2001-03-23

new item! ok well this week has been some events strung together with a minutea of minutes in between to catch my breath. there was this monday's amazing open mic. Where we had these two strange performance types passing out bread and fish to the audience, and then getting into a staged fight on stage, slapping each other with fake blood and gutted slimy little fishies.

then there was koki's storytelling: how he got handcuffed to the bathtub by the real crook nicknamed 'the west side rapist', and how his karate skills helped him escape and eventually capture the crook.

i'm feeling abstract because im so tired. last nite i went to see Cabaret. A Broadway show. With Casey. it was nice and fun and cute. there were so many old-er rich wannabees there. it was in studio 54, like the movie. The singing and dancing was great. Liza Manelli and Bob Fosse inspired. oh, right on, man!

and today my mother was here. Which is the real story, if there really was any here to tell. She came to 'look at art'. Well i took her to brooklyn in Williamsburg, just to show her a taste of art outside of disgusting SoHo. And we went to Peirogi 2000, and looked at works on paper, and totally hassled the staff. - 'We are looking for a large, horizontal piece, please.'

But it was endearing to see her so honest and so open to the stuff. The new york art world is cruel and hard to understand. Its fucked up. But they finally decided we weren't worth helping when they overheard her whispering to me,... "this drawing is $800!"

The meals were so good, we ate at this little joint called Bliss in W-Burg for lunch, and the AquaGrill for dinner. We had an array of Westcoast Oysters, and Swordfish (both of us) for dinner, with Shitake mushrooms, homemade gnocci, and a light orange sauce. She had Sugar snap peas, as well. and i drank a guiness, which decidedly isn't so collaborative with seafood, Me thinks.

Well we discussed my Dad, and my heritage, and Mom-Mom who is now in the Nursing Home. And this was all very grave and enlightening. I told her of my plans to make a storytelling performance, and I think i did a good job of convincing her it was for real. I've done a good job of convincing myself its for real. so now all i guess i have to do is go out and make it for real.

I am rarely a maker. i am more of a conversationalist. a debater, a diagrammer. i draw up definitions and finit-isms. i am a 'look - at - why - i'm - smiling' person. I am a performer.

I told her all this, and told her bluntly. It was all very good.

Again she asked if i was upset with her parenting. Have i forgiven her? yes, yes, and more yes,. . of course i have. its all in the past. things work themselves out naturally.

Don't you see that this whole repression has been lifted and has given me insight into the eastern beliefs that i now have come to. Death is not a matter. We all do the best we can. There i nothing else. We can sit down and read Dr. Spock's views on how we should raise our children, or Madoimeselle's views on how we should make ourselves pretty, and then we can worry about how we are not measuring up to those standards...

or we can just do what comes naturally, and most obvious, and most truly what is us. it is the gut.

and i told her finally in response to all of the troubles that she was having - that i thought it was not any small thing that the world is falling into capitalistic corporate overkill. No! this affects our daily lives, our family and ethical problems are all tied into it! We are sucking ourselves dry with over-advertising exposure, with talk shows that focus on the spectacle of another person's sorrows. We are killing ourselves softly with guises of pleasure wrapped in poisonous gold. We are enslaving the rest of the world to our merchandise, to making our merchandise, (our nike sweat shops and what have you), and the idea of being 'cool' (Which is really out of date -- it's much more important to be 'hot' these days, i think). And so we are also enslaving ourselves, and pacing ourselves so that we may never fall behind the clock, never let the stop watch get ahead of us.

oh! there are a thousand million grains of sand in the hourglass, and why are we counting Each One? We are becoming schizophrenic, neurotic. We have no joy. We are killing our joy.

So we then had some coffe for desert (me a cappuchino, and her a khalua liquor in coffe), and went on our way to the subway and the bus terminal, where i saw her off and she is off now still on the way to pennsylvania, or perhaps she is home by now, in New Tripoli at 12:15am this saturday.