Finally! New Year's Resolutions You Can Live With! Hooray!

Because I believe that the main reason people drink so much on New Year's Eve is because they already feel guilty about the fact that they are going to break every resolution they come up with, here is a new, improved way of listing one's intentions. So now you don't have to drink! And now you especially don't need that bottle of Veuve Clicquot you just bought. So just toss that over here, wouldja? Thanks.
Signed, Your Conscience.

For 2011:

1) I intend to tell everyone I have stopped smoking entirely, and totally absolutely do so. -In public. Except when I bum one off someone. Or have a cigarette I don't tell anyone about. -Which means, I guess, that my New Year's resolution is to continue lying about whether or not i smoke. Both to myself and others. Hooray! 

2) I intend to write a list of nourishing organic veggies to use in my upcoming weeklong juice fast, and then I intend to take the list to to the market, buy the veggies, then notice there's a special on my favorite breakfast cereal,buy that, and then get some soy milk to go with it,and maybe a couple of other things, like bacn, bacon is good, and then go home and feel guilty as the vegetables stay in the crisper drawer eying me reproachfully as they wither, while the breakfast cereal and bacon and Mallomars* are gone in a weeek.-Okay, three days.

3) I intend to make an absolute ton of money this year. But this time?  Legally. God, it will feel good to have to stop harvesting kidneys.  Besides: I think eBay's getting suspicious.

5) I intend to have a ton of plastic surgery and then tell everyone I didn't have any plastic surgery: that I just look great because I did a week long juicefast, and completely let go of all of my resentments about my relationship.-Which I guess means that, once again, my New Year's Resolution is to be JUST like Demi Moore! -Again.    (Oh, Aaaaashtoonn........)

6) I intend to just go ahead and tell people the truth: my cat is a Scientologist.- Okay. Now you know.

7) I intend to just go ahead and keep lying about my age, except now in a different direction. Dammit, I'm PROUD to be one hundred and forty seven  thousand years old.-It's the juicefasts. Right, Demi?

8)This year,  I intend to be able to come up with more than seven intentions. -Done!

Seriously, I am truly just kidding about everything on this list, especially the actionable stuff. I love and respect all of my exes, I believe women should age gracefully with self love and acceptance, and that smoking is bad for you and I never do it. I also believe that truth is what you make of it,and most of all I believe that both my parents and my exes' lawyers all read this blog.

Happy New Year, everyone! Thank GOD 2010 is over. Glad to see the back of you, Year of the Tiger. 

Next year is Year of the Cat, so everyone should probably start now on practicing both complete indifference and licking themselves publicly. Thank you.

xxxxooooo

peri lyons

peri lyons
Originally uploaded by perilyons

Peri Lyons is kind of like a NYC version of Edith Piaf, except tall, blonde, and rather importantly, not dead.

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Anniversary Poem: rough draft

anniversary poem:thinking about an apartment you painted a fresco of us, as "Orpheus and Eurydice" on the wall of, 1994, Greenwich Village

The problem was, we got our myths mixed, you and I.

You Orpheus, looked back , while I was  (wrongly?) singing;

And then that time you showered me with gold-  Danae!-

i loved that they were chocolate coins...the taste without the ringing.

And when we fought, we'd turn each other into trees:

Zap! Myrtle!  Daphne! Zap! The oak of Nimue! -There!

And we'd remain as trees and shake our leaves in angry glare

-But hey, at least we had SOME sort of belief.

Our lares and penates, homemade as they were, 

Were some relief.

part 2 (prediction: change)

The oldest myth of all is from gorillas: not exactly "told"

By them; (though silverbacks all are  raconteurs when old)

I read it at a zoo, a sign nailed to a "tree":

Where my friend (who is a goddess for a living)

took me as comfort for my poverty

The sign said: "Gorillas live in tribes; their tribal boundaries 

Are rigidly maintained; the only ones who travel troupe to troupe

with no trouble, fights or visas, and are the least forgiving
 of all the  social groups,

 "Females from 13-23, in human age." I read this carefully 

as though looking at a diamond, through a loupe.

Doing lines in bathrooms, behind red velvet creeper vines,
I dreamt gorilla "it girls", 13 to  23,

the wombs of whom: provoking, Che incendiaries

are criminals, all innocents. We"ll lay the blame on Time.

I was one of those "It Guerillas" once:

"We're REAL evolutionaries", we would sniff

our bright red bottoms and  Guevara tees distracting good gorilla family men. 

We'd shriek "As if!" and run away, displaying:

pretend to play "dismayed"- without being TOO dismaying. 

-And always, then...

Then

Part 3 1/2 (the missing link)

Myths to me

be half apology 

half warning

half shaman

half danger:

all love.

The warning that no love at all, is itself, a gift;

as much as the presence of love, that gift, is taken, 

Or not taken,

at command or whim.

The words of "yes" and "no" are, finally, Man's. 

Yes, you know. Him.

So when I skipped the flowery Greek translations

And bluntly was a stupid vain gorilla in a tutu, young enough and cruel

Preverbal, premyth but, uh-oh , somehow, knowing mythic endings:

I knew, someday, I'd be replaced in school

by the New Gorilla Goddess on the block, whose fecund abacus

Had fewer beads than mine now. -But? Now I  had learned to talk.

You showed me that nurture may be red in claw and tooth;

She showed you that an It Girl's always climbing

But then you found palette'd colors where'd you'd hidden truth :

And, Love, I found my real job, while resigning.

We were a self; we are a history.

We helped each other translate, draw, identity

Each

Goddamn

Not entirely gorilla free

Tree.

Happy Baby:

Anniversary.

peri lyons
from:

"Dawdle: Some Poems"  2010 copyright 

************************************

For Adam Cvijanovic, friend, artist, former husband with love Dec 29 2010

Merry Christmas, loves.

I am grateful for everything that happened this year: yup, finally got to that point. Everything. EVERYthing.

Voltaire, in "Candide", had a character named Dr. Pangloss, meant as satirical, who often opined that "everything happens for the best in this best of all possible worlds."

Since it's Christmas today, I'm going to go out on an optimistic limb and say I agree. And not even ironically. I believe that being with someone I loved more than I've ever thought possible, and then losing him, taught me more in six months than I'd learned in the whole decade previously. I learned how to take responsibility for my own actions; how to love someone when you don't love his/her behaviour; how to not say the first angry thing that comes to mind (mostly), but to take a deep breath and figure out what the real need is and how to communicate it lovingly; how important it is to remove all trace elements of "victim" from one's worldview--cuz there are no victims, just volunteers; ; how (apparently) not to be sick again, but to ask for nurture and attention instead if I need it; how to be more compassionate; and that envying someone for being 22 is simply silly,because I was 22 and had a DAMN good time being 22; now I'm having a damn good time being -thank God- NOT 22.

I discovered that people are kinder than I ever imagined possible; also that the kindest people can be cruel unexpectedly; I learned not to do unasked for favors for people and then reproach 'em for it; I learned that if people can be compared to pies, then we're all 9 slices Divine and one slice poop, and that's just how folks are.

My friends and family showed me love and support and infinite patience--but this year I actually really recognized and was grateful for it.

If you're reading this, I send my love, my gratitude, and my wishes for your best and most joyous and healthiest year ever.

Next blog will be funny. Honest. But for now? Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

love from

Peri