as summer rolllllllls in....

tired. getting old. can't keep up.

but i love it. arthritic knee and all.

-little brother arrived tuesday and we surprised the whole hoosier clan. i have a newfound love for SURPRISES. i want to work them in more often into the rigmarole of life.

-saw Arabian Nights at Lookingglass Theatre. as usual, Mary Zimmerman makes theatre a painting-come-to-life. but I have to wonder, WhAt WaS wItH the FaRt JoKes?

-waited on John Hughes at work. I was like, 'Whatza happenin' hot stuff?' and he gestured his hands into L-shapes as if they were camera shots angling my face and pitched an idea to me about Pretty In Pink 2. don't tell Mr. T the husband but he does kinda resemble Duckie in that certain light....

-headed back to NYC in a few weeks. I plan to ride roller coasters, go to Coney Island Freak Shows, the circus, roller skating, walk across the Brooklyn Bridge, win a million dollars or two in Atlantic City and kick off my summer righteously in the three new pairs of shoes I bought last week.

-my little 14 year old cousin is coming to stay with me in July. from where? FRANCE! she doesn't speak english so je crois que nous serions attachees aux hanches. just too bad i don't have any vacation time left or much of a staff to cover.........

crrrrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeak <-----that's the sound of my old lady knee. another wild Friday night dans la vie fabuleuse de Nikki....

R.I.P. Marley 1993-2009

He was the silliest lil boy kitty. "Ask my older brother about his cat."

This little fuzzy outgoing black cat followed one of my brothers back to a party after leaving a bar and slept on his chest all night. The next morning when I awoke, still finishing up high school at the time, my brother comes in my room....Nikki, want a kitty?

The street kitty used to hang around McDonalds in our hometown where he was fed cheeseburger scraps and therefore went crazy anytime he thought he smelled Macdo. He was terrified of brooms and thunderstorms. He had a thick thick thick coat and when he would groom himself sometimes the gray hairs got stuck in his mouth so it looked like he had a little old man kitty beard.

Was he named for Ziggy or Bob? We don't really know. We just knew he was happy like a reggae song.

Marley never got along with the kitty I already adopted, Minga (1992-2005) so he stayed at my parents' house until just this last Tuesday where he died in the company of his human Granny and BooBoo, another black cat who traveled in the carnival before landing on the Indiana homestead.

RIP little Marley. The funny lil cubby/kitty all stuffed with fluff. Sweet sweet lil boy he was....

pulling a Madonna

Well, not THAT Madonna. Ca serait sacrilege!

But what I mean is that I am reinventing myself.

In a small way.

Kinda.

Well, it's more of the journey, I suppose, so it's not a Reinvention.

I am GOING BACK TO SCHOOL! Over the next few weeks I will map out the Big Plan. Going slowly, semester by semester, but I am moving into a new field of work.

It's such a lengthy, cumbersome, problematic, HAYWIRE kind of territory, but all the more reason for me to pitch in a helping hand.

The rehabilitation of those in crisis mode.

I refuse to say 'mental health,' because I firmly believe that EVERY SINGLE HUMAN BEING has an ounce of mental crises at some point in his or her life. If one cannot confess to this statement, then one is a liar.

I have been spending days with Grandmere. She is still frail. Was not healing from a back surgery and now going back in for another hip surgery. Her spirits are down. She does not want to talk about everything. But I love her. And I understand her....



My grandmere told me she started to look forward to going to the shelter during class when Air Raids alarmed because one of her older classmates used to play Blue Danube on the piano...

Bob Ross Days

The husband finished training in his new job and therefore is settled into his 3-12am shift.

I don't see much of him. For awhile. It's a lot to get used to.

Cooking for one, hanging out alone, sitting on the bus alone. Again.

But in the big grand scheme of things, more people are roaming out there alone than we probably estimate. I notice patterns in the behavior of several of my regular customers, and even among the folks who seemingly have incredibly active social lives. They tell me all of these wonderful grand plans and plentitude of activities to keep themselves busy, and I listen and listen and listen. "Really?" I think to myself....

I suppose for those with children this concept of being 'alone' is alien. To know you have an extension of your self, your creation, breathing life and looking always in your direction...perhaps solitude becomes a thing of the past. I do not know. Does it?

I look at my cat and she seems to say, 'Oh. Hey Mom,' as she slithers back under the bed.

