Pink Skies in Harlem

Tomorrow morning Velvet and I are going out apartment hunting with the real estate agent.  Note that I have called my child "Velvet" again.  After a brief consultation he said, "I don't care what you call me on your blog, but I like Velvet." Ergo:  he remains Velvet.  Maybe Buster Velvet, but Velvet nevertheless.  For the uninitiated, he is named Velvet after this character:

It's good to have him here, especially right now because I think if he weren't here, I might give in to the fear welling up inside me at the moment.  It's kind of scary to be moving from my home of 17 years on June 14th.  It will be better when I know where we're moving.  And I can't even hold the thought of surgery in my head more than a few minutes right now - although I have to follow up on all that medical stuff by the end of the week.  I need to schedule the procedure for around July 1 so I have time to recuperate before school starts in the fall. I'm on the right path right now, but the timing needs improvement.

Today we took things up to my classroom at the church on the hill and down to the storage unit with Buzz Kill.  I meant to clean closets yesterday, but I had done such a good job getting rid of superfluous stuff that there's nothing left to jettison.  The problem now becomes finding a place to put it all.  For years, everything has been in its proper place, and now there's no place at all.  I'm almost positive that we'll find a place tomorrow:  A great place in almost every way, except that it will cost more money than I wanted to spend.  At least I realized there was no way I would find a place I liked for the money I wanted to spend.  That's how it is with most things, really.

Fortunately, I'm in a position to simply pay my rent for the year up front so that there won't be any trouble with my salary being lower than landlords prefer.  All things considered, I'm a very fortunate female.  My dad will be arriving on the 12th to support me through this transition.  He walked me down the aisle when I married Buzz Kill, and now he's helping me walk away.  June 10th would have been our 22nd wedding anniversary.

June 10th is the fifth anniversary of the fateful Gemini party which had to be cancelled because Buzz Kill had gone through the trash and found the story about the black man with a dick the size of a maglight.  Buzz Kill was crushed by that story which explains why he thought it would be a good idea to read it at the party. I really do wish that the housekeeper had come as scheduled and emptied the trash before he got home from India.  I never meant for him to find that story - or at least I didn't consciously mean for him to find that story.  Most everyone I know believes it was my most spectacular Freudian slip.   Oh Well, what's done is done.  And besides, if he hadn't found that story, he might still be living here and I'd have been locked up in Four Winds forever.

Despite the bitter fights, Velvet is much better off this way.  I am too - but I can't help wondering what would have happened if Buzz Kill had never found the story so that the party was never cancelled and all those gay porn stars would have been over here drinking Epiphany Punch (Vodka, Triple Sec, Lemonade, Sprite and a splash of Tequila) with the specific mission of determining whether Buzz Kill is gay or if he needed a woman with a strap on.  It would have been nice to have that question settled once and for all, and I'm still convinced that a room full of gay porn stars would have been able to sort it out.

I'm not so sure what's happening with Mr. Amsterdam.  He reappeared like gang busters, but I've got the feeling he is more interested in my ass than me.  That may not be a bad thing.  I'd like a man to be interested in my ass, but he has a way of asking simple questions, then pursuing answers until he hits one of my sore spots.  In a way, it's working for me because it's all done in a series of short emails over a few hours - so it's not like I'm having to get out of my pajamas and put on lipstick.  And it seems like he and I have similar energy ebbs and flows - which is also a good thing.

I'm ready to forget the whole thing tonight, though.  I'm resisting the urge to tell him so because I'm pervasively vulnerable at the moment and it's unwise to make policy decisions when you're pervasively vulnerable.

The only decision I need to be making right now involves an apartment.  A new home for me and Velvet, temporarily, until I figure out where I want to buy a place.  I'm thinking it's a good thing we sold the apartment now for an excellent price to somebody who works for Banksters so they can get a mortgage without a bunch of bullshit.  Plus people have started moving into the building next door finally.  It sucks balls to look out my window where there used to be a sunset and see some asshole unloading groceries in his luxury kitchen.  The building isn't any closer to this one than any of the high rises on the East Side or in Midtown - which is why we could sell for such a good price.  When you remember the sky and clouds turning golden pink, though, it sucks.  So again, we're getting out in the nick of time.

