Stop. I'm Getting Dizzy

"There the wicked cease from troubling, and there the weary are at rest." Job 3:17

My original Asian BodyWork man who hung out on St. Mark's smoking Virginia Slims, with his over sized cream colored cordless phone in his back pocket, disappeared without a trace one evening.

The orange sign with ominous black letters was stamped to the window where the fish tank once stood. I stepped down onto the water soaked indoor/outdoor floor covering to get a better look.

SEIZED. For lack of proper paperwork.

Mmmm.

I bemoaned this loss for a good six months until the local Vietnamese boys brought their version of fast food Bahn Mi pork sandwiches on which I now patronize more than my cheap body rubdowns. 

Now, my new Asian BodyWork Man is just further down on the corner. 

 

And in my brief moments of serenity (this is all relative in a shared basement space with other massage recipients on 1st Avenue at rush hour) I sink into my paper towel covered pillow, exhale loudly, and listen to him on repeat like a worn out favorite 45 record....

Oh, you soooo tired. Ohhh you so tiiiiight. Oh you soooo tired. Oh you sooo tight.

Where I come from, we say you aint' just whistling Dixie.

What would become of your sanity, if you stopped the maddening merry-go-round?

A 72 Hour Workweek...In a Nutshelll

   It dawned on me in a dark, dank graffited tunnel on 155th and Riverside while the 40 mph winds blew off the Hudson River and into the chapped faces of the Carhart-clad Grips holding up light stands at the midnight hour,  that I wouldn't be able to recover from this week to a fortified enough state to form sentences, recall exactly what it takes to complete an eight-day hour drama, or to remember where and when time multiplied its forward progression.

My vague recollection of a fever fueled ending to the night looks something like this.....Lying on the floorboards of a 1990 gray Cherokee Jeep, hands zip tied to a dog cage,  with pouring "prop" rain on the windshield, and a Gaffer's perfect spotlight simulation of headlights hitting the hood of the car at the exact camera angle, as the Director measures the bounce of the chassis in believability beats.

The rest I leave to Moses who says it best....

 "Lord, you have been our dwelling place
 throughout all generations.
 Before the mountains were born
or you brought forth the whole world,
from everlasting to everlasting you are God.

 You turn people back to dust,
 saying, “Return to dust, you mortals.”
 A thousand years in your sight
are like a day that has just gone by,
or like a watch in the night.

 Yet you sweep people away in the sleep of death—
 they are like the new grass of the morning:
 In the morning it springs up new,
but by evening it is dry and withered.

 We are consumed by your anger
 and terrified by your indignation.
 You have set our iniquities before you,
our secret sins in the light of your presence. 

 All our days pass away under your wrath;
 we finish our years with a moan.
 Our days may come to seventy years,
or eighty, if our strength endures;
yet the best of them are but trouble and sorrow,
for they quickly pass, and we fly away. 

 If only we knew the power of your anger!
Your wrath is as great as the fear that is your due.
 Teach us to number our days,
that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

 Relent, LORD! How long will it be?
Have compassion on your servants.
Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love,
that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days. 

 Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us,
 for as many years as we have seen trouble.
 May your deeds be shown to your servants,
your splendor to their children.

 May the favor of the Lord our God rest on us;
establish the work of our hands for us—
yes, establish the work of our hands."

Psalm 90

Time In a Vacuum Called NYC

Three years is a long time.

Especially if you count the days by sunrises and sets.

If you count the changes of the tree outside my window.

If you numbered the subway trains and steps I trod.

It's a long time if you measured it by heaping, steaming, freezing, soupy, syrupy, and clumpy bowls of oatmeal choked down at obscene hours of the long, short, rainy, bitterly cold, blazing hot days.

If you weigh the days in how many bars of soap used to erase the grit, grime, stress and smiles off your face from a day a disastrous defeat or valiant victory.

The pavement pounded, the wine consumed, the weekly underwear washed...

Considering just how many streets treaded and avenues traversed to get to where I am now, its been a long time.

But to New Yorkers, these years are a wee story, a chapter in the saga of time well spent and terribly wasted.

I am a short-timer.


This morning when I realized I missed my three year mark, I jotted down on my script the above words while sitting on an apple box under the camera tent, sheltered from the freezing rain, in the heart of Harlem. And then I realized someone had thought these same thoughts before.*




*In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights. 

 In cups of coffee. In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife.
In five hundred twenty-five thousand
Six hundred minutes...

How do you measure

A year in the life?

Gracious Giver

“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me." Matthew 25:40

Mariska Hargitay bought the crew a Mud Coffee Truck for the bleary eyed morning and brought in Sushi Chef's for our 13th hour dinner on this snowy sixth day of work Saturday.

Proving she is what her friends and employees call her.

A heart with feet.

Hard To Please, Please, Please Me

The song that says it...

