beauty and weirdness

cosmetic surgery

It's Spring, and that means brighter light, less clothing, and much, much more flirting.
And it also means that even the most secure woman thinks, fleetingly, about paying lots of money to look better for all three of those conditions.

[Random note: I think Macy's would make a LOT more sales if the put Xanax dispensers in every bathing suit changing room. Or Vicodin. I'm not picky.]

Many years ago, the combination of having an unexpected day off and a taste for random adventures, led me to call a plastic surgeoun who advertised in the Post. [Advertising in the Post should have been the first red flag: Danger, Will Robinson!! as "Lost In Space" robot would say.] He was giving free consultations, and his office was a block from the museum I was going to. And I'm a weirdo. So I went.

The girl behind the desk had classic ethnic features: BIG eyes, BIG mouth, BIG cheekbones, and a little dot where her nose used to be. She smiled cheerily at me as I approached the desk with trepidation. She said "He's WONDERFUL! He did my nose! I'm so happy!"

She leaned confidingly in. "I know, you're surprised. Most people can't tell. But then he did myy mom and my cousin Sheila, and now we all look alike!"
I gulped weakly. "Didn't you look alike before? Being, um, related and all?"
A shadow crossed her face. "He'll see you now," she said crisply, and I walked in.

Dr X's office was like any other oldfashioned doctor's office: paper covered table, stainless steel trashcan opearted by a lever (this is important, hold on), and, on the desk, an oldfashioned doctor's bag. I couldn't IMAGINE why he needed that. He beamed at me, and said "Oh, you've come just in time!!

"I have? It's Tuesday." I was confused.

"No, no! Those naso-labial folds are getting out of hand!" He helpfully handed me a mirror. It had magnification. LOTS of magnification. Catherine Deneuve at 16 would not have survived looking in that mirror.
"I like to call them marionette lines!"

"You do?" I needed water.

"Yes, because--and this'll interest you, I saw where you are a cabaret performer--I'm actuall a ventriloquist! "

"You are?" Really needed water. And a valium.

"Here's my dummy!" He whipped out a picture of himself on stage, with a dummy dressed as a doctor. Little stethoscope, white outfit, the works. Disturbingly, the dummy looked like he was suffereing from a form of macrocephalia. I guess that was supposed to be humourous.

"I can throw my voice!", he announced, and walked over to the trashcan. Using the pedal, he made the lid go up and down, and made hois voice come out of it, saying "Hello, Peri! You got here just in time!"

"well, it IS Tuesday", I muttered, hynotized by the surrealism.

"So! he sat back down. "You need a brow lift, a partial face left, and a couple of other things we can talk about now. Mind if I se your breasts?"

I fled. I would like to say I handled it coolly, and stuck around for the free wine and cheese, but i didn't: I fled like Bambi at a gun show. All I could think about was tha, someday soon,while he was opearating on a patient, he was going to snap, and make Mr. Kidney have a fun and amsuing dialogue with Mrs. Spleen. There would be blood on the walls as they carted him away, screaming "Give me a trash can! I can make it talk!"

So now I age in real time, and smile when I see the "New You For Spring!" plastic surgery ads in the Voice, and getused to the fact that NYC is a city filled with an ever-arriving stream of the young and the gorgeous. I have marionnette lines. But I got no strings to hold me down, and i can quote Dickens, and on a good day I can turn enough heads to satisfy whatever need that is, and that's okay.

But please. No talking trash cans.

Ever.


PS: Did I mention, that at the time of this whole megilla, I was TWENTY-SEVEN?
27. And he said I needed abrowlift.

Note: the writer reserves the right to change her mind about this issue at a moment's notice.

Where's that Xanax?

A Brief, Chicken-y Encounter With The Abyss

I make the best chicken soup ever in the history of the Universe, and I'm modest about it, too. The problem is, I can't let anyone know what's in it. But you're you, so I can tell you: the secret ingredient is...Chicken feet.

No, really. I go down to Chinatown, and find a store that sells chicken feet. They're easy to locate, as there is usually a crowd of chickens in wheelchairs, picketing the place. I buy a passel (along with the two chickens it takes to make the soup properly), go home, and fire up the oven.

The first time i did this, i was still married. I was cooking away, and had tossed the footsies in the pot, and did something else for a while...then turned back . And then screamed. The feet had come together in pairs [no cracks, please], and were doing an amazing simulacrum of the "Praying Hands" trope, so beloved by cheesy sculptors everywhere. Truly, it was one of the most appalling sights ever. So i did what any normal, 29 year old woman would do...I raced into the hall and crouched there in sheer, abject terror.

My husband came home. "Ha ha, little lady," he said, or would have said if he talked like that, which he didn't or else i wouldn't have married him. "What seems to be the problem here?"

I gestured in a frantic way reminiscent of the early Zasu Pitts, towards the closed kitchen door. "Feet," I said. "Praying. -Scared."

He gave me an odd look, and marched in a manly manner, into the kitchen, where i heard a loud girly scream, and he came rocketing out to join me in terrified crouch position.

"NOW what?", he asked. We clutched each other, and whimpered, and waited for The End To Come.

Finally, we closed our eyes, inched back into the kitchen, and managed to turn the stove off. Eventually all was fixed, the feet were retrieved and buried in a special graveyard, and dinner went on. I made matzo balls with seltzer water-the secret o' fluffiness- and life went on, but I had to go get Audited by a crack team of Chicken Scientologists, before i could look at a spoon again without screaming.