We'll be living somewhere in Harlem.  Either over by Adam Clayton Powell Blvd and Malcolm X or up Broadway in an area they're calling Sugar Hill.  I'll still be able to walk to work, which is my main priority, and the buildings up there are farther apart and typically only six stories or so.  Plenty of sky, and if I'm lucky, another sunset out the window.

Full Circle

I have a moving date:  June the 14th which happens to be the anniversary of my first date with Buzz Kill in New York City in 1986 or 1987.  I'm pleased to say that the work on the terrace is finished so that Buster and I will be able to use the terrace gratefully between now and then.  So pleased that I've just scheduled another Gemini party with my dear friend, the lovely and talented Kathleen.  Just a small one.

I have to write reports - but I've decided that since the Owners have fucked up the world so completely that we can no longer hope to avoid climate change and a generally toxic environment - then I'll be noticing things of beauty and encourage the creation of more beauty. That's thing of beauty #11-101 (I think).

Throwing away the marital bed is going to be a thing of beauty, too.  I believe I'll do that on June 14th.  It's kind of like the Mandelbrot set.

Although the pattern of seasons and cycles repeats endlessly, your perspective changes as you move inward and outward within the set of variables.

On another note, I have begun to get bitchy with Buster regarding his lack of summer employment.  He has gone to websites on his own, but he has not been able to locate a button that says:  Click Here for Your Summer Job.  He figured he could click a button, fill out an application and get a job as if it's a meal card at the Housing Office.  I have therefore supervised the updating of his resume and showed him how to email it to the parks service with a cover letter attached.  Hopefully Santa Claus will bring him a job soon.  I want him around this summer for the move and in case I have surgery on the shoulder.

I went to my favorite doctor the other day.  I haven't seen her for several years because Buzz Kill and I both used to see her, but he got that doctor in the divorce.  The Center for Health and Healing includes nutrition counseling and acupuncture as well as MDs trained in alternative medicine by guys like Andrew Weill.  I like it there, and I'm in a situation that may or may not involve the spirit of Aleister Crowley.  He could be exactly what the world needs now to counteract the impact of Theocracy, especially when applied to Contemporary American Non-Thinkers.  I would like to think my shoulder is giving birth to the spirit of Aleister Crowley in order to nudge the world toward the light.

It's shadowed in Darkness for sure - what with Dick Cheney and the Koch Brothers and All. 
I figure that if that guy from the world bank who brutalized the hotel maid is an example of the kind of sex life these Owners have, we may start to consider that a Summer of Love is necessary to restore the balance of hormones in the atmosphere or something.  Back in the day, The Summer of Love drove Conservatives crazy. Not because of all the fucking, but because Love is the antidote to Fear.



Chanel Z (1989)

All I know---we've got to change what's happening
Something good could happen
I feel light has got to come through---and I need it
Something big and lovely
I want the world to change for me-gotta get away, away from Z
Living on the edge of Z

Relational Mutitasking

I hate dating.
I try to keep an open mind, but really, I hate dating. Drinks with the salacious flirt on Saturday was pleasant. Pleasant enough so that I'm surprised he's apparently fallen into a black hole never to be seen again.

I sent him a brief Thank You email. He responded politely and zip, nothing, nada. He told me over drinks that his business partner was arriving the next day, and they were leaving for Amsterdam on Monday - so obviously he's busy. But still, it's weird to have three or four days of email exchanges where the gmail counter registers 96 emails or more in one conversation, meet for cocktails and then disappear.

Some men get like that when they're working, however. I'd think he didn't like me - except what's not to like? Personally, I think drinks went well enough to move on to lunch, and he may be waiting for me to say so, but how the hell do I know? I figure I'll go about my own business and make an overture later in the week, when he's on his way back to New York.

I guess that men are just as insecure about dating as women. Woody says that men don't multitask across the board as well as women so that even though a man can easily perform serveral concurrent tasks at work, he's focused on work until he's done. Then he switches focus to the domestic front where he can also perform several concurrent tasks. Women, on the other hand, can be at the office and paying total attention to the work at hand and simultaneously think about domestic issues like friends, family and WTF is up with some relationship.

There are certainly differences between the way men and women operate. A study called Pink Brain Blue Brain indicates that these differences are not neurologically inherent, but that the way adults respond to infants is the beginning of gender based enculturation.  So while the brains of males and females may be exactly the same at birth - by the time a baby is four months old, the trajectory of neurological development is already gender biased.  So it may be that girls are not biologically predetermined to talk earlier, for example, but societal expectations push development in that direction.

There are physical differences in development, however, that may lead girls to small motor projects at the art table more frequently than boys - but even that is reinforced by societal expectation.  So the whole Nature/Nurture debate once again ends in a quagmire.

Nevertheless, I wish I knew whether or not that man in Amsterdam wants to have lunch with me when he gets back.  You'd think a fellow who had spent that much time on the internet from his house in Massachusetts would at least send a naughty comment from his blackberry while he's hanging around the airport.  I keep telling myself that it's only Tuesday.  And in fact, it's not even 7:00 in the morning on Tuesday and there's no reason to aniticipate rejection when the man has been working ever since we said goodbye on Saturday night.

I considered sending him the link to Worldwide Hippies News & Stuff as a way of introducing PENolan, but the bit that went out yesterday wasn't exactly what you'd send a prospective romantic partner.  Joe needed to edit my piece down to under two minutes,  He did it well but left out my favorite part in the interest of time.  That's show biz - and I can easily write a follow up piece for the site that makes the point even better.  So while I have no issue with the News itself, it's no good for seduction even though mac was kind enough to call and say I looked nicer than usual.  Most people wouldn't consider an indictement of the Koch brothers tantalizing - but I figure attractive women trolling around Match dot com are a dime a dozen in New York City.  Activist Hippies and Menopausal Stoners are another breed entirely.  Besides, I'd mentioned the Kochs and he made some silly comment designed to keep the conversation light, and I let it pass.  The minute Joe edited out would have clarified my position on the issue of those villians.

The sooner the man realizes that he was out with PENolan, the better.  I feel like mild mannered Clark Kent when I'm Tricia the Preschool Teacher - which is certainly the best way to be on a first date when all you're doing is having a drink in an elegant hotel bar.  I have confidence that I'll figure out some way to handle the next dating maneuver before Friday.  In the meantime, I have to write twenty-two narrative "report cards" for my kids.  No matter how you slice it, that's a labor of love.

Rapture Day

I'm glad that my first real date in some time is on Rapture Day.   I got high as hell this morning and walked down to a local lingerie shop that's been in the neighborhood for decades.  They have a sign in their window saying they are "Sweat Shop Free."  I stopped at Zabars cafe and got a zaberry frozen yoghurt cone.  When I told the women in line around me that I was having ice cream for breakfast in honor of the end of the world as we know it, everyone smiled and was glad to be alive.  I said, "dig it," like a good hippie and headed off to the nail salon.  I've been going to that salon ever since Buster was a baby.  Cindy, the owner, gave me some mini snickers bars to eat while I was having my spa pedicure.

Then I came home for a nap.

At some point during the correspondence with this fellow, Aleister Crowley popped into my head.  I'm still pretty sure that the pain in my shoulder is somehow related, spiritually, to some energy that has been stuck in my fourth chakra which vibrates on the same frequency as Aleister Crowley.   Once the block is cleared and Aleister is fully integrated into my psyche, I'll be better able to experience The Force.

