“Come on, Jane, you ready?” This was Pittsburgh, a venue called the Electric Banana. We’ve played there before. A little road tour of cover shows and some originals. The proverbial van and trailer for our gear. I knocked on the bathroom door. Photocopied fliers stuck to the walls, door, everywhere. Decals and graffiti. Band names,… Continue reading

I’m using Scrivener to plow through the manuscript, nip, tuck, and write (a lot) anew. Decades ago, and I’m talking almost half a century, you’d write on a typewriter, use scissors, and rearrange. Crumple into balls everything you didn’t want, and straight to the garbage. People used Dictaphones. Legal pads were for drafting, for some… Continue reading

To not be in your right mind is a very real thing. The doctor at the hospital, Dr. Sapphire, tried to explain this medical fact to me and the other girls in the unit, ad nauseam, so repeatedly the purgers could swear that the bile rose in their throats all by itself. I know, because… Continue reading

A couple years ago, I hopped between Joshua Tree and Borrego. Different deserts, one cooler and I do not mean temperature. Joshua Tree had the history. Have you ever heard of Gram Parsons? If you’re a certain age, you know and recall the tragedy and subsequent intrigue. He died in ’73 at the Joshua Tree… Continue reading

How many times he tried to leave Rosalie. It was absurd to the max, their marriage in the first place. How it lasted eight years, he did not know. Their therapist, a sprite of a man with a yoga body, said that theirs was a house of mutual revulsion. It was true. They never really… Continue reading

I had no idea Jane was around, still extant, her biker boots on the ground of the sphere we call the world, axis tilting and moving around the Sun. The Sun is a funny thing for me to mention for a few reasons, the first being that Jane hated sunshine. We went to Jones Beach… Continue reading

I don’t know how it is that such a short time can last for so long. Every time I am here on this block, my brief visitations, every single time I look at decorative molding and ironwork. My attention is not specific to this street. In Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, no bargello of bricks escapes me,… Continue reading

There was a Friday in March, not long ago. At long last, I was where I have always wanted to be, and never reached until recently: Eretz Israel, specifically Yerushalayim. We were there with our Chabad community, for nearly two weeks. Each day magnified my desire to be there, at last sated. But at the… Continue reading

Back to the rotting Conestoga that is WordPress. I am recovering from a broken ankle, pulmonary embolism, and DVT, and there is no time like the present. I have a cast on my leg, my butt in a hospital bed, and hours on my hands to type in this moribund blog. I have no desire… Continue reading

Well, prior to today, I last posted on this thing in 2014. That is eight years, not ten. Eight Years After is not a song. The penultimate post, titled METROPOLITAN LIFE, is one of my favorites. I’m happy to say that Mario Batali no longer slings truffles at Eataly, down the block from the Stanford… Continue reading