tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36531993698671940962024-02-19T20:56:04.615-05:00Miss Peri Lyons: The Ampelopsis DiariesMiss Peri Lyons' observations on:love,culture, ghosts, love, celebrity, psychic ability and how to get it, fashion, boys, girls,cats, artists, love, and anything else that wanders by.
What is an Ampelopsis? To quote Lord Peter Wimsey: "An ampelopsis is a suburban plant that climbs by suction."
(Speaking of which, everything here is copywright-ed 2012 immediately.)Perihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12802277469585764886noreply@blogger.comBlogger95125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653199369867194096.post-29185911826293068632021-07-28T01:25:00.000-04:002021-07-28T01:25:39.870-04:00What The Day Brings<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
A friend once told me, "There are only two things to do: the right thing, and the wrong thing.<script type="text/javascript">
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"And the thing is? We ALWAYS know the difference."</div>
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"So what do I do?", I asked, slightly simplemindedly.</div>
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"The right thing," she answered, simply.</div>
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Perihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12802277469585764886noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653199369867194096.post-30093664780997203312021-05-02T23:42:00.002-04:002021-05-02T23:42:29.090-04:00The Lilies of the Field Are Trying To Tell You Something <p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-size: 25.58px;"><a href="https://missperilyons.blogspot.com/2011/01/valentines-day-is-approaching-for-gods.html">Valentine's Day Is Approaching. For God's Sake, Hide Me, Someone!</a></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 30.5px;"><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;"></span><br /></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-size: 25.58px;">Or,</span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 30.5px;"><span class="s1" style="font-size: 25.58px;"></span><br /></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-size: 25.58px;">The Lilies Of The Field Are Trying To Tell You Something</span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 30.5px;"><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;"></span><br /></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 30.5px;"><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;"></span><br /></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 30.5px;"><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;"></span><br /></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;">Did you know that, on Valentine's Day, if your dreamboat </span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;">hands you a bouquet of purple irises, he or she is actually saying: "I anxiously await your [sexual] favors"?*</span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;"> </span><span class="s3" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">( </span><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;">*Author's Note: </span><span class="s3" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Well, with any luck.)</span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 30.5px;"><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;"></span><br /></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;">Or that, hidden in that lovely collection of fragrant pink dahlias, is a a subtext that actually warns of imminent betrayal and sexual degradation?** </span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;"> (** Author's Note</span><span class="s3" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">: Agatha Christie says this is what "Dahlia" means,.Other sources say it's actually what "evergreens" mean, but I flatout refuse to believe all that about my Christmas tree.)</span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 30.5px;"><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;"></span><br /></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;">-Of course you didn't, because: a): You're not a big ol' crazypants, and, 2): It is no longer circa 1850-1890, which is when the "Language of Flowers" was an accepted way to communicate your secret feelings to your loved one in floral code. In Victorian England, every flower in a bouquet, had a very specific meaning: that tradition, though long forgotten, still resonates on some level. Case in point: we give red roses almost exclusively these days, to be on the safe side: red roses, in the Language of Flowers, mean "I am romantically in love with you, although this floral arrangement does not actually constitute a legally binding agreement." And the reason you have never offered your fiancé/e a selection of lobelias, lime blossom and houseleeks? -Is because you somehow knew you would be accusing her of, respectively, "fornication; malevolence; and poor domestic economy."(And frankly? You'd be right. Sorry you had to find out this way, man.)</span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 30.5px;"><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;"></span><br /></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;">So here is a selection of the Language of the Flowers, circa 1885, and then the Language of the Flowers, circa 2016.</span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 30.5px;"><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;"></span><br /></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;">Happy Valentine's Day! </span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 30.5px;"><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;"></span><br /></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;">love, Peri </span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 30.5px;"><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;"></span><br /></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 30.5px;"><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;"></span><br /></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 30.5px;"><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;"></span><br /></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s4" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;">Language Of The Flowers, 1885 version</span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 30.5px;"><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;"></span><br /></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;">1) </span><span class="s4" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;">Camellia</span><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;">: I live in gratitude of your perfected loveliness!</span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 30.5px;"><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;"></span><br /></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;">2) </span><span class="s4" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;">Chrysanthemum</span><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;">: I admire your cheerfulness through adversity.</span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 30.5px;"><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;"></span><br /></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;">3) </span><span class="s4" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;">Damask Rose:</span><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;"> I worship your brilliant complexion.</span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 30.5px;"><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;"></span><br /></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;">4) </span><span class="s4" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;">Fuschia</span><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;">: The ambition of my love thus plagues myself. </span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;"> [Author's note: "Huh?"]</span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 30.5px;"><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;"></span><br /></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;">5) </span><span class="s4" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;">Peach/or Peach Blossom</span><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;">: Your qualities, like your charms, are unequalled.</span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 30.5px;"><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;"></span><br /></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;">6) </span><span class="s4" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;">White Rosebud</span><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;">: You are too young to understand love.</span></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;"> [Author's Note:"I get this one a LOT."]</span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 30.5px;"><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;"></span><br /></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 30.5px;"><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;"></span><br /></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;">Okay. Moving right along:</span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 30.5px;"><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;"></span><br /></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;"> </span><span class="s4" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;">The Language of the Flowers, 2016 Version:</span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 30.5px;"><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;"></span><br /></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;">1) </span><span class="s4" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;">Dandelions</span><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;">: You're okay, considering. I guess.</span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 30.5px;"><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;"></span><br /></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;">2) </span><span class="s4" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;">Poppies</span><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;">: I love you, but not more than I love prescription medications.</span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 30.5px;"><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;"></span><br /></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;">3) </span><span class="s4" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;">Carnations</span><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;">:My God, you're beautiful. My God, I'm cheap.</span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 30.5px;"><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;"></span><br /></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;">4) </span><span class="s4" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;">Rare Orchids</span><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;">: Aren't these exquisite? I'm sleeping with your sister.</span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 30.5px;"><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;"></span><br /></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;">5) </span><span class="s4" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;">Daffodils</span><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;">: Your optimism is touching. If delusional.</span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 30.5px;"><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;"></span><br /></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;">6) </span><span class="s4" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;">Asters</span><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;">: These are asters. -No, that's it, that's the message. Sorry.</span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 30.5px;"><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;"></span><br /></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;">7) </span><span class="s4" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;">Peach colored sunset roses</span><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;">: Your skin is like a flower petal at sunrise, and I think i might be gay.</span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 30.5px;"><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;"></span><br /></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;">8) </span><span class="s4" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;">Red roses</span><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;">: I think you're swell, I think you're aces, and I think it's 1947.</span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 30.5px;"><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;"></span><br /></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;">To sum up? Flowers are a beautiful means of communication, wherein you can totally say stuff you mean, and not have to cop to it. The Victorians may have had their flaws, but they have a lot to teach us still. Especially in the area of being completely passive-aggressive and yet, still decorative as hell.</span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 30.5px;"><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;"></span><br /></p><p class="p1" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-size: 25.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s2" style="font-size: 25.58px; font-weight: bold;">love,Peri</span></p><script type="text/javascript">
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</script>Perihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12802277469585764886noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653199369867194096.post-34516171955276061522016-09-18T22:14:00.006-04:002016-09-18T23:41:14.392-04:00The Unicorn Is An Asshole, And Other RenFayre Tales!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-size: large;">The Inwood Renaissance Fayre is a hardy urban flower, that, once a year, grows near the orange-and-gray-striated cliffs, that enfold and protect the Cloisters. On this cheery weekend, even the most hardened New Yorker's heart is melted- or at least, very slightly defrosted- by the sight of a decidedly urban population that has suddenly morphed into a court of jewel-toned-velvet clad minstrels, swoony princesses with inverted ice cream cone hats, and rather naughtily-attired three hundred pound flower fairies in shimmering rainbow eyeshadow, fantastically botanical headpieces...and very little else.</span><script type="text/javascript">
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<span style="font-size: large;">God, I love this town.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Brightening a neighborhood that not so long ago was considered "dangerous", the Inwood RennFest has now accumulated thirty seven years worth of peculiarly New Yawk Wonderful. I love how so many different cultural identities meet and then shatter into a kaleidoscopic, and adorably Anglophilic, mosaic of shared, forced joy.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">One especial favorite of mine is the Puerto Rican Bagpipe players band, called the "MacGordon Clovers". I walk by and watch three big guys staring worriedly at their pipes as they warm up, and then, apparently relieved to remember that horrible squeaking is the whole POINT of bagpipes, they relax and launch into a Socttish march. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I hate bagpipes. But "Boricua Bagpipes"? fill me with delight.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Knights with Brooklyn accents you could hew with a broadsword, call to each other cheerfully across the asphalt glen, ringed with the booths of perspiring, magical purveyors of RennKitsch. Drooping elves caper heavily in the heat, and seem like they are about to doff their pointed caps and invite you to try their wares...until you hear a muttered "ahh, to hell with it", and they stay where they capered.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">You move forward, pushed by a sea of perspiring but determined celebrants.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">And what is this? On a greensward, or a patch of grass that looks suspiciously like a ball field?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">It's a TOURNAMENT!</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Yes!There is a tournament, with real horses. Real, really BIG horses, with big, cheery, valiant sweaty guys on them. These noble knights are sweating profusely, because it's 92 in the shade and as humid as a bellydancer's armpit, and they are gallantly arrayed in velvet and wool with a rather cruel topping of genuinely heavy steel armor. One noble gent, in his early 60's, is possessed of the features and bearing one would expect to see in a Connecticut country club: the straight nose, slightly bleary blue eyes and Anglo Saxon chin wobble took him from WASP clubman to Noble Lord with no effort, although I am worried he'll keel over from heat induced thrombosis before he has a chance to be gored by the other knight's lance.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The horses are draped in heavy velvet baronial , um, drapings...you know, those horse drapings you see in children's books and tarot cards and never until you were writing about them thought to ask what the hell they're called. Anyway, since PETA is a no-show, the show goes on.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"> The gorgeous young gender neutral person who is acting as the Blue Knights Page, brings a huge wooden lance to the Blue knight. The Blue Knight is the showman of the bunch..he makes his attractively piebald horse rear and whinny and do that "legs pawing the air' thing that I just realized i also don't know what it's called,. a flourish? Anyway, the horse does the Cool Horse Thing, and everybody cheers, wildly, and we're away!</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">-No, we stay here. THEY're away. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The horses thunder towards each other, the lances are lowered, and then...The pages hold up yellow plastic rings, and the lances go through those.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I admit to being slightly disappointed. I secretly wanted bloodshed, and intestines spilling out, and King Henry to be crippled for life and take it out on Anne Boleyn, but I got yellow rings and I'm cool with that, I guess. I mean, I couldn't do that, so yellow rings are fine.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">They also sword fight, and the swords are metal and every body gets all "oooh scary!" but they just knock the plumes off each other's helmets and then the knight makes his horse do the Cool Horse Rearing Up and Pawing The Air Thing. Google it. At this point, I'm too hot.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The Tournament Has Ended. It was certainly the best Tournament I have ever seen in a New York Park. Horses and everything. Awesome.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Many of the children in the makeshift metal stands have never seen a horse in the horseflesh before, so when the Black Knight, who is white, as opposed to the White Knight, who is African American, trots over, post joust, to let the groundlings pet the velvet muzzle of Sir Frederick The Steed, a lot of children surge forth...and then scamper back. Much like the French warriors at Agincourt. Then they bravely overcome their misgivings, and a hearteningly diverse sea of tiny hands, reaches towards the enormous beast. You hear "ooooh soft!!" -said with surprised joy..and "nice horse?" , said as a tremulous prayer. My New Yorkers heart grow stwo sizes in a moment. And then immediately shrinks back, but it was a nice thirty seconds.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Elisabetta and I are steering three children through the largest crowd I've ever seen at a public event, and that's saying something. Two six year old boys and a girl who is "free and a harf", as Yseult, E's daughter, grimly announces when strangers, so diverted by her strawberry blonde curls and aqua eyes, that they totally miss out on her permafrown, stop to chortle over her. Emilia has a way of dropping an invisible cement block on the cooing of kindly strangers. "Go WAY", she growls, as they back away slowly, realizing too late that the lap dog is actually a very tiny Rottweiler. As each of them are chased off sheepishly, explaining to each other that she <i>seemed</i> so adorable, Emilia grins like a Viking triumphant after a bloody raid. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I worry about that girl.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">We elbow our way up a mountain of people coming rapidly downhill, and I have a brief glimpse of what it might be like, to be Hannibal escorting his elephants across the Alps. (Note: I had a great great grandfather named "Hannibal and the Elephants Robinson". -Not relevant: just always wanted to tell someone that. -As you were.) Then we finally attain Castle Clemence, The Grail of Heart's Desire: in less lofty terms, that means we got into the air conditioned Cloisters, and we all lean gratefully against the cool stone walls.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I leave them and go to the ladies room, where the line is so long that a bored precocious 12 year old boy and I have a Mime-Off. He'd been sitting on the bench, obviously waiting for his mother and sister, and was amusing himself by pretending to be in a glass both, outlining the invisible walls with the flat of his hands. Mime 101!-I took that class! So I look over at him and slowly pull myself up, making myself much much taller using- an Invisble Rope. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">He lit up like a Christmas tree. Soon he was next to me in line, and we were trading off Sorry Mime tropes like there was no tomorrow. Was at the point of giving up ever getting to pee and instead giving in and buying a black beret and stripped boatneck chemise (such as mimes wear) and possibly taking the kid to Central Park to infuriate passersby, when suddenly the Secret Handicapped Stall in the side wall opened and I darted in, completely unethically. The kid was gone when I got out, but I consoled myself by singing "I'm Hennery The Eight I Am" with a young gentleman who was crooning it quietly to his new bride, possibly as a warning, as we walk up the chill gray stairs. He looks surprised, and a little chagrined, but we finish the song whether he wanted to or not, and I stride off victorious towards my tribe.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Then I see the Unicorn.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Not the delectable yet melancholy tapestries, no: but a Furry, Six Foot Unicorn. I guess it was a man in costume, but I was so grateful that other people seemed to be able to see him too, that really, I didn't care. It was Not the Dreaded Acid Flashback my high school driving instructor had warned us about. It was an actual fake Unicorn, a fluffy and oddly disdainful Unicorn at that, and he had his own PR guy with him. A man whose professional title was "Unicorn Handler". The PR guy seemed unctuous and smarmy, and kept holding a little blinking box up to the Unicorn's face. A light meter? A Geiger counter? It was weird.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Also...'