I am fully aware that the doctors believe it's rheumatoid arthritis and arthroscopic surgery will be required, and in the physical reality, I'm sure they're correct.  More tests and a second opinion have already been scheduled.  Nevertheless, we cannot dismiss Aleister Crowley - particularly not on Rapture Day.

The thing is that something about the tone of this fellow's emails suggests that the man I'm meeting tonight is Aleister Crowley, only Jewish.  Or maybe he brings the Aleister out in me.  Either way is good for Rapture Day.



I suppose there's a bit of a risk when you put on high heels and head out to meet a man in a hotel bar.  If I'm not on Worldwide Hippies on Monday, I set out for the Tribeca Grand. I'm not worried a bit, but my mother would be, so I'm leaving clues on the internet.

**Update**
No cause for worry. He was a perfect gentleman in real life, and I liked his looks. I hope he asks me out again when he gets back from a business trip to Amsterdam, but I may have been boring in real life. Hard to say with two Geminis.

Dating in Toon Town

Here's Worldwide Hippies News & Stuff for this week.
I'm on at about 4:00 talking about the march OnMay12



Joe had some fun with Bill Clinton as asshole of the week, but then I love cartoons.

I tend to examine my interactions with men through the lens of Cartoons.  I'd probably compare women to cartoon characters, too, except there weren't enough female cartoon characters back when I was a kid, and I haven't watched any cartoons lately.   When Buster was little, I enjoyed The Power Puff Girls, but once he started watching all those Japanese cartoons, like Gundam Wing and Pokemon, I quit watching with him. People say the Japanese cartoons are backlit so frequently because the nation still struggle with the nuclear trauma - and that was before the earthquake.

I can't hold thoughts about the current nuclear situation in Japan in my head very long before Godzilla takes over.   I'm pretty sure that Godzilla has simply been sleeping somewhere - kind of like King Arthur - and all that radiation leaking into the ocean is bound to get his attention.  Godzilla is not a cartoon, however, and has nothing at all to do with The Summer Boyfriend Reality Show which is, of course, where my own attention lies at the moment.

My first real date in years is scheduled for Saturday night.  I'm not sure where we're going yet, exactly, since we agreed we'll meet for drinks and then determine how the evening will unfold.  The increasingly salacious flirtation via email suggests that the fellow in question could be a wolf.

 

Given that I changed my dating headline to "Built for Comfort," after listening to my trusted adviser Woody Konopeli, I can see how I may have been a bit provocative.  It all started when I decided to make a new screen name because I had used SummerRain back during the Ashley Madison Experiment and didn't want my latest adventures in dating to be colored by associations to the past.  Now I'm 212Shambala.

While updating my profile, I felt it necessary to address the tendency many folks have on Match dot com to go searching for ski bunnies and tennis partners.  I was merely saying that while I'm always prepared to come about, I'll be waving goodbye to all those people trotting by in spandex outfits.  I closed with the line, "I'm built for comfort, not for speed," which I first heard in college - most likely from The Man from San Antone who reminded me distinctly of Foghorn Leghorn.  I'm not sure I've ever even heard the Howlin' Wolf song until Woody was so enthusiastic about the blues that I grabbed the headline and found the song on Youtube.



The headline seemed to be working for a while, though. For the last couple of days, nobody has paid any attention to me - but for some reason Match hasn't been sending me my Daily 5 either. For the uninitiated, Match dot com sends five potential dates to your inbox every morning. I haven't gotten any in days. Maybe because I kept hitting the reject button. They weren't bad fellows - it's just that they lived in New Jersey or somewhere equally as unattractive.

People who live in the suburbs and the boroughs are justifiably annoyed by the way those of us who live in the city visibly cringe at the Bridge and Tunnel factor. I honestly try to keep an open mind - but I'm just not going to cross a bridge or go through a tunnel for dating purposes.

I'm sure that there are thousands of Nice Guys in the boroughs - and in New Jersey or Long Island. But they often have such thick Yankee accents that we have trouble communicating. I have had to spell a word on more than one occasion because they can't understand a damn thing I'm trying to say. Actually, I have to spell things for Woody occasionally, too, but that's because when I've been smoking weed I sound like I just got off a tractor.

