Friday, October 19, 2007

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Fall, Flares, Bowie and Latino Man Flesh



















Hi Anderson,

It is Autumnal. In German, herbst. Die Schoene blaette sind auf der branche die baeume fallen. The pictures I took around the corner from my former residence in Western MA. I am going to head to the movies but I wanted to share with you the beauty that I can sometimes muster to see in front of me. Oh btw. I saw recently on another blog that you have a 25 year old Latino boy friend. You and the rest of the GWM's...I was so dissappointed. I have yet to get over the last 15 year trend for Latino Man-flesh...and the white-boy sexual objectification of thug culture...but white boy sexual anything has long been of any relvance to me...not has my own...so what should I be complaining about...

Brown ain't Black...and "What Black can do, Grey can do better!" or so read a fashion editor from the Midwest Gannet News Service touting that Gray is the fun, frivolous color of the season...

"As far as fashion trend touting...David Bowie will forever be the winner when he declared that...

"Shoulder pads are the Flares of the Eighties!"

or myself or a friend who worked at Barney's said in 1990 that "Orange was the new Black."

Which of course brings us back to G-R-E-Y...do re mi fa so la ti -Gray!!! Gray!!!! Gray!!!!

Coming soon Anderson I will forgive you for your life lived with rice and beans (Sorry Val and all Latino's) and hope you will vote when I post my next poll..."Favorite David Bowie tune." coming soon to Anderson Cooper Kissed Me...

Peace,

M

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Who Really Cares? Watching Ken Burn's "The War:" From Within and Without



Hi Anderson, (The picture to the right here is of my father and the then Vice President Hubert Humphrey campaigning in Rochester NY in 1967) Humphrey was what is now called a Liberal-Universalist.)

I started this blog out of a desire to begin to let myself write. To let myself work on some of the white noise between my ears that seems to constantly remain no matter how much I seem to feel it might lessen. I thought it would be a great forum to engage people (Friends, colleagues etc) in my take on things and/or world view. this seems to have been a mistake. In my current state of affairs and in my midlife-crisis...my age-old beliefs and ideologies seems to have no place-they are unappealing to my friends or they...we...are so busy being busy that no one seems to bother...they just seem to want to get home and watch "Dancing with the Stars." To give you a better glimpse into my particular eschewed priorities...I have taken a PT job as a sales associate at a large retail store. When I first worked at this store in 1983 I had just moved to NYC and was 21 years of age and full of piss and vinegar. I lived with my best friends sister (may she rest in peace) on West Fourth Street between Bank and 12Th and took class with the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company at NYU's Tisch School for the Arts on Second Avenue. I eventually moved uptown to live with my Grandmother Louise (My mother's and my Aunt Doris and Geraldine's mother) on 147th Street and Lenox Avenue. The store was Macy's and I worked there for a few months in the late summer and early fall whilst still a scholarship student at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center. It was the last time until a few weeks ago that I worked in a field outside of choreographing, dance, teaching dance or performing.

My grandmother has since passed away but I am now living with her daughter my Aunt Doris and my cousin Steven and I am again working at Macy's and living in the town in which I was born, Rochester, New York.

My Aunt Doris was kind enough to let me bring my puppy Ella, who is rather large at 154 lbs, with me. I reside in my older cousin Lisa's room with Ella. Aunt Doris cleared the room out for me and left me with a lot of space and a dresser in which to place my wardrobe. Most of my belongings are in storage and my cats, Murray and Ripley are with my friend Meg in the hill towns of Western Massachusetts. I miss them terribly.

So my eschewed priorities...well I have been fixated on watching the entire series on PBS of Ken Burns' "The War" about World War Two. It is epic and enthralling and nobody in my immediate surrounding is taking time out to watch it. My Aunt Doris won't watch it because she thinks war is bad...I agree but instead to watch three commercial laden hours of CSI crime shows and the like...and don't get me wrong... Aunt Doris and I are on the same page..I can watch hours of Law and Order...but if something of substance comes on I will run red lights to get home to watch it...