And now, off to teach class...

love

xoxo peri

New York Stories: 4 AM.

     When you fall in love with a city, it tells you its secrets.

   New York is, for better or worse, the city I am in love with.

    Oh, I've had flirtations: Paris and I have a long standing affaire, but, not surprisingly, it doesn't want to commit; Rome and i have had some beautiful moments, but, being both beautiful AND Italian, it's seeing other people; and Sydney and I like to say "we're just good friends", but that time in the park when a three-foot-tall ibis with a scimitar where it's beak should have been, offered to eviscerate me if i didn't hand over my sandwich...well, that moment binds us forever. -Me, Sydney, AND the ibis. [Note to bird lovers everywhere: maybe it wasn't an ibis. I didn't stop running long enough to ask.]

   But New York has my heart.

   Maybe it's because my family got here from Limerick, Ireland, in 1832, and one way or another, never got around to leaving. Maybe it's because my family's history is inextricably intertwined with the history of New York: not in a big way, but in small ways that matter. I can walk around and see the house where three generations of my mother's family lived : the upright, now-Episcopalian, newly hyphenated (some of them, anyway) Knox-Robinsons. I stand in front of the townhouse on West 10th Street, and think about how the hero of the 19th Cavalry Brigade of NYC, also known as The Fighting Irish, came home from with a Congressional Medal of Honor from Gettysburg, and later, ran for Mayor of the City in 1876, on an Anti-Tammany Hall/Anti Boss Tweed platform. Since the Boss and his Tammany machine ran every molecule of the city back then with a grip that was ferocious, greedy and ruthless, I think Captain Knox got minus twenty-two votes. 
 Then, I can go to Fifth Avenue and 41st Street and see the grand Stanford White-designed "Knox Building", symbol of my lovely Mom's family's former glory. My profligate grandfather, on that side, sold that gorgeous gold mine of a marble property, for a song in the 60's: right around the time he burned a Mary Cassatt portrait of his mother, because he had "never cared for it.". [That sound you hear right now is me yelling, "Even if you hate art,someday you'll have a granddaughter who both loves art and could really use a trust fund!!", to handsome, improvident, dead Grandad.]
Or,  I can walk to 75th and Second Ave, and see the tiny hardware shop, that my (wonderful, New York born, Jewish) Dad's immigrant father, David, founded 75 years ago[ it's still there!], when he and my grandmother came here to escape the shtetls of the Ukraine. My grandmother had been a typist for a jail, in the "old country". Her desk overlooked the courtyard, where, every day, men were marched out and dispatched by firing squad. My grandmother was not exactly nostalgic for that, and loved her adopted home, where, instead of a steady diet of death and potatoes,  she could nibble marzipan, and dress up like a Chinese Maiden in order to better play MahJohnng with the other fair, fiftyish "maidens" of the Yorkville Jewish community. (So many other family places...but, that's enough for now.)

 Maybe I love New York so much, because so many of my favorite writers, artists and musicians have breathed their molecular selves lastingly into the air we breathe here now. Either born here: the Gershwins, Irving Berlin, Edith Wharton, Langston Hughes, Duke Ellington, Norman Mailer, among so many more; or self-imported treasures, such as WH Auden, Truman Capote, Josephine Baker, Carson McCullers...on and on and on.

If I walk the Brooklyn Promenade, I can hear Walt Whitman and Melville talking about the harbor; if I walk in Central Park, it's a Ludwig Bemelmans drawing. Uptown, I can hear Langston Hughes saying, "Life, for me/ain't been no crystal stair..."; downtown, I can hear Edna St. Vincent Millay murmuring:

"My candle burns at both ends/It will not last the night/ But oh my foes and ah my friends/It gives a lovely light," 
which is the unofficial creed of the young who flock here to have Life...before it has them.

  My personal city has celebration and loss, mourning and hope, and most of all, surprises. As a friend who now lives in Hong Kong, said wistfully, last time she was here, "The best parts of this city happen in minutes and years...and nothing in between." -Like most who are most astute about this town, she was born elsewhere. Some of the most passionate lovers of this granite gathering, have been from other, softer, better-natured places. Joseph Mitchell, who with passionate dispassion chronicled New York's eccentrics and day-to-day workers in books like "Up In The Old Hotel", was from balmy, half remembered Missouri landscapes. These live in his language, in his Southern, dawdling observer's awe of the city's zooming minutiae. The contrast makes both views more vivid, as smooth blue velvet brings out a diamond's most brittle glittering sharps.

   My personal city is sometimes literally personal. I can trace my years of being married to a great artist who worked, back then, as a mural painter, by walking into certain churches, theaters and the houses of the Great, and seeing my own face and body on the walls-and sometimes ceilings. I've been Goddesses, Maenads, angels, and some romping Renaissance nudes, or sometimes just a worried face in a crowd, whose inherited mongrelsy reflects, in her features, the hybrid vigor of this immigrants' town. I walk by a Chase bank on Fulton Street, whose dull facade looks vapidly out, expressing nothing...but whose granite mulishness, hides the place where PT Barnum's Museum once drew gasps of wonder from a constantly changing-but always aghast-audience of happily duped gapers. "See the Fiji Mermaid!" [Really a stuffed manatee.] "See George Washington's nurse!" [An African-American woman of incredible antiquity and dignity, sitting in a chair hardly less stiff-backed than she was.] "This way to the Egress!"-a joke on his audience, as "egress" is a silver dollar word for "exit", so the punters happily showed themselves out.