It's not really the dialect, however. It's the commute. When you have to factor in an hour or more on the train just to get to your lover, an affair quickly becomes tedious. I'd entertain the idea of dating a fellow from the boroughs, but I could never ever sleep over at his place without being terminally late to work. I can't get to work on time now, and school is only a bit over a mile from HQ. It's like if a guy lives all the way downtown, it might as well be a long distance relationship - and if I'm going to have a long distance relationship, I'd prefer it to be with someone who lives in a charming small town so that I could spend weekends in the country, and he could come into the city to go out to dinner and the theater.

Fortunately, the fellow I am scheduled to see on Saturday has both an apartment in the city and a home in Massachusetts. At least, that's what he says. You never know about people you meet on the internet.

Fracking and Fucking

It has just occurred to me that fracking and fucking are metaphorically similar.  People often that say a sexual episode was just a little harmless fucking, and often such an episode does pass without lasting consequences. But sometimes an episode can lead to trouble.

The whole issue described by a catchy little tune:



The potential risks are detailed in this trailer from Gasland:



A drill goes in deep, injects unspecified fluids and the next thing you know, the environment is so toxic that the tap water's on fire. That doesn't always happen, but even when the results are generally positive, life around the rig is never the same. You may be able to restore the natural balance without a whole lot of trouble if preliminary exploration determines a site should be rapidly abandoned - but once you start seriously drilling, there are lasting repercussions.

It's possible that I noticed this similarity because of becoming involved recently in a salacious flirtation with an individual from Match dot com. I doubt it's going anywhere because stuff from Match dot com rarely goes anywhere - but it got me thinking.

On another note,Buster, formerly known as Velvet, arrived home Thursday night. Cupcake, Buzz Kill and me went to pick up Buster the airport. Cupcake was charming in every way. She wore a form fitting skirt and top of the same dusty pink stretch lace, with a brown leather jacket and brown lace-up half boots that was sexy without being flashy or a bit cheap. Their obvious enthusiasm and affection for each other was appropriately reserved in public, and Buster was very respectful of my feelings when he asked if it would be okay for Cupcake to stay over that night. I have to give them both gold stars so far.

*Note* I will continue to refer to Velvet as Buster for a while in honor a family friend named Buster who recently died peacefully watching TV with his dinner nearby. I knew him through my brother the photographer.

It's too bad that the chemistry between me and Buzz Kill that created the remarkable individual that is Buster was ultimately unsustainable, but at least the environment isn't toxic these days.

Fracking just goes to show you, though, you could find yourself up to your ass in a problematic situation because some smooth talking lobbyist with lots of cash persuades you to grant a Halliburton Loophole. 

Resistance and Playing with Redemption

Now that the mystery of my shoulder is well on its way to being solved - at least until the next round of tests - and one of my dear friends has recommended an excellent real estate agent who can expedite the search for Menopausal Stoners Temporary Headquarters in the 'Hood, I'm working on the Revolution again.



I'm still having fun with Worldwide Hippies and spread the love this week with a story about 108 Productions' new documentary Corpus Christi: Playing with Redemption (I'm at 3:00 on WWH News & Stuff).

108 Productions has been taking Terrence McNally's play, Corpus Christi, around this country and over to Europe for some years now and are sharing that experience. It's kind of about what happens when the Religious Right meets the Gay Jesus. I love these guys.  Find them on Facebook at Corpus Christi Playing with Redemption.





The comments under the trailer got me thinking about how love is generally missing from public discourse these days - now that half the working class is determined to kill off the other, which is exactly what Jay Gould said he could manage back in the Robber Baron days.

This Ain't No 900 Number

Match dot com seems to provide an affordable venue to pursue my pet project, Tits & The Progressive Agenda. I have just posted a provocative profile firmly stating my political position.

