I wrote this post over a year ago, inspired by this song, but I didn’t hit the publish button. Today, I am still very sad that the world lost David Bowie. The salvation of an artist is that as death takes all away, it gives more power to the art than possible to imagine in an artist’s lifetime, the work has it’s own life. Fame and riches disappear, but the work is to create, which David Bowie did by expressing his individual self in his own cocktail of perfectly complicated and rich, soul-shaking music that gives me a high each time I listen.  I meditate today on a life well lived. I know that the breaking feeling is love for what he has done and also a yearning to express as strongly and poetically as he did.  He paved the way for all of us to be as wild and kookie as we want to be.

Written on May, 2014

On Sunday, we celebrated Isaiah’s 5th Birthday.  The Birthday magic was in the air, even though he did’t want to dress up or brush his hair.  Together, we whipped the cream for his cake and decorated it with a blueberry number “5”, while listening to David Bowie filling our hearts with love.

His happiness was the happiness that you can only feel on your fifth Birthday. Free of any concern of who is going to come to the party or what he is going to wear.  Free of any insecurity or fear. Just free.

Suddenly, I noticed a change in his movements, he moved like a real boy and not the toddler he was the day before.  I felt like Geppetto when seeing Pinochio move for the first time. He was changing like all of us, but in a child, the pronounced changes jerked me to the fear that this beautiful childhood will come inevitably to an end, and like all of us, he will have to endure the world.

He wiped his first booger on me, while cracking up at his originality.  He hid under the bed and stayed quiet, waiting for the right moment to jump out and scare me for the first time.  Usually I can hear him laughing from the next room, but he finally worked it out.

David Bowie was adding to our magic morning.

He was singing:

“Just remember lovers never loose, because they are free of thoughts unpure and of thoughts unkind. Gentleness clears the soul.  Love cleans the mind and makes it free.”

And if that wasn’t enough:

“Fear is just in your head, so forget your head and you’ll be free.”

Thank you David Bowie!

Rest in Peace and send us some.

Lyrics

I love moments when the world’s monotonous ticking is interrupted. There is time to go inside my own soul and investigate what is there and why. The snow started falling and my dream to get snowed in for few days is here. It is the snow of my childhood, when the streets became fluffy and crispy and that was the only event that mattered.

I sat in the coffee shop before getting snowed in, so that I could write. I was about to tune out with my headphones, but Billie Holiday came on. She wailed for all of us. This woman struggled from birth, being born to out of wedlock, left by her father with no support. She worked in a brothel as a young girl with her mother and went to prison for it. Her life story is a tragedy of drugs, misfortunes and abusive relationships, probably caused by all of that pain. Billie, whose voice we canonized after her death, had a life of mostly suffering.

But in the coffee shop, her unique sound breathed life into me, years after her death, she still speaks, her voice the wire that connects us with our own human pain. The greats continue to cry the lessons that they have learