I'm so proud to be a part of Bill Popp's benefit at R Bar for the American Heart Association. Every year for the past TWENTY SEVEN years Bill has put on a benefit on behalf of his father, called the Daddy Tapes benefit. It has become a local music institution, and I'm excited to be working the door for this show.
The famous guitarist of the Patti Smith Group, composer, producer, author, music historian, compiler of the legendary Nuggets series, and all-around great guy Lenny Kaye will be playing; that's reason enough to go to the show if a good cause and eight (!) other fun bands aren't enough inducement.
R Bar
218 Bowery (what 3rd Ave becomes below St. Marks Place/Cooper Square)
between Prince & Spring Sts. (a block and a half below Houston Street)
on the West side of the street
6:30 PM to ? (at least midnight, and probably later)
Wednesday, March 6, 2013
Wanted: person-walker
Soon it will be Spring. People will be out and about even more than now, and I have to get myself back out there too.
I used to depend on other people going with me to walk, and to that end I fantasize about putting an ad in the local foreign-language Penny Saver-type rag saying:
My other choice is to invent an invisible friend to walk with me. My last invisible friend was French (with a Parisian accent, no less!); this time, the odds are he'll be Korean. The good news is I get to work on my foreign language skills; the bad news is it's cheating, because I should really be doing this by myself with no outside help, real or imagined. Ah, well ::sigh::
So here's my ad for the local invisible friend Penny Saver:
I forgot to mention that the lack of intellectual stimulation over the past year has also been a factor in my decline since the loss of my teacher. I miss those conversations. Hopefully my new invisible friend will be the best conversationalist ever! Yeah, I know it's all imaginary, but I don't actually expect a real human to answer my ad.
Oops, 5:30 AM; time to finish watching my kdrama and catch a bit of sleep. 안녕히 주무세요; 사랑해요, 친구. (I'm sure my invisible friend can read 한글, plus I wanted to show off my new typing skills ㅅ_ㅅ.)
I used to depend on other people going with me to walk, and to that end I fantasize about putting an ad in the local foreign-language Penny Saver-type rag saying:
Wanted: person-walker
Just like walking a dog, but no running and no picking up poop. I can't pay you money, but as an energy exchange or barter I will help you with your English language skills. Learn proper pronunciation and grammar for the low, low price of taking a lady for a walk around the park for an hour or so a day.
My other choice is to invent an invisible friend to walk with me. My last invisible friend was French (with a Parisian accent, no less!); this time, the odds are he'll be Korean. The good news is I get to work on my foreign language skills; the bad news is it's cheating, because I should really be doing this by myself with no outside help, real or imagined. Ah, well ::sigh::
So here's my ad for the local invisible friend Penny Saver:
Wanted: person-walker and invisible friend
To take me for walks around the park, to accompany me as I run errands, and to love me, encourage me, and motivate me to get my ass in gear. Multilingual a plus, and intellectually stimulating conversation is a huge plus.
I forgot to mention that the lack of intellectual stimulation over the past year has also been a factor in my decline since the loss of my teacher. I miss those conversations. Hopefully my new invisible friend will be the best conversationalist ever! Yeah, I know it's all imaginary, but I don't actually expect a real human to answer my ad.
Oops, 5:30 AM; time to finish watching my kdrama and catch a bit of sleep. 안녕히 주무세요; 사랑해요, 친구. (I'm sure my invisible friend can read 한글, plus I wanted to show off my new typing skills ㅅ_ㅅ.)
A lady named Ruth
Let's face it, I've been having a hard time. See, there's this lady named Ruth, and try as I might I can't communicate with her. Nah, let's not talk about her. I'm doing this quarterly review thing, and it has come to the forefront of my attention that I'm not in as good a place this year as I was last year. I can blame it all on someone like Ruth, but that's not the truth of it.
I've been reflecting, and I've got a lot to give thanks for. Between a teacher that I used to have when I lived in the country and the teacher I had when I returned to the city, I've grown more in the last few years than in a bunch of others combined. I'm so much stronger in so many ways; I have more confidence in my abilities, more assurance of my strengths than I ever used to, and I can acknowledge it without feeling as if I'm committing some sin of pride.
That being said, I've fallen far behind where I was last year. I was just beginning to become confident enough to do the "coffee on the front steps in the morning" thing, and I felt quite sure that with the work I was doing with my teacher I would achieve my short-term goals. That didn't happen, not simply because my amazing and wonderful teacher was no longer guiding me in my path, but because my teacher's replacement never provided me with anything close to the same kind of guidance. I feel as if I've spent the last ten months or so pulling pills off of an old sweater rather than running laps around a track. Weird analogy, right? Okay, here's a better one: picking nits slowly and carefully off of one hair at a time, when what I want to do is shave it off and get on with the important stuff like running around the track. Yes, it's ultimately helpful to remove all the nits from my head; but at this pace I won't be lice-free for another five years, and in that time five years of my life will have been lost and gone forever. I can't wait to live, I need to do it NOW, and rehashing old emotional shit and picking it apart down to the molecular level does nothing but make me bored, angry, frustrated, and fed up.
