I miss working with you.

God, you were so good!
You were lightening fast!
Open! A natural!
Wondeferously wonderful!
Of course, everyone only has good things to say about you!
You were excellent!
Thank you for loving me. 
It will always be an honor that I was your lady.
Thank you for working with me. How lucky was I!
I am honored that I was your partner. 
I will miss you for the rest of my life.
I will sing you praises for the rest of my life. 

July 2011

Kids love to play. 

It’s summertime in the neighborhood. School is officially out and the kids run around expressing their newfound freedom with an unrelenting display of fireworks, bicycling, and fire hydrant aquatics. There seems to be a surplus of boys. There are some girls running around too- riding bikes, or roller blades or sitting on porches yelling at their brothers to come back and play with them, but their is an obvious difference in the ratio of boys to girls. It sometimes feels like Lord of The Flies- especially when it gets to about 90 degrees and  a dozen boys between the ages of 5 and 15 have congregated on a porch looking bored to death, their brains honey glazed hams. It’s that time in the summer when things get like this. Hot, idle, a growth spurt on the horizon, someone might die, or maybe grow six inches.

At night the action keeps going. In Bangladesh, it’s normal for children to play at night- to run through the street at 1 am. I like it. It reminds me of my childhood.

Fireworks have been going off since last Tuesday and there are kids riding around on cool circus bikes. Somebody’s making double decker bikes around here! Upon further investigation, I discover the bikes where initially made by a local artist name Doyle, he made a few double decker bikes, and then showed this other artist named Andrew how to make them, who then showed a few neighborhood kids how to make them, who in turn showed some other kids how to make them thus spawning a neighborhood filled with people on double decker bicycles. It’s awesome! It’s great to watch because the bikes are so high- it’s one frame atop the other, and so the kids are about six feet off the ground- definitely higher than a car. I rode one the other night, and the height you gain is definitely impressive, if not a bit scary. 

There are a lot of kids in the neighborhood. It’s nice. It’s entertaining. They’ve been lighting fireworks off all week. It seems like everyone has. I don’t think I’ve ever lived in a place where fireworks go off all the time. They are legal here. 

Today it’s 91 degrees. It’s hot. I sit in Liza and Richard’s living room with boob sweat and thoughts. We had a pretty good rehearsal today, and discovered some fun stuff. We presented some character etudes. I created a sex menu, and had everyone read the menu items. We then partnered and tried them out. It was pretty ridiculous, and great. We need to get a bit for a show pony harness- one that won’t break any teeth. 

It’s fun playing a prostitute. It feels quite natural to find the play in it. Maybe I was a prostitute in a past life. Who knows...

Or maybe I’m just influenced by the vibes coming off my street. The house two doors from ours is a brothel and a literal cat house. The house feeds the neighborhood cats. Today, when I walked past the house, there were at least six cats just chilling on their front yard, and for added emphasis a giant stuffed tiger has been placed in the topmost window of the house- its regal body hanging halfway out the window, its glass eyes greeting me from a block away.  This is a cat house for reals.

So here I am playing a lady of the night, a hooker with a heart of gold, a first class madam, your whore about town, and I’m living two doors down from a brothel that’s such a far cry from the myth I’m playing in.  Here is one of the oldest professions, one that boasts an impressive past in histories, mythologies, and religions, where there is something in it to be said of the freedom it afforded many ladies. I find it fascinating, and I just want to read more and more about this countries notorious past, but when I see my neighbors working the corner, looking tired, and full of drugs, I realize I only have my belief in the a soiled doves of the American Wild West- Madame Pearl Starr, daughter of the ‘Bandit Queen’, Libby Thompson aka Squirrel Tooth Alice, Dora Dufran, and the like to keep me from falling off this pedestal of privilege and power (with sexy consequences) concocted by legends and Hollywood. 

Today is the 4th of July. It’s Independence Day! It’s the official day folks say Happy Birthday United States and we are doing a Psychedelic Wild West Show in Detroit! Birthplace of techno, Eminem, coney islands, the assembly line, MoTown,  and... 

portal to the Psychedelic Wild West??? 

You betcha. 

June didn't happen.

The last day in May.

