But I feel the fear still.

Then suddenly I am working in a store selling various trinkets and fun things. Maybe did the world trade center figure in here somewhere? Like I passed it, or the remains, or something like that. Anyway, I'm in this store and my boss there is telling me rather than get money on my metro card ask these people downstairs for $13. I make sure I hear her right, and she says yes. So I'm working there, and then am told to keep a lookout for such and such a guy....I see his picture, a few of them, different people, but???

Then, it's time for me to leave around 5:30 and I ask this security guard downstairs for the $13 some odd and he gives it to me. THen I see my sister and tell her how tiring my new job is, and how paying for these things adds up? Then I go into one of these bodegas where they're selling these California rolls, and some of them have only rice in them. Someone is talking on the radio, I think....? A guy's voice.

how many times I've been propositioned today

so many I stopped counting. Our society...whatever you want to call it, or maybe just men, or....????? place so much emphasis on women being attractive and we're under constant pressure to be that, to be well-groomed, whatever you want to call it. But then we look nice, and what happens is......intense, exaggerated stares, comments, honks and catcalls from cars, and being asked in a crude, disrespectful way for sex or blowjobs. I don't think I'm that gorgeous, although I'm not ugly, either. My point is, if we get pissed, we're told we either can't appreciate compliments or we're getting bent out of shape over nothing, a little harmless fun, or we're crazy, hysterical bitches, or we should appreciate it cause once we're past a certain age we won't get it, or we should be grateful we're getting it at our age. I would always, my whole life, think I am not pretty enough, thin enough. THere has never been a time in my life where I thought I was thin enough or pretty enough, although there were times when I thought I looked good. But the other side of that is always, once we are "pretty" being the target of unwanted attention. Or maybe it happens even if we aren't "pretty." I've gotten it even when I didn't look good or was dressed badly or.....when I see men doing this to other women it makes me sick. SOmetimes I'd feel resentful or jealous of the women, or think, I have to admit, why is she walking down that street dressed that way. But maybe I do it, too, without realizing it. BUt now I have come full circle, or rather, 180 degrees and I see it the other way. These men are shits, they're disrespectful. What is the solution? I am not sure our counter harassment parties were. BUt I have yelled at these men, I have had my public battles. And no, I don't enjoy it or go looking for it. But I was provoked to where I finally snapped. What if I'm having a bad day, if I'm upset, like I was today, and I get some stupid comment? Yeah, I am going to be pissed....I'm human, I have bad days, I get mad, I lose my cool. Am I not entitled to my feelings? To react, if pushed that way??????

dream

I was in my back yard, but there was an opening in the ground, and water underneath it. West, my cat, jumped in the water, and I almost accidentally covered him but got him in time, as he was swimming in the water. I got him out. THen I somehow got into the water, which was dirty, and was up to my waist in it. I was grossed out thinking this water is polluted, disgusting, but I could smell it too, and it didn't smell bad, but like fresh sea water. G was standing behind me, and I kept saying, I can't believe I'm getting into this water.

I am constantly having water dreams. I had a dream a few months ago about being in the clear blue water, I think an ocean or maybe Lake Michigan in Chicago, and being on a water boat. I think I get in the water and swim.....but am trying to balance myself.

Water is the most common theme.

Maybe it's cause it's 94 today and I could use a trip to the beach, the hamptons beach. Fuck it, maybe I will.

me in egypt.....a long time ago now ....I love traveling but I remember how tired I was by the end.....was so happy to get home, to my neighborhood again....I'll take another trip......at some point 

recent of me and bike .....g put that parrot horn on it recently 

cheesy yes but can't resist..... 

dreams, two nights ago

I was in prison, with other people. THere was smoke....I couldn't leave of course, I was thinking I'd be stuck there for hours, days, who knows how long.

only one person

I would rather not have casual sex....

can only be with one at a time.

I love one, he's the only one.

BUt he's not here, so what do I do?

