india and franklin

i have a soul sister…her name is lolee. for the past five or six months lolee has been homeless in a sense. round about april she set out on an adventure. she is an artist you see…and she finds inspiration in the people she meets and the places she takes in. so off to paris she flew, and from there it was on to berlin. berlin is where she spent most of her time and where i know she will go again and maybe someday live. after berlin she spent a short time in prague and then ended back in paris.

when she got home at the end of june she was invigorated, refreshed, revitalized and on a european high. she was beaming and she was ready to begin her life at home in new york again. she had a plan…she always has a plan, you may not know what it is and she may not have figured it out yet, but it’s always there brewing in the back of her brilliant mind.

i never worry about whether or not lolee is going to end up on her feet. she radiates an air of confidence that is a rarity even in today’s modern woman. that’s not to say that she is never down or sad, and i’m sure she’s been humbled a time or two by the experience of failure…as we all have. but she and i recently had a long conversation in my backyard, on the comfy chairs…with our shoes off, smoking cigarettes. me with my morning coffee and she with her bottle of water. it was during that conversation, the honesty in which she was able to confront the situation and overcome any fear she may have had about that confrontation, that i was truly seeing her for the first time. she was raw and exposed and honest and for that i will always love and respect her as my sister in life. thank you for being you lolee.



it was a rough summer for lolee as she struggled to find a place to live in new york while skipping from one parent’s house to another, not always sure where she was going to be spending the night. so when she finally found a place it was the most thrilling thing…she hasn’t finished unpacking, and the furniture still needs to be ordered, but i couldn’t wait and she couldn’t wait for me to take my first trip to see her home!

so on friday i took the 4:24 pm metro north train from new haven into grand central station. when i got to the station i realized that we hadn’t talked about where we were going to meet once i arrived…apparently lolee had the same realization as my phone rang about four minutes after i had gotten off the train. we found each other by the clock in the center of the station…and after big smiles and excited hugs she handed me my very own one day fun pass metro card…and we were off…


we jumped on the l to the union street station where we got on the g line to brooklyn. or maybe it was the g to the l…hhmmm, all i know is that we were in the subway and it was crowded and hot and i felt like i was in a herd of cattle.


this was my first experience in the new york subway system…and it was nice to be there with her. when we got off the second train we walked the stairs up to the street and were blasted by the fresh, cool evening air. just around the corner was the bus stop that we needed to catch the bus down to lolee’s new neighborhood.


as we walked from the bus stop i couldn’t help but notice how quiet it had gotten…just from going from downtown to brooklyn…suddenly the ringing in my ears subsided. we walked slow so i could take it all in…she has trees on her street and a little black iron gate guarding the front door and her last name is already in the call box glass window. (yes, she has a call box, it’s so new york! *smile*)



once inside she gave me the tour…all four rooms. she does have a view that includes some green grass, and if you look out the kitchen window you can even see the empire state building!



it really is quite beautiful…the apartment was just renovated so the walls are still white and the entire kitchen is brand new. the ceiling is high and there are eight foot windows that let in sun light in the late afternoon…and did i mention there were mums?!


before we could hit the town we had to have a new york minute…


…on the catwalk, on the catwalk, yeah i do my little turn on the catwalk…


we decided on a smorgasbord for dinner. and we begin with yaffa café’…where they’re open late and you get a free condom when you pay your bill…


this is also where i found my new favorite beer…


and across the street we saw the dumpling man…


we stopped at petrosino for a quick bite. but our smooth faced blonde waiter forgot to put our order in so they won’t be featured here today. (although the food was fantastic and they gave us a complimentary dessert...but i don't think everyone is cut out to be a waiter.) next we hit the motor city bar…complete with anything michigan (the midwest is everywhere!) and a cute blonde in a shiny pink ruffled bikini dancing in the window, who could pass that up?!


before we could walk away we had to strike a pose…



we had a night cap at the pencil factory in greenpoint and headed home.

saturday morning we had brunch with ****…did i mention that **** hates having his picture taken?


lolee had a lisa lobe moment while drinking her coffee…


and i just wanted to know where this coffeehouse had been all my life?! *smile again*


i had to be sneaky with the **** picture taking…


i’m not sure if i was successful or not… (obviously i wasn't, hence the blurring of ****'s face. when he saw my original post he was none too happy, but i couldn't bring myself to take down his pictures completely...i mean seriously he is such a fun person to be around and bonus, check out that cute little ass...i guess we'll just have to wait and see how this one goes over.)