I have these cards up. They have quotes from Sri Chimnoy on them. I got them when I went to one of the vegetarian restaurants run by his followers. He was a guru. His restaurants are oddly ubiquitous. There are at least five dotting the N. American landscape in key places like San Diego, San Francisco, Chicago, New York, and Ottawa- which we all know is the capital of Canada. In NY there are two known locations. They are both in Queens. I've been to the one in Jamaica. I went with my boyfriend at the time, Jud, which is short for Judson. He was from the South. He was a freegan. I don't think you, and I ever really talked much about him, which I think is neither a good or bad thing, but probably a good thing. In any case, that's where I got the cards. At the guru's restaurant in Jamaica, Queens. That was about six years ago. I found them recently in a purse. The purse I most likely used that day when I went to the restaurant. I don't think I've used that purse since. It's a red clutch that I hardly use. It usually gets taken out for weddings, and formal events- small purse functions. It's old. Probably from the seventies. I think it cost five dollars. I like red. Going to eat at Sri Chimnoy's restaurant is not a formal event, so I don't know why I used it that day. It doesn't matter. Sri Chimnoy has good quotes. 
"Never depend on applause." 
I like that one. 
And this one,
"I tell my mind that it must never underestimate the abundant power of a disciplined life." 
and these two, 
one,
"Do not be afraid of tasting the bitterness of failure. Be brave! The sweetness of success will long befriend you." 
and two,
"Nobody is destined to be perpetually wedded to doubt and suspicion. Indeed, it is a matter of personal choice: doubt or faith." 
There are more. I have nine cards total. I think I took one of each. They were free at the restaurant. 
I recently ate at a location in SF with Jen, Gaia, and Mauricio. This restaurant did not have the cards, but they had a book of his quotes for sale. I'm glad I have the nine cards that I do. They also have impressionistic paintings of flowers printed on them. They're quite nice. 
I hope you're enjoying this as much as I am. I can't keep a straight face while I write to you about my Sri Chimnoy cards. 
This one is the funniest: (if we were to measure them from least funny to most funny...)
"Do not try to make a happiness-fountain. Just try to break your unhappiness-tower and then see where you are: You are playing in and with happiness-power."
A happiness-fountain is funny. What does a happiness-fountain look like? I like this quote. I like all of them, but I always picture a grand fountain when I read this one. The type of fountain you'd find at Versailles, or in front of some palace in a country that has or has had a monarchy. I picture such a fountain, and it's filled with furniture, and it has all this stuff hanging off it- like a chandelier. It's ornate, and busy, and spewing just a dribble of water, and it looks miserable. It need's some redoing- the happiness-fountain in my head. It's a disaster. I think that's a good thing. What also comes to mind, unfortunately, is the intro to the TV sitcom Friends- which, yes, I've seen, but, no, did not embrace or follow to its over-publicized, and probably anticlimactic end. Ok, that's unfair. I don't know what happened. It might have had a good ending. It's just that long running sitcoms usually end on a low note. In any case, the intro to Friends has a fountain with a couch either in it or right next to it. 

It's unfortunate that my imagination is corrupted by a sliver of overplayed simulated reality. I feel like it's going to be in there forever. I wish I could replace it with a memory of me and you. A memory I don't remember. That would be nice. 

It is raining reallly hard right now. So hard that I used three L's. It is beautiful. The sun is shining to the left, and the sky is open, while on the right it's dark. I like staring into the patch of bright sky, out to the left, where the clouds are illuminated. There are pink blossoms on the trees. The rain is slowing down. It is quiet now. It is still. 

I like cleaning bathrooms.

Although I know many people who dislike cleaning bathrooms, I find bathrooms to be rather uniform and easy to manage. The smoothness of tile, the porcelain details, the shine of chrome fixtures all have their allure. They are a part of something that definitely appeals to the lizard part of my brain. Bathrooms are cool, but can be changed to steamy if desired. It's by far the most acceptable place in the house where one can be naked, and completely indulgent. That's why I can understand when really indulgent people put T.V.'s in their bathroom. Not my choice, but I get it. I'd probably have a whirlpool in my bathroom, and a balcony.

The last day in April.

I want to write to you at least once a month. It doesn't feel right letting a month pass without a pointed introspection of you and I. Me without you. You and the moon. Old me and you. New me and you. Your birthday month was a busy one. Aside from you turning thirty in the sky, other stuff happened too. 
When I was a kid, I used to tell my teachers that I wanted to be a philanthropist. I didn't know back then that a philanthropist was essentially a wealthy person who gives their money away to animal shelters, little leagues, and free clinics. All I knew was that in Greek it meant a friend of the people, and that sounded nice.    

Garage bandit.

I wrote a song, and you're in it! It's short, but that's because I wrote it. It's a gospel-like song about the sun of God, but it's entitled Orpheus Prayer, not The sun of God Prayer, for reasons I will not go into right now because I should be having a phone meeting with your brother instead, and I'm procrastinating for no good reason. I want to write more songs. I like it. I think you like it when I write songs too. http://soundcloud.com/ciao-frau/tracks