Two houses down from Barnum's jackdaw splendors, you could stop in the famous Cigar Store, and buy a smoke from a pretty girl, who'd throw in a smile as lagniappe. One such wood cured nymph was named Mary Rogers, and one day she vanished, to turn up in the caves off Hoboken as a forlorn bundle of rag-and-bone. One of her regular customers-an odd and dandified newspaper man with forlorn, agate eyes-was named Edgar Allen Poe. Poe was so intrigued by a life going up in smoke, that he wrote what was arguably the first detective novel, about the crime.  Out of respect for Mary Rogers (nee Lyons, and a Mather-descended half Yankee, like your humble correspondent), he changed the setting rather randomly to Paris, and her name to "Marie Roget". [Not the best disguised nom-de-homicide.] "The Mystery of Marie Roget" is a still a wonderful, "dread-full"read.

 Next to that was the first Knox Hat Store. Charles Knox had escaped the potato famine in Limerick (yup-we've come full circle-he was my great-times 5--granduncle), to apprentice himself to a hatter at 15, and open his store at 22. At that time, no man would leave his house without wearing a hat. It would have been as indecent as going outside without pants on...really. Hats were most often made from the pelts of the beavers John Jacob Astor got his start by trapping and selling. The beaver pelts were then treated with the toxic heavy metal mercury, which, if one is unlucky or unknowing enough to come in contact with, will poison your mind and then the rest of you...hence the expression "mad as a hatter." But Mr. Knox seems to have kept his wits enough to make a fortune, for soon "Knox Hats" had a bustling factory in Brooklyn, and his stores rivaled our modern chain stores, for ubiquity. Charles Knox made the hats for President Lincoln to wear to both of his Inaugurations. The second time around, the silk lining of the great man's top hat, was hand painted by Civil War widows. History does not relate, alas, what the paintings were of, or whether the widows' tears caused the pictures to run, tellingly, movingly, indelibly.

Fittingly enough, the great Civil War photographer Matthew Brady's photography studio, was upstairs. 

Next door, in a modest apartment, lived a customs clerk named Herman Melville, who liked to write in the evenings. "Moby Dick" was most likely written, about where the Chase's third ATM now stands...perhaps twenty feet up vertically. And the peripatetic and worldchewingly exuberant Walt Whitman, had a place around the corner. Poe's office was one block down. One wonders what the Cigar Store conversation, the talks over choosing a hat next door, were like. One does, at four in the morning, writing on a laptop, thirty blocks north of these lost stories. But not so lost after all.

Will end with a moment that distills my own wanderings, of daytime glittering/nighttime somber, sidewalks. It was 10:30 on a beautiful Mayevening. I was leaving the place I worked, late, and decided to walk home to the Village, to breathe and dream and gaze around in peace.

A song called out from a shadow, a low tango murmur on a boombox breeze. In an alcove in front of a building, where flowers nodded their small bright heads, were a man and a woman, evening-clad: he in a dark swallowtail tuxedo, she in a gown that shimmered like a waterfall of twilight satin. They danced the tango, to the music coming from the portable player set, like a conductor, in front of their secret stage. He led and she followed...bending, swaying, prowling like panthers, as I walked by and into my own dark unknown streets. The music followed me. It felt like a soft, lingering hand on my cheek, saying goodbye gently, reluctantly...and forever.

xoxoxoxox

peri lyons. c2012  all rights reserved  New York City 4:15 in the morning

Properties (A Poem for Henslowe)

  Note: Philip Henslowe (1556-1616) was an Elizabethan-era producer, entrepreneur and general theater maven, who is known to most of us through his diaries, and through Geoffrey Rush's portrayal of him in the film "Shakespeare In Love." 

  Recently, while reading a history of Elizabethan theater, I came upon his list of props ( or "properties) for the Globe Theater, around 1600. The list [see below] is, I think, a wonderful piece of "found" poetry, with its brevity, rhythm, and  tossing-about of names of normally "sacred" objects, in the most delightfully casual way.  -What follows that is a little riff from 2012 NYC. Enjoy. PL/NYC

Henslowe's List 

“One rock, one cage, one Hell Mouth.

One tomb of Guido. One tomb of Dido.

One bedspread.

One wooden hatchet; one leather hatchet, one Iris head,

One rainbow.

One little altar and one target.

Some evil foils. Three tumbrels. One dragon for “Faust”.

One Pope’s miter. One imperial crown.

One plain crown.”

   -  Henslowe, 1600

Property (in memory of Henslowe)             PL 2012

One New York apartment: Cage.

Hell Mouth. Tomb, and bedspread: all.

Tomb (for lighting), HellMouth (radiators);

And you should see the carpet in the hall.

One hatchet for my neighbor, who plays jazz;

One rainbow for gay neighbors, Hal and Chaz.

Upstairs. Iris, model: gives 
what little head she has.

She seethes and hisses. Off and on. 
Just like the radiator.

I hear her when at night to bed I crawl.

My bed’s the altar/target . This bed’s Faust.

It gives and takes, it bargains me for all.

My cat is Goethe, and the Devil’s mouse’d.

I’m trying to trade this tumbrel for a crown.