we spent the rest of the day running around and losing track of time…santa is that you?


all of a sudden it was 5:30 and we hadn’t eaten since brunch. we both got a slice of cheese and a slice of pepperoni to split. we didn’t talk for ten minutes straight as we scarfed them down. i was too hungry and too distracted to even capture that little moment. every once in awhile we would look away from our food, take a breath and laugh hysterically at one another.

alas it was time to go back to her house, retrieve my things and head for the train station so i could return home. we were in no hurry and it was a beautiful day with a perfect 75 degrees and a slight breeze…perfect for skipping the bus and walking thru the park. we passed a little street fair and found the perfect t-shirt for $1. pancakes anyone?


it was unbelievably hard to leave. i love spending time with lolee…we laugh so much together. i’ve waited a long time for her to be able to show me her new york…i can’t wait to do it again! but i had to get home, i just couldn’t be away another night and miss waking up to this in the morning?!

i woke up one day

today i've been thinking about ian. this happens to me every so often. not just with ian, but with all my boys. all the boys that i've ever loved.

when i say 'boys i've ever loved', i don't mean i dated them all, or slept with them, but for one reason or another, sometimes just friendship, i loved them. and each person i've known in my life - not just my boys - as a friend, as a lover, for a brief moment in time, has come back to me at one time or another. i don't mean physically either. more of reminders that i once shared time with them. every new person that enters my life, sometimes in unexpected ways, has somehow changed my perspective on life.

there was that guy that came into sam's in brattleboro one night when i was working until 9 pm. i was stocking shelves, probably the water bottles or the coolers, anyway, i was in the camping department that night and he was looking for a cast iron cauldron. during the course of our search we struck up a conversation. he had just gotten back into town after being away for a couple years. he was working up north and felt he was becoming complacent where he was. this complete stranger looked me in the eye and said, 'i just realized one day that i had stopped growing as a person'. i nodded with an, 'uh-huh', glancing at my watch out of the corner of my eye as the minutes ticked past the 9 o'clock hour. thinking to myself, 'when is someone going to come and rescue me and tell this guy we need to close?' and still he continued, 'so i packed up my car and moved back down here...' this went on for another couple of minutes until my manager finally came to check on me.

as i drove home that night i couldn't get this guy out of my head. i couldn't even remember what his name was, but what he said stuck with me for the next couple of weeks.

there i was, living in this tiny green house that was making me physically sick, in the middle of the woods, on a dirt road in vermont. i had been working as a cashier/merchandise returns/visual merchandiser making $7.50 an hour, and that was after two years, in the sporting goods department of a little local department store chain. i couldn't even get an interview with a social service organization, so finding a job in my field was proving to be a dead end road. my husband had been laid off from his job with little to no prospects in site as video production isn't considered big business in vermont.

then i woke up one day and made the decision. i had wanted to move back to ohio since about six months after we arrived in vermont. this was no secret. i had spiraled into depression in the fall and winter of 1998. the house we were living in was full of mold, and i was sick constantly. our landlord was the town sheriff, so there was little repercussion for him if he just left it alone, and he did - in my closet, in my shoes, in the floorboards of the room that i slept in. i'm convinced this was a major contributing factor to my depression that year.

we didn't have the money to move. we didn't have the money to pay the gas bill half the time, let alone pay first, last, and deposit on someplace else. thank God for my coworkers and my mother-in-law, if it weren't for them kindly giving us venison and chicken to put in the freezer, I don’t think we would have seen meat all season. there were days that i skipped breakfast and had half of a bagel for lunch and the other half for dinner. i lost fifteen pounds that winter. i looked and felt like death warmed over, and that was on my good days. don’t' get me wrong, not every day was like living in Hell, but when i look back at that time in my life, i feel sick to my stomach. it all seems to flow together as just one big ugly feeling.

the discussion had been had many a time.
'i want to move.'
'so do i.'
'ok, then let's go. what's holding us here?'
'i don't know, i'm just not ready yet.'

this went on until the day i woke up. i made the decision, i was moving and catfish was welcome to come with me, but that was his decision to make. i set a date for the end of may 1999. my parents switched cars with me, so i drove my mom's mini-van around town for several months while i got my house in order, gave my notice, and looked for work in ohio.

it took catfish very little time to make his decision. but just as we were getting ready to go he landed a gig. he was first ac on a low-budget horror flick that was being shot close by. after that he would go to massachusetts for eight weeks on a low-budget drama. and in the first weeks of august, he would be back in vermont as an instructor at a film camp.