On the other hand, maybe I had to waste almost a year with this shit until I got fed up enough to do something about it. So, I'll write a letter to the gang explaining why I feel they've failed me (and I've already got a couple of drafts in my computer; I've been working on this for a while, now) and take the steps to finding myself a new teacher. I don't know if there's any way I can ever find anyone as good as the last one, and I'm sure a large part of my depression last spring was the heartbreak over losing him, but I've got to try. I need to be my own Prince Charming and save my own life, since it's obvious there won't ever be some other who'll do the saving for me.
That's a pretty sweet lesson, I think.
Peace
I've been reflecting, and I've got a lot to give thanks for. Between a teacher that I used to have when I lived in the country and the teacher I had when I returned to the city, I've grown more in the last few years than in a bunch of others combined. I'm so much stronger in so many ways; I have more confidence in my abilities, more assurance of my strengths than I ever used to, and I can acknowledge it without feeling as if I'm committing some sin of pride.
That being said, I've fallen far behind where I was last year. I was just beginning to become confident enough to do the "coffee on the front steps in the morning" thing, and I felt quite sure that with the work I was doing with my teacher I would achieve my short-term goals. That didn't happen, not simply because my amazing and wonderful teacher was no longer guiding me in my path, but because my teacher's replacement never provided me with anything close to the same kind of guidance. I feel as if I've spent the last ten months or so pulling pills off of an old sweater rather than running laps around a track. Weird analogy, right? Okay, here's a better one: picking nits slowly and carefully off of one hair at a time, when what I want to do is shave it off and get on with the important stuff like running around the track. Yes, it's ultimately helpful to remove all the nits from my head; but at this pace I won't be lice-free for another five years, and in that time five years of my life will have been lost and gone forever. I can't wait to live, I need to do it NOW, and rehashing old emotional shit and picking it apart down to the molecular level does nothing but make me bored, angry, frustrated, and fed up.
On the other hand, maybe I had to waste almost a year with this shit until I got fed up enough to do something about it. So, I'll write a letter to the gang explaining why I feel they've failed me (and I've already got a couple of drafts in my computer; I've been working on this for a while, now) and take the steps to finding myself a new teacher. I don't know if there's any way I can ever find anyone as good as the last one, and I'm sure a large part of my depression last spring was the heartbreak over losing him, but I've got to try. I need to be my own Prince Charming and save my own life, since it's obvious there won't ever be some other who'll do the saving for me.
That's a pretty sweet lesson, I think.
Peace
Monday, February 11, 2013
sleeping, dreaming, waking
I dreamed of you last night. There were several people standing around, as they do at art gallery openings and wine and cheese parties, although I can't remember what event was happening, or if there was one. I was over here, and I caught a glimpse of you over there, three or four depths of people between us. I just saw your face for an instant, and that was it. No conversation or anything, and it wasn't a major part of the plot of the dream, but you were definitely there.
Interesting; I hadn't planned on thinking about you for another couple of months, but you popped up sooner. Why? What is there to tell me? Are you reminding me that my work tanked after you left? Are you gently chiding me to get back on track? Easier said than done, with Ruth as my support system. I mean, seriously; how can I focus when my helper is more scattered than me?
I hope you didn't email me and think I ignored you; I haven't used my normal e-mail address for a year now. Too much Facebook crap filled my inbox every day, and since I couldn't figure out how to turn it off I just abandoned both of them. I use alliesbass now, but I don't check any of my accounts with any frequency.
As you see I stopped blogging here after my forward movement came to a crashing halt. I was doing a sex blog on another platform, but I haven't posted on that one in a month or two either. I've been spending an awful lot of time on Tumblr, reading a lot of manga, watching a lot of anime, watching lots of Korean and Japanese mini-series, watching lots of Korean and Japanese movies, and learning about things like non-binary sexuality and gender fluidity.
According to a bunch of people in the non-binary community, bisexuality is as rigidly binary as heterosexuality and homosexuality. There's a fierce debate going on at the moment that I'm fascinated by and very much invested in; it affects how I will want to label myself, and it's helping me take a deeper look at my orientation and how I see myself sexually. I am also getting used to the longer LGBTQIA, which stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered, Queer/Questioning, Intersexual, and Asexual. I'm not sure of Q for Questioning, because all the other categories (besides Intersex, which describes a condition, or rather a group of conditions) describe orientation. On the other hand it makes sense, because even at this stage in my life I'm questioning my orientation based on the (for me) new ideas of gender fluidity and non-binary sexuality. (It's not that my orientation has changed, it's just that my previous self-label may not have been completely accurate.) Also, Q for Queer isn't specifically about orientation, it's an umbrella term for all the other non-heteronormative sex/gender minorities. I think polyamorous folks would fit under that umbrella, for example.
Gee, look at me; I ended up writing a blog post after all. It doesn't really belong here (the paragraph above is the kind of writing I've been doing on LiveJournal) but it's good to let you know what I've been up to.
Studying the complexities of sex and gender has been and continues to be an interesting and introspective journey, so I suppose it fits in with the contemplative theme I was originally going for when I started this blog.
Sending my thoughts of peace and lovingkindness to you out in the ether, to you reading this blog, to you not reading this blog,
I am with grateful thanks,
Respectfully yours,
AH
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