</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The Unicorn was regally disdainful of the children swarming up to see him, as he posed for the photographs his handler/flunky was taking fawningly... Although he was IN THE ACTUAL UNICORN ROOM at the Cloisters, DRESSED AS AN ACTUAL UNICORN, the Unicorn was pretending he didn't see the kids, and as he swanned gracefully about, posing for pics, I realized with blinding clarity that:</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">This Unicorn was an asshole.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Maybe all Unicorns are stuck-up...I don't know, it's been a long time since I was in the state rumored to be most attractive to unicorns, and haven't been truly pally with one since, so who knows. But really, dude: chill on the attitude. Being mythical doesn't make you Beyonce.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">We had a spartan lunch of sandwiches , water and chips in the cafe garden...imagine my surprise, when, graciously offering to pay for everyone!, (how much can two sandwiches be?), I hear the girl at the till cheerily sang out, "That'll be sixty one dollars, please!" There was a long line; Yseult is threatening to turn into the combination of Shirley Temple and Vesuvius that she has since patented, and I don't want to look like a cheapskate in front of toddlers who well might be my future demographic, so I tip her ten bucks with a flourish, mentally strap on my empty wooden barrel, and prance away.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I eat every bite the kids left behind. Hey. money isn't cheap.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">As the day gets less hot and more crowded, Elisabetta goes to get the stroller...which she has left a mile away. In a New York park. Miraculously, it is untouched: Apparently, there is an honor code among stroller owners: if you park your buggy in the agreed upon Impromptu Stroller Corral, you can also leave your bag, your bottle, and any stray emeralds you've been meaning to put in the vault, without fear of degradation. Kind of amazing.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">As we are waiting for her to come back, we see A Marvelous Magic Show Is Commncinge, Sic, and we trot over to sit in a ring of hay bales, to watch the late middle aged, slightly bitter hippie, Bill-Maher-lookalike-with-sixty-pounds-extra, magician. There is a classic New York Yenta standing behind us (when her son urged her to take a seat on a hay bale, she visibly recoils, and says "on STRAW? You want me to sit on STRAWWWW?") and she keeps up a critical commentary during the entire show. As the magician keeps moving the children in front back, and back, and backer, she says, "What? What is he going to do, that needs the children so back? What? Juggle fire?" (pronounced "fiyuh") Tame elephants? What? He needs so much space? Why?"</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">We watch-me warily, the kids with sheer trust and joy- as the guy winds up his spiel and does...Card tricks. In an outdoor show with three hundred kids, in an open arena..Card tricks. He makes the cards smaller- not that we could see them to begin with- and he does slight of hand, and the six year old Luca next to me says "he has cards in his other hand", in a a "hey, I'm smarter than a grown up" surprised and pleased tone of voice. Luckily, Elisabetta comes back just as the guy was pulling what he SAYS is a jack of hearts from his bodkin, and we trundle off towards safety and the blessedly magician-free car.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">As we drive home, towards brooklyn, and bedtime, and for me, a beer, god willing, the kids start to get sleepy. Adorable Yseult falls asleep cradling her brother's blue dragon scooter helmet, and her snores mingle with the previously slightly aloof Luca's voice saying what are, to me the sweetest of all words, to his Mom:</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"Mom, can we have Peri over to stay? Please can we please?"</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">That was, to this hardened New York broad who is also a godmother to two kids she loves more than PBR, sweeter even than the music of the MacGordon Clover Pipes.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Of course, pretty much anything is. But still.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Blessed Be!</span></div>
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Perihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12802277469585764886noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653199369867194096.post-13930741873388619772016-09-18T21:00:00.001-04:002016-09-18T21:00:09.760-04:00The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-size: large;"> The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter</span><div>
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<div style="color: #454545; font-family: Helvetica; line-height: normal; margin-left: 23px;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Couples living out truthless mimes</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Making comfort in ruthless times;</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Your raging heart, your gentle eyes-</span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: Helvetica; line-height: normal; margin-left: 23px;">
<span style="font-size: large;">You learned so early to temporize:</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Irrational passion may not seem wise-</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: Helvetica; line-height: normal; margin-left: 23px;">
<span style="font-size: large;">-But it's true.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">No matter how rueful the renunciation;</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">No matter the guilt by association;</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">No matter the undisclosed location...</span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: Helvetica; line-height: normal; margin-left: 23px;">
<span style="font-size: large;">It's true</span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: Helvetica; line-height: normal; margin-left: 23px;">
<span style="font-size: large;">And some real part of you always knows</span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: Helvetica; line-height: normal; margin-left: 23px;">
<span style="font-size: large;">That: Even when all of the doors seem closed:</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I am the one for you</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Whatever that thing that happened, was? </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Started out as a "why" and the answer's: "because"</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">It stayed in my blood as a physical buzz</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">It stays in my heart as a pink cloud of fuzz</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">You'll make the choice of a sensible stay-</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">And I'll make the choice to be truly away.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">But baby, i will always remember today</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">As it was</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">There's truth behind bullshit, there's courage with fear</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">If you come and find me, might let you back near</span></div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: Helvetica; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;">
<span style="font-size: large;">And that is the closest this woman, my dear,</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Can come to telling you I will be here.</span></div>
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<div style="color: #454545; font-family: Helvetica; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;">9/1/2016</span></div>
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Perihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12802277469585764886noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653199369867194096.post-36664064602001969542016-03-10T04:05:00.002-05:002016-03-10T04:05:38.286-05:00"Last Letter From Stalingrad, 1943"<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><u>Last Letter From Stalingrad, February 5 1943</u></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">by Peri Lyons, c 2016 all rights reserved</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /><i>(Author's note: In 1976, a mailbag came to light in the archives of the US Army. It was filled with letters.<br />These letters were written by German soldiers. In 1943, the German army abandoned the soldiers it had left in Stalingrad, leaving them to die of exposure and starvation.. These letters were written by the men, when they knew no one was coming back for them. The ltters were never mailed.<br />I found these letters in a book, and, although of Austrian Jewish descent, I was moved by the words of men I grew up thinking of as enemies.<br />.This is a reimagining of one of those letters.Who this man was, and why was he was "avoided by men", I will never know.-PL))</i><br />***************************************</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />Last Letter From Stalingrad<br /><br />Dear Monica<br />There are four of us here<br />For the first time I have friends<br />other than my friends, the stars.<br />(I couldn't look up from my telescope, Monica.<br />Not then. You know why. I was avoided by men.<br />So I looked at the sky.)<br /><br />This letter will take two weeks to reach you<br />It will all be over by then<br />Do not believe what you read in the papers<br />of what they say has happened here:<br />What are the judgments of others, to you and me?<br />Monica, the time is too serious now to joke:<br />You were always my best friend.<br /><br />I have always thought in lightyears<br />But I felt in seconds.<br />On this beautiful night<br />Andromeda and Pegasus are right above my head<br />I have looked at them for a long time<br />I shall be very close to them soon<br />My peace I owe to the stars, Monica<br />Of which you are the most beautiful to me.<br /><br />Around me everything is collapsing<br />An army is dying<br />Day and night are on fire<br />And four men busy themselves with their job<br />We measure temperatures<br />And report on cloud ceilings<br />Here too. I have much to do with the weather.<br /><br />No one, no one will come for us, Monica<br />There is no one to come<br />The clouds are rather low this evening<br />They make a pattern I have not seen before<br /><br />I want you to know my secret, Monica<br />No human being has ever died by my hand<br />I have never loaded my pistol<br />With live ammunition.<br />I should like to have counted stars<br />For another few decades<br />But I suppose nothing will come of that now.<br /><br />I have always thought in lightyears<br />But I felt in seconds<br />On this beautiful night<br />Andromeda and Pegasus are right above my head<br />I have looked at them for a long time<br />I shall be very close to them soon<br />My peace I owe to the stars, Monica<br />Of which you are the most beautiful to me.</span></span></div>
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Perihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12802277469585764886noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653199369867194096.post-49199117944112303742016-03-07T23:18:00.004-05:002018-09-04T06:24:20.257-04:00rapturemath<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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so this should be a hint: God</div>
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Must want us to love and be loved<br />
just this way: </div>
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Stupid beautiful sleepy</div>
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Unaware</div>
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To let me be this way with you, permission slip:</div>
<div style="color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.701961); font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 28px;">
(he gets to see me because he's this way too)</div>
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</div>
<div style="color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.701961); font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 28px;">
Hell, cheerleading for<br />
This (accidental) heaven<br />
That might be:<br />
True..<br />
<br />
Wrong, rightly:<br />
<span style="line-height: 1.4;">Loving completely,</span></div>
<div style="color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.701961); font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 28px;">
<span style="line-height: 1.4;"> despite/ because of</span></div>
<div style="color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.701961); font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 28px;">
This, ugly/ beautiful:</div>
<div style="color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.701961); font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 28px;">
You</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
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Perihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12802277469585764886noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653199369867194096.post-26721878344574612202015-09-30T23:44:00.002-04:002016-02-14T03:09:11.237-05:00Family Pictures<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;">“Good heavens, she’s got a face like a catcher’s mitt,” said my father. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;">He was peering unhelpfully over my shoulder, as I sat at the dining room table with a fraying cardboard box full of yellowing photographs spread out in front of me. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;">“Sit up straight, you’ll wind up bent into a bow. Nobody wants a woman who can double as an archery tool.-Good HEAVENS, she’s ugly,” he said, picking up the thick, yellowed cardboard rectangle from where it lay in front of me. “Plain to see all the good looks came from your mother’s side of the family.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;">He held the picture up close and frowned at it. “This is your great grandmother, so don’t get too smug. You only dodged this bullet by a chromosome or two.”</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;">“What was her name?” I asked. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;"> He’d handed me back the picture, and I frowned at it myself, trying to make her face- broad, wide, and with an expression that could politely be described as “disagreeable”- connect to anyone I knew. It was tough. It wasn’t doable.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;">Dad was now reaching over my left shoulder to pick some pretzels out of the smooth oval wooden bowl in front of me. “Watch out for these”, he said, waving an admonitory pretzel at me. “They look harmless, but at 100 calories apiece, they’re lethal. Of course, by the time you gain the weight , the salt will have bloated you anyway. Win-win situation, really.” He chewed thoughtfully. “But they are good. Just watch yourself.”</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;">I was impatient. “What was her NAME, please? And stop scolding me. I’m 123 pounds, for God’s sake. ” </span></div>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">“Good thing you’re tall. That could be a deadly number if you were my mother’s height.” He looked off into the middle distance. “Did I ever tell you that she got so fat that she would fall off her feet? She would just be standing there, and boom. She was very vain about her feet. They were a size 2. Like bound feet, really. And SHE was 123 pounds, once.. And look what happened to her.” He leaned over me to grab some pretzels again. “And don’t be shrill, young lady. You’re one of nature’s contraltos. Shrill doesn’t suit you.. And the catcher’s mitt's name..hmph..what was her name? Binah!", he said triumphantly. "Binah. I think. I </span>remember it having "beans" in it<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">. Not good for a name.”</span></span><br />
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;">“Bean-ah? I have a great grandmother named Beanah?? Who is really unattractive? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;">This is not good.” I looked at the photo, and tried to match his tone. "She can’t afford a bad name. Wow, she really DOES look like a catcher’s mitt. But ..wait, is this the one, the grandmother-"</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;">-"GREAT grandmother."- said my father-</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;">"-who was such was such a great baker that everyone came from neighboring shtetls for miles around to buy her stuff?” I asked.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;">“I think so. Yeah, yeah. Although God knows how they paid for anything. Nobody HAD anything. “I’ll give you two dusty rocks and a potato for that brownie.”Shtetl life was no month in the country. -Well, it was, really. Just not a country you’d ever want to live in. “</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;">I smiled. “Throw in a kidney and my first born son for the carrot cake.”, I said.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 16px;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;">“BLASPHEMY!” My Dad recoiled in mock horror. “NEVER sell your first born child for health food! Carrot cake. You are not my child. Sachertorte, sure. Those pastry pig ears, of course. All butter and sugar. But… Root vegetables with frosting on em? No. And not for you, if you don't want to take chances with those fat genes."</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;">“Dad. Your mother was four ten and one twenty three. I’m FIVE ten and 123. AND I have really big feet.”</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;">“You know, I never noticed that. But you do. “I Love You Honey But Your Feets Too Big,””, he warbled. “Is that Fats Waller?”</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;">“Dad!!! What does “Binah” mean?”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;">He was already bored, walking away. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s Hebrew for “flatulence”. How would I know? I married the least Jewish girl on the planet. Your mother is truly the Shiksa’s Shiksa.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;">He was on his way out the door. “I think I’ll drive to the Stop and Shop and get some Haagen Daazs."</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;">It was ten pm, but we were used to his odd peregrinations. He was a a city boy, never got used to the suburbs. He stopped in the doorway and turned around and looked at me, his eyes actually focussing on me, rather than doing what I thought of as his usual “periphery check”.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;">“That’s interesting. You know what?”</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;">“What, Dad?”, I sighed, in that teenage way.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;">“I think you are my only Jewish child. “ He looked at me quizzically, and then, unexpectedly, came back and kissed the top of my head.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;">I was thrilled but was successful at hiding my happiness. Boy, break out the Taittinger, I thought. But I made sure not to let him see that.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;">“Remember dog food.”, I said, frowning at Binah’s photo, still.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;">“Your mother and her damned dogs. Now THAT’S a WASP thing. Don't understand that."</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;"> He stood behind me, his hand still absentmindedly on my shoulder. I hardly dared breathe, lest I draw attention to his attention and break the magic. He stood completely still for a moment, and then chuckled.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;">“What? What?” I had to ask.The moment trembled in the air, half broken between us, but still present, before it would, as always, fall and shatter.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">He shook himself, and removed his hand from the vicinity of my shoulder. “I was just thinking about </span>how <span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> your brother and his exquisite Irish Catholic socialite “Nancy Reagan was my Mom’s best friend” wife would react if they saw THAT face peering out from the bassinet."</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">"Wait, whose face? You mean, in December?"I asked.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">" The catcher’s mitt. </span>That<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> face. Ha!” he said happily,”The Shtetl’s Revenge. Binah’s Back. </span></span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;">--Alright, Miss Feet’s Too Big , do you want anything else? Dog food, ice cream…” </span><br />
<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span>
<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;">He shuddered theatrically. “I refuse to BUY anything else. That’s a GHASTLY combination.”</span><br />
<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;">He looked down at the photo in my hand.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;">“I will tell you this much, though. Ol’ Binah would have had to have been a DAMNED good cook.”</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;">“Um…Well, Dad, if you’re going to get ice cream, I guess I want-"<br />
</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;">But it was too late, by seconds.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; min-height: 16px;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;">The screen door had already swung behind him then. My handsome father, was gone.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11px; min-height: 13px;">
<br /></div>
