lextopia

This stoop is in the West Village in NYC. It’s near enough to St. Mark’s Place, where I used to live, and so brings up a memory… Earlier in the day, Maninder and I walked down my old block, between second and third, and saw a beautiful open doorway with stairs all the way at the back of a restored building. We were both shocked to remember that the last time we’d each seen that door, the residence was a famous crack den. We called it “crack door.” Everybody did. I walked past it every day my senior year of college…

This scene is inside a sparse vintage clothing store owned, operated, and designed by two young women. They were both in attendance the Saturday I was in there and were flattered that I loved the decor. It was pretty spartan, but beautiful. Not so perfect that you know someone’s next gig is going to be interior design, but nice and classy enough to be comfortable. They had about five really cool antiquesin the place. Only five, or a few. This chair was one of them. Just sitting by itself being quiet and sweet. The chair had really nothing to do with the store. It was just clear that one of the girls had gone to a flea market or estate sale and fallen in love with it. She’d bought it without haggling, knowing it would match the mirror…

Walking up 5th Avenue during the Gay Pride parade this past Sunday was an unexpected joy. It was also unexpectedly emotional. I realized just how proud I am to be not in the closet. I never have been, but it was still significant to me to be out there on the street, among “my people” and feel so cleanly that I belonged to something.

To borrow a few words from Larry Kramer’s wonderful play, The Normal Heart, “I belong to a culture that includes Proust, Henry James, Tchaikovsky, Cole Porter, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Alexander the Great, Michaelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci, Christopher Marlowe, Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Tennessee Williams, Byron, E.M. Forster, Lorca, Auden, Francis Bacon, James Baldwin, Harry Stack Sullivan, John Maynard Keynes, Dag Hammarskjold… these are not invisible men. … If this were taught in schools … maybe you wouldn’t be so frightened of who you are.”

Priceless, priceless, priceless… My great pride is that Ms. Allende’s accent sounds like my mother’s, and that both of their kind of passion runs through my veins. How lucky I am. The takeaway? That feminism is alive and well. Call it what you like, but it is alive. We are alive. Enjoy.

morning-come.mp3

This is for Sarah.

Saturdays are the new Sundays. Although tomorrow, Sunday, as it will be raining hard all day, will be the old Monday. Monday, after tomorrow, will be itself, Tuesday will be about half of a Wednesday, Wednesday will be a Friday this week, Thursday will be Thursday cuz Thursdays ROCK!, and then Friday will again be Friday.

It’s a mad, mad, mad world, y’all. Try to keep up…

Awesome brother fixes my broken driver’s door.

Theeeeeeeee……LATCH!

Brother’s fix. Used to be a plastic clip there. It broke. This is a zip tie.

Lifestyles of the rich and… rich.

Braided plants.

Rock of hostas.

The Lilypad.

Lettuce in the round.

Horse fence.

Who you callin’ a pansy????

This is just pretty…

Rock of hostas, reverse view.

 End at the beginning.