Thanksgiving 2009

Windows open and windows close. This was last night as we drove through Times Square toward our next stop on West 45th Street. This city never ceases to amaze me, even after 51 years. I've been told 5 is one of my prime numbers, so this being my 5th decade on Earth, I feel like a good ten years are ahead! I have so much to be thankful for: my friends, my wife, my family, my good fortune to be employed by the greatest city in the world...and our cat! Going for a nap now, Paul is home from the hospital...again! One more round of chemo to go. Thinking of him too, and thankful he is still around. Another friend and mentor of mine is not faring so well. My prayers and thoughts are with him and his family as they face the final curtain.

Miracle Manifestation

The Star

Miracle Manifestation,

My first royalty check came in this week from the sale of my book: After September. I will be donating $58.80 to the National 9/11 Memorial at the World Trade Center. May it be the first of many. Thank you all for your support, for those thinking of holiday gifts...give the gift poetry (tax deductible!).

The Hierophant

Let Me Down Easy

We, me, Jen and Routh, went to see Anna Deavere Smith last night in Let me Down Easy at 2nd Stage. There was a bit about a boxer getting knocked out. I had flashbacks to The Knitting Factory many years ago and my own solo performance as a boxer who gets knocked out and does not remember how it happened. This one woman tour-de-force takes on Cancer, Health Care Reform, Life, Death and aging in a 95 minute channeling of 20 individuals. Among them a former Tour-de-France champion battling cancer, a supermodel, a bull rider injured on the job, a TV movie critic dieing of cancer, (even a woman who does one person performances!), all interviewed by Smith who impersonates them verbatim with a skill that lives up to her reputation. Last night at our post show discussion over cocktails in the Film Center Café the question I posed was: “How do we grow old in America now?” For me I can find some great salvation in my work, a reason to live, so I can put this poetry out in hopes that it will inspire others to keep going and face the brutality of our darker natures with luminous offerings of Peace. However, in a culture that seems to value the violent, the young and the beautiful, it seems an up hill battle. The only thing we can do is:

Keep fighting. Thinking of all my loved ones in physical difficulty: Keep fighting. To my loved ones who stand up in front of crowds of people to deliver messages of hope: Keep talking.

Agent Provocateurs

To my friend and Agent Provocateur about to subject himself to another round of trial and error...I salute you. Our thoughts and prayers continue for you and for your friends and family near and dear, keep the strength!

We saw the film "Precious" yesterday with our friends Kelly and Jill, and it is as brutally an honest portrait of urban-American life in the late 1980's as I have ever seen. Raw and powerful, unapologetic and disturbing, real life artfully depicted.

Happy Birthday to My Father

Is it macabre to celebrate the birthday of a loved one after they have passed? I don't know, but it seems to me in the case of my father, when I celebrate his life I am celebrating my own. I love my father very much and have never had an adequate way of showing it. So... I'll just keep marking his arrival and his passing on this earth until the day I no longer am able. He would have been 79 years old today. My thoughts are also with my friend in Florida recovering from his 2nd round of Chemo. Stay strong Rebhan.