it all worked out for the best in the end...i think. i stayed at my parents for the summer. they weren't there for most of it anyway. and when catfish was finished in Massachusetts, he came out, found us a place to live, and the rest is for another day, another story.

the point is that on the day i woke up, it was the day i realized i had stopped growing. and that if i didn't do something about it, i would die. and it was that guy, that random guy in the store, that was the catalyst. and that guy will never know how profound that moment was for me and still is to this day. when i start to feel complacent, when i start to get too bored, or too comfortable, i think of what he said. and i think about the day i woke up and had the courage to stand on my own.



...maybe tomorrow i'll tell you about ian...maybe not.

coffeehouse what?

i’ve never been a late night drinker really. i’ve never been one to frequent the weekend bar scene. don’t get me wrong, i’ve done my fair share of partying, and plan to continue that on into the future…i’ve closed down bars, played pool and won against drunk frat boys, i’ve held my own at the table in a few games of asshole over the years, i’ve waked and baked, and i’ve seen the sunrise a time or two. but not everyday…that would just get boring.

it’s really always just been more about coffee, a cigarette, and good conversation for me. and if good conversation is no where to be found, then a pen and paper may suffice. and sometimes a good book, but they aren’t always easy to find.

my favorite coffeehouse ever was a place called Another Fool’s Café. there were comfy booths with dim lighting lining the walls, round tables and chairs in the middle of the floor and a small stage in the back for those sweet acoustic coffeehouse sounds that would play in the background as the jamaican barista behind the counter made the perfect mocha latte with whipped cream.

i read every maya angelou novel in that café. and tasting the bitter sweet mocha, i would read her poetry and i could hear her honey thick, rich voice in my head. brutally honest, reaching for raw emotion. slow and patient, with wisdom beyond her years.

it was sitting in those booths drinking a house blend, smoking my camel lights, that i tore thru anything and everything written by alice walker. i’ve always been a much bigger fan of her prose than her poetry. she writes with a decidedly passionate feminist voice. and she challenged me as a woman to question the beliefs and expectations i unknowingly placed on other women, and myself. she created a new sense of discovery of what being a woman can be.

my favorite female poet of our time though is nikki giovanni. it wasn’t until years after Another Fool’s had closed it’s doors and become a bar called swindlefish, (what the fuck kind of name is that anyway?), that i discovered nikki. it was esta’ that shared her with me, all the way from seattle. nikki is tender, evocative, sexy, lustful, and passionate. she is coy and funny. she is a reminder to women of all ages, (as she is in her 60’s and still carrying passion in her words.), that we are all beautiful, sexual creatures who needn’t fear who we are. she is about capturing the power that is deep within every woman. that raw animalistic nature that is being a woman.

i want to sing

i want to sing
a piercing note
lazily throwing my legs
across the moon
my voice carrying all the way
over to your pillow
i want you

i need i swear to loll
about the sun
and have it smelt me
the ionosphere carrying
my ashes all
the way over
to your pillow
i want you

-nikki giovanni

it wasn’t always the feminist perspective that i read at Another Fool’s. i read poe there and the bell jar for a class. i know i did some studying, with ms. evans and drew. they were coffeehouse sluts too. there were others that would trickle in every now and then, but they seemed to prefer the front room. the front room was always my second choice. it had a kick ass brick and cement porch out back, with high, wide walls that were good for sitting. but their coffee sucked. i mean really sucked.

it’s been four and a half years now in the great state and i’ve yet to find a descent coffeehouse. there was a little place here in town, but it’s gone now. and besides, they were never open when i wanted them to be, after dark. and the coffee wasn’t that great. not great at all. in fact the only good thing about that place was it’s location. other than that, there are a couple of coffeehouses in m-town that aren’t too bad. brew bakers can make a descent mocha and their coffee isn’t too bitter. but that’s a drive for me. the only alternative is dunkin’ donuts. there isn’t even a starbucks. not that i would want to get comfy in a starbucks – they don’t make it too comfy for you, they really don’t want you sitting too long. in and out with no personality, is that what the world is coming to?

wait, what were we talking about again?


tonight’s’ listening: marc erelli – he’s usually in my repertoire in the late spring and the early fall. tonight’s favorite is summer night off the memorial hall recordings.

smile sunshine. it's a brand new day.

walked outside this morning to a breath of fresh air...