Whoa. Apparently? It CAN Get More Random. Who Knew.

1) Botanicas are the last repositories of cheap amazing folk art. I regularly buy the "baths" and give them to friends, just because the art of the front is so crazygood. (image TK). Also, the love "perfumes"-with labels saying "Come to Me" and featuring pictures of a couple dressed in the style of the 1950's gazing swoonily at each other- seems to actually work. -The baths I can't recommend--the first and only one I tried was the "good Luck Work" bath. I had to get out of the bath to answer the phone (this was 1999, when people still had quaint handcranked landlines). It was temp job, informing me I'd been let go. So now I take showers instead.

Anyway-where were we?- oh, botanicas--which for the uninitated are Spanish santaria magic shops--are cool. So I walked nto one on Bushwick, where within ten minutes a very large woman was holding my hand and telling me I had just lost a love. I said, "well, not "just", and I'm fine now, actually." She said, persuasively and ungrammatically that I had lost him to a...MAN. 

I burst out laughing. "Um? No. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But? No. Trust me on this one. Nope. No."

She then tried to persuade me that I needed to pay her 700 bucks to have the spells taken off me, that, apprently had been cast by "other women"  who had abandoned all good sense (and, apparently, 700 smackers) because they were mad with jealousy of my beauty and kindness. Yup.

I had a moment in which all became blindingly clear-"of course! that explains EVERYTHING!" -and then reality reared it's reasonable head and I laughed and said "Um? i don't THINK so. Nice try, though."

Then I left. Despite the kabillion Christ and Mary themed images ,statues, candles, footwear, and sucking candies, the place had a whiff of the "run away now!!" about it. So? I did.

Still jammin' on those Magic Bath Packets though. Must post an image.

2) Every winter in defined (in my head only) by the coat I bought for it. The Winter of The Cool Inuit Coat With The Embroidered Polar Bears; The Winter of the 1970's NeoHippie Faux Suede Floorlength--but THIS--this is the winter of the Faux Leopard Swing Coat . -It's a big hit in Bushwick.
 I was buying a bottle of wine for a dinner party at the corner liquor store--I find the best wines are ALWAYS displayed behind flyspecked, bulletpocked fake glass--and while the guy was getting my choice (dialogue: Me: "What's your most expensive wine cost?" Him: "12.99" Me: "I'll take it"), a neighborhood guy whose breath was pure phosgene, swayed in my direction . He looked at my coat and said "Wha you have to kill tha' tiger for, lady!" and then looked at me and said "You're niice."

I was contemplating if killing tigers is a sign of a good personality, when he said "tigers is dangerous are YOU dang'ous?"

I said "Not yet", took my thirteen dollar wine-ish thing and sprung [sprang? springed?], like a faux leopard, off and into the night.

3) At a dinner party filled with interesting art/writing/music type folks last night (Happy Birthday, Handsome Mr. Riley!), many things were discussed. First, we discussed different forms of Buddhism . One of the guests was a very devoted Tibetan Buddhist, who had married his Wiccan wife in a broom jumping ceremony in the middle of a labyrinth. All I could think to say was, "and you're both jewish, right?" He said "Just me" and grinned. "We jumped over the broomstick and onto a glass. That was tricky."

I was just about to ask him if all of the wedding guests found their way OUTof the labyrinth, how could you be sure, did you have a checklist?- when my attention was diverted-okay, hijacked- by a discussion of what seems like a permanent trend in younger women: that of having laser hair removal in an, um rather intimate area. yes it was an odd topic, but people seemed to find it compelling.

One guy said his younger male friend was shocked when his new older girlfriend actually had hair there. (He got over, I guess, because they're now married.)

I was reminded of the story about John Ruskin, who had grown up with his erotic images being of classical nude statuary, famously smooth all over. (The statuary that is. Not John Ruskin) and whose marriage remained unconsummated because, on their wedding night, he was traumatized by finding he had married a nonmarble person. She later ran off with a painter and had 9 children, proving that Adler was right about the theory of overcompensation.

Someone suggested that no trend lasts forever, and these poor girls were going to get COLD down there eventually, and perhaps we should pool our money and start a merkin store. [Google it. I can't be arsed.I'm sorry] to be ready for when the tide turned. It was interesting how men over 40 were going "ergh--really?' and the women were outraged by the connotations -"great- paedophila Barbie, just what we need", one woman commented drily; but the men under thirty, all one of them, were perking up. "Well, I don't know.."he said. I quickly changed the topic by saying that, when I was little, I had asked my brother Mark what God looked like, and he told me "God looks and sounds just like Louis Armstrong", which made sense to me and still does. I asked the table )the people at the table that is: not the table itself) what other contenders could handle the job. People like Marianne Faithfull, Willie Nelson and the American Indian actor Graham Green were mentioned, but then someone said authoritatively "Everyone knows that God is Norman Mailer." [no she didn't know my past] and silence fell. "Yup" was the general agreement. So a toast was drunk, to God and Mailer and to having as friends people willing and able to run with a conversational ball.

And so to laundry. Dammit. Don't wanna. Oh well. The laundry is starting to pulse slightly, as well as glowing faintly green -and greeting me by name when I walk in- so I think it's Time.

TTFN. love Peri