tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31116332007-10-23T12:24:22.068-04:00main blogPatCHBlogger381125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111633.post-18276530174011363772007-10-23T12:22:00.000-04:002007-10-23T12:24:22.095-04:00Time Heals Some Wounds
Fifteen years is a long, long time. Fifteen years can seem like an eternity. But when someone is taken away from you, irrevocably and without notice, and when that someone is someone you love so very dearly, nights stretch on and dreams become strange, but fifteen years, they go by in the blink of an eye.
I miss you, Daddy.PatCHtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111633.post-41933539129367273152007-07-30T23:01:00.000-04:002007-07-30T23:10:51.085-04:00What Is It About Mothers?
What is it about mothers that they feel the need to keep information from their sons, that they feel the need to be self-reliant, that they demand their independence? "I wasn't going to tell you," my mother said to me tonight. "Because I didn't want you to worry." Greg and I rushed over to her apartment a few hours ago to check on her. She had taken a tumble earlier PatCHtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111633.post-30384396240615510082007-06-25T15:12:00.000-04:002007-06-27T14:03:56.109-04:00Thoughts on Pride Weekend
The city is quiet today, the day after Pride weekend and all its trappings. It certainly always seems that way the day after. Here in midtown, the rainbows and the glitter and the scantily clad revelers have been replaced with businessmen in their business suits and business ties rushing about with their stodgy business briefcases to close their lucrative deals. Weekend PatCHtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111633.post-50342285295120225952007-05-27T00:35:00.001-04:002007-05-27T00:35:28.742-04:00Happy Happy
To me.PatCHtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111633.post-75616254341575418682007-04-27T14:49:00.001-04:002007-04-27T20:04:21.936-04:00Drenched In Thought
From the stairwell on the seventeenth floor, I watch the quiet monotones of a thunderstormy Friday saturate midtown Manhattan. Down below, taxicabs roll along unhurried, their yellows dulled by the nebulous mass of grey high overhead, their wheels splish-splashing in the pools of water collected beneath. Umbrella tops glide by, indecisive circles on the pavement below.
PatCHtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111633.post-38099031279379508442007-03-31T09:54:00.000-04:002007-04-27T20:24:13.215-04:00Sorta
I'm still here. Sorta. Whaddya want?PatCHtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111633.post-79240347675686854842007-02-28T23:30:00.000-05:002007-02-28T23:45:55.075-05:00Reflections At Thirty-Six Thousand Feet
Butterflies and dragonflies and pillow-white clouds and setting suns. Another February come and gone and what really have we to show for it but a smattering of memories harvested for pensive nights and a few extra wrinkles collected at the corners of our eyes? I watched this evening a tiny insect jump off the leading edge of a jet engine and get immediatelyPatCHtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111633.post-1170041031875756722007-01-28T22:23:00.000-05:002007-01-31T20:11:15.696-05:00Fort Lauderdale
"And your boyfriend, he won't be angry?"
"Of course not," I said. "Why?"
Oswaldo cupped my chin gently between his thumb and middle finger and lifted my face away from the light. "This," he said, and he touched with his index finger a spot on my exposed neck two inches below my left ear. "Here."
I looked at my reflection to where Oswaldo was pointing and giggled. Oswaldo PatCHtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111633.post-1167632072045667532006-12-31T23:13:00.000-05:002007-01-01T01:15:42.486-05:00Here's to Hoping
Last day of the year, wondering during a brief emergence from twelve months of hibernation, from twelve months of madness, from twelve months of mayhem: how can so much change so fast, so completely?
And really, no, really: where has my 2006 gone?
Here's to hoping 2007 brings peace to troubled minds.PatCHtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111633.post-1163906602449655832006-11-18T22:23:00.000-05:002006-11-18T22:56:11.110-05:00Grüss Gott
Frankfurt, Heidelberg, Munich, Innsbruck, Vienna. Greg and I have been traipsing about Germany and Austria the past eight days by train, little more than our overloaded backpacks and train tickets in tow and the merest hint of what to do when we arrived to wherever it was we ended up that day.
We flew in to Frankfurt last Friday and we've been seeing most of the countryside by train,PatCHtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111633.post-1160419388235183932006-10-09T22:42:00.000-04:002006-10-15T00:19:32.826-04:00An Autumn Undressing
There's a scraggly old maple twenty yards from me that sheds a few leaves every now and then when the wind blows. She's not a particularly handsome tree, and her leaves aren't as beautiful as her neighbours', but she stands alone in the autumn landscape and busies herself for Vermont's winter and the long sleep ahead. She stands alone in a clearing away from the woods, facingPatCHtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111633.post-1159314064413889162006-09-26T19:40:00.000-04:002006-09-26T20:25:58.970-04:00Ang Dendi Lama
I climbed into his car late Sunday night, exhausted and spent as one can be, and slumped gently into the soft, plush backseat. The window was cracked open and the cool night air swooshed in as he drove off. The skyscrapers of midtown Manhattan slid quietly by.
"Where you from, sir?" he asked.
"Excuse me?"