But I know that I have overcome enormous struggles and have learned to cope with doubt, isolation, and all the nastiness that life's difficulties bring forth and I am stronger and wiser for it.


"I have my books
And my poetry to protect me;
I am shielded in my armor,
Hiding in my room, safe within my womb.
I touch no one and no one touches me.
I am a rock,
I am an island.

And a rock feels no pain;
And an island never cries."
-Simon & Garfunkel

In these times of 'isolation,' for lack of better word, I do turn to certain figures for inspiration. Particularly when you've gone through your phone list and left about ten messages for others who are busy out there doing other things.

See, when Bob Ross found himself alone with a canvas and a low budget television camera, he might talk aloud to himself and say something like this:

"Little more black, little more blue. And we'll just put that in using little crisscross strokes or--or little X's, whatever you want to call them. Whatever."

And in the course of 20 minutes, he'd have a new landscape to reflect upon.

What a beautiful man he was....

I want to get out my supplies now and invent.

"There."

il était une fois...

Je vais faire mes exercises ici. Je n'ai pas beaucoup d'occasion pour utiliser mon français, sauf les petits messages aux familles francaises par couriel. J'ai essayé un travail pour un bureau qui specialise en voyage european par train mais c'était quelque chose qui me fait vomir dans l'esprit...repondrant aux appels en anglais, en francais, en québecois. Peut-être si j'essayerai un peu plus fort le travail aurait un peu plus facile avec chaque semaine. Mais le téléphone? C'est trop difficile à m'expliquer sans l'usage des mains, le regard sur le visage, la langue de corps si tu veux. Et sans le mot ècrit, les accents ouvrent la porte d'une salle des gros problemes.

C'est dommage que mon pere et mes tantes n'apprendent jamais la langue de leur mère. Mais je comprende la situation trop bien d'être une jeune femme toute seule dans une nouvelle terraine. Je ne peux pas imaginer tout ça avec un mari, une grande famille avec les soeurs qui ont le même age de ma mère et les petits enfants. C'est le shocke culturelle...bien sûr. C'est normale. Et je pense que c'est quelque chose qui doit être manditoire. Les lois d'éxperience nous enseignent l'empathie.

Ma grandmère connait un univers d'histoires de sa vie, et je passe chaque mercredi avec elle en ésperant qu'elle me raconter. C'est le focus de mon nouveau projet écrit. Peut-être le plus important de ma vie. Et la sienne.

Et maintenant, en anglais...

I am doing my lil exercises here. I don't have a lot of opportunity to use my french, except for those little email exchanges with my french family. I once tried a job in an office specializing in European train travel but it was something that made my head vomit, answering calls (with one-hour hold times) in English, French and Quebecois Canadian French. Maybe if I had stayed with it a little bit longer it all would have become a lot easier with practice each week. But the telephone? It's much too hard to express myself without the use of my hands, facial expressions, or any kind of body language. And without having the written word in place, those spoken accents open the door to a whole roomful of problems.

It's a pity my dad or my aunts didn't learn the language of their mother. But I understand all too well that situation of being a young woman in a new, foreign land all alone. I couldn't image having done that with a husband ...and a big family with sisters the same age of my mother...and children. It's cultural shock, a normal human condition. I think immersing onself like that into a cultural shellshock ought to be manditory in life. The laws of experience teach empathy.

My grandmère holds an entire universe in her life story, and I've been spending each Wednesday with her hoping she will tell me one more and one more and one more piece of it. It's the focus of my new writing project. Maybe the most important one of my life. And of hers.

quelque chose charmant

Black Orpheus.

not only does this movie make me want to visit Brazil, but it also makes me want to learn Portugese AND join in a samba school...

musical interlude

one of my favorite songs of my life.
clever youtube interpretation.

Philadelphia cont.

It was a whirlwind day and we squeezed in as much as humanly possible in an 11 hour period before our bus took us back to 42nd St.

Philadelphia Museum of Art had some great pieces in its collection. A quick run whizzing past the Impressionists
galleries complemented all the stuff I've seen over and over back home at the Art Institute and glided through in Paris. Lots of wacky Marcel Duchamp pieces. And my favorite silly painting...that Joan Miro 'Dog Barking at the Moon.' I don't know why I love that one so much.



Of course it is common tourist tradition to run up the steps on the museum à la Rocky. Behold the bronze statue in the upper right photo. I bet that little girl posing never even saw the movie. Funny what statues make people do.