I have had nsa sex, but it wasn't planned, ever. I wanted it, I said yes. But it's not something I'm looking for. Still, it's nice to travel and see beautiful people everywhere.

heat wave

normally I like heat, but I have sweat dripping off me, everywhere.

My neighbors smoke and I'm sick of it, I think smoking is RUDE and inconsiderate. I'm sick of being told to suck it up (Garrett) and let them do it. I never smoked into people's windows when I smoked. It' lazy and piggish. I'm always having to inhale people's smoke when I'm jogging.

So, I went to Egypt and my dad had told me not to go anywhere because of terrorism. I said, oh come on (this was last NOvember) and he said, what, you think this is a republican conspiracy? I think it's A conspiracy, though to what party? So I go to Egypt and I get back alive. But now this incident in Sharm El Sheik, though I wasn't there that I know of.

but still something can always happen. I can (God/dess forbid) get hit by a car, shot, knived or .....trip and fall



I'm bitching, but I don't know what to do, ever. I have only an idea. The thing is though, then who will be left to pick up the grunt work that keeps society functioning? Oh, OK, stupid people? Are they really stupid? According to whom? I've seen the lowlifes of the world and the "highlifes" both. It.....where am I going with this? Throughout history, men (rich men) made the crucial worldly decisions that made history and put them in my high school history books, but women? Where were they? Cleopatra? Queen Elizabeth? What other women were in my history classes? The hetairas of Greece, housewives, slaves, common street hookers? I don't identify with ANY of these women. Jeanne D'Arc is one of the rare exceptions. Oh, women's suffrage got a huge mention consisting of two small paragraphs, in my high school history book. So I know what Virginia Woolf meant about women's absence in history.

What these books don't mention is that men (and the occasional Queen) were able to change the world with their contributions because women were doing the .....how can I be pleasant? well, shitwork that was necessary for society but "leaving no human mark" (B Friedan) WOmen and slaves. SOmeone has to take care of babies, clean the floors, be an ornament, decorate the house. But when did these contributions get mentioned? Good old Stuyvesant history. THe story of Bismark, the Triple Alliance, the Industrial Revolution.......

But when a woman could actually write down her experiences, suddenly, someone exists that we know something about. Sappho, Empress Eugenie, Mrs. Osborne, Sylvia Plath.

But like I said, someone has to do the grunt labor, someone has to run the stock market, fix computers, work the traffic lights and subways, sweep the floors.......

I mean, is anyone passionate about that? Why would someone be a CEO if they didn't need the $? Do they love it that much that there's nothing else they'd rather do than get up at 5 AM to go to the office? I just.....I don't get it. What is the solution here?

pms

the beginning stages. Will spare the gory details, but I couldn't sleep tonight maybe it's the insane, relentless humidity which feels like I'm sitting in a wall of plaster, or that I drank too much, but I deleted some things I wrote on a message board. It was turning into a constant defense on my part, maybe for good reason, but I was coming across as a shrill argumentative banshee and not really enlightening anyone. Even though I thought I was right then and still do but.....when chatting which is superficial and boring leads to politics which is not it nevertheless turns to a fight.

Everything just came crashing tonight I woke up to a lot of things. I'm an insomniac, really a night person.

I want to be nice

but I'm told I'm mean. I want to be nice. To explain what happened will take too much time, but in a few words someone wrote an article I considered unfair and insulting, and I complained about it. I can't stop someone from writing something, no matter how ignorant and offensive. I just thought it smacked of bias and since it hits a sensitive spot in me: he wrote about a place where I have friends and that is connected to my dad, I guess maybe I did lash out. Yes, I was upset at what he wrote, and I believe for good reason. But it really hurts me and frustrates me that people think when I defend a person, concept or place that I am just acting on a power urge or a sadistic desire to hurt someone. Never in my life have I hurt someone just to hurt them. If I did get snippy with people, it is because either I was upset at the time and acted well, hysterically, or because they crossed a line of mine. If someone doesn't want people to be pissed off at them, they why do they provoke people in the first place? Most of the people who say, oh, people are attacking me, they hurt me, are also people who themselves often say hurtful things about others. Not all the time, but much of it.

back from hamptons

is that a trip? It's a mini one.

