Feeling blah today...

It's helping my writing though. I watched The Diving Bell and the Butterfly again. It's still brilliant. It made me realize that I'm stuck in my own Diving Bell here in South Florida. At least in New York City, you never had to walk to far to have something to do. Not having a car here is a handicap. Everything is so spread out and yet I feel like I'm suffocating. There's only so much sunbathing poolside a honky can take. Every freckle is a melanoma.

I inherited the hypochondriac gene from my Father. He would get a twinge of pain in his side and say it was his spleen. My Mother would get so angry. Especially since he was having a massive heart attack and refused to go to the hospital until he finished his cigarette. He sat outside the hospital in Michigan, in the dead middle of winter dragging his IV and his ass outside to smoke. That's dedication.

I'm missing them a lot lately. I would love to go see the revival of Bye Bye Birdie in New York City with my Mom. Even though the reviews were less than spectacular, it was one of our shows. Mom saw the original, of course, and said Janet Leigh was a tart in the movie version. We loved it though. My poor Father! I can't believe they will have been gone seven years on December 13th.

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately..." (Henry David Thoreau) I moved to New York for just that reason but it didn't turn out so well. I timed it with the collapse of America. Thanks George. I wrote that My New York Story piece because of it. Everyone keeps saying that we are coming out of it in every area except unemployment. Yea, well, that sucks for me. On SNL this weekend Seth Myers joked that all the unemployed people sitting at home at 3:00 in the afternoon yelled "yay" at their TV screens when they announced the dow had climbed over 10,000 on CNN. Yea, like I can afford cable.

I hate to think it's 2009 and people had to march for equality...in the land of the free? Really? I'm having a hard time adjusting to this reality. My head is all over the place tonight.

I'll end it with a poem I wrote a while back after the death of my parents.

I Wander


With every age
the road narrows.
Ponder the whispers
long forgotten
by some.
I forgot
or forget sometimes
to steal a moment
and seal a memento.
I did not notice
the narrowing of time
or the pace at which
your time had come.
I now walk in footsteps
formerly planted
to soak up a memory
and understand
what road may
be left for me.
I yearn to learn
from it or lean on it
for solace.
Make me a token for
years of something.
So I can find my way
again.