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Perihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12802277469585764886noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653199369867194096.post-9549861879716901762015-06-08T12:04:00.001-04:002015-06-08T12:05:53.157-04:00"Goddess" is such an overused word. <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<u style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">¨Goddess" is an overused word.</span></u><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;">Look over here.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;">Yes</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I am that girl </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The first and the middle and the last and the always girl.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Yes! -THAT one. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The girl you had the crush on in kindergarten, your eyes sliding over to see</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">if I'd be</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Your secret Valentine. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I am the joy in that five year old's smile, always, for you, and,</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I am her joy, she is me.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;">Today I cried, though. I feel no goddess at all.</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">When I was away gathering wood for our hearth, she whispered to you</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And you frowned and nodded and said " Yes that must be true"</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And you both said "Go. We don't want you."</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;">And now I feel small. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;">I take out the bright mirror and the dark mirror,</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The dark mirror sings</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> "You are ugly, old one. You are wrong.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Wrong.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Wrong."</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The dark mirror has a song like a lullaby buzzsaw. It sings</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">"Oh what I say is true,</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The gifts you give are tainted. No one loves ,or could love, or WILL love, or HAS loved</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> such a one as you."</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I can feel my strength rain away. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> I reach for the bright mirror too</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The bright mirror says nothing, for the bright mirror is busy doing her own makeup</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The bright mirror says "Am I as pretty as her? What can I do?"</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;">Throw those mirrors away, sister . The only mirror here is you.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;">So? You gonna cry or you gonna play ball here or what?</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;">We say together:</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">YES no YES!</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I will not let anyone steal my fire</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">You will not be my Prometheus</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And if you do steal my fire, so what?</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Stolen fire goes out and leaves you in the dark</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">My fire keeps replenishing. You cannot handle my real fire</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">For then you'd have to know that you have your own.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;">Yes</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I am the singer in the storm.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I am my own medicine. I make this from all poisons . </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;">I love my own grace, wit and style enough that you don't have to...but you will.</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I promise</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Ohhh you will.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;">I have the interdependence</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> that is the true independence,</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">A bird entwined with the wind,</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I have unlimited riches that are also yours</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I am like a queen so entwined with her people</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I am proud of the love of making songs</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> that flows through me like I am the trout and the river too</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;">So:</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I will be vulnerable ...but not foolish with it</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Generous.. but not foolish with it</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Foolish but not fucking stupid</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">If I am foolish we will laugh together</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I laugh with you at the joke of our own being.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;">I am proud of the tender heart that nestles in my breast like a bird.</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I am happy to be happy. Sad to be sad. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">But my emotions are my own.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;">My life? is is my own. Yes, I bend towards those I love, like a reed,</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">but then</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I sway back to stand tall again</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">against the river</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I am truth. Simple and in bloom.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;">I call in the spirits of my ancestors to surround me with family love.</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">AOnce they arrive, we open the door to friends:</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I call in Hare Spirit, who always sees the joke</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Who guides the seer in her tent and brings food and water</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">To the oracle in her cave</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And jumps away fast, white tail mocking your slowness</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;"> I call in Ant Spirit for working when I don't want to work particularly</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Thank you and fuck you Ant Spirit.-No, really.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;">I call in Beautiful Oshun for love and abundance, </span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I call in Wise Minerva for intelligence, </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">and Probably Lesbian Artemis to protect me </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">with her bow and slightly ironic arrows</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I burn sugar for the Hungry Ghosts and they don't notice me in their greed for sweeties</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Rush past me out the side door, unbiting, full;</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I am that Valentine filled with moonblood, </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I am the healer, skin against skin, breath combined to make me part of you</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">There has never been a such as I</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I am the only one like this, made of mud and snot and orgasm and fireflies</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Of mirrors light and dark, the spider and the spiderweb, </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I am the only one like this!</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;">Throw back your head and let your throat reverberate with your yell</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">that you are the only you</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;">And I will see you again at sunrise</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And we will do this dance again</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Daily, the same.. only?</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;">we</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">are</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;">Different.</span></span></div>
</div>
Perihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12802277469585764886noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653199369867194096.post-40875198891922505402015-02-17T22:45:00.000-05:002015-02-25T05:04:35.617-05:00Everyone Loves Me But You<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
That plastic surgeon on Park Avenue<script type="text/javascript">
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<div>
Wants to know if he can take me to a do</div>
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He's mighty handsome-</div>
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He can make me pretty, too!</div>
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Everyone loves me...but you.</div>
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<br /></div>
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That brilliant artist</div>
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Wants to paint me in the nude</div>
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His paintings hang</div>
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In the Metropolitan, dude</div>
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To refuse to be a nude muse to genius, would be rude..<br />
But i do<br />
I stay home at night and paint my toenails blue.</div>
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Cuz everyone loves me...but you.</div>
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<br /></div>
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You and I see movies</div>
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You and I have dinner</div>
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You and I take long walks in the park...</div>
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You want to do at night, what most people do in daytime</div>
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I want to do what folks do after dark..</div>
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Can we just park??</div>
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<br /></div>
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The plastic surgeon wants to take me to the Philharmonic</div>
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The painter wants to fly me to the Louvre</div>
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And while I dog your footsteps till I'm almost catatonic</div>
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The writer gave me first editions of his entire oeuvre ...</div>
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<br /></div>
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Hmmm....Hmmm... Wait just a cotton picking minute....</div>
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<br /></div>
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Thursday? Dear I'd love to but I'll be at Lincoln Center</div>
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Friday I would love to, but I'm posing in the nude;</div>
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Saturday? We're going on a literary bender;<br />
And Sunday? Gosh I hope I don't sound rude..<br />
But the next few years there's just no time that's free...</div>
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<br /></div>
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Because everyone loves you</div>
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yes, every girl loves you..</div>
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I wish you all the best</div>
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But you hit "pause" so get some rest!..<br />
Know how hard you studied but you never took the test;<br />
So be free:</div>
<div>
And do have a happy life,<br />
But you won't have me as wife<br />
Because everyone loves you</div>
<div>
But me.<br />
<br />
peri lyons 2015</div>
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<br /></div>
</div>
Perihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12802277469585764886noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653199369867194096.post-29956810733795626302015-02-09T01:34:00.001-05:002016-03-07T23:12:39.451-05:00Five Things to Do Before Getting Outta Bed That Will Make You Happy<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
As a Practicing Lazy Person, getting out of bed has never been my strong point. I like being comfy and snoozy and warm- so much that my Mom had to have me induced, because I was three weeks late and not budging.. The doctors finally sat my Mom down and told her that the problem was, apparently, that her child was- gasp- a musician, so getting that kid out of ANYWHERE where she was getting free food, free rent and not being judged for napping, was going to require drastic measures. Seriously: They'd already unplugged my amp, and I still wasn't budging. The pre-natal tests were very clear: I was going to stay in there well into my early twenties, unless serious measures were taken.<br />
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<br /></div>
<div>
Decades later, I still don't like getting out of bed. I don't care if I have tickets to the circus, a date with Benedict Cumberbatch, and a guaranteed winning lottery ticket scheduled for later that day, because if I wake up in a bed with 800 thread count sheets, fluffy blankets, and, for preference, a scantily clad genius* with impure intentions, it's going to take Serious Measures to get me to Step Away From The Comfy.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
So here are five things that actually work. Try these simple steps, and you will most likely have a great day. </div>
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<br /></div>
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1) Remember who you love and who loves you.</div>
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<br /></div>
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There are a ton more people you love, than you think. It sounds sappy, but it's true.<br />
I have a list I keep of people I adore, appreciate, am grateful to and for, and it's in a notebook next to my bed. I add to it every morning (after getting out of bed), when I'm doing my spiritual work, so the list keeps growing. Nice thing about "love"-that most folks don't think about- is that it doesn't have to be A Really Big Deal, or reciprocated (though it probably is), or Legally Binding. It doesn't just have to be family and friends...it can be as simple as people you bump into every day who smile when they see you.It can be your pets, past and present. It can be your favorite diner waitress. It can be ex lovers for whom you still wish the best. It can be- it is!- anyone who makes you smile.</div>
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I think about each one of them, and send them each love, appreciation, thanks, and good feelings. Then i think about people I know who love me. Sure, they may be delusional, and yes, I pay them, but it still counts. I think about the fact that I have people who will call to see if I'm okay if they haven't heard from me for a day or two, and only about half of them are debt collectors, is something that makes me feel really good. In fact, if you let yourself really open up to how much you are genuinely loved, it's euphoric.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
2) Remember that you're awake and therefore probably alive. This is a VERY GOOD START.</div>
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It's a good sign when you wake up and you're NOT either surrounded by people wearing white robes and playing harps, or, alternately, screaming in agony while being engulfed in unquenchable eternal fire. It means that you get another day to either fuck up massively and still be forgiven, or, ideally, NOT fuck up and get some great work done. You might meet a great new friend. You might fall in love, or, if you are in love, fall in love more. Today might be the day you tell that person exactly but exactly how amazing you think he/she/other, is. Today might be the day he/she/other smiles and reaches out her arms and says "Of course ya do, ya big silly. Come here.."<br />
Or..or..You might be in the right place at the right time to say the right thing and change someone's life for the better. You might write a song that will outlive you. You might exceed your known limits and inspire yourself and others. You might get smiled at by a baby. Someone might tell you you're beautiful. The world is so full of possibilities tat there isn't even a word in the English language to express it. In other words? It might be better than you think. Eventually? It always is.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Also, as someone who has almost died a few times, I can tell you that waking up alive is a much bigger deal than it can occasionally seem.</div>
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<br /></div>
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3) There will be breakfast.</div>
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This might seem like a no-brainer, but as someone who has gone hungry in my life, the fact that 2 bucks will get you coffee and a roll even if you're broke, is a great incentive to be happy. If you actually live in a house with a kitchen and a full refrigerator, you are so fucking lucky that I don't know what to tell you, except "dude, enjoy that.". One or two of us have lsot everything and come back from that, and while that was no fun at all, it means that we (okay, I) no longer take anything for granted, which means that I am grateful as hell for really small stuff, which means that I am one genuinely happy babe a great deal of the time. So "there will be breakfast" is my own personal shorthand for "there will be a billion chances to be grateful today"...and that, my dears, is seriously key.</div>
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<br /></div>
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4) Someone might make and bring you coffee.</div>
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<br /></div>
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I actually truly feel that this is one of the greatest joys in life. Without exaggeration. If someone gets up before you, makes you coffee the way you like it, and brings it to you in bed, then everything else in life is pretty much frosting, because this means you are loved, you are cared for, you are thought about, and caffeine is involved. Make sure you thank the person involved in a sincere and possibly time consuming way. This is a PG rated essay, so we'll leave it at that, but...use your imagination.</div>
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5) if you have company, express physical and emotional affection. If you don't, do it anyway.</div>
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If you are with another human, take as much time as you can and snuggle, cuddle, tickle, give compliments, and allow yourself to enjoy him/her/other in every way you can. I am a big believer in the incredible magical healing powers of sex, as much, as often and as joyously as possible, and am also NOT a big believer in coming up with reasons to avoid it. Set the alarm earlier. Try something new. Wake 'em up in a novel way. If you're alone, treat yourself with the same joy, physical expression of love and appreciation you'd give someone else. This also creates a space for someone amazing to enter your life...you're creating an energetic space for that! </div>
<div>
Studies have shown repeatedly that if you're sexual with your partner every single day, no matter what, it can literally double your happiness in the relationship. Even if you're with someone who, for physical reasons, can't have sex as you might normally define it, you can still be joyfully erotic with each other...and you'll be happily amazed at what miracles of healing can occur. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Extra credit: </div>
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Open yourself up to God, to The Big Love, or however you define it. You don't breathe you..Something Else does, and that Someone/Something loves, holds, supports, cherishes and nourishes you now and always has and always will. It could be science. It could be G-d. It could be gravity. It's definitely Love.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
So. Who am I, Miss Nobody from Nowheresville, to give you advice?<br />
Because, maybe....I'm happy. Didn't used to be. Hoo boy. Nope.<br />
<br />
In the last five years, I have survived brain injury, heart failure, clinical depression, tumors, reversal of fortune, and a fiance's suicide. (I also stubbed my toe once and got a C in algebra. IF you can imagine.) But for whatever reason, I seem to get happier every day, in bite size increments. </div>
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Happiness is a discipline . It's easier and more comfortable to not choose happiness.It's easy to find reasons not to take chances in love, or life....you could get hurt, or fail.<br />
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The good news is, you WILL get hurt. You WILL fail. People, including me, including you, are crazy, selfish, untruthful...and also loving, kind beyond belief, and infinitely amazing. </div>
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<br /></div>
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So get outta bed because there is a miracle in every cell of your body, in every molecule of your food, in every vibration of the energy your own perfectly necessary brand of love, emits as you walk around being a dope like the rest of us. A big, miracle creating, unconsciously perfect dope. It's what we all are. It's funny and beautiful and sad and surprising and sbolutely, perfectly wonderful.</div>
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And while you're up?</div>
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<br /></div>
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Can I have a coffee, please? Milk and two sugars?</div>
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<br /></div>
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Go get em, Tiger.</div>
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Love,</div>
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PL</div>
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<br /></div>
</div>
Perihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12802277469585764886noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653199369867194096.post-45905182055980956732014-10-05T23:12:00.001-04:002014-10-07T14:01:40.285-04:00"the possum" fiction 2014 c Peri Lyons<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">"The Possum" </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> (</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">For Jim, </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">who didn't ask.)</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I got my secondary education in country music when I was 25 and in rehab for coke and booze. Although I was a spoiled NYC brat, suddenly I was living in a halfway house, in a Bloomington, Minnesota converted convent, filled with other women who had just stalled out at the crossroads of "What The..?" and "Fuck St.". The place was haunted, too...there was a perverted ghost named "Henry", who used to spy on us in the showers. Only me and my Lakota Sioux roommate, Wanda Blue Day, could see him, but everyone could feel his weirdo pervert energy. The halfway house was not a place you wanted to come back to, and with the exception of one time with a British duke at a Bastille Day party at the Dragignon palace of a Greek shipping magnate years later? I never, ever did coke again. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">At the halfway house, there was a sort of den mother, named -if memory serves, which it probably doesn't- Lorna, and she took a shine to me...no, not that way.-Well, not that she acted on, anyways.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Lorna had run I country music bar in the heart of Nashville, and when alcohol killed her husband, dried up her resources, and damn near removed her liver, she found a slightly cynical, chain-smoking God, and sobriety, and came to Minnesota to make her appliquéd gingham toilet roll covers, in a country new. So to speak. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I had come to Minnesota by way of Chicago, where i had heard country music, consciously, for the first time. Sure, it was on the radio, growing up-the first song I can ever remember loving when it came on the radio was "King of the Road"- (and the first song I can remember hating was Neil Diamond's "Crackling Rosie"- I asked my Dad is that was music, and he said "yes, why do you ask", and I said "but I like music, and I hate this')-but as the youngest kid in our family, I had passive taste in music. I listened to Dad's beloved Gilbert and Sullivan, "; my older brothers' "whatever we think might impress girls", which ranged from "Black Sabbath" to, very weirdly, "Jesus Christ Superstar"; and Pete Seeger, a mean old sonuvabitch who was a patient of my Dad's and had given us all of his records. Boy, were we not a musical family.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> But then, in Chicago.I waitressed at diner owned by a homesick Tennessee boy, and God help me, the jukebox in "Bill's Restaurant: Eat Here", changed my life. I had never heard Patsy Cline. I'd never heard George Jones. And sure, I'd heard Loretta...but I'd never LISTENED. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I got fired from that diner for being so hungover from coke that my hands shook too much to pour coffee. But tellingly, the homesick Tennessean did NOT fire me when I stopped in the middle of my shift and made everyone shut up- customers, waitstaff, the 6'6" cook named Jemima- while I stood with my mouth open, listening. Afterwards, the homesick Tennessean said, "Darlin, you really NEVER heard "He Stopped Lovin her Today", before?"</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">No. I had not.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">One night Lorna got a phone call. Her sister, whom Lorna referred to as "white trash"- was in trouble. Lorna, although herself a habitual Velveeta user, was plain ol regular blue collar, but her sister, now her sister had "married beneath her". and I got the distinct impression that at this point, for sister Ruthie, "white trash" was kind of ASPIRATIONAL. She had gone hillbilly with a vengeance, according to Lorna: These were the kind of people whose daughter, born in October, was named September because dad gum it, she was due in September and they were too stubborn to change their minds about the name. Even at 15, September had an "oh God please don't ask me my name" expression on her face all the time. I remember she had very small brown eyes, like raisins baked into dough.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Lorna hung up the phone- this was in the 80's- and got her stern "Going to whip you in the name of Jesus" look. This was a look she got when on a "mission to help fools", which last time Lorna checked, included pretty much everyone except Lorna. It narrowed her Dorothea Lange-subject-thin lips and Cherokee cheekbones, and gave her curly raven black mullet hairdo a sort of Avenging Angel look. She looked like a tattoo of something, but I wasn't sure what. Something angry, with justice. Black and white. With maybe a Reb Flag banner.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"You wanna go for a ride, honey?" she asked me.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">As there was a curfew and I hadn't been out after dark for two months, and it was 9 PM, I said "HELL yeah," and raced after her, as she grabbed the car keys and strode out to the powder blue Impala. I figured we were going to drive to some Minnesota small town- they were all East Bumfuck, to a NY girl- and it sounded intriguing. Maybe Shane, her blonde sleepy eyed tomcat of a son, had diddled his Daddy's new girlfriend. Again. All I knew was, this was NOT Valley Cottage NY, I had never met people like this, and I wanted to watch. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">We drove in silence for a while. The streets got flatter and longer, and darker,and the sky spread out like it does when you start to hit prairie, real prairie. We weren't going to Duluth, or Edina, or even the dreamily named "Saint Cloud".</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"Lorna?" I finally asked. "Where we going?" </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"North Dakota", she said grimly. "Hang on."</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">What I remember about that night was not the crazed evangelical brother in law with the shot gun, who had decided that Revelations Chapter Six , was about to come to pass.As it turned out, he was disappointingly tame, longwinded and unloaded, shell wise. Lorna strode in and just took the gun away from him, as his family cowered in the corner. "Come on, Billy, don't be such a fucking pain in the ass," was all she said.You could see he wanted to rebuke her for her profanity, I watched the thought occur to him and then die unsaid on his face. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> She broke the shotgun open across her knee, peered into it, then blew down the barrel with scorn and contempt. I thought she was going to spit in it, but she just said "Didn't think so. Jesus." and walked out and tossed it into the trunk of the Impala. She came back in, and September got us some Country Time lemonade. And that was pretty much that.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">What I remember about that night - the important thing, the big good thing, that stayed, after stupid family drama puffed itself into sheepish mumbling and half hearted apologies and recriminations, was this: and this</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">may not be accurate, because it was a landscape of dreams, and dreams, as we all know, slow time. and speed your soul up. What I remember is a knife hard sky, with stars streaming down like frozen gunshot, and Lorna's fierce half Cherokee profile, as she put cassette after cassette into the car's tape deck. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"What's this?" I ould ask, and she'd frown slightly.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"Listen," she said. "Just listen."</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">And apocrypha and starlight, Impala and apolocolypse, the chuggida-chuggida- noise that becomes hypnotic as the highway seams test the suspension, the twin lines of the highway, became one high appalachian chorus of the Carter Family, the only thing real that I kept from that night.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The only real thing.</span></div>
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Perihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12802277469585764886noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653199369867194096.post-54970882809229630542013-11-25T23:40:00.000-05:002015-03-04T19:36:49.897-05:00"The Comet " in memoriam U Roberto "Robin" Romano 1956-2013<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The Comet <br />
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I first met Robin at a "Justice For Farm Workers" benefit. My friend Maggie, who is lovely and brilliant and kind and- rather importantly for this story-- as much of a tall girl as I am, had invited me, partly,because I am interested in justice for farm workers, partly because I have donated my services to be auctioned off for the cause, but mostly? because I really like parties.Also, Maggie shares the same delusion that happily married people everywhere share, which is that their unmarried friend would be happily married too, if their married friends take them to enough parties. As this is a delusion that often involves free wine and sometimes even snacks? Count me in.</div>
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She whispered in my ear, "Here comes Robin..he did that amazing documentary about chocolate-" but that was far as she got, because a very short, very charismatic and slightly pudgy whirlwind had just pulled up in front of us. Maggie and I both hover around 6 feet tall...Robin cavorted blithely on the sunnier slopes of 5'4 or so. He said, "Oh look! It's the twin towers!" and cackled madly.</div>
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Maggie introduced us, and I said, glibly, "Oh! You're the chocolate guy!"- Which I might not have said if I had known that his brilliant documentary "The Dark Side of Chocolate" was actually a compelling expose of child labor exploitation in Tanzanian cocoa fields. But ignorance is bliss. (-Except in retrospect, when ignorance involves a great deal of wincing. )</div>
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Robin was U Roberto Romano, one of the greatest documentarians, social justice voices, and photographers of our generation. At the time, all I knew was that we instantly seemed to be attracted to each other like those little black and white magnetic Scottie dogs one got in gumball machines when I was a kid. This was a bit odd, because in my former life, my romantic path had been littered with Grade A Certified Prime Adonises, and Robin was not, at first glance, exactly the Apollo of Bellac...a head shorter, wearing what sometimes seemed to be three or four pairs of impatiently-pushed-up-reading glasses at a time, prematurely salt and pepper hair. In repose, his handsome face could look old beyond his years, and unfathomathomably sad ...but as his face was never IN repose, I wouldn't learn that till later. </div>
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Instead, we started talking. And never stopped.</div>
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I don't delude myself that it was my mind that brought him over to say hello to Maggie and to me...I was wearing sky high high heels and a black leather minidress. It's not like I had a sign over my head that said "Talk to me about Foucoult!" </div>
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But after the first few minutes, we never bothered with small talk again. For one thing, my casual "What do YOU do?", was a question that acquired an interesting echo in the subtext of his answer, He didn't say "I care passionately about helpless people who are exploited or hurt, and i do everything in my power to bring attention to the people, places, and situations involved, because sunlight is a great disinfectant", but as he matter o factly talked about his documentaries-"The Harvest","The Dark Side of Chocolate", the great "Stolen Childhoods", et all... that passion was like a vibrating chord, behind the way he talked about his work. -And he entranced me when, in answer to a similar question, I sheepishly murmured "I'm a, a, well, I'm an intuitive..." he looked at me with straightforward interest and said "And why are you embarrassed about that?"</div>
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We left the party speedily, when it became clear that we just needed to talk a lot, immediately, and possibly forever. We somehow landed in a West Village bistro without noticing where we were, and had garlicky mussels and inky red wine; talking avidly,both of us waving our hands to illustrate important points, interrupting each other...so utterly, mutually, happily absorbed, that we didn't notice the waiters had placed all the chairs but ours, upside down on the surrounding tables, and were smiling indulgently,if wearily, at the two oblivious grownups acting like happy kids.<br />
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Our second date was impromptu, and not exactly a second date, as we had been talking, texting and writing each other almost hourly, since the moment we parted that night, if only because we had the exact same," S.J. Perelman Is My God" sense of humor, and neither of us was used to someone being equally quick and equally caustic. He had been away on a shoot, acting as cinematographer for a documentary about meditation being taught to kids in inner-city Baltimore.<br />
Five days later he had texted me just as I was ending a session with a client. [-Some back story here: I am an Intuitive Consultant. A few years ago, I discovered a gift for being able to describe people, places and circumstances i would have no way of knowing about rationally,and for predicting events that hadn't yet happened, with an accuracy I both can't explain and am often a little embarrassed about. After being sanctioned by a kind article in "The New Yorker", which lent me a social credibility not usually accorded to folks who pursue this vocation, I wound up opening up a fulltime "practice". I make no wild claims for metaphysics, or for possessing special powers from a nebulous "beyond"...I might just be reading microexpressions, or be a really good guesser..but I try to be ethical, non-"leading", and supportive: people seem to enjoy and get value from our time together.]<br />
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I arrived for our last minute lunch, still wearing what I had worn to the office: no makeup, hair scraped back higgledy piggledy into a schoolmarmish bun, and a floor length dress so modest that Amish women were stopping me on the street and saying, "Dear, we think you could show a LITTLE more flesh here.."<br />
I could see that my new flame was a little taken aback..where was the vivid glamourpuss from earlier that week?<br />
He was an avowed feminist, but he was also a guy, and a visual one. That's just how it was.<br />
But ten minutes into that late dejeuner, we were laughing like five year olds who'd just balanced a bucket of whitewash over the schoolroom door: and some five minutes later, we realized two hours had gone by.<br />
There was a moment of abashed silence: what the hell was going on here?<br />
Then Robin said, with the same earnest intensity he always had when serious: "Look, I want our honeymoon to be in Saint Petersburg. I want to show you the harbor at sunrise, as the ferry pulls in." He took my hand and raised it to his lips, while holding my gaze. He wasn't smiling: rather, looking at me questioningly, and very seriously.<br />
"Is that a proposal?", I asked. I was somewhat taken aback.<br />
"Yes. It is. I want someone I can spend the remaining years talking to, who interests me. You have a wild mind and a great heart. Also, I think you're hell's bells beautiful. -Despite today's outfit, of course."<br />
I was silent. So Robin said, "I am also completely smitten. Always will be. So there it is."<br />
I thought for a minute. Neither of us had had a serious relationship for three or four years..my heart was behind glass, or, more accurately, barbed wire, after a previous- and spectacularly illstarred -engagement. But when Robin and I met, there was instantly a feeling of, "Oh, THERE you are. What took you so damn long?"<br />
So I said "Well okay then. You're on. On a "let's see" basis, but I'm up for it."<br />
And we both grinned at each other. And got the check, so we could get on with this new life as soon as possible. I had a meeting to go to; he had to go see his mother, so we kissed and vanished in opposite, but ultimately reconcilable, directions.<br />
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Why? Where did this instant,bone deep familiarity, come from? Some reasons: we had had similar, although wildly different, lives, but we shared a sometimes inconvenient impatience with expectations or convention, or bullshit.We both possessed a very New York kind of class fluidity that makes one either an "insider" who faces out..or an ":outsider" who forever has his or her nose pressed against an invisible window looking in on unattainable but tantalizingly close treats and treasures..even when it seemed to others, that we were already in possession of some of these.We both had had some privilege: private schools, comfortable upbringings...and a family love of culture,art, ideas. We were both from what I jokingly called "Semi-Semitic" families...we each had wildly disparate and farflung circles of friends, from teachers and busboys and cabdrivers to celebrity,and intellectual friends...we'd even dated members of the same literary American Royal family...and we each had chosen unconventional and difficult careers, driven by curiosity and a restless, or reckless, impulse to keep following the next step, of what felt the most true in each moment.</div>
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And we had the same interior altars, the same sacred things.The first poem he sent me, was a Cavafy poem I have framed on my desk, something he had no way of knowing. We quoted the same obscure Marx Brothers dialogue, loved the same weird paintings, even took similar photographs- although his were masterly, while mine were, uh, not. (With his typical bluntness, he once said, after perusing my photographs: "You have one of the best natural gifts for composition, I've ever seen. But your technique is for shit. No problem, I'll teach you.") What he had, that I didn't even think about having till after until I met him, was a passionate and public commitment to social justice. I tend to operate on a more personal, local and random level- I'm the whackjob who has waded in and yanked the kids away from a parent beating them on the street, while a crowd of sidewalk gawkers stood by and watched, as I got my wrist broken with a tire iron for my pains -but the kids were rescued...He was the guy who would face down the leaders of a child sex slave ring, rescue the kids, make the documentary...and eventually get kidnapped and tortured for his bravery.<br />
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He was. like many of the funniest people on the planet (of which he was one), deeply thoughtful, even melancholy,below the surface. Unexpectedly for such a Norman Mailer-ish alpha man (broad chested, bluegreen eyed, unapologetically male), he was wildly sensitive, and empathetic, and capable of a gentleness deeper than any I'd ever encountered. He was also completely enchanting with children...upon meeting my 3 year old friend Leo, he bowed gravely, and spoke to Leo as though he was a Very Important Personage. Leo was instantly Robin's acolyte, forever.<br />
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After our odd, alfresco agreement, we had a hard time, for a time, finding time to see each other...we were both caretaking elderly parents..I was moving back to NYC, and he lived mostly in a light filled house on a lake upstate, but when I fretted about not being able to come see him because of work, he texted, "There will be world enough and time. That's a promise...and I keep my promises."<br />
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It was a promise it was not in Robin's power, to keep.<br />
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When he didn't return my goodnight text, on Halloween, I thought---with the solipsism of the newly in love woman, and the insecurity of the no-longer-twenty-five-year-old-girl: "oh, okay, I guess he's having second thoughts.." I was a little miffed, and retreated into an unwonted formality, in my next texts..none of which he answered. As the day, and then evening, and then morning, went by, I tried to talk back to my anxiety: he was busy, he "needed space"-(an abominable phrase, if not used in reference to astronauts)..take it easy, Per. Lighten up.<br />
But I still had a feeling something was wrong..really, really wrong. My intuitive ability is not so hot when it comes to myself or those I love, but it's still strong enough that I had to fight back against a rising tide of absolute terror.<br />
So I cast romantic dignity aside and texted, emailed and called. Over and over and over.<br />
"Baby, just taking anything romantic off the table for a moment, for God's sake let me know you're alive, okay? Robin?...Darling...Please."<br />
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And finally, "Robin. Please. Answer..answer..ANSWER, Love."<br />
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No reply.<br />
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So when the phone rang on the morning of November 2nd, while I was a bit hungover from a Day of the Dead party the night before, I was somehow both prepared -and completely unprepared- for the voice on the phone...his best friend and caretaker, a woman he spoke of often with great warmth.<br />
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"Hi...is this Peri? You don't know me..I'm a friend of Robin's...I'm afraid I've got some bad news. You'd better sit down..."<br />
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Robin, the most wildly, vividly alive person I'd ever known, had killed himself. I still don't know how...in his car, medication...all I know is that he left my engagement ring in an envelope with my name and number and a heart on it. And a note that said "The body's in the garage."<br />
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He was 57 years old.<br />
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And so one life ends. And another life, the life we had been having such fun planning together, ended as well.<br />
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I have another life now, one that doesn't include two hundred texts traded daily between passionate, entranced and delightedly surprised, slightly middle-aged lovers, starting at 5 AM and ending at 10 in the evening. My life now doesn't include that dance between intimacy and shyness, an exploration of the gap between how well we understood each other already..and and how much more there was to know. I don't,these days, wake up to an image of sunrise on his lake,taken when he woke at dawn... a photo by one of the world's great photographers, the size of a postage stamp on my phone but still carrying the unsaid message of "I see this and I want you to see it the way I do. Because you do." I don't have four hour phone conversations, an adolescent ritual reinvented by two people who had lived long enough to be hurt, badly, and were trying to find out - sometimes tactfully, sometimes bluntly- if it was possible to love again without having one's soul injured...if this glimpsed and longed for-but-given-up-on possibility actually existed as solidly as it looked..if this one last game was worth the candle, as the cardplayers of the 19th century used to say.<br />
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I've heard that a comet presages the death of kings. The night Robin died, there were meteorite showers, bright and visible even near the crowding-out light of the city we both loved and (sometimes) lived in.<br />
Robin was someone who would have jeered at the cliche of "good night sweet prince", and perhaps especially at flights of angels singing anyone to his or her rest..."I'm a light sleeper, that would really be annoying,", he would have said. But he had an almost angelic compassion for the hurt, the exploited and the voiceless...and a near-demonic energy to carry out his work to help, to draw attention, to create a conscience, for those with , as his great documentary had called it.."Stolen Childhoods".<br />
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"People ask me, "how I can do this kind of work. How can I care, with life being so busy? How can I find the time to help? How do I do this? " And all I can think of to tell them is, "How can you NOT?"<br />
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He leaned back and looked at me, with a kind of baffled, hurt wonder.<br />
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"How can they not care?", he would ask.<br />
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"How can they NOT?"<br />
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**************<br />
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Peri Lyons. Brooklyn, NY, November 3, 2013<br />