I would definitely go back to Philadelphia. It was a strange city to classify, as we had discussed with some student friends of my brothers over dinner that night. It has its history, but then it felt like Detroit in some parts. It had that fantastic food market (what was that called??), where you could order Amish-prepared apple dumplings or BBQ or, of course, cheesesteaks. But then it had as many homeless beggars as Chicago does, yet in a more concentrated area. I could only imagine Philadelphia's homeless population carries an overt disgust for its anthem of 'Brotherly Love' day in and day out. When traveling, there's always a lot to be told from the eyes of the city's homeless...

note to self: must watch that tv show people are always telling me to watch 'It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.'

Philadelphia

I had never been to Philadelphia before this trip. It awoke an urge to go visit our nation's historical towns again, most definitely. I was 4 when I did Washington, DC, but I sadly remember a Burt Reynolds film being shot in my grandparents' condo complex more than I remember being inside the White House...

Here I am in the wind (again) in front of Independence Hall, where the Constitution of the United States was signed in case you don't remember.

It's also two days before my hair was chopped by a student at bumble & bumble hair school in Manhattan. He did a good job, but I can't get it to look as cool as he did that day so I guess you'll have to wait for a shot of the new 'do...

Anyway, back to our nation's history.

Over there is the Liberty Bell. They had a strange modern museum building built around it, not at all like in Back to the Future. You have to go through intense security to get inside. Ryan (my brother) and I stood around it for a few minutes and had the giggles because we were the only blatant Americans standing there in the item of purest essence of our nation's history. There were a group of Indian families posing for group portraits in front of the Bell, some Greeks (I believe that was their language) doing some posed gestures for the camera, and a Chinese bus tour group making their way in as we squeezed our way out. It was interesting to experience. Here stood my brother and I, each 1/4 French, 1/8 Osage Native American, 1/8 Irish and 50% American Mutt, next to all of these other global identities. That truly is America in a nutshell.

More Philadelphia to come...

New York City, NYC, pretty mean when it wants to be...

it was a cold and blurry trip.

squeezed a lot in. but MAN was it windy. i felt like the animated Addams Family in an episode of the Flintstones, where the weather just seemed to follow them everywhere they went.

here I am posing near little brother's place on the upper upper west side, George Washington Bridge behind me.

some highlights? art museums, touring our nations history in Philadelphia, FOOOOD, the Strand bookstore, and the girl on the subway.

Ryan and I were headed home for the night on the A train, stuffed full of assorted cakes and ethnic meals and windblown beyond recognition. I glanced over to my brother sitting on my left and caught wind of a knitting project a few seats over, across the way. Knitting always catches my eye because I don't know how some knitters and crocheters can detail such intricacies on mass transit.

I looked up from the piece she was knitting and looked at the woman. I had to try and restrain myself with giggles. At least in the beginning. She was wearing a hat, that she obviously knit. It was complete with cat ears on the top. She was a tall and lanky figure, sitting with her legs twisted and intertwined with each other yet stretching into two seats. She had a pointy chin, thick glasses, and was holding her knitting needles about two inches from her eyes with a strange smirk on her face. Her handbag also had a cat's face crocheted on its front flap, resting on her sprawling pose.

I kept peeking back over to her to catch a better glimpse of her project, until my little brother caught me mid-turning-of-the-head and did a knowing gesture with his eyebrows and I just LOST IT!

It was at that moment I realised she was knitting a sweater for her CAT! I bursted out in laughter so hard and bellyaching and it wouldn't stop!

I quieted down after about a minute straight and breathed deeply.

Then I glanced back over and it started up again, this time lasting about 5 subway stops.

I just laughed and laughed and laughed until I was lightheaded and dizzy and I'd have to catch my breath.

Colombus Circle, expressing past the Central Park stops, 168th...the laughter just kept coming and coming and coming and I couldn't stop myself!

I thought the paramedics were gonna have to come and rescue me from asphyxiation!

I couldn't look at her.

So many character developments were racing through my mind.

She was like a character Kristen Wiig would have created on SNL.

She was the epitome of what happens when you live alone in a big city for much too long.

I was envisioning her having tea parties with her cats in a one-room Washington Heights studio apartment.

All I wish is that I would have been able to control my laughter long enough to snap a shot of her. I hadn't laughed like that in I-can't-even-remember-how-long-ago.