The Hamptons and beach are gorgeous and so are the $8 million dollar homes. Everyone almost is rich except the locals who are mostly middle to lower middle class. My mother made great dinners, and I went to a club for the first time out there.....in all this time I still haven't gone. It was Resort. It's OK, but it was too bright and not crowded enough, and I like clubs where I blend in and become anonymous. That's why I like the big clubs cause I can go alone and disappear. But places like this you're visible to everyone and I felt so uncomfortable. THis girl came up to me and made conversation, who herself was from Australia.
My sister went out of her way to introduce me to people even if they're much younger, so that's nice.

But it's hard being out of my element for so long. I felt kind of sad. Plus, I miss my own friends, my own people.

Anyway, I'm back, back to my world......

rain, and being stuck indoors

sick of it......had a crazy morning but now I'm sitting in my apt alone and sick of being stuck here, so I'm going to go out for yet another late night ride. It's been raining steadily, and I got totally drenched, not kidding, this morning when I took my bike out to meet someone. My shoes are all soaked. So....the mint in my backyard will grow huge and luckily I pulled out the weeds, so that the water will go to the good plants.

There's just so much I have to deal with now that's ugly, stressful. I'm always in conflict, cause my instincts tell me different things at once. But I'm really sick of being stuck in here. I don't know the solution, not yet.

I will be going to the hamptons this weekend so at least I'll be on the beach.......riding waves.

oh, so my dream I remembered: it was a dress I found in a store for $8. I tried it on and it was really pretty, looking like from the antebellum days. I turned and looked in the mirror behind and my back looked like Scarlett's.

I can't stand being stuck in here anymore.

dreams...the past few days

Well, around June 27, in Indy, I dreamt I was at a party. First, there were cats everywhere, I always have this one, that I'm picking up stray cats and trying to take care of them, but they keep disappearing and coming back. THen......I'm at a party where we're in some kind of enclosed space, wood walls. A horror film is playing, but there is someone impersonating one of the characters. I get up to leave and he slaps me. I end up staying, watching. There would have been more, but I was woken up. There was a major storm this night.

The past few nights, well.....I dream often of churches. I'm in and out of them.

A couple nights ago I dreamt of a briefcase full of money, but it was illegal, like drug money. SOmeone had lost it, and I was afraid that whoever it belonged to would find me and get me. At the same time, I wanted the money. It kept turning up in other places.

penis, power?

Is there a power that comes with having a penis? I was thinking that by inserting a (not my, I don't have one) dick in someone you're exercising power over them, dominating them really. Or you have a certain power. I mean, some women have power over some men, but that's not the....well, more like men with wealth have power over all women and many, most men. But say, a higher class woman may have power over a working class man, but in other ways, she doesn't. I think .....the way I see men look at women, not just turning them into objects or paying attention only to their looks, deciding which women they'll harass and which they won't, they are exerting their power over women.
So I was thinking when I was riding my bike.....very unsexy in my helmet and glasses then these guys made a comment at me from a car.
no, well not in every case. If the human race is going to stick around, there has to be intercourse, really. I'm straight, have no plans to become gay even if once in a blue moon there's a woman I'm attracted to or I think about sex with women.
But is anatomy destiny? Men are simply bigger, faster than women. They're built that way, probably born that way. There are moments when men's intentions are good and sex is good, mutual, between equals, caring partners. But the majority of what's out there is not about equality.
The problem is, I don't really love women. I don't hate them. Many women I really do like. But I don't think someone is great just because she's female. There are some I just don't like. I'm not saying I have answers, I'm just putting the question out there.