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IMPORTANT POSTSCRIPT: Robin and Len Morris started a school in Kenya. If you were moved by this story, or even if you weren't- please visit <a href="http://www.kenyanschoolhouse.org/">http://www.kenyanschoolhouse.org/</a> and make a donation. It would make Robin happy, and it's a great place to start.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxKyaFLcDTlu8vt6na7FIdVsAWH5N38YgCSUGJDRi9qqwQmJlsT-WJFP22RAYDGt05IfSvg3mTodC6P1prYmiA0poA_JVs0m298D6CgdoS2iIsZbhYHIkOXYDgY7T8a_5lytLKrBqE7eE/s1600/1403416_10200888916320325_332782985_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxKyaFLcDTlu8vt6na7FIdVsAWH5N38YgCSUGJDRi9qqwQmJlsT-WJFP22RAYDGt05IfSvg3mTodC6P1prYmiA0poA_JVs0m298D6CgdoS2iIsZbhYHIkOXYDgY7T8a_5lytLKrBqE7eE/s400/1403416_10200888916320325_332782985_o.jpg" height="298" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small; text-align: left;">Maggie, Robin, Peri "Justice For Farm Workers" Party, Sept 2013 NYC</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br /></div>
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Perihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12802277469585764886noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653199369867194096.post-17310945221900472122013-11-22T04:25:00.002-05:002013-12-21T23:10:53.992-05:00The Rock Star, The Poet, The Dead Past, And Me<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-size: large;">Woke up this morning to find that my wonderful friend Courtney Love had lost her phone; that the NY Times columnist Frank Bruni found it; and that his assistant, the lovely Isabella Moschen, saw my name in Courtney's phone, remembered I had dated her uncle, remembered I was a "celebrity psychic"(I love that phrase- it makes me want to run right out and purchase red flocked wallpaper) -and-voila!-mystery solved.<script type="text/javascript">
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<div>
<span style="font-size: large;">Courtney gets her phone back, Frank Bruni gets to be a hero (he already IS my hero: go read "Born Round"), and Isabella and I, who were bit players in the New York Magazine piece that Joe Coscarelli wrote for his "Intelligencer" column all of this celllphone superstar serendipity- found ourselves blinking in the unexpected spotlight when the whole thing went viral. Not just viral..by the end of the day, the piece had gone QUANTUM. Courtney Love's cellphone! Found by a respected New York Times columnist! SWho was obviously really pleased, in a sweet, even slightly starstruck way!</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"> It's fun, and as evanescent as the dew on a kitten's whiskers for those of us who AREN'T Courtney, so us non rock stars shan't take it too tseriously..but still,honestly, FUN. (Grazie, Universe!)</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Meanwhile, I got one jillion hits on my Facebook page, with people asking how and why Courtney Love had me on her phone. So:</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: large;">Here's the delightful and- for those of you who only believe what you read in the media, and don't have the pleasure of knowing the Lady herself- probably rather surprising backstory.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">For example, would you have thought that the world's most famous diva, would have befriended a non famous chick, because of shared interests in 19th century poetry and Buddhism?</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">-Nope, didn't think so. Read on, my little lily blossoms...read on!</span><br />
<br /></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: large;">Courtney Love and I met 5 or 6 years ago, when my then-fiance was directing a play in Santa Monica. Now, many people direct plays, and some direct them in Santa Monica, but very few of the aforesaid worshippers at the altar of Thalia (who is, I hope, Goddess of the Theater- I would google it, but I can't be arsed, frankly)- have the good fortune of having discovered a riveting young actor named Sawyer Avery to star in it. Sawyer Avery played a high school kid who had an unfortunate dislike for his high school classmates, and an even more unfortunate affinity for guns. And Sawyer Avery could ACT. I don't mean "act pretty well for a 16 year old." I mean: he could seriously and indubitably act his intense, charismatic, 16 year old James Dean-ish butt off. Sawyer's father is also a hugely famous Hollywood genius, which is possibly why Oliver Stone and Courtney Love showed up to see my then-fiance's play, as said exfiance was friends with Oliver, and had worked quite successfully with him, in the past. But they stayed to see Sawyer. (Also, the exfiance was terrific, and the play was quite wellwritten.) </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Courtney and Oliver made quite an entrance..they walked ACROSS the stage (which was level with the floor, so it was actually completely understandable)..but it WAS after the play had STARTED, so frankly, it was kind of seriously badass. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Also, Courtney's reputation at the time did not prepare me for the shock of how genuinely beautiful she is. -And this isn't a "friend of a star/must kiss ass" insincere compliment: I grew up around a ton of famous folks, and it's nice, but not compelling, the fame thing...so when I say she is genuinely, Carol- Lombard-beautiful in person, I mean just that. Flawless skin, huge green eyes, tall, with the elongated, almost stylized, slender figure of a 1940s model: wide shoulders, narrow hips, long legs. Anyway, the show went well, and was so entertaining that people actually managed to tear their eyes off the several seriously A List famous folk in the audience, for minutes at a time. -What was also interesting to me, sitting in the audience, was that, although there were people </span><span style="font-size: large;">in that audience who were </span><span style="font-size: large;"> so famous the folks in the adjoining seats actually physically burst into flame? It was La Love that every single person, was talking about, staring at, and pointing to. Such is the mystery of charisma.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: large;">Later, at the beginning of the seriously VIP afterparty, Courtney and I caught each other's eye, and we each,respectively, made the same mental note: "hmm, that seems like someone I'd get along with. Don't know why." -and then, we each kept walking. Much later on, she mentioned that she'd liked me partially because I wasn't that young, wasn't that skinny, was idiosyncratically sttractive but not plastic surgery gorgeous...and my guy was a serious, goldplated catch...so what, she had wondered at the time,was UP with that? Could it be that, in LA, someone actually loved someone else for her MIND? [Note: </span><span style="font-size: large;">( -Actually, he kinda did, and, as in most doomed relationships, we had a really, rea</span><span style="font-size: large;">lly good time-until we really, really didn't. -Anyway..)</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">She also made a mental note that my beyond Adonis boyfriend, might have a lot more substance than one suspected, if he could both write and star in a good play, AND have enough gravitas to not have the Young Trampy Girlfriend.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: large;">Courtney and I were somehow standing back to back at the party, in the middle of a scrum so tight that no one could move, or even figure out HOW to move. Then I felt someone tap me on the shoulder, in a friendly, impatient way. I turned my head--all that COULD be turned, in that claustrophobic party mob- and saw Courtney, close up as smooth faced as the dream of na porcelain doll. She was talking to someone, and also seemed to be snapping her fingers in a futile effort to remember something. Maybe that girl I saw before might know, know, was apparently her decisive thought, because her next move was to say to me,"Hey. What was the name of that poet? You know--19th century, English, wanted to be Shelley, died in an attic of arsenic at 18, killed himself, you know...Thomas something...Thomas, uh..."</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: large;">"Thomas Chatterton," I supplied. "Killed himself over a plagiarism fraud, 1824." </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: large;">"Right! Right! Thanks..." she said, and turned back to her friend.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: large;">How, and why, she was talking about Thomas Chatterton - a poet even more obscure than he was deceased, which was saying something- at a party in Los Angeles- the world's MOST ahistorical city- was never explained. But it established a bond of sorts, and later that night we wound up talking enthusiasticallyfor a long time- we had shared passions for Buddhism, 1920s and 30's films, vintage couture, and scurrilous gossip. I was delighted to find that she had a mordant, dry, very British wit, and an eidetic memory...she could remember stuff thet Miss English Major here, had totally forgotten. In fact, she was really fucking smart. When at last the party wound to a close, and those of us who WEREN'T doing cocaine were starting to yawn (yup, neither she nor I partook- I have never seem her take drugs) she said " Great meeting you..Hey, I have an idea! Come chant with me..I'll have my driver pick you up at 2 tomorrow."</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">I limped home, my Louboutins having won their fight with my now warped-into-submission toes, and thought, "well, that was cool.Who knew? Live and learn."</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">[Note: I made a mental note, from that night on, to regard everything I read in entertainment media, as "guilty until proven innocent"..in other words, I stopped being a credulous consumer of gossip.-Except the British gossip mags, which are awesomely awesome and who cares if they're true?]</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: large;">Dawn broke. And tomorrow came and went, but no driver, so I figured, "Well, that woulda been fun, but..oh well."</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: large;">Went to sleep and, at 2 AM, the phone rang.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: large;">"Errrroo?" I answered..I am not a girl who wakes up easily.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: large;">"Miss Lyons? This is Courtney's driver...I'm here to take you to the Chateau."</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: large;">"Roo..err..hey, what?? It's 2 AM!"</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: large;">"That's right. She asked you if two was okay."</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: large;">"Darlin, I must get my beauty sleep. Let's try again later," I said...and fell asleep before my head hit the pillow.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: large;">So the next day I went to see her at the Chateau Marmont. To be continued....</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: large;">xoxoxox</span></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>
Perihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12802277469585764886noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653199369867194096.post-62264589911559716642013-06-29T10:20:00.003-04:002013-06-29T10:20:48.425-04:00A Wimbledon Pome, or, U.S Open Your Heart, Baby!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18.0pt;">Though tennis I know nothing of;</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt;">We ALL know "nothing" equals "love";</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18.0pt;">And all the sports fans know this call:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18.0pt;">Love equals nothing much at all.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18.0pt;">While poets tell us there's no cost:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18.0pt;">It's"better" to "have loved and lost"-<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18.0pt;">The sportsfans tell you different, hon:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18.0pt;">It's better to have loved- and WON.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18.0pt;">Sportsfans and poets all agree<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18.0pt;">That love's a bigass mystery:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18.0pt;">If love's a game, as seems to be?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18.0pt;">-The heart's a crooked referee.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18.0pt;">So though one loved and lost, it's true,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18.0pt;">And played no games at all with you:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18.0pt;">She's cut out sobbing in her gin-<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18.0pt;">Cuz next time? She will play- to WIN.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Perihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12802277469585764886noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653199369867194096.post-61117854552314680112013-05-28T00:14:00.002-04:002015-02-09T17:30:29.011-05:00Now, As It Is<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Love is not only the answer- it's also the question.<script type="text/javascript">
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<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
This morning began with a ritual that's been in place since my 83 year old mother got home from the hospital: I gently shake her awake, bring her some water with lemon and mint and ice cubes, and start doling out a seemingly endless list of pills, while making cheerful, meaningless conversation in order to help both of us ease into consciousness.</div>
<div>
"I saw a fox this morning, Mom, in the backyard . -No, we only take that pill at night, take the pink pill instead.-Why do foxes always look mildly guilty? -Ooops, the mint is stuck inside the straw, that's why you're having trouble. Here, lift your head up a little. -Okay, fixed it.- There was a cardinal yelling at the fox, from a tree nearby. You know the way cardinals do...it's funny how most birds sing, but cardinals yell. Bluejays scream, robins chirp, cardinals yell. Cardinals all seem like they're from Brooklyn.-Okay, you ready for your tea?"</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
These days, there is a hospital bed in the living room. There is a walker, which has broken but we can't yet afford to fix it; and a wheelchair, and a chair set up as an impromptu nightstand, big enough for a phone and three antique bracelets, and otherwise overflowing with pills...there are two other bags filled with pills, and a grownup version of a sippee cup nearby, filled with water and mint and a straw. There is a radio that always plays NPR; there is a copy of "The New York Review of Books", but it's three months old, because her cataracts make it hard to read these days. There are sculptures from long ago travels to the Pacific Northwest; there are paintings shining on the walls, gifts of artist friends; there are photos of the grandchildren and great grandchildren, the kids whom she is not exactly not allowed to see, but not exactly not. My brother has never explained why he stopped loving her, three years ago. Mom no longer asks. She is gallant and optimistic and loving and utterly heartbroken, a heartbreak made worse by bafflement...isn't losing your husband supposed to make your kids be nicer to you? But we don't talk about it anymore. I hear her cry at night, and go hold her hand. There is no explanation, and no resolution, and what can not be fixed must be endured.<br />
<br />
Mom's house is making the transition from being a home, to being a history: and my job here, is to make sure, as she approaches a similar transition, that she does not have a stranger at her bedside.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
In an adult's life, this kind of time out of time that I get to have right now, usually signals a major transition in both lives. In my own life, it is a moment when I get to take a deep breath after the end of a three year roller coaster ride. It is a moment to mourn lost deeply held and never before even questioned assumptions of what family is, or "should" be. It is a also chance to actually learn lessons, really learn them, cell deep and forever. Learning involves a combination of brokenness and surrender, and who wants to feel broken, who wants to surrender? But since all opposites actually mirror each other, getting broken can also mean getting made whole. Surrender can lead to a whole new kind of power. Mostly, what happens in circumstances that are worse than one expects, is that one learns to listen.<br />
<br />
One lesson is that I have to be the family, I want to have. If that makes sense. Another lesson is that, yes, we are each alone in this body, this nautilus shell that makes the noise of the ocean, which is a fanciful way of saying we are all alone..and never, never alone. What I'm learning is that making mistakes doesn't make you a bad person, but repeating mistakes does make you an ineffectual one...learning to face facts without being defeated by them, seems to be a useful thing. Learning that forgiveness and love, really are more important than "being right" and "keeping track". Not for abstract moral reasons, but because it works better. It just works. Better. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Families fall apart over money, and old resentments dressed up in new clothes, and who's better, who's wrong, who's worthy, who has given more, who taken too much...and all we're looking for,really, is love and affirmation. I have watched "good" people make an old woman miserable in the name of "what's best for her". I have watched "bad" people continue to do sorta bad things...but make the old woman feel happy and safe and cared for. And i don't for the life of me know, which camp I fall into. Or care. What I care about is the happiness or lack thereof, in the life of the people I love.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Because what I'm learning is that love is a verb. In the same way that God can be Unconditional Love in one person's usage, and in another person's usage, the same God can be: a lucky charm, a big brother who will kick your unrighteous ass, and a reason to hate the same folks they seem to believe S/He "made". None of this makes sense.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Anyway, when nothing you thought you knew makes sense anymore, what does make sense is just doing what's in front of you.<br />
What makes sense, is doing what's in front of me. Doing the dishes; making the oatmeal with dried cranberries that Mom finds tasty and will therefore actually eat; doing the laundry; trying to sort out my finances, her finances, the cat's finances...give me a finance and i will leap into action. My financial action usually consists of staring uncomprehendingly at a statement; entering things into Quickbook; accidentally erasing said things from Quickbook; calling the insurance company/financial institution/ credit card company and attempting to explain to a seemingly endless array of voicemail options and uninterested people in foreign lands, why they are wrong and can I have my money back now, please?</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Then one makes lunch. Often for the next few days. It's best to do ALL the cooking at once, and freeze whatever you think you won't need immediately. You will be wrong- always- about how much you need of what and when, because invalids have tetchy appetites, and today's Turkey Meatloaf Which Is Exactly Right and Gets Eaten With Happy Noises, is tomorrow's Thing That Is Not Exactly Sneered at But Not Exactly Not. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Then one cleans up, and talks encouragingly, and tries to find a film on the computer that will soothe and stimulate in exactly the right balance. Old movies are best. I'vefound that British films from the 40s, are ideal. Most ideal are what used to be called "omnibus" movies...which, counterintuitively, are NOT films about omnibuses, but films like "Dead of Night" of "Quartet", that are several short films under one thematic umbrella.That way, a smart older person can watch something smart, but not have to feel embarrassed about getting drowsy partway though. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Mother actually helps enormously with my new book: brilliant editing suggestions, and the kind of Vestigial Mom Authority that gets my bum into the seat to write, when nothing else will. So that is part of the afternoon, as well. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Then one makes dinner.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
And one makes conversation to go with the dinner.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
And one makes the best of what one has, both dinner and conversationwise. We have cobbled a very nice dinner out of a chicken carcase, some frozen corn, and matzoh balls; and conjured a matching conversation about the history of "end of the world" scares and cults {Millerites, anybody?], out of my scraps of remembered historical anecdotes and Mother's partially remembered but potentially enormous fund of knowledge, from her years as an Ivy League history professor. Mother pops in and out of lucidity, but since her lucidity, when present, borders on actual genius, it's worth the wait.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
And then one does the dishes, and listens for Mother's voice, and sweeps and mops, and hears the voice and goes in to count the pills, and arrange the pillows, and we sing "Stardust" together and she's asleep, mouth open, by the second verse, and i am just so fucking grateful to be here.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Because it's not perfect, or pretty, or even, sometimes, bearable. But I've learned more about the look of love, lately, than I knew before. And by the look of love, I don't mean the dreamy Dusty Springfield song. I mean the act of being each other's flawed but willing witnesses. Love may make vile things precious, but it doesn't make vile things pretty, and it doesn't make anything perfect. Quite the opposite. Quite, quite the reverse.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Love makes lack of perfection the point. Love makes doing the gristly dishes an irritating privilege. Love is not abstract...love is annoyingly concrete, brilliantly ugly, and love, in every way?</div>
<div>
Is a verb.</div>
<div>
And a question.</div>
<div>
And an answer,</div>
<div>
And finally?</div>
<div>
A reason that you can not argue with.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Off to do the dishes, again. I wish they'd stay done. But I guess the point is, I hope they keep getting dirty. If you see what I mean.<br />
<br />
Maybe all we can do in the end, is what's right. Maybe if I do what is right, the phone will ring and my brother will say "Can I talk to Mom?" Maybe if one just tries a little more every day; loves just a little more than the day before, forgives just a little more than 12 hours ago, catches one's self when one falls into old patterns of anger, or entitlement, or selfishness...maybe one day you wake up and the "good" has finally pushed out the "bad".<br />
<br />
"Darling", Mom calls out excitedly from the next room. "Come in here quickly! I just noticed that the dogwood tree has tiny green shoots on it already! Look at that! Spring will be here before you know it! Won't that be nice. I can't wait to see the snowdrops again."<br />
<br />
I am making Mom tea, now. I can see through the huge kitchen window, that both a cardinal and a heavily pregnant red fox are framed against the white snow,both motionless for this minute, vivid red against the sterile, seemingly hopeless white landscape. In a minute, the cardinal will fly away and the fox seek shelter against the coming evening and the steadily mounting snow.<br />