Like all of us, I give up now for later.

A backwards glance at thrones, and all fall down.

Down into Hell Mouth, cage and radiator.

The stagehands strike the props. They walk away.

It’s: just another script. Another play.

peri lyons 2/2012

Realistic New Year's Resolutions. And by "realistic", we mean, "Not realistic at all"

New Year's Resolutions 2012

1) I will not be 5'2".


2) I will not be Norwegian. -Voluntarily.


3) I will not do drugs. -Unless, of course, I can get them. *


3a) I will smoke more, gain that last ten pounds, and resist the temptation to go to the gym instead of napping.

4) I will forgive myself everyday. So I can do the same annoying thing again, only this time with "awareness", which apparently makes it okay.

    [note:   Addendum to people who say, "I KNOW I'm talking too much about myself," and then keep talking about themselves: 

"You're right. Shut up. Ask me how I am. Great! Thanks!]

           

Sheesh.


5) I will remember that all food has calories. Unless it's eaten standing up, or someone else is paying. Or it's after midnight, or it's your birthday, or Arbor Day, or possibly even Wednesday. -Whoa. Apparently, NO food has calories, then! Am PSYCHED!!!


6) I will not tell people I'm a vegetarian when what I mean is, "I eat vegetarians." .But, I mean, cows are practically VEGANS, right, man? So maybe being a vegan is, like, catching.

7) I will stop getting impatient with friends when they ask questions** like:

"But WHY did he do this? WHY? I just need to understand!"

Here's what I will say instead, with love and hardly any impatience at all:

"No. You don't need to understand. You need to get the fuck over it and move on.

"Perhaps, in the fullness of time, you will find out every single detail of why he or she, did this,or that.

"But the good news is, that by then, you won't give a shit. I promise."

Addendum: I will stop being impatient with people who expect any other human beings, to "be reasonable", to "make sense", or to NOT destroy his/her/their lives, by falling in love with him/her/them, at the wrong time in the wrong way. -And, sometimes, backwards.


Here's the thing:

People are crazy. We ALL are. And, people are also delightful, kind, funny and amazing.

-When they're not being fucking NUTS.

8) I will remember that "on sale" does NOT mean, "Yes!! This is FREE!".


9) I will return calls and emails within a day of receiving them.

Well. Maybe not a "day", exactly. Maybe a week. 

Ten days?

How does "eventually" work for you? Or, "eventually, maybe."?  -Gotta start slow.

10) I will live in the moment. I just have to figure out which one.

11) Anytime I feel like whining about something in my incredibly lucky life, I will go read about, say, life under Pol Pot's regime. Then I will shut up and be just insanely grateful, all the time, for everything.

12) I will do more volunteer work.-I mean, if the pay is right.

12a) I will continue to be open to what life teaches me and what the Universe is telling me. Even-okay, maybe especially-when it's not what I thought I knew...or not MY plan. Grrrrr. I will expand my thinking and spiritual life every day, not contact into what I already know.- This will still involve coffee. -Truckloads.

14) I will remember that every day I wake up, is a good day right there. (Trust me on this one, okay?)

15.) In 2012? To sum up? Will meet MORE amazing people, eat great food, stay in touch, be radically loving  (well, "radically loving" that hopefully stops short of "restraining order'); will listen; and get a shitload of plastic surgery. [Okay. Not that one. Just wanted to see if you were still listening.}

Will continue to lie about having read Proust, and ...and...Okay. Never be late again.


YOU, my dear, are going to have your best year yet. Your 2012 will be filled with friendship,

love, great food, health, massive amounts of plastic surgery, and, if you ask nicely, drugs. - No. Wait. Sorry. Those last bits were, um, typos. But everything else?

YES!

Love you. No, really. And Happy New Year!!

* Note: Despite what my sister-in-law insists on telling people, including random strangers and the clerk at Duane Reade, I do not do drugs. Nope- not ever! Some people are just naturally odd. true!

** Friends who are asking these questions usually ask them about 14,640 times, in the first months after a break up. Try not to hit them. instead, encourage them to drink more, especially if they're buying.

Oh, and if you're not me, ask them to get you drugs! ***

*** Oh for Heaven's sake. Just kidding!

Nostalgia For The Present

       Christmas telescopes time.


       As an adult, one Christmas becomes all Christmasses. You become who you were, in every Christmas past....The seven-year-old you that was delighted into awestruck silence by the beauty of the lighted tree, at five in the morning when you snuck down to see if you could actually catch santa; the eighteen year old you, being a bit mouthy, feeling impatient with these older people who JUST did not GET it, rolling your eyes at your parents, and antsy to go hang out with your friends; the you in your twenties, who almost doesn't go home for Christmas dinner because, well, your family will always be there, always...all of you laughing, trying to top each other's jokes, waving a turkey leg around to emphasize a point at the dinner table...and finally, the later you. The you who means to have time for your brothers and sister but you're busy, and time goes by fast, and they live so far away, and besides, they know you love them...the you who watches with loving trepidation as your elderly mother insists on taking the huge pan out of the oven herself; the you who would give anything, anything, to have five more minutes with the father you rolled your eyes at, so long ago.