opinions

Everyone has one. But honestly, especially if it's a controversial topic like religion, what is the point of throwing it out there, trying to force it on others. If you believe, don't believe, it's your decision. But these people who try to speak as the realists and skeptics I find more often than not form their statements on half truths and extreme generalizations. I guess I disagree. I have my beliefs, but I never try to force others to agree with me. What's the purpose of arguing? Are you going to change the other person? Probably not.

auditions

went pretty well for the most part. Steve, the director, is crazy but really good at this. far better than me. it's hard though, cause this is such emotional material. to watch people unravel like this. I'm always wondering what's going on with people but then I see and it's like, please don't tell me all this. It has the potential to be really great. It's far better than the stuff out there now. But this time it's up to me. how else will it get done?

so lovely fans, you can read about this production process here below.

http://threewomennyc.blogspot.com/

the character I'm doing abandons her baby and is in college. I was in college when I first read this play. So I searched for articles on people throwing their babies in dumpsters, and suprisingly many of them turned up. In different parts of the country. So I'm lucky that, despite the problems women have, at least I can get an abortion, the morning after pill if I need it. One of my favorite plays is Slow Dance on the Killing Ground. The girl is walking around Brooklyn at around 1AM looking for an abortionist, and she's alone when she confronts the two other characters. This play was written before abortion became legal, and it's such a gem of a play. She is so similar to the Plath character that this must have been common enough. If you got pregnant then, you were really in trouble. I don't love the idea of abortion, but it is necessary. Still, we have abortion now but all is not great still. We're still not equal. We have abortion, the morning after pill, women bankers. That's the right.....up to the top. But why don't I feel the equality, never have? Cause.....well stories in my family, my mother, me, school, it's complex enough. I had this girl friend in high school who was really pretty, full of potential. I remember her saying she wouldn't have an abortion but she supports the right to choose. This is someone who had the world at her feet. Next thing, she was homeless, starving, moved into a squat, calling herself Tree, and had a kid, under those circumstances. I hope she's well. She herself was badly treated as a kid. She started crying once at Halloween, really seriously. That was one of the few deja vu moments in my life. I still don't think I feel as intensely, nor have I ever, as I did as a teenager. So I mean, we see these shows now about how the ancient Incas sacrificed children and ate them, and we of course are disgusted and horrified, thinking they must have been primitive brutes (thus it's a good thing the Europeans arrived to civilize them?). So if aliens land here and decide to take over Earth, maybe two thousand years from now people will look back at us and say, they threw their babies in dumpsters, they fried people alive in the electric chair, they had savage crack wars, gang fights, they bombed entire civilizations, and we will be seen as savages.

just returned from indy

a mere three days but it felt like a month. It was for the most part a nice visit....but traveling took a day, as I flew to atlanta then changed to indinapolis with three hours in between. Atlanta looks like a cool place I wouldn't mind spending some time in. I may be different from these round the world vagabonders in that...well, for now I wouldn't want to go away for months at a time. Maybe to live somewhere, but NYC is still home, however fucked up. I enjoy coming home like now....to familiar surroundings. It becomes very stressful living out of a suitcase and....but then there's the part of me that says, I want to go to such and such a place and I need a change....I think sometimes I have to get out of the US, maybe I will, like spend time in Berlin or Egypt. My next trip will be, well, I really miss the whole UK, I really, really do. Sometimes it just is painful to read about anything from there, or anyone, and not be there. I never thought I'd be saying this but I miss the place. It just feels "right." Sometimes I think I never should have returned. BUt like I said, I get homesick. Also, back to Berlin, like to study and work. Or Egypt. LA. My next little trip will be South America, like in February next year. That way, cause their summer is our winter, when I'm freezing here I can think about how great the beach is going to be. Peru, Argentina, but not for too long, just a few weeks.

so tomorrow are the auditions.....