And?<br />
In two weeks or three, there will be green shoots of snowdrops, where the snow is now. The momma fox will be nursing her tiny red pups. The dogwood's green shoots will be turning into white flowers with vivid orange crosses in the middle. The world will once again be a chorus of kept promises. The snow will be a memory.<br />
<br />
And maybe, this time? The phone will ring, and my Mom will join the rank and chorus of those who get to come back to life, to hope and to promises unbroken, in the springtime.<br />
<br />
Meanwhile, my other brother and his wife are driving through the snow to be here tomorrow. Meanwhile, tonight, I take in the tea.<br />
<br />
With cookies.<br />
<br />
Happy Almost Spring.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
love, pl</div>
</div>
Perihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12802277469585764886noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653199369867194096.post-88378628153307919012013-02-09T05:30:00.000-05:002016-02-14T03:05:30.077-05:00Valentine's Day Is Approaching. For God's Sake, Hide Me, Someone!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h3 class="post-title entry-title" style="color: #956839; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', sans-serif; font-size: 22px; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">
Or,</h3>
<h3 class="post-title entry-title" style="color: #956839; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', sans-serif; font-size: 22px; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">
<br />
</h3>
<h2 style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #cc0000; font-size: small;">
The Lilies Of The Field Are Trying To Tell You Something</span></span></h2>
<div class="post-header" style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', sans-serif;">
<div class="post-header-line-1">
</div>
</div>
<div class="post-body entry-content">
<div style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', sans-serif;">
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: 16px;">
<span style="color: #990000; font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , sans-serif , "helvetica";"><br /></span></div>
<span style="color: #990000; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">Did you know that, on Valentine's Day, if your dreamboat </span><br />
<span style="color: #990000; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , sans-serif;">hands you a bouquet of purple irises, he or she is actually saying: "I anxiously await your [sexual] favors"?*</span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><span style="color: #660000; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"> <i>( </i></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , sans-serif;">*Author's Note: <i>Well, with any luck.)</i></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><span style="color: #660000; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><span style="color: #660000; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">Or that, hidden in that lovely collection of fragrant pink dahlias, is a a subtext that actually warns of imminent betrayal and sexual degradation?**</span><span style="color: #660000; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><span style="color: #660000; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"> (</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , sans-serif;">** Author's Note<i>: Agatha Christie says this is what "Dahlia" means,.Other sources say it's actually what "evergreens" mean, but I flatout refuse to believe all that about my Christmas tree.)</i></span></span><br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #cc0000;"><br /></span></span></div>
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><span style="color: #660000; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">-Of course you didn't, because: a): You're not a big ol' crazypants, and, 2): It is no longer circa 1850-1890, which is when the "Language of Flowers" was an accepted way to communicate your secret feelings to your loved one in floral code. In Victorian England, every flower in a bouquet, had a very specific meaning: that tradition, though long forgotten, still resonates on some level.</span><span style="color: #660000; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , sans-serif;"> Case in point: we give red roses almost exclusively these days, to be on the safe side: red roses, in the Language of Flowers, mean "I am romantically in love with you, although this floral arrangement does not actually constitute a legally binding agreement." And the reason you have never offered your fiancé/e a selection of lobelias, lime blossom and houseleeks? -Is because you somehow knew you would be accusing her of, respectively, "fornication; malevolence; and poor domestic economy."(And frankly? You'd be right. Sorry you had to find out this way, man.)</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><span style="color: #660000; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , sans-serif;">So here is a selection of the Language of the Flowers, circa 1885, and then the Language of the Flowers, circa 2016.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><span style="color: #660000; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , sans-serif;">Happy Valentine's Day! </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><span style="color: #660000; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #cc0000; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , sans-serif;">love, Peri </span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><span style="color: #660000; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
<br />
<div style="color: #660000; font-size: 16px;">
<span style="color: #990000;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="post-body entry-content" style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', sans-serif;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #990000; font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , sans-serif , "helvetica"; font-size: 16px;"><u>Language Of The Flowers, 1885 version</u></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #990000; font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , sans-serif , "helvetica"; font-size: 16px;"><br />
1) <u>Camellia</u>: I live in gratitude of your perfected loveliness!<br />
<br />
2) <u>Chrysanthemum</u>: I admire your cheerfulness through adversity.<br />
<br />
3) <u>Damask Rose:</u> I worship your brilliant complexion.<br />
<br />
4) <u>Fuschia</u>: The ambition of my love thus plagues myself. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #990000; font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , sans-serif , "helvetica"; font-size: 16px;"> [Author's note: "Huh?"]<br />
<br />
5) <u>Peach/or Peach Blossom</u>: Your qualities, like your charms, are unequalled.<br />
<br />
6) <u>White Rosebud</u>: You are too young to understand love.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #990000; font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , sans-serif , "helvetica"; font-size: 16px;"> [Author's Note:"I get this one a LOT."]<br />
<br /><br />
Okay. Moving right along:</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #990000; font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , sans-serif , "helvetica"; font-size: 16px;"><br /> <u>The Language of the Flowers, 2016 Version:</u><br />
<br />
1) <u>Dandelions</u>: You're okay, considering. I guess.<br />
<br />
2) <u>Poppies</u>: I love you, but not more than I love prescription medications.<br />
<br />
3) <u>Carnations</u>:My God, you're beautiful. My God, I'm cheap.<br />
<br />
4) <u>Rare Orchids</u>: Aren't these exquisite? I'm sleeping with your sister.<br />
<br />
5) <u>Daffodils</u>: Your optimism is touching. If delusional.<br />
<br />
6) <u>Asters</u>: These are asters. -No, that's it, that's the message. Sorry.<br />
<br />
7) <u>Peach colored sunset roses</u>: Your skin is like a flower petal at sunrise, and I think i might be gay.<br />
<br />
8) <u>Red roses</u>: I think you're swell, I think you're aces, and I think it's 1947.<br />
<br />
To sum up? Flowers are a beautiful means of communication, wherein you can totally say stuff you mean, and not have to cop to it. The Victorians may have had their flaws, but they have a lot to teach us still. Especially in the area of being completely passive-aggressive and yet, still decorative as hell.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #990000; font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , sans-serif , "helvetica"; font-size: 16px;">
<br />
love,Peri</span></div>
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Perihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12802277469585764886noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653199369867194096.post-3853918234118986012012-12-06T00:32:00.001-05:002012-12-06T00:38:09.290-05:00Monogram Memories: A Christmas, Um, Thing. [Greatest Hits]<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: large;">This time,some years ago,your humble correspondent was working at the Louis Vuitton Flagship Store. Here are some notes from that time: my Last Days Of Retail.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">*************************</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">If you are a store, and you're French (which I'm going to assume you, dear reader, are not), here is how you assert your Frenchness during the Christmas retail season:</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">1) Leave your front doors open when it's 22 degrees out, ensuring that people shopping for $1600 handbags can see their own breath as they utter the words "I'll t-t-t-take it".</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Expecting to be warm indoors during a luxury shopping experience is simply not chic. One must suffer for beauty. Also? We don't like you. Or care. And your hair is funny.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">2) Refuse to play Christmas music. Instead, play depressing emo girls wailing about how their lovers have left them and it's probably their own fault, but if said lover doesn't return to make thm miserable again, they will probably either take pills or continue wailing. Or both. "Rudolph the RedNose Reindeer" is a bourgouis construct, and has been denounced by LeviStrauss in his famous tract "The Deconstruction of Rudolf de la Nez Rouge"., in which reindeer are proven to be a failed neo-Marxist syllogism.Parce-que: Christmas music at Christmas is so...predictable.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">3) Refuse to have sales. Sneer openly at those customers who ask. Sneer openly at customers who don't ask, for their lack of courage. Sneer openly at anyone who happens to be walking by and within sneering distance. Nous sneerairons.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">4) We spit on the concept of Christmas decorations. Instead, we have a conceptual artist who walks around the store before it's open and murmurs the single word "holly". So spare. So simple. So chic.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">5) Your hair is funny and your shoes are a laughable relic of the former life you have now outgrown. Your children are sad and your wife has a lover. Do not ask me what is the price of this purse. You can not purchase back the strayed affection of your spouse, who is sleeping with a german art student who moonlights as a garbage man in order to impress his marxist, much younger other girlfriend, with a $420 beach towel. Do not try, either to do the first thing I suggested or to understand the structure of this sentence. Pah- I spit on conventional sentence structure.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">There ya go. If you ever want to be a huge, French, luxury retail store at Christmas, you now know everything you ned to be a huge success with people who would not want to belong to any club that would have them as a member. I.e., all of humanity.</span></div>
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Perihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12802277469585764886noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653199369867194096.post-10551036920501539442012-12-04T18:58:00.000-05:002013-03-06T15:31:38.779-05:00What Is The Journey But Our View<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;"> (Note: The 18th Century Russian Empress Catherine The Great, wanted to take a tour of Russia. In order to keep her happily assured that everything in Russia </span><span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px;">was absolutely FINE- which it most assuredly was NOT--her</span><span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> lover and prime minister, Potemkin, erected an astonishing series of village facades , for Catherine to ride past. She was happily fooled, and Potemkin kept his power. The </span><span style="font-size: 15px;">villages were burned as soon as she passed.</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 17px;"><u>What Is The Journey But Our View</u> (lyrics) Peri Lyons c 2012 ASCAP</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;">There was a Russian Empress<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;">Who said she had to see<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;">What was going on <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;">With her Russian Peasantry<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;">So: She rode out in state for a year and a day<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;">And
her minister Potemkin rode ahead.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;">Potemkin rode ahead... to build<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;">The fronts of houses -but not the houses<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;">The fronts of villages -but no villages<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;">He hired handsome peasants to stand outside<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;">and Catherine<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;">Was satisfied<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;">When Catherine the Great looked at the view<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;">She saw what Potemkin intended her to <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;">No trouble, no starvation and no poverty<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;">Potemkin Villages as far as she could see<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;">Potemkin rode ahead to build<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;">The fronts of houses but not the houses<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;">The fronts of villages but no villages<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;">He hired handsome peasants to stand outside<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;">and Catherine<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;">Was satisfied<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;">And Catherine’s sleep was untroubled<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;">And Catherine’s mind was untroubled<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;"> I fear we are too
untroubled<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;">in our complacency<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;">Potemkin Villages are all that we will see<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;">when Catherine the Great rode past and on her way<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;">Potemkin Villages were burned down the same day<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;">That lying architecture, had to go away<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;">No one could make a home there anyway<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;">Potemkin rode behind to burn<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;">The fronts of houses- burned like houses<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;">The fronts of village-s burned like villages<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;">The handsome peasants had already moved on<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;">And Catherine <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;">was long gone<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;">I sing this song to say the burning hurts the same<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;">The fake and the real all burn, with just as hot a flame<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;">But this complacency is turning into shame<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;">I did not see<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;">The Potemkin Villages you put up just for me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;">My darling, you rode ahead to build<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;">The fronts of houses but not our house<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;">The fronts of villages but not our village<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;">And everywhere you lied<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;">and I<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;">Was
satisfied<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;">And yes my sleep was
untroubled<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;">And yes my mind was untroubled<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;"> I fear we’re all too
untroubled<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;">in our complacency<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;">Potemkin Villages are all that we will see:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;">That heedless wreckage ,is our legacy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Perihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12802277469585764886noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653199369867194096.post-57625049859926671382012-11-30T20:19:00.001-05:002012-11-30T20:19:10.935-05:00Adam Cvijanovic’s Post-Natural History at Postmasters Gallery<a href="http://ecoartspace.blogspot.com/2012/11/adam-cvijanovics-post-natural-history.html#.ULla2t0Oop0.blogger">Adam Cvijanovic’s Post-Natural History at Postmasters Gallery</a><br />
<br />
Best show I have seen this year. Bar none.<br />
<br />
<script type="text/javascript"> var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXX-X']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })();</script>Perihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12802277469585764886noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653199369867194096.post-89253311712668923202012-11-28T00:58:00.003-05:002012-11-29T01:38:59.328-05:00Secrets of The Universe-REVEALED!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Secrets of The Universe<br />
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The Universe is very big, and very mysterious. There are some scientists, however, who claim it only looks mysterious because it's far away. And because it's very very dark. These scientists claim that the Universe is not actually full of Mystery: that it's actually just full of Math, and is only pretending to be Mysterious, because it didn't get good grades in calculus.. They also claim that the Universe is five hundred thousand billion years old*, whereas the Universe claims to be 39.</div>
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<br /></div>
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As I am a professional mystic, the Universe has revealed some of its deepest, darkest secrets to me. Now, for the first time, The Universe's REAL secrets...REVEALED.<br />
<br />
Here are a few of the Universe's most closely guarded secrets:<br />
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<div>
1) The Universe wet the bed until it was 5 million years old.</div>
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2) The Universe's favorite game is "Worlds With Friends".</div>
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3) Occasionally, the Universe, giggling madly, will spell out really dirty words across the sky, using leftover stars. So far? No one's noticed.</div>
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4) The Universe occasionally whispers, the following phrase to itself: "<span style="font-size: x-small;">Hey--</span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">"</span><span style="font-size: x-small;">I'm a ME-niverse!"</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div>
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5) The Universe likes toast. But it's hard to get it delivered. More often than not, it arrives either stone cold ? or too far in the future, to eat.</div>
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6) The Universe thinks Saturn is, frankly, a little pompous. The rings? A little showy. A little too.."moderne". Yes...Saturn's up to something, the Universe thinks. -But what??</div>
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7) The Universe watches every TV show ever, all the time. It thinks 1950's game show host Bill Cullen is what every human looks like. It approves.</div>
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8) The Universe has many secrets. One time, it fell asleep and some galaxies went sideways. It put them back but The Universe really hopes the duct tape, holds. </div>
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9) The Universe hums Mozart every Wednesday morning. It listens to NPR, but millions of years too late. </div>
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10) The Universe knows your home address, and wants to send you brownies. But somehow? It never finds the time.</div>
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<div>
"Good nigh"t, says the Universe. "I have told you some secrets. Now turn off the Hubble for a day or two, so I can take a shower."</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
xoxo pl 2012<br />
<br />
* The age of the Universe is another Mystery. I solved this one quite easily, by the simple expedient of Making It Up. -Shut up, it's Quantum.</div>
<div>
</div>
</div>
Perihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12802277469585764886noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653199369867194096.post-8570991274915516852012-11-23T05:44:00.001-05:002012-11-23T05:47:17.997-05:00"Don't Be A Stranger" (lyrics)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="font: 15.0px Times; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<b><u>"Don't Be A Stranger"</u></b></div>
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<span style="font: 14.0px Times;"> <i>Lyrics: Peri Lyons</i> </span> <span style="text-decoration: underline;">C.Juicyfruit Music/ASCAP 2012 all rights reserved</span></div>
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When we met- I don’t know why- you somehow felt like home.</div>
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You saw me to my soul, I saw.. Could I stand being known?</div>
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I couldn’t feel desire, back then, without some shallow "danger"...</div>
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But when I left you smiled again, and said : “Don’t be a stranger”</div>
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I wouldn’t kiss you, then, as well, ‘cause I desired another: </div>
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Another shallow boy, who cared for no one but himself.</div>