    And since all Christmasses are this Christmas, because Christmas telescopes time, we get to keep all Christmasses as now. It's not about what-and who-we've lost. It's about having had the family, the friends, the comfort and joy; the seven year old inside of us who opens the box under the tree with the gift we REALLY WANTED, and in that moment, combines the joy of anticipation, the joy of possession and most of all, the joy of being KNOWN. Someone knows us as we know ourselves. Our secret wishes matter. Someone sees.

      This Christmas, for the first time, I felt myself lucky in the moment. Nostalgia for the present. YES, things could be better...but maybe happiness- actual happiness, as opposed to the IDEA of happiness-lies in knowing that we are so lucky, in so many ways, every moment. That things CAN'T be better, not in this moment. The best is THIS breath, the best is THIS hug, feeling my beloved Mom's frailty in my arms and knowing she's here NOW.

Maybe Voltaire's fictional "Dr. Pangloss" was right, after all, even if his creator meant him as a satire of fatuous optimism. Maybe Dr. Pangloss has his own revenge, two hundred years later: maybe, as he always said,
    "Everything happens for the best, in tHis best of all possible worlds."

love,
Peri









    

Christmas memories: Retail Division

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.
*************************
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:

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".
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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

After The Storm, It's A Pretty Shiny World

  I'll be darned...it turns out what I've been telling my reading clients all these years is actually true.


   I mean, I knew it was true, but was having a wee bit of difficulty taking my own advice. Metaphysician, Heal Thyslef! -So: while I was telling other people that the Universe/God/Spirit really DOES have our best interest in mind, and that the things that aren't working in our life, aren't working because we simply need to course correct...I was right.


A year ago, I was enfolded in pain, selfpity, and helplessness. A health scare, a bad breakup, and unexpected move or three...money worries, the kind of depression that says "oh, go ahead..stay in bed! You're kind of a big dope anyway, so why bother going out and taking risks?" Resentment--"How could this happen to me?"...Swelfpity..."I'm a good person, I don't deserve this"! and self-criticism.." I bet this wouldn't have happened if I'd gotten my roots done!' -I know...fun, right? The next word after these phrases is usually, "Bartender!"

  And then you do start to course correct, because no one can stay in bed forever.-Not alone, anyway. -And you have to look at what's broken so you can fix it, because you can't live the way you're living for another minute. So you make a decision to be happy and successful and loving. Even if it feels, when you're saying out loud during your worst misery moment, about as realistic as "And then, I'm going to climb Mount Everest in rollerskates! Backwards! In the nude!"

   The thing is...when you take one step towards the Light? The light takes a thousand steps towards you. Really. Truly. No backsies. Some part of you means it when you decide to give up an addiction to misery, victimhood and resentment..because that ain't the real you, mister. Or Sister. The real you--buried under all of that crap--is actually, naturally, like a flower that turns its face to sun as the sun moves across the sky. Our real selves always want to turn towards warmth, nourishment, love and joy.-It's a wee bit cheesy. But it's true.

   Now..the learning and change process is not pretty. Not fun. Not easy. Becuse before you have a field of daisies to skip through, you have to clear the field, take out the rocks, cover the big empty field in fertilizer, plant the seeds and then...wait for the suckers to grow. For a long time, it can look like an empty field covered in manure. Not inherently exhilerating. You weed daily, try and take out the rocks that sneak in (no one knows how. I personally believe they have little tiny legs.) and know that flowers eventually bloom.

     My own personal version of this was to just take action every day. Something. (I also am a chanting Buddhist..that speeds the process up.) After my relationship broke apart, and my best friend and my Dad died, and my Mom almost did, and I came back to my family to hear really terrible (and vastly untrue) rumors about myself-and lost my extended family because of gossip--there was a moment when I said "Okay. This sucks. I'm outta here." -Luckily, right after that, there was a moment when I decided that I could either go lie in front of a truck, or take my own advice and use everything-everything-as a damn lesson.


  Yeah. THAT was fun.


   But it was the only way out. So--if people are hurting you terribly with gossip, what's the lesson? Don't gossip ever, myself. Which led to my organization "StopGossipin'". I've got an ever growing board of advisors (shrinks and the like) helping us put together a curriculum about the power of choosing positive speech. And, if I didn't have any money because my fiance was very kindly supporting me? Put together my own business and make my own money. Done! (I LOVE being a businesswoman..and it turns out being psychic really, really helps with picking stocks. My intuitively-picked stocks have all gone up at least 10 percent!)  -If I'm jealous of someone because she's more proactive than i am? Turn envy into admiration, and become more proactive. If my identity seems tied up in my romantic partner's? Get my own identity, and glue it into place firmly with active self-respect and self-love. -Done, done and done.


   In the same way I always used to make myself feel better by doing for someone else, what i wanted done for myself (i.e: want someone to give you flowers? Give someone else flowers and watch their face light up. Etc.) , I had to look at everything i was complaining about, and turn it into a to-do list, essentially.


   It worked a treat. 16 months after I thought i was the most put upon creature ever, I actually DO see all of the seemingly "bad stuff' as blessings. After doggedly pursuing my dreams for the last year--and sleeping on people's floors and going hungry to pursue the dreams--I am seeing really lovely "daisies". I am making my own good money doing something I love and am good at; I can genuinely say I am grateful to my exfiance for having the bravery to know when something wasn't going to work;I don't feel jealous of ANYone, cuz I like myself just fine, thank you; I have friends whose love and brilliance lights up my world; and we'll just stay mum on the romance stuff, but let's just say I smile a lot these days. Ahem.