New York, I love You but you're bringing me down
New York, I love You but you're bringing me down

Like a rat in a cage pulling minimum wage
New York, I love You but you're bringing me down

New York, you're safer and you're wasting my time
Our records all show you are filthy but fine
But they shuttered your stores when you opened the doors
To the cops who were bored once they'd run out of crime

New York, you're perfect, don't please don't change a thing
Your mild billionaire mayor's now convinced he's a king
So the boring collect - I mean all disrespect
In the neighborhood bars I'd once dreamt I would drink

New York, I love you but you're freaking me out
There's a ton of the twist but we're fresh out of shout
Like a death in the hall that you hear through your wall
New York, I love you but you're freaking me out

New York, I love You but you're bringing me down
New York, I love You but you're bringing me down
Like a death of the heart...Jesus, where do I start
But you're still the one pool where I'd happily drown.

---LCD Soundsystem


And the video that proves it...

Forgive The Typos, My Hands Are Cold

Anyone that has worked on a television set will agree, background actor's antics far surpass the excitement a celebrity sighting can bring.
Take #36.                                                      
She showed up to set this 20 degree morning walking evenly on both knees, smiling. When she learned she would potraying a passerby lookie-loo at a crime scene at night, feet ay rom the East River for four heavy dialogue scenes blinded by the flashing police lights, she quickly twisted her knee in holding and become incapable of standing
 or moving for that matter . Number 36 then promptly called the set medic.
Had him skeptically wrap her incapacitated knee
Implored wardrobe to come to her, and insisted she would elevate it without delay.. those were her words..."Without delay."
Now, she sits in the warm corner, propped up on pillows, listening to her pocasts and racking up the hours.

I've seen this particular "patient" accomplish this scam two other times.

Hey, gotta make a living in this dishonest business somehow.

And Then There Were Five

"When a country is rebellious, it has many rulers, but a ruler with discernment and knowledge maintains order." Proverbs 28:2

November is fast approaching.

Are you paying attention?

I Have Multiple Dreams

"So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom."  Psalm 90:12

               “We must use time creatively.” Martin Luther King

Standing on a Brooklyn sidewalk in fleece lined waterproof rubber boots with two pairs of wool socks and toe warmers, I asked a 20 year veteran in the television business his respected advice on the next steps these feet should tread.

His reply calmed the fever pitch I'd reached in this painstaking pursuit of a career and the placement of my entire value within it.

"Start a family."

Try, Try, Try Again

"The heart of her husband safely trusts her; so he will have no lack of gain. She does him good and not evil all the days of her life." Proverbs 31:11-12

I've been taking the 30-Day Husband Encouragement Challenge.  Each day I apply an assigned scripture to blessing him and building trust. If I blow it, I have to start over the entire program.

I'm on my fifth day of repeating...

Day One:
You can't say anything negative about your husband . . . to your husband . . . or to anyone else, about your husband. Say something that you admire or appreciate about your husband. . . to your husband . . . and to someone else, about your husband!

Can you hold your tongue?

His Plan

"I think this is what you envisioned all along when you moved to New York City."


-my husband regarding the Law and Order television scripts laying on our coffee table.

The Misinformed Masses

"But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ." 2 Corinthians 11:3

I have done my best to steer clear of writing about politics as of late.
I've saved my vocal ranting while reading headlines on the morning commute where I yell and scream over the hop hopper's blaring $200 headphones and the Section 8 recipient talking on her bedazzled blue tooth about how the guvment's gonna snatch any raise at work she may get.

But this war on capitalism makes me so fucking mad I can't see straight enough to look all of these liberal Manhattanites who are paying the average apartment rent of $3,309 per month in their whining, crying, imbecilic little eyes.

There, I feel better now.

An Excerpt

"His first days in the city were like hyper vivid continuations of the urban dreams....Humanity coming from him at every direction. Andean musicians piping and drumming in Union Square. Solemn firefighters nodding to the crowd assembled outside the station house. A pair of fur coated ladies ballsily appropriating a cab hailed outside of Bloomingdales.  Tres hot middle school girls wearing jeans under their mini skirts and slouching on the subway with their legs wide open. Cornrowed ghetto kinds in ominous jumbo parkas. National Guard patrolling Grand Central with highly advanced weapons. The Chinese grandmother hawking DVD's of film that hadn't opened yet, the break-dancer who ripped a muscle or tendon who sat rocking in pain on the floor of the 6 train, the insistent saxophone player to whom Joey gave five dollars to help him get to a gig; Each encounter was a poem he instantly memorized."

Jonathan Franzen's Freedom

And an adequate description of my first few days here, three long years ago....

All To Him I Owe

"May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world." Galatians 6:14

Behold the Man upon a cross
My guilt upon His shoulders
Ashamed, I hear my mocking voice
Call out among the scoffers.