If you go on Match, my profile is SummerRain212.

Also, a song popped into my head last night, signaling a profound shift in the soundtrack.



I figure that if we are swirling around in the toilet of life as American society, and other societies around the globe, go down the drain, I might as well be getting laid. You can't say that on Match dot com, though, so I have tried to present an accurate impression of myself as a woman that still leaves a man wanting to call.

**Update**
I have a date for the demonstration on May 12th down on Wall Street.  He's with the UFT.  I liked him immediately because he noticed on my profile that I'm reading Women Who Run With The Wolves and said he was writing the male version:  All Men are Dogs.  He already had plans to go on Thursday.  I don't know if he has to hang out with his union buddies or what, though.

Looks like there's a new season of the Summer Boyfriend Reality Show.

Wall Street, May 12 - Be There!

It's me on Worldwide Hippies again, with a name of my own, PENolan - but Joe still calls me Trish.  Works for me.  He's becoming proficient at graphics, and I think he's pretty insightful.



I'm jazzed about the rally on Wall Street organized by On May 12.   I've never been to a demonstration before, that I can remember anyway. I'm going to get a flip cam with my tax return so I can do my first report from a location instead of my desk where I'm sorry to say the lighting has emphasized the jowl lines I'm inheriting from my mother. Maybe I can learn a TV make up trick that works for webcams.

In other news, I don't have to have shoulder surgery again because it's just arthritis and inflammation. The doctor I saw today was an enthusiastic young surgeon who would be happy to perform a shoulder replacement if things deteriorate. My mother always says, "Doctors like to tinker." He can tinker with somebody else for a while.  Fortunately, I've got a very nice, long-standing relationship with the rheumatologist who keeps up with my morphea scleroderma.  I'm hoping he prescribes massage therapy and weed, although I'm pretty sure doctors in New York can't prescribe weed yet.

That won't prevent me from taking matters into my own hands, however.

Menopausal Stoners Preliminary Response to OBL

Osama Bin Laden is everywhere this morning, but from the announcement Obama made last night, I don't think the troops will be going anywhere any time soon.  We're fighting Terrorism after all, not a single Terrorist.  And besides, Michael Chertoff (former head of Homeland Security) is still trying to make some dough off those naked scanners.  We can't have everyone relaxing now that special ops got OBL.

Personally, I think all military action should be like that concentrated operation.  I don't see how blasting Afghanistan to bits and killing civilians with predator drones helps anybody at all whatsoever - but a specific target and a concentrated effort makes sense.  I'm a pacifist, for sure, but that doesn't mean we don't need the military. To me, the raid on Bin Laden is precisely what the military is for.

Dick Cheney, on the other hand, thinks the military is for building and/or protecting infrastructure and territory so that we can get the dang lithium out of the mountains in Afghanistan and keep it for ourselves.  What good is being a superpower if you can't occupy a country and take all their resources?  If I'm remembering correctly, Donald Trump recently made comments to that effect.  He's just Dick Cheney without an editor.

Maybe Osama Bin Laden has been dead since 2002, like some people claim.  Maybe the World Trade Center was an inside job.  What do I know?  I'm a preschool teacher who believes that conflicts can be solved with words, so clearly few grown-ups pay attention to preschool teachers.

I'm pretty sure it was a good idea to deal with his body as covertly as they killed it since the media frenzy surrounding a burial at sea later this week would be beyond absurd.  I've got big visions of commentators comparing his shroud to Kate's dress as they hang out of helicopters with fancy lenses from behind the "no fly zone" surrounding an air craft carrier.  A 24 hour robot camera undersea, like they had focused on BP's gusher, watching the body drift in the current until it settles somewhere and is covered by shrimp.  Some fool would make a special report about the kind of shrimp eating Bin Laden and Fox would say it was cat fish.  And then somebody would try to sell us the fucking Cat Fish - so you could eat Osama for lunch, if you could afford it.

This society is seriously fucked up.