    I know this is the same template for recovery that one sees everywhere: make a commitment to happiness no matter what; take the necessary steps even -especially-when you don't want to; believe in asomething greater than yourself, even if it's nature and the cyclical seasons; and never, ever take a victim stance again. Keep your communications about others positive and loving or stay silent; work your ass off; love yourself; and, um, get out of bed.


Unless there's someone else in it.


That's all. This is a simple entry, mostly to express amazement and gratitude and joy. Thanks for reading.


love.
peri

"What I've Learned" - Lessons learned the hard way. But learned!

[author's note...who am I to be giving advice...? Um, no one. ...but this isn't advice:it's just stuff I've noticed from living, and written down on cocktail napkins over the years. I don't live this every day, but it's a good feeling to try. Thanks for letting me share what I've learned from falling down a million times...but always getting up one more time. -Eventually. love xo pl}


Greatest Hits: "What I’ve Learned" all rights reserved c Peri Lyons



"what i've learned'

1) Appreciate and accept people for who they are. Don't try and change 'em, or want something they can't give. They're giving what they can give. Enjoy it for what it is.

2) Trust your gut. If your head is saying "no, he wouldn't do that" and your gut is saying "but this is definitely what I'm feeling...", trust your gut. If a new job seems perfect but your gut is saying "NOOOOO!!!!", listen. Etc etc. Mostly, what you feel is happening? It's actually happening. Yup.

3) EVERYthing is there to learn from. How did you contribute to a situation in which you seem to be the pure and unadulterated victim? Okay, cop to it and then don't do that anymore. Usually, the bigger the "victim" you feel like, the bigger the lesson there is to learn.-Which doesn't take away from the bloody awful thing you just went through, but it gives it a much more empowering shape.

4) Have a spiritual practice. I don't care if you worship Kermit the Frog, do SOMEthing. Pray, meditate, chant "nam myoho-renge-kyo"...

5) Don't lie. -Just don't. It hurts you and everyone around you, even if you think you're doing it to be "nice." You're not being nice: you're actually being- um, how to put this tactfully- cowardly AND self serving. Being GENUINELY "nice" is respecting other people enough to be honest with them. Not lying seems hard at first, but then your life gets exponentially better. Besides, you will always get caught (if not at the moment, then-trust me-eventually) and you'll wonder why you feel subtextually awful even if you do get away with it at the moment.

6) Don't cheat. If you are with someone and meet someone else, be honest about it, and/or end the other thing first, before acting on a romantic impulse.Otherwise you've doomed both your chance for a real relationship with the new person, and you've also diminished your own greatness, for a time.

7) Share your strengths, not your weaknesses. No one wants to hear ALL your problems, not really. Maybe for a bit, but NOT all the time. Share your triumphs and joys more. Try bragging rather than complaining!

8) Don't overshare. Especially in a romantic context.

9) Learn to forgive. But don't pretend to forgive before you have. If you're nice to someone when you actually are still hurt, it just muddies the waters. Retreat until you've processed it. Or talk it through. If you can't forgive for a while, dont talk to em. You'll forgive AND forget eventually, then you can reach out. Or? not.

10) Don't make up stuff to torture yourself with. You can't know what's really going on in someone else's head or heart. If your beloved is now with someone else, and you are picturing their life together as one long feast of milk and honey, you may be right--but you are probably not. No one goes dancing down the flower laden path hand in hand singing show tunes together forever. -Unless there are serious drugs involved. -Get on with what makes YOU happy. Guessing about what's going on with HIM/HER, is a waste of time, because? you just can't know. Don't make up stuff to make yourself miserable about.- Besides, everyone turns into a human being (rather than an idealized Other) eventually, in a romantic relationship. She might be gazing at Prince Charming right now and saying "That whole crown thing? Really bugs me."

11) Get some exercise, eat good stuff, don't drink too much. Your mom was right. You'll feel better.

12) Look outward. Reach out to a friend or do some volunteer work. Amazing how good it feels to help.

13) Support your friends. lean on them too --but not too much.

14) Go to every party you're invited to.

15) Say YES. If someone says, for instance, "Do you want to go to East Harlem for the world's most amazing pastrami sandwich?", say yes, not "nooo, it's laaate.' Take reasonable precautions, but say yes to adventures. Fun is good. Pleasure is healing.

16) Keep an open mind. Not so open that things fall out of it, but open enough that you can change your thinking if new evidence presents itself.

17) Fall in love. If it doesn't work out, it hurts, but it's always, always better to love than not to love.

18) People tell you everything you need to know about them on the first date. Listen.

19) Don't gossip. That juicy story about someone else's perceived weakness/bad behaviour/meanness? Don't tell it. It ONLY makes you look insecure and mean. And if someone wants to tell you something? Change the subject. EVERYbody has something good about them you can point out, even if it's your exes new gf. Maybe she's beautiful and makes him happy. Isn't that what you want for people you care about? Don't repeat or start rumors...it's always comes back. Say something good. Or stay silent. Truly.

20) Trust me, karma exists and she is NOT a nice goddess to mess with. Err on the side of respect, kindness and honesty. It may not feel good at the time...but you will be happier, luckier, and healthier later.

19) Always have fresh flowers and perfume!!

22) Find pleasure in EVERYTHING!!!!