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I truly thought love was a toy, and that there was no other</div>
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Way to love that was "exciting", so I put you on a shelf.</div>
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<br /></div>
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[chorus]</div>
<div style="font: 14.0px Times; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">“Don’t be a stranger”- </span></i></div>
<div style="font: 14.0px Times; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">You meant more than I knew</span></i></div>
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I knew that I would never be a stranger- not to you- </span></i></div>
<div style="font: 14.0px Times; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">“Don’t be a stranger”</span></i></div>
<div style="font: 14.0px Times; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">This was your gentle art</span></i></div>
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">You taught me slowly not to be, a stranger to my heart</span></i></div>
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[bridge:]</div>
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Just friends again for so long –then- I let myself be kissed</div>
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And what I was so scared of, I’m scared now I almost missed</div>
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My fear of boredom was the reason that I’d always flown:</div>
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Turns out the biggest bore of all, was never being known</div>
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<br /></div>
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">“Don’t be a stranger”</span></i></div>
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">You meant more than I knew</span></i></div>
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">You knew that I could never be a stranger- not to you- </span></i></div>
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">“Don’t be a stranger”</span></i></div>
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">This was your gentle art:</span></i></div>
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">You taught me slowly not to be</span></i></div>
<div style="font: 14.0px Times; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">A stranger to my heart</span></i></div>
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We mostly are the opposite of how we play the world:</div>
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The ship that looks the fastest, never’s had its sails unfurled</div>
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The recipe that looks the best’s , the one’s that’s never made</div>
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The man who seems a player, is the man winds up played...</div>
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The love that travels deepest, is the love that never strayed;</div>
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The man who plays for keeps, is the one man who can’t be played;</div>
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The love who truly loves you, first can TRULY feel like danger;</div>
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The strangest and the strongest love is only when you’re <span style="text-decoration: underline;">not</span> a stranger.</div>
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">“Don’t be a stranger”</span></i></div>
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">You meant more than I knew:</span></i></div>
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">You knew that I would never be a stranger- not to you- </span></i></div>
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">“Don’t be a stranger”...</span></i></div>
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">This was your gentle art:</span></i></div>
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">You taught me slowly not to be</span></i></div>
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">A stranger to my heart</span></i></div>
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(coda)</div>
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I’ll never be a stranger now, no matter where I roam</div>
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You showed me what freedom is </div>
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when </div>
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you gave </div>
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this strange and stranger’s heart…</div>
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A home.</div>
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Peri Lyons juicyfruit music/ASCAP 2012</div>
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Perihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12802277469585764886noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653199369867194096.post-65619832222243078882012-07-22T13:55:00.002-04:002012-07-29T15:08:20.139-04:00Confessions of a Psychic: Excerpt<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">(Written in June, 2008.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Copyright Peri Lyons, all rights reserved.)</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Last night was kind of the exception to every rule I have as an intuitive.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Started the day off right by doing a (thank heavens, spot-on) reading for a nice new client, an attractive and articulate British artist. It was a relief to get verifiable facts right, as lately the psychic stuff had been feeling stuck. Now, for whatever reason, my mental clouds cleared and I couldn’t talk fast enough to convey the torrent of information I was getting. Artists are often much easier for me to read. I suppose that’s for a few reasons: one being that artists lead less conventional lives and therefore have fewer things to”hide”; another being that visual artists think in very vivid images, and those images often show up for me “verbatim”, if you will. In this reading, when I was telling the artist about his immediate family, I was trying to get his niece’s name. Immediately, I saw a picture of an English Garden.”Her name is ‘Garden?’” I asked, incredulous. He grinned.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I looked closer, and started naming everything I saw in the image in my mind. “Garden. Stone wall. Bunny rabbit. Oh…FERN!! Her name is Fern!”</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">He was laughing so hard he couldn’t speak for a moment, but when his mirth subsided a bit, he gasped out, "No, actually her name is Stonewall Bunny Rabbit. It's an English thing. Yeah, her name is Fern"</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The rest of the reading went well, although we were both confused when I got an image of his late father, in which the lanky English gentleman was wearing a white sleeveless sweater and white shorts. "No" he said decisively. "He never wore that."</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">A bit crestfallen, I said " well, okay, I can be wrong,I guess, but ...", and bid him Adieu at the door of my shoebox-sized flat. A postscript to this: a few days later, he rang me up."Peri, remember my dad showed up wearing the white sweater and shorts? Well I rang. my mum, and was telling her about the reading, and she said " you idiot, your father, played tennis religiously for the last 20 years of his life. That was his tennis outfit."</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">There was a slight pause "I had left home by then, but I should've remembered that."</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">"No worries," I reassured him. I was in no position to rebuke anyone for forgetfulness. The day before I had temporarily puzzled a friend when I asked her to close the, um, the, um “rectangular shaped wall thing."</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">She stared at me, then a light went on, and she exclaimed, "Oh, the DOOR! You mean the DOOR!"</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">"Uh, yeah. Door. I knew that." I said touchily.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">She looked at me with narrowed eyes. "Why can you remember the word ‘rectangular’ and not the word ‘door’? I'm just curious."</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“I was testing you," I lied briskly. “Come on, let's go."</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">As the British artist left, my phone rang. It was a party entertainment agency. Somehow they'd heard of me, gotten my number, and asked if I would do a last-minute ”Tarot reading" gig. Since I had decided that day that there was a new pair of rather spendy Louboutins that I needed in order to keep breathing voluntarily, I said "Abso-LUTELY”, with a fervor that took the nice woman from the agency a bit aback, because there was a pause before she recovered, saying brightly “Ooo-KAY then!" She gave me an address, said " It's a party, thanks for doing this, bye!" And hung up with a relief I could hear 20 blocks away - On reflection, I should probably have paid a little more attention to that. However, pausing only to change into a cute dress, feed the prowling catbeasts and mentally spend the eye-popping sum she had promised, I headed to the Upper West Side.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The building's lobby was gleamingly ostentatious. The doorman had obviously gotten high marks in the “eyeing visitors suspiciously” part of the doorman exam. When he finally put down the tenant phone and announced grudgingly, “They'll see you now", I heard the unsaid warning "…and don't track anything on the carpet with your Payless MaryJanes there, peasant."</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The building elevator was bigger and much better furnished in my apartment. Which made sense, when I got to the party place and found that their co-op was measurably bigger than the actual town I grew up in. It also seemed oddly deserted, until suddenly a cacophony of high-pitched giggling broke out in a far distant room. I set out to find the noise, reluctantly abandoning the idea of leaving a trail of the ChexParty Mix so I could find my way back to the living room, and came upon a party, all right…it was a 12 year old's birthday party. Yikes. The nice agency lady didn't mention this. I don't read for people under 18.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">While I was undergoing a St. Augustine-size crisis of conscience--"Dear God, give me a way to keep my professional ethos intact and yet still be able to buy shoes", was my shallow yet heartfelt prayer-a professional kids party entertainment troupe was organizing a"Murder Mystery" for the young ‘uns. Wow. Those children managed to reach a decibel level that would make Def Leppard weep with envy.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Meanwhile, I walked in and greeted the assembled parents. I was led to a kitchen table by an immensely patronizing mom, who made it clear that she thought I was a…well, a Tarot reader sent by a party agency. (Which is why I don't work with agencies, there's just too much stigma to overcome and it takes energy away from the reading.) She sat me down in front of her extremely nice friend and said, "Here. DO her."</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">[Note: She meant "do a psychic reading for this person", lest you think this story is going in another direction entirely.]</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I thought “O-kay. Let's see if we can take that smirk off your puss, my dear." Sat down, took the younger woman's hand and said ,"Disc problems, neck, two discs, for operations in two years. Also lower back, L2 and L3 discs, especially affected."</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">They both gaped at me. Well, that was fun.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The older woman said, accusingly,"Who told you that?" She was a little angry.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I turned back to the younger woman."Your mother issues are entirely valid; she WAS enormously controlling and she WAS verbally abusive, but you have to remember that you were her only daughter, and she did love you tremendously but-due to the situation with her father, especially-she simply didn't have the emotional tools in her toolkit to show love. And she didn't love your three brothers better."</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The other woman said."Look, someone must've told you she has three brothers."</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I took HER hand and said,"You work in an agency of some kind; your specialty is coordinating various groups of people in some way; you work, with each group separately and then coordinate them. You work for the greater good. You went back to work recently after taking time off. You just got a promotion, you sit here [drew diagram on the tablecloth with my finger] and the man who is your boss and yet is not directly your boss, sits over here. He has a tree in his office. The woman you don't get along with sit here: she's bossy, but doesn't actually know what she's doing. Short black hair. Bad lipstick choices."</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Silence.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Then suddenly, I'm a bit ashamed of myself. Everyone has their buttons, and mine is being condescended to. I have way too much pride. And psychics are supposed to be accurate, but we are not really supposed to show off. -Or are we??</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">More silence.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Then suddenly the older woman begins to laugh. She's delighted, like a kid who's Justina really good magic trick. “That's TOTALLY RIGHT!! OH MY GOD!! That's AMAZING!! How do you DO that?"</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I said truthfully, "I have NO idea."</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I finished both their readings, and as always happens after I do a reading for someone, we felt sort of bonded and would smile warmly across the room. When we caught each other's eyes at the party. Meanwhile, you put a visible Tarot deck in a room with a bunch of 12-year-old girls and soon you will be surrounded by an imploring, lipglossed tribe of supplicants. No way I could say no, but man, is THAT a tricky thing… Many, many ethical considerations. I do not do readings for the under 18 crowd. Finally, I figured out a way in which I could do it with ethics and integrity. This involved reflecting back the most obvious positive aspects of the child in question, and telling them that if they take breaks during studying to say the magic phrase." I am now remembering and understanding this perfectly!" that they would do even better in school. I also made a point of telling them that there's no such thing as hard-and-fast "fortune-telling": that we each make our own luck and destiny, with hard work, honesty and respect for ourselves and the folks around us. [Re-reading this, I sound a bit like a sanctimonious pill, but it was the best I could do at the time.] -Just to satisfy ‘em a little, I would tell them how many brothers and sisters they had, or if they had a pet and what kind of pet they had and even sometimes with the pet's name was. They LOVED it. BUT--not a single girl, even the 13-year-olds, asked about boys. Is the latency period longer than it used to be? What's UP with that?</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Then, just as I was leaving the older woman came up with her five-year-old boy. He was a "Leave It To Beaver" outtake with huge blue eyes, total sweetness radiating from his every pore, and a Mets hat on.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">"Max says something to ask you" she said.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">"Will you read my fortune?" he said.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">[Oh, boy. Yikes. God? Help me out here.]</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I knelt down."Hi Max! I'm Miss Peri!"</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">"Hi," he said in a suddenly wee voice.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">"Max, I see with my magic powers that you LOVE baseball!"</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">His eyes got really big."Wow!" he breathed.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">"Well, you ARE wearing a Mets hat, Max. So that's not magic, it's just paying attention, which is really all I do."</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">He thought for a minute. "Can you tell me what my favorite subject is?" he challenged.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">" Math!" I shot back. "And you're good at baseball because you're really great batter and have great hand-eye coordination."</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">His mom laughed. "He just tested really high for that."</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Max looked down and blushed. "I AM a great batter", he admitted in a whisper.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">"And I bet you have so many friends, because you really care about other people's feelings and that's great."</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">"Yes." he whispered.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">"Max, you're going to have the best year ever. That's my prediction." I shook his hand and prepared to rise but he caught my arm.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">"Miss Peri?”</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">"Yes, Max?"</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">"Will I have children?" His eyes were big and his face was solemn. He really wanted to know. It was such an odd, unexpected question, that my eyes welled up.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">"Maxie, you can have all the children you want, you can adopt some too. But promise me something?"</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">"What?" He looked relieved, but still anxious.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">"Please don't get married until you're at least 11"</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I kissed the top of his head and ran out the door.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;">********************************</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;"><br /></span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;">For more information on what I do, and to book an appointment, please visit http://www.PeriLyonsIntuitive.com </span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;">Thanks and love</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;">P.</span></span></div>
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</script></div>Perihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12802277469585764886noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653199369867194096.post-26022197161974856862012-06-01T05:10:00.000-04:002012-07-29T15:06:26.887-04:00Last Letter From Stalingrad<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><u>Last Letter From Stalingrad, January 1943</u></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;">by Peri Lyons, c 2012 all rights reserved</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br /><i>(In 1976, a mailbag came to light in the archives of the US Army. It was filled with letters.<br />These letters were written by German soldiers. In 1943, the German army abandoned the soldiers it had left in Stalingrad, leaving them to die of exposure and starvation.. These letters were written by the men, when they knew no one was coming back for them.<br />I found these letters in a book, and, although of Austrian Jewish descent, I was moved by the words of men I grew up thinking of as enemies.<br />.This is a reworking of one of those letters.Who this man was, and why was he was "avoided by men", I will never know.-PL))</i><br /><br />Last Letter From Stalingrad<br /><br />Dear Monica<br />There are four of us here<br />For the first time I have friends<br />other than my friends, the stars.<br />(I couldn't look up from my telescope, Monica.<br />Not then. You know why. I was avoided by men.<br />So I looked at the sky.)<br /><br />This letter will take two weeks to reach you<br />It will all be over by then<br />Do not believe what you read in the papers<br />of what they say has happened here:<br />What are the judgments of others, to you and me?<br />Monica, the time is too serious now to joke:<br />You were always my best friend.<br /><br />I have always thought in lightyears<br />But I felt in seconds.<br />On this beautiful night<br />Andromeda and Pegasus are right above my head<br />I have looked at them for a long time<br />I shall be very close to them soon<br />My peace I owe to the stars, Monica<br />Of which you are the most beautiful to me.<br /><br />Around me everything is collapsing<br />An army is dying<br />Day and night are on fire<br />And four men busy themselves with their job<br />We measure temperatures<br />And report on cloud ceilings<br />Here too. I have much to do with the weather.<br /><br />No one, no one will come for us, Monica<br />There is no one to come<br />The clouds are rather low this evening<br />They make a pattern I have not seen before<br /><br />I want you to know my secret, Monica<br />No human being has ever died by my hand<br />I have never loaded my pistol<br />With live ammunition.<br />I should like to have counted stars<br />For another few decades<br />But I suppose nothing will come of that now.<br /><br />I have always thought in lightyears<br />But I felt in seconds<br />On this beautiful night<br />Andromeda and Pegasus are right above my head<br />I have looked at them for a long time<br />I shall be very close to them soon<br />My peace I owe to the stars, Monica<br />Of which you are the most beautiful to me.</span></span><br />