"Where you from, sir?" His voice was gentle and excitable and pitched a PatCHtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111633.post-1157759901523068542006-09-08T19:51:00.001-04:002006-09-13T22:07:17.620-04:00Jetlag in the Land of the Rising Sun
The view from twenty-three is lovely. I never really noticed it until just now, the past week having gone by in such a whirlwind blur of sleep-deprivation and maniacal rushing about. From twenty-three you can see dozens of red and white cranes, their necks tilted at impossible angles over new construction, over the building facades with kanji, with hiragana, PatCHtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111633.post-1155500022475283842006-08-13T16:13:00.000-04:002006-08-14T20:58:11.723-04:00Second Thoughts
I spent the past few hours in front of the keyboard typing a message about life and love and anger and disappointments, about misplaced affection and misunderstood emotions, about living and loving and being alive and being loved. It was time I should have spent at the office, time I had planned on being there, time ill-spent being controlled by the various pent-up emotions that PatCHtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111633.post-1153857747321640882006-07-25T16:02:00.000-04:002006-07-25T16:17:29.780-04:00Lebanon Conflict
With the conflict in the Middle East hitting its fortnight stride, I sat thinking over the weekend about my first experience meeting someone from Lebanon. It was late in the summer of 1997 and I had been in New York a mere few months when one particularly sultry Saturday evening I found myself standing in line at the tiny hole-in-the-wall, just under the train tracks, a little PatCHtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111633.post-1151093020915284362006-06-24T10:00:00.000-04:002006-06-24T10:03:48.023-04:00Tokyo Drifting
And then, my boyfriend, he was like, he was like on the phone, and--chew chew chew--and I just got off the phone with him, and he was like, oh my god oh my god I just saw the Fast and Furious movie--chew chew chew--you know the Tokyo Drift thing, you know it was like so cool, and all my boyfriend wanted to do--chew chew chew--all he wanted to do, because you know how, like, how PatCHtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111633.post-1150949881146387492006-06-21T11:17:00.000-04:002006-06-22T14:18:36.773-04:00Private Dance
Tonight on the Queensbound E, I watch out of the corner of my eye two men sitting across from me. They are both the Harley types, bald heads and handlebar moustaches, eyebrows furrowed and frowning at everything and nothing in particular. The taller of the two sits with his legs crossed, daintily and just so, and is reading from a tabloid of some sort, occasionally scowling into it PatCHtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111633.post-1148751303853584932006-05-27T13:34:00.000-04:002006-05-30T14:39:11.216-04:00That Time of the Year
Thirty four spankings a little after midnight, plus one, as I understand it, to grow on. I didn't know about this American tradition until today, but yep, it's that time of the year again.
Happy happy, me.PatCHtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111633.post-1144177874995204192006-04-04T14:10:00.000-04:002006-04-07T13:23:38.296-04:00Disjointed Thoughts on a Fickle Spring
I stood at the window near the stairwell this morning, sipping slow coffee and watching the monotones of a winter recently retired reemerge in the faces of colleagues around me. High above, a tired sun tried to break through muddy gray clouds without consequence, and pedestrians travelled about their way, unhurried. Midtown was, as midtown sometimes is, PatCHtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111633.post-1143515471104760882006-03-27T21:22:00.000-05:002006-03-28T11:11:53.036-05:00Sleep-Sneezing
Sometime last night, in the middle of deep, deep sleep, in the middle of a dream or two about nothing I now can recall, sometime between one and six in the morning, I sneezed. Twice. It's a bizarre thing, this sleep-sneezing, and something I'd never before done. The first sneeze woke me up, and I opened my eyes. "What the..." I thought, and before the completed sentence could PatCHtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111633.post-1142988681170431902006-03-21T19:50:00.000-05:002006-03-27T21:09:08.906-05:00Baker's Dozen, Minus the Dozen
Rushing through a Dunkin' Donuts, somewhere between here and there, a pre-dinner snack to hold off the grumbles, I point to the lone chocolate torus sitting quiet and desolate on the shiny wire tray.
"That one, please."
"It's the last one in the tray; I'll give to you, just to you. On the house."
He flashes a smile and waves his hand, self-assured in his PatCHtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111633.post-1139285870659063582006-02-06T22:15:00.000-05:002006-02-11T20:46:41.800-05:00Sudden Dance
I run run run down the stairs and into the subway, wrapping my scarf tight about me and hurrying out of the bitter cold when I see him tonight, all dapper and handsome in his tuxedo, shirt crisp and starched and oh so white against black. He strides towards me and away from the train, perhaps an E, perhaps a V, maybe from one stop away at Rockefeller, maybe from all the way downtownPatCHtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111633.post-1138081260005469662006-01-23T23:48:00.000-05:002006-02-10T17:05:37.073-05:00The Next Train Will Take You There
Tonight on the train platform I am waiting for the Queensbound E, my iPod playing quietly into my ears when a woman comes up to me, panic-stricken and wide-eyed and gesticulating wildly. She has that demented look about her, the look that betrays a tiredness so often seen in the city, one so often seen in the murkiest depths of winter when clouds obscure suns PatCHtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111633.post-1137473516154335442006-01-16T22:51:00.000-05:002006-01-17T09:47:55.740-05:00Weekend Road Trip
We're back in the city after a long weekend away, exhausted and utterly spent from all the driving, from all the walking, from all the eating, from all the cold.
We started in southern Vermont, skiing Mount Snow on Friday in fifty-degree sunny and spring-like weather and then braving the rain and fog Saturday morning for a spur-of-the-moment road trip to Montreal. It was a PatCHtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111633.post-1137104372765861012006-01-12T17:19:00.000-05:002006-01-13T10:17:25.936-05:00Goodbye, Pain in the Neck
The first time it wasn't too bad, just a wham-bam-thank-you-sir the Wednesday after Thanksgiving and I was out with little more than a minor out-of-body feeling. The second time was yesterday, and that was a little tougher.
I lay face down under the live x-rays, my back naked and feeling exceptionally vulnerable under the glaring white lights as the doctor, a PatCH