And 23) Please: Tell me what YOU've learned!

love and happiness

peri

http://www.perilyonsintuitive.com

Read more:http://www.myspace.com/perilyons/blog?page=3#ixzz13iD6xy9K

The Real, True Meaning of Love. This Time For Sure.

Author's Very Serious Note: 

     The National Enquirer recently printed a simply heartwringing true story, giving the details of a lawsuit filed by a disgruntled magician. It seems  the magician's young wife and assistant, "Bambi" (no, really...Bambi.) attended marriage counseling with Pastor Bob, a former former soap star. Bob  DID help the couple achieve closure. Unfortunately, Bob did that, by running off with  Bambi. 

The poignant note in this story, and the reason for the lawsuit, was this:

When they vamoosed, Bob and Bambi took with them-at least according to the details in the lawsuit--
the magician's--wait for it--

"Specially trained Kangaroo".

And so...a poem was born. Yes. Some things are so..so...well, amazing, that only Poetry can describe them. Deep, dark, heartwrenching poetry.

See below.

Thank you.

xxooo

  



kangaroo doggerel: a plea




How could you do

This to me, who

Has loved you so long!

Oh the disaster!

You ran off with our pastor

And that’s not all too!

When you ran, 
you took my heart

My money; most expensive art;

But:

What

turned my heart deep blue:

Was that you took-

You awful crook!-
You took

My Specially Trained

Kangaroo.

I see you now, you three-or two;

Just two, without the kangaroo

Or three, if you include him too;

Or four: my poor heart makes one more;

All of us-I mean all of you-

Are riding into a sunset, ooh.

Just you and him,

And me and you,

And a wellworn

 Didgereedoo*

And of course,

-That’s not a horse!

It’s way too cool:

it’s our specially trained

but-who knew? so cruel!-

     Kangaroo.

Now I am not a bitter man,

But dear it does seem cruel;

After all that I looked past,

To  do this last thing too:

[spoken:]

I forgave you

When you strayed with my best friend

My catchers’ mitt

A vat of organic peanut butter

Some Filipino acrobats

And a cockatoo-

Hey,

I thought it was just an amour fou!

But now I know better

Since I got your letter.

It was a picture of You.

With Bob,
that swine with whom you flew,

And worst of all,

What hurts of all,

It’s true-

In the middle of the two

of You

is .... Jim:

My Extremely

Specially Trained,

And Ungrateful,

HardHearted

Kangaroo!




By Peri Lyons, The Poet Who Understands. -Sort of. 2011

Cat Doggerel c peri lyons 2011

the cat                                    peri lyons c 2011

love leaves by the window;

love sneaks out the door.

i think Love must be somewhere near-

cuz it was here before...

the more you ask Love where its gone;

the more Love cannot say.

the more you tell it to come home?

the more it stays away...

when I was weeping earlier,

my Cat jumped from above

to comfort me: but now I know,

who Love reminds me of.

Thundering Lettuce and The Jane Hotel

Standing in the produce aisle of an Annapolis, Maryland "Safeway", I was surprised to hear a rolling peal of thunder.
Puzzled, I turned to my mother. "Is there a storm coming?"
A stockboy said, "No, that's just the lettuce."

Feeling that I must have missed a beat somewhere, I asked him, in a slow, thoughtful voice, "Why is the lettuce thundering, sir?"

He looked at me in a kind way, the way one looks at one who is obviously a few sandwiches short of a picnic. "So it doesan't dry out," he explained.

Oh. Well, that answers that question. Silly me. -As it turns out, Safeway has a built in "tghunderstorm" produce-refreshing system: it makes a loud thunder noise and flashes light, before spraying the veggies with a fine mist of water. No word on whether the playful performance artists who have taken over the fruit aisle, occasionally throw in a tornado, just to keep customers on their toes. I DO know that when Mom and I left the market, it WAS, in fact, storming outside, with golfball size hailstones in July. I don't know why I want to move back to NYC: the art scene is sort of better--and a lot more subtle -here.

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

Actually, even DRIVING to the market was an adventure of sorts. Mom and I were being quiet, when, out of nowhere, she said, "I want to look at meat."

I said, "I beg your pardon?"

"Meat." She said simply.

I paused. "Mom, you sound like you're in a Beckett play."

Mom remarked, "Actually, Beckett was more about turnips."

Another pause. Hard to know what to say to that.

I said, "If you'd like, I can go in and shop, while you wait in the car. I know you're not feeling great."

Mom said, "Darling, I don't think that's a good idea."

I thought for a moment. "You think I'm going to emerge from the store with a basket filled entirely with Froot loops, don't you."

Mom said, "And creamed herring. Yes, actually."

I said, "Let's not forget the turnips. Froot Loops, creamed herring, and turnips."

Mom smiled. "And meat," she said quietly.

We drove the rest of the way in puzzled, beckettian silence.

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

I do take the occasional foray into NYC, now that Mom is recovering nicely. It's exhilerating [that's code for "terrifying, but in a good way"] to start one's life anew at whatever age I last said I am. I stay at the Jane hotel, which I was madly in love with even BEFORE I found out that it's where the Titanic survivors stayed when they were taken off the Carpathia.