It was my sin that held Him there
Until it was accomplished
His dying breath has brought me life
I know that it is finished.

I will not boast in anything
No gifts, no powers, no wisdom
But I will boast in Jesus Christ
His death and resurrection.

Why should I gain from His reward?
I cannot give an answer
But this I know with all my heart
His wounds have paid my ransom.



*Happy Birthday to the King of Rock-n-Roll

My Tiny Rock

My husband fondly admired a brunette with long dark limbs on the familiar white sand of St. John. She wore aviator Raybans and her perfectly sculpted cheeks were kissed with just the right amount of sun. Her ringlets fell just past her bare shoulders and a white and tan polka-dotted silk tank clung to her body. Her shorts hit her tan legs mid thigh and moved with her every stride.

He complimented her. Really complimented her, like she was the one that got away. And 15 years later, she still looked as good and made him feel the same. She tilted her head with every flirtatious response.

She did look good. Great rather...and the stunning image before me was a flash from my past.

I stood on our beach blanket in turquoise Capri pants. The button had fallen off on our last warm weather trip and I hadn't had time to sew it back on. The waistband sagged, exposing my pasty white skin. I just watched.
They stood on the water's edge. He had his back to me.

"You really have kept it together," He swooned.
"I mean, so full of life. You, wow, you haven't changed."

She just kicked the soft coral with her bare feet as the breeze blew her hair and drew her top even closer, outlining two handfuls of soft breasts. The wind gave me a chill and I grabbed my cover up.
She shook the gold bangles on her delicate wrist. They seemed to catch a ray of sunshine that flickered on her face.
She was the furthest thing from cold.

Just wait until she has two of his children. I thought.

But girls like that never do. They hunt. And don't waste time building a den.
They still hitch rides on sailing yachts, sunning on the bow in their sequined bikinis, letting butter drip from their chins, throwing their heads back in laughter.
They are the simple ones.

Champagne and flowing skirts are their bills.
Flip-flops at the door and two wine glasses in their cupboard.
A Jeep that barely runs.
A career full of bar tabs and dinner specials.
But they are content.
Content in the greatest definition... to plunge into the cerulean Caribbean Sea without abandon letting the salty, silky water wash over them. And cleanse them of worry or want.

Settling down with the right guy, buying the perfect house, educating their children at acclaimed schools weren't even on their radar.

They share a gypsy spirit, a fighting sense of adventure, life filled with wonder, and the world at their fingertips chasing the horizon and soaking up the next best fun.

And here she was on this five mile island, putting down a tap root and being adored presently by my man.

Days Of Our Lives

I lie in bed this morning listening to the rant of a man whose drug trip has gone so wrong. He's running back and forth beneath my window violently screaming in an unclear language. He has been since five this morning. Since the sun came up, every now and then he points to his head and says, "Leave Me Alone." The NYPD can't be bothered, so the entire neighborhood is.
I just pray he falls asleep soon. And his head hits something softer than the frozen ground.

***

So Mariska didn't want to say a line. Two writers on set brainstormed how to modify the script. They threw out ideas. She shook her head.  I offered up my word choice. She took it.

Harry Connick and I talked Saints-Falcons football, magic tricks, and his gorgeous wife. He made an absolute outstanding first impression with crew proving that it doesn't take much to shake a hand and learn a name no matter who you are.

Ice called out with the stomach flu.

And my sweet Kelli gave me a music filled ride to my doorstep.

As Ice Cube would say...Today was a good day.

Rat-a-pooey

Rat-a-pooey

Dreams Vs Reality

Here's a list of items I said I couldn't wait to accomplish while on hiatus from the show.

Yoga

Swim

Outline Novel

See Movies

Sleep In

Finish Short Story

Run in Central Park

Now back to the grind...Here is the list of items I say I would be doing if I wasn't at work.

Swimming

Running in Central Park

Finishing Short Story

Sleeping In

Yoga

Seeing Movies

Outlining Novel


As West Indians would say Wh'apen?

It's All Too Much

"The purpose in a man's heart is like deep water, but a man of understanding will draw it out." Proverbs 20:5


Contrary to popular belief (Or unpopular.... some of my best posts have never been read) and proof on this never quite found a way to end blog, I am off to quite an impressive start to the New Year in my writing venture.

Day 5 of My Morning Papers. That's three free hand written pages of stream of consciousness upon rising for my eyes only.
 Before the bathroom.
And yes, before coffee.

I'm clearing the clutter in what I didn't realize was a hoarders mind. Dangerous. And not so pretty....

Worse, I'm extremely defensive towards every last item that spills out onto the paper.

My mission....to find my mission.

Or wait on the Lord to reveal it.

How's everyone else's new year pursuits?

Feelin' Alright

The New York tradition continues, an epic New Years Eve Gov't Mule Jam at the Beacon Theater.