There is no one near...Anderson? What should I do? I feel like I am that Polaroid in "Back to the Future" that Michael J. Fox is carrying around and if it fades to completion he will no longer exist...my friends don't call me...but I guess I have tired of calling them and leaving them messages so its mutual...I had a good spurt of networking but I get tired so easily...the $7.15 per hour job is taking its toll but it is all I have...when I have called New York no one calls me back or they are just busy being busy. Have people forgotten what it is like to look for "the work" to find your mission in life to go to school and to try to find the place where you might belong? My battle seems to be trying to understand do people really care...? Should I just completely disappear?

Here's the Big One....Why do I care so much?

My best friend was home in Brooklyn on Saturday night and I went into Rochester (where he is from as well) and sat with my dog alone at a street cafe and had a beer and some food. I decided to text him and he said he was watching T.V.. He then started a text messgae exchange with me when a phone call would have enlivened us both instead of making our thumbs tired. Anderson why do I see the world this way? What are we all disappearing to...or into? What do I want...my birthday is in less than 2 months...I am trying so hard not to feel sorry for myself and not to worry that my car might be repossessed or that I won't lose my insurance. The stack, and I mean jumbo stack of bills sits in front of my altar (I am a Nichiren Buddhist) and I chant everyday that I will be victorious and to remain ever cheerful and worry-free...that somehow all that I have been through, all that has brought me here...has been for very important reasons...but some days....I tell you, Anderson...it just is very hard...I am humbled to at least have a job and I hope again for today that my eyes will be open to all the possibilities out there that exist for me and for everyone else...my biggest hope though, is that we don't let ourselves disappear into "a reality show" that is not so real. That we stop sitting apathetically and watch all the wonderful, truly "real" things pass us by, unnoticed...as we let our own potentials just slip away..."The War" is about just that...people gave and gave and gave and gave...I guess while I watch "The War" I am trying to deeply understand the world and the world, especially that my father grew up in...he won't speak about the war...so I watch...I drive home and watch every gripping, horrific story and imagine that those dear old men, who speak so candidly about things they never really wanted to share, do so; in fact with impeccable candor and courageous humility...I try to imagine my father being interviewed along with the others....opening up his heart and letting out his stories...freeing himself from years of holding onto unimaginable things.... all the heart and horror of being a black man from Mississippi, fighting in a segregated military for liberty and the pursuit of happiness... I watch and wince and imagine what my father witnessed as he landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day + 11...I even looked for him in last nights episode "The Ghost Front," looking for his lanky figure in the fastidiously compiled footage of The Battle of the Bulge...he was there...I tried to imagine my father surviving the deafening thunder of battle and the chilled treachery of hatred and the deepest emotional trenches of loss...I guess I should not want to know but I do...the more connected I wish to feel towards my family and friends the more disconnected I get.

In knowing how desperately lonely I am right now...how passionately I want to feel connected...to perhaps know how my dad survived such horrible things...my little sob story is seemingly petit...but I need to know...especially right now...All I know Anderson, is that he experienced things I could never fathom...he lived in a society through which his efforts made it possible for me to have a life within which to have a crisis in the middle of. Perhaps the lines of my idealism's and my own realistic views are coming more into focus...I have clung to some beliefs in people and hoped and dreamed of a world in which the types of relationships I thought I could have don't really exist because the type of person that I actually thought I was is beginning to fade and perhaps a more real person is starting to emerge. This might explain why the past and all the people and my connection to them is blurring...Nietzche was right...on many fronts...but most importantly Nichiren Daishonin said it best "Never seek the Gohonzon outside yourself." The relationship to oneself..the one in which, for years I have been struggling...can be reflected in ones environment...If I am feeling disconnected or care so much about others and I remain feeling that that is not reciprocated then..."Voila"... the interconnected relationship to oneself is eschew.
So I answer my own question. WHo really cares? I do...I always will and that will never be blurred...by anyone or anything...

I will alway be there for whoever needs me and don't really care if that is ever the case for others...My Aunt Doris is of course excluded...she has opened up her arms and heart to me and I will forever be indebted to her...

I have come this far alone I am more prepared than most to continue.


Anyway I have to start my day...I hope you have a winning one Mr. Cooper.