Here are reasons to love the Jane with a wholehearted passion:
1) If you go to "Getaroom.com", you can find a room for 80 bucks. Admittedly, the room will look like a small ship's cabin, and you will be sharing a dormitory style shower/bathroom arrangement, but I have whatever the opposite of claustrophobia is, and delight in small cozy spaces. Also, it certainly takes a lot of the work out of seduction: if you take your date up to your room, you are not leaving he/she/it with any doubts about what your intentions are: there is barely room for two people, and if you're going to be at all comfortable, it certainly won't be, by remaining standing. [Note: This is hypothetical, on my part. Yup.]

2) The staff wear 1920's style outfits that, counterintuitively, really hot looking. "Hot" as in "adorable"...just realized that, as it is 120 degrees Celsius outside today, that should be clarified a bit. They are also extremely nice people. I was especially fond of Zach, who looks a little like Tyrone Power, and Carlos, who has a devil-may-care gleam in his eye that offsets his utter professionalism very nicely. But everyone was adorable, which is NOT the norm in a hipper-than-hell hotel. I am even now secure enough, not to mind that the waitresses in the Cafe Gitane, downstairs, all look like Brigitte Bardot's younger, betterlooking sisters. [That's because i was in my 20s once too, and got enough hugely enjoyable mileage out being cute, that I don't begrudge anyone else theirs....and in fact, enjoy it vicariously.]

3) Somehow, the staff knew who I am, which is often more than I do, and would occasionally take me aside for a moment and ask earnestly about the various ghosts they'd encountered, or if they could ask a psychic question about their love lives. That was cute. And flattering.

4) The Ballroom is a GREAT bar, especially early, before the music gets cranked up too loud to talk. It's a little like taking your date into the ballroom in "The Shining", which has always been a fantasy of mine. It's also a great "adjustable" date bar...depending on who you're with and how you're feeling about him/her/it/them, you can maintian a mysterious degree of aloof allure by perching perpendicular to their couch, or you can snuggle attractively yet appropriately on the massive couches flung around as though by a very large and peevish toddler.

Coming back to the city tomorrow, to go see "Three D Hamlet" and then go haunt the Hamptons. Looking forward to seeing Tommy Mottola's new popup gallery "Valentine". Even more looking forward to lolling about with loved friends. 

Hoping you, beloved reader, are reading this while being lightly sprayed with cooling mists, while lettuce thunders in the background,
love
peri

the family you choose

"Friends are the family that chooses you."-Hopi Proverb

Swinging through New York before I move back here in September, and having the brilliant pleasure of seeing a very small number of the lovely and amazing people I am privileged to know. Because I'm doing a couple of things professionally-luckily, mostly with friends- I got to combine business with joy: always a gift.

(Am going to change all names here, as nobody asked to be written about.)

First and foremost, a shout out to my amazing pal Erik, a musician who has played with every legend from Dylan to Dave van Ronk, and is known as "the straight Cole Porter" for his ability to write witty yet heartwrenching songs. Every woman should be lucky enough to have an Erik in her life...he lets me sleep in his spare room, brings me delicious foodstuffs at the slightest indication of peckishness, and will pick up his guitar and play something astonishing in a casual way, to illustrate a conversational point. -Of course, I have to relinquish him occasionally to the giggling gaggles of ravishing chorusgirls who stop by and implore him to come tot Minetta Tavern...but such are the vissitudes of friendship. Hooray Erik!

Last night, I pulled on a killer red dress, that  a friend custom made after I expressed an interest in wanting to look like Tippi Hedren in Hitchcock's "North By Northwest". (Tippi's outfits in "The Birds" were pretty great too, but who wants to deal with holes made by pecking?)  Strode out into the NYC dusk. -It ain't easy to stride in 5 inch heels, so maybe "hobbled confidently" might be more accurate. Forgot that a (newly strawberry) blonde who is 6'3" in heels, attracts a bit of attention no matter WHAT she looks like, and wearing a fire engine red dress might have been a wee bit of a miscalculation. By the time I got to Union Square, I had had Cheesy 80's Song "Lady In Red" sung to me by bystanders, 14 times, a total that would rise precipitously and annoyingly by the end of the evening.

Swung by a dinner party with artist friends. Walked into a discussion consisting of many colorful threads, including what it was like for one couple to walk into a fabulous Hollywood party, only to discover that the main part of the party was taking place in The Nude Room. Ahem. Although both of these folks are physically beautiful, they also cling to the possibly oldfashioned idea that one shouldn't have to eat canapes wile naked, as the crumbs become a health hazard.-We also discussed the Medieval Fashion show at the Morgan, and how much we all want to own shoes that come to a 14 inch curly point at the end. Then our hostess brought out her two week old son, and we stared at him in a fascinated and hypnotized manner for 20 minutes, until he woke up and said "Quit it guys!" so we did. 

Off to the the Regency hotel, to meet with a goddess friend who is in the same field I'm in....if you're going to pay 20 bucks per glass of champagne, it better be deductible.-As it turned out, we didn't have to pay at all., because we both are exuberant humans who talk while waving our hands around, so we spilled three glasses of champers and the management finally gave in and comped us. Gravity...it's not just a good idea, kids...it's the law!

And so home to write a few champagne inspired emails. After re-reading these in the cold light of a morning [that brought new meaning to the phrase "The Wrath Of Grapes"] , I realized that I will now have to change my name, move to Borneo, and live among the gentle natureloving indiginous people, who rather importantly, don't have access to the internet. So this might be my last entry for a while, except for ones that are written on bark and thrown into the ocean. Which sometimes take a little while to post.

Yours, in gratitude, headache and joy,

Peri