After a while I have to shut off....can't think, xcept.....no brainer stuff.

recent of me green!!!!!!!!! 

so much,

I got about a hundred submissions for my play. Lots of women interested. I think I know pretty fast who I want to cast just from photos. Some people just have interesting faces and eyes, which leads me to think their personalities are interesting. BUt those people are rare. I want to find these relationships where sparks fly, with a male or female, but it's hard. When I finally do find people like that, well.....
I just seem to be running into a lot of people who I just don't connect to. Maybe to some readers this sounds like a righteous woe is me rant but I keep trying and trying but I'm just not finding them, although my dear reader you may be an exception. I am not like most bloggers I see where there is a lot of chatty material and photos. Personally, no hard feelings, but that doesn't interest me.

so this one guy was posting comments and had a weird, moving blog but he disappeared. I know nothing about him. It's strange how I deeply connect with so few people and it's not for lack of trying. I TRY so hard to get along with "everyone" but getting along is not the same as.....

it's fun getting headshots and making creative decisions but it's also really annoying to be constantly having to open, resave, delete emails cause I get messages saying my storage is full.

I was thinking of comments my mother sometimes makes about other women. These are gorgeous women who look like models, at least I thought so, and she'll say, "She looks like a man. She looks like a drag queen." Really catty, huh?

requiem for a dream

been wanting to watch this for a while now....whew! pretty sordid. But the acting was superb, by everyone. Really disturbing though. I'm squeamish about sores and gross stuff. yick. I know now not to take diet pills.....

me and west....in brooklyn  

Berlin graffiti 

me and punzy 

late working

I'm going in to interview at this news station.....it's really freaky. But if I get it, the pay is good and the hours flexible. I can't complain. Still.....I'm going ahead with the show and performance plans....I know there are all these important things in life but art is important. It's the only thing I care about, except for certain individuals in my life.

But sending out p and reses I see a lot of good stuff but so much....the troubled teen daughter and her mother dramas. Well, I've been down that road, not as a mother but the other thing. I'm still a troubled teenage daughter. Still, I'm so sick of these themes. I'm looking for fleshed out, crazed, oozing with life, something, characters. I've found a few. But so much that's being produced is mediocre-sounding. What's really annoying is this ad for a travel show host who shouldn't have a north american accent (and this was a north american paper) and should be UK or Oz. Uh, why? People have so many stereotypes, like that Americans don't travel or don't want to experience the world. Uh, please give it a rest. I know I'm bitching. You can call it constructive criticism.

But....onto my project.....

although that urge to go somewhere is back again. Maybe there will come a time when travel is simple. I've been thinking of favorite destinations, though there's something to be said about everywhere. But I remember Switzerland as an absolutely gorgeous place, stunning. So was the chocolate! Take Swiss Air, no kidding, and make sure there are a few hours in between flights to see Zurich. Also, Alexandria Egypt. Just really fascinated by that place....and I almost didn't go but something told me to. Think what I'd have missed! Well, those are my recommendations.



next day: June 13

Had the interview and the people seemed pretty nice overall. THe woman interviewing me said, "We had some criticism last summer...." and well, whatever, I got to see the other POV. Well, for me civil rights and women's rights are a priority and I didn't vote for Bush but.....well I don't know. I can't count on getting this job but it was ....it went fairly well. I made a mistake in mentioning my blog and my trip to Egypt. Well, I'm not telling them about this one; it's private.

Yes you reading this have the priviledge of knowing what those around me don't know.

So....another thing.....I walked all over the city today. That's my new thing: I walk EVERYWHERE. It's not that I can't take the train. But I feel so free walking places and not being crammed into a car. I walk over the Manhattan and Brooklyn bridge a zillion times per day. I don't understand these men and this obsession of theirs with trying to pick up women. I know, I've heard the argument: they're trying to meet women. Others say that's bullshit. But we're supposed to feel grateful for what is an invasion of space. Intense stares, one liners, walking too close.....I used to really fight them back. So many of them are in pretty bad shape those I leave behind. I guess I sympathize that they're......down and out. But we shouldn't have to beg for these crude advances or want them.....it's none of your fucking business if I want to walk down the street. Oh, well, thank god/dess you noticed me I've been waiting all my life for your blessing so I can go outside. Fine, give me money. Give me a job. ?