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</div>Perihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12802277469585764886noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653199369867194096.post-13204290953846319362012-05-19T18:19:00.001-04:002012-05-19T18:19:08.365-04:00perilyons' photostream<div style="padding: 0; overflow: hidden; margin: 0; width: 500px;"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/perilyons/7228597312/in/photostream/" title="" style="display: block; padding: 0 10px 10px 0; width: 75px; height: 75px; float: left;"><img src="http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8018/7228597312_0c332f0498_s.jpg" alt="" style="border:none; margin: 0; padding: 0; width: 75px; height: 75px;"/></a><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/perilyons/7225745926/in/photostream/" title="STA60096" style="display: block; padding: 0 10px 10px 0; width: 75px; height: 75px; float: left;"><img src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7094/7225745926_464947d375_s.jpg" alt="STA60096" style="border:none; margin: 0; padding: 0; width: 75px; height: 75px;"/></a><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/perilyons/7225548822/in/photostream/" title="P1010171" style="display: block; padding: 0 10px 10px 0; width: 75px; height: 75px; float: left;"><img src="http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5444/7225548822_726979d0cf_s.jpg" alt="P1010171" style="border:none; margin: 0; padding: 0; width: 75px; height: 75px;"/></a><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/perilyons/7225147032/in/photostream/" title="the sexy victorian lushness of an overgrown garden" style="display: block; padding: 0 10px 10px 0; width: 75px; height: 75px; float: left;"><img src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7084/7225147032_bab86ed8c7_s.jpg" alt="the sexy victorian lushness of an overgrown garden" style="border:none; margin: 0; padding: 0; width: 75px; height: 75px;"/></a><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/perilyons/7224722646/in/photostream/" title="because it is bitter and because it is my heart. Or possibly, a rhododendron." style="display: block; padding: 0 10px 10px 0; width: 75px; height: 75px; float: left;"><img src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7091/7224722646_6e8ae32519_s.jpg" alt="because it is bitter and because it is my heart. Or possibly, a rhododendron." style="border:none; margin: 0; padding: 0; width: 75px; height: 75px;"/></a><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/perilyons/7224664134/in/photostream/" title="when plants take psychedelics." style="display: block; padding: 0 0 10px 0; width: 75px; height: 75px; float: left;"><img src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7090/7224664134_9c5ac58bd9_s.jpg" alt="when plants take psychedelics." style="border:none; margin: 0; padding: 0; width: 75px; height: 75px;"/></a><br clear="all"/><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/perilyons/7224646424/in/photostream/" title="dark tree magic: fluffy division." style="display: block; padding: 0 10px 10px 0; width: 75px; height: 75px; float: left;"><img src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7097/7224646424_613264b834_s.jpg" alt="dark tree magic: fluffy division." style="border:none; margin: 0; padding: 0; width: 75px; height: 75px;"/></a><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/perilyons/7224628666/in/photostream/" title="Princess, Puzzled" style="display: block; padding: 0 10px 10px 0; width: 75px; height: 75px; float: left;"><img src="http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8011/7224628666_bbb90831a1_s.jpg" alt="Princess, Puzzled" style="border:none; margin: 0; padding: 0; width: 75px; height: 75px;"/></a><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/perilyons/7219749410/in/photostream/" title="wisteria, in kindness and in Brooklyn" style="display: block; padding: 0 10px 10px 0; width: 75px; height: 75px; float: left;"><img src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7239/7219749410_aabd6e8cd1_s.jpg" alt="wisteria, in kindness and in Brooklyn" style="border:none; margin: 0; padding: 0; width: 75px; height: 75px;"/></a><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/perilyons/7219567588/in/photostream/" title="the generosity vine, in summer" style="display: block; padding: 0 10px 10px 0; width: 75px; height: 75px; float: left;"><img src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7234/7219567588_532309d81c_s.jpg" alt="the generosity vine, in summer" style="border:none; margin: 0; padding: 0; width: 75px; height: 75px;"/></a><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/perilyons/7219382308/in/photostream/" title="f5cce414-dd6e-42bd-88f1-181d853e26a9" style="display: block; padding: 0 10px 10px 0; width: 75px; height: 75px; float: left;"><img src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7224/7219382308_51aa76201d_s.jpg" alt="f5cce414-dd6e-42bd-88f1-181d853e26a9" style="border:none; margin: 0; padding: 0; width: 75px; height: 75px;"/></a><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/perilyons/7219211026/in/photostream/" title="meadowlands from a train window, sunset" style="display: block; padding: 0 0 10px 0; width: 75px; height: 75px; float: left;"><img src="http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5323/7219211026_92fd47e232_s.jpg" alt="meadowlands from a train window, sunset" style="border:none; margin: 0; padding: 0; width: 75px; height: 75px;"/></a><br clear="all"/><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/perilyons/7216718908/in/photostream/" title="the best laid plans..." style="display: block; padding: 0 10px 10px 0; width: 75px; height: 75px; float: left;"><img src="http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8017/7216718908_19b4b23d7b_s.jpg" alt="the best laid plans..." style="border:none; margin: 0; padding: 0; width: 75px; height: 75px;"/></a><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/perilyons/7216714244/in/photostream/" title="35536284530001311_LkGetQfX_b" style="display: block; padding: 0 10px 10px 0; width: 75px; height: 75px; float: left;"><img src="http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8162/7216714244_bf2599f951_s.jpg" alt="35536284530001311_LkGetQfX_b" style="border:none; margin: 0; padding: 0; width: 75px; height: 75px;"/></a><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/perilyons/7216714182/in/photostream/" title="whimsical window" style="display: block; padding: 0 10px 10px 0; width: 75px; height: 75px; float: left;"><img src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7092/7216714182_e4ec88e9eb_s.jpg" alt="whimsical window" style="border:none; margin: 0; padding: 0; width: 75px; height: 75px;"/></a><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/perilyons/7216700486/in/photostream/" title="6e43fda3-a691-424f-af69-8dc380d4b107" style="display: block; 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padding: 0 10px 10px 0; width: 75px; height: 75px; float: left;"><img src="http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5111/7214227198_1257e5ff90_s.jpg" alt="" style="border:none; margin: 0; padding: 0; width: 75px; height: 75px;"/></a><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/perilyons/7214226592/in/photostream/" title="" style="display: block; padding: 0 10px 10px 0; width: 75px; height: 75px; float: left;"><img src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7089/7214226592_71bc36e885_s.jpg" alt="" style="border:none; margin: 0; padding: 0; width: 75px; height: 75px;"/></a><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/perilyons/7214226142/in/photostream/" title="" style="display: block; padding: 0 10px 10px 0; width: 75px; height: 75px; float: left;"><img src="http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8149/7214226142_264df2820f_s.jpg" alt="" style="border:none; margin: 0; padding: 0; width: 75px; height: 75px;"/></a><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/perilyons/7214225900/in/photostream/" title="" style="display: block; padding: 0 10px 10px 0; width: 75px; height: 75px; float: left;"><img src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7226/7214225900_8ae9c0d3a4_s.jpg" alt="" style="border:none; margin: 0; padding: 0; width: 75px; height: 75px;"/></a><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/perilyons/7214225590/in/photostream/" title="" style="display: block; padding: 0 10px 10px 0; width: 75px; height: 75px; float: left;"><img src="http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5444/7214225590_63c96b3c72_s.jpg" alt="" style="border:none; margin: 0; padding: 0; width: 75px; height: 75px;"/></a><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/perilyons/7214225162/in/photostream/" title="" style="display: block; padding: 0 0 10px 0; width: 75px; height: 75px; float: left;"><img src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7084/7214225162_3c4fd5acc0_s.jpg" alt="" style="border:none; margin: 0; padding: 0; width: 75px; height: 75px;"/></a><br clear="all"/></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 5px"><p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/perilyons/">perilyons' photostream</a> on Flickr.</p></div>Perihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12802277469585764886noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3653199369867194096.post-45602829721589349922012-04-25T11:16:00.002-04:002012-04-25T11:16:43.805-04:00Eddie Sebastian,Private Eye: A Cat Appreciation<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span><br />
<h4 class="post-title" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #262626; font-style: inherit; font-weight: bold; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.myspace.com/perilyons/blog/404030411" rel="bookmark" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #666666; display: block; font-size: x-large; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Read Eddie Sebastian, Private Eye">Eddie Sebastian, Private Eye</a><a href="http://www.myspace.com/perilyons/blog/404030411" rel="bookmark" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #666666; display: block; font-size: x-large; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Read Eddie Sebastian, Private Eye"><br />
</a><a href="http://www.myspace.com/perilyons/blog/404030411" rel="bookmark" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #666666; display: block; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Read Eddie Sebastian, Private Eye">note: Today would have been Eddie Sebastian, Private Eye"'s 25th birthday. This was written four years ago. Eddie left this planet in 2008...I think to go back to the planet he came from.</a><a href="http://www.myspace.com/perilyons/blog/404030411" rel="bookmark" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #666666; display: block; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Read Eddie Sebastian, Private Eye"><br />
</a><a href="http://www.myspace.com/perilyons/blog/404030411" rel="bookmark" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #666666; display: block; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Read Eddie Sebastian, Private Eye"><br />
</a><a href="http://www.myspace.com/perilyons/blog/404030411" rel="bookmark" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #666666; display: block; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Read Eddie Sebastian, Private Eye"><br />
</a></span></h4>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Ed is a twenty year old cat. He is the oddest animal I've ever known.<br />
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Ed is, in his own mind, many things: a Bon Vivant; a Devil With The Ladies, an Internationally Acclaimed Sculptor...also? the Official Greeter for my building, a Fighter of Dogs, and (as we shall see) a MAJOR Player on the New York Real Estate Scene.</span><br />
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In real life? Eddie is a skinny orange-striped eunuch with white eyebrows: his fancy fur is the <i>exact</i> color orange of the hip leatherette vinyl jackets worn by Starsky and Hutch-type private eyes in 1970's copshows. But Ed has <u>never</u> let reality bother him: when a pretty lady friend walks into my apartment, he strolls over to her, his inner Barry White Love Soundtrack obviously playing a seductive disco beat, and then, when she is seated, he lies on his back across one of her feet, the better to show off his belly. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"Hey baby", Ed says.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"Betcha never seen nothin like THIS before, huh? I think you wanna be my Lady NOW, am I right? I know I am, darlin. You...are my Forever Lady. ....PET me."</span></div>
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And, indeed...the Ladies go crazy over him, proving yet again that confidence is <u>everything</u>. One pretty lady friend of mine, the glamourous TamTam, actually stitched Ed a heartshaped red pillow- stuffed with catnip!- AND, with the words "I Love Ed", embroidered on the front in white cursive script. I was touched. Ed never said thank you. But he loves his comfy token of devotion: s</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">ometimes he uses it as a pillow, sometimes as a toy... but sometimes? I find it under the bookcase, because Eddie likes to make it clear that no woman can own <u>him</u>, baby. He never made no promises. He is a free n easy swinger. He is his own man. Or would be, if he was a man, rather than, say, a relatively minuscule quadruped with orange eyebrows, and an ego the size of Detroit.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">*****************************************************<br />
Some years ago, my friend Adam, an artist, asked if he could borrow Ed, the better to deal with a sudden Mouse Problem in Adam's studio. I said, "Sure." So Ed went to live there for a while, spending his leisure time </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">intently watching the artist paint and sculpt. Obviously, Ed took notes, because one night we walked into the studio, to find that Ed has made his own, site-specific sculptural art piece: he had surrounded the cat food tin on the floor, with nine perfectly symmetrical piles of "homogenous found materials."</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">There was: one pile of cat fur fluff, one pile of wood shavings, one pile of dry cat food, and so on....nine perfectly round, perfectly identical (in size and shape) art piles , surrounding the cat food can in a perfect circle. It was, not to put too fine a point on it, the single goddamndest thing I've ever seen. Eddie trotted up to meet us as we entered, and led us to his masterwork, looking back every two seconds to make sure we were following him. When we approached it, he stood there with an attitude that said, quite clearly, "VOILA!"</span></div>
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If I'd been thinking straight, i would have photographed it and then found him a dealer and a gallery. By now, you might be reading, instead of this, a piece about Ed's current retrospective at MOMA.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">*************************</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Fast forward two years. By now, the artist friend (now my husband) and I, were living in Carroll Gardens. We had a lovely floor-through apartment ,with a landing that had an entrance to the apartment on either side: so that it was possible to go out through the kitchen door, on one side, mosey across the landing, and go straight through to the bedroom door on the other side. One day, Ed , in a spirit of adventure and inquiry, scratched at our kitchen door, so that he could go exploring. Finding himself on the hall landing, he went across it...and scratched on the bedroom door, opposite. We let him in, little suspecting what was to follow.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Eddie stopped short, upon entering the bedroom from a whole new perspective, and then his whole orange self, stiffened in astonishment. </span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"Hey!" his attitude said, very clearly ."You know what?? I have ANOTHER apartment, exactly like THIS one! Then he looked at us. "And you guys look just like those OTHER people I know! My OTHER servants! </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">This is AMAZING!!" </span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">He walked around the entire apartment, his tail a quivering question mark of dazzled discovery. He couldn't believe it. Here he was, only three years old, and yet ALREADY he owned TWO apartments in a pretty nice section of Brooklyn. AND , two more servants. This was GREAT!</span></div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Ed walked up to the kitchen door (which I'd closed) and scratched to be let out, then, did the same drill: walked across the landing to the bedroom door and scratched to be let in, and- once again!- was completely overcome with delight to find that he had...yes..THREE apartments! With ? Two MORE servants! Making a total of six! In a nice section of Brooklyn! God DAMN! And then he made the same inspection as before, with the same quivering, question mark tail....</span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">He was impressed. Self-impressed. Only three years old, and yet, he had accomplished SO MUCH. "What a genius i am," one could hear him thinking. It was almost audible. What was more than audible, was his purring, He sounded like a bilge pump. on steroids.</span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
Since it was a Sunday afternoon with not much else going on, I decided to see how many times he'd repeat his Voyage of Amazing Real Estate Discovery. The answer was? Eighteen times. Each time, he seemed progressively more chuffed. Each time, he repeated his tour of triumphant inspection. Each time, you could see him mentally trying to keep track of how many servants he had NOW. 18 apartments. 36 servants. And a market value of, oh...22 million? 24? That's 40 MILLION cans of Little Friskies! [Cat currency is a wee bit different than human's. Their values are much more specific.]</span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"> At the end of it all, Eddie turned around three times in a circle, curled up, and went to sleep...for sixteen hours. </span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Hey, real estate mogulhood is TIRING!</span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">He was a happy landlord. And, to be fair...he only raised the rent once...the day he decided that he needed a can and a HALF of Friskies, a day. But we scrimped and saved, and made do...and somehow? We managed.</span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">****************************************<br />
<br />
The day we moved into the aforementioned apartment on President Street, I was piling up boxes, Adam was haggling with the movers, and Ed was exploring the fireplace. Suddenly, I heard a "CLANG!" ...and a black cat I'd never seen before, went scooting into the room I was in, and hid under the couch. I couldn't understand where this strange black cat had come from. -And where was Ed? But when I picked up the noir stranger and my hands turned pitch colored, I got suspicious, and put the intruder under the bathroom tap: as the water ran, he gradually revealed himself to be a ginger cat named Ed, who had figured out how to release the thing on the fireplace that held all the soot back, and then got drenched in an avalanche of hundred year old cinders. </span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">A new identity: Master of Disguises. Cat of Mystery. Politically incorrect user of blackface. Blackcatface. Eddie fearlessly broke taboos. Of course the last taboo is a taboo because it's just a stupid thing to do, but Ed cared not. -I'm surprised he didn't wind up headlining in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, frankly.</span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">******************************************************<br />
<br />
For ten years, Eddie Sebastian, Private Eye, had a performance art ritual that was as ironclad as it was baffling: he did what we called "The Work." </span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">It started one night not long after we were married. At three a.m., a series of inexplicable, loud and bizarrely specific noises began issuing from the kitchen. I turned to my spouse. "Hey, wake up! I hear something that sounds like someone is tipping over a series of small marble busts of Napoleon, in the kitchen, honey!"</span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
Adam awoke, and listened for a moment. "My God, that IS what it sounds like. What the hell?"</span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
I got up, and, walking into the kitchen, switched on the light, to find Ed sitting there with a "Who, ME?" expression. His golden eyes were wide with completely spurious innocence. </span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">"Nothing to see HERE," he intimated. "And certainly no small marble busts. <u>Especially</u> not of Napoleon." <br />
Eyeing him suspiciously, I stood, irresolute, but his innocence convinced me, and I went back to bed.<br />
The next night, 3 a.m., we were awakened by what sounded like someone teaching hamsters to poledance.<br />
"Psst! Wake up!" I nudged my fella.<br />
He sat up, and rubbed his eyes, and listened for a moment. then a strange expression crossed his face. "Is there some sort of hamster strip club around here?" he asked.<br />
'It's Ed!" I hissed. "What is he Doing!"<br />
We listened intently for a moment. Then my hus's face relaxed. <br />
"He is doing...The Work."<br />
"Oh. I think you're right." I had to agree.<br />
"And...the Work Must Continue," he said, and started snoring.<br />
This went on for years. I thought it was just a folie a deux, that all married people had delusions about their pets, until a brother in law staed overnight i the study. In the moening, Pete got up and I found himsearching throught he trash.<br />
"What are you DOING, dude? I made you a nice breakfast, it's on the table, you don't actually forage for scraps, you know."<br />
He muttered "yeah, yeah.." distractedly. the he straightened up and faced me squarely. <br />
Listen," he said, "I could swear I heard someone building a small, dog-powered diriible last night." He looked defiant." I know that sounds crazy.But it was an inexplicable yet very specific noise."<br />
"Oh, THAT," I said, releived. "That was just...The Work."<br />
At that moment, Ed strolled by, tail in the air.<br />
"And, "I continued, "the Work..Must Continue."<br />
"Oh, okay, "said pete. "Then I want coffee."<br />
<br />
Many years later, after Ed parols the hallway here twice a day, and greets visitors by officiously showing them the many amenities of the uilding, such as the stairs, the floor, the stairs again and the place where I once dropped a platter of fried chicken (a day that will live forever as a golden memory for Ed), and after he challeneges the two pitbulls who belong to the nice lesbian postal workers on the sixth floor to a duel (thank god Susan, their main walker, has very good leash control), he comes back in, and after checking to see if there are any ladies aside from me, he sits in his favorite place. the inside of a the base of a wicker stool. It's round and perfect for an old guy to curl up in, and hecan also keep an eye on what's going on, in case pit bulls or Pretty ladies stop by and Action needs to be taken. <br />
These days, he's not as spry as he used to be. I noticed recently that he doesn't hear me when I say "Ed man, I'm home, pal!" and he can't hear the celestial sound of a can openin. Sometimes he falls over, but I always act like I don't see, and he gets up again and starts nonchalantly cleaning the one area on his bod he cleans, a ptch the size of a quarter near his right leg. Pointless, but apparently VERY important.<br />
He has to take medicine, and his eye is a little cloudy, and I think he might be nearing his last days, but he's proved me wrong before. But just in case, some nights I sleep in the floor, because he can't make it up the ladder to the loft bed, and he cries when he feels he is not getting his fair share of attention. he retired from the Work soe four ears ago. Except one night, when my friend Jennifer stayed over, a longtime Pretty Lady friend and admirerer or Ed's.<br />
As I was making coffe in the morning, she said, "Is it possible that someone was teaching mice carpentry here last night? I swear I thought I heard really tiny sawing."<br />
I asked, carefully, "What tie was this, Jenjen?"<br />
She tought for a moment. "Oh...maybe 3 a.m?"<br />
<br />
I smiled. The Master had come out of retirement. Like Sinatra, Like Streisnad, like he great masters before him, he always had one last tirck up his sleeve for his admirers.<br />
<br />
because..the Work Must Continue.<br />
<br />
And so I wrap myself in a blanket on the carpet, solemnly hand Ed his red heartshaped pillow, and we both settle down for a cat nap, dreaming of catnip, fried chicken, and...The Work.<br />
<br />
love from me and eddie <br />
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</div>Perihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12802277469585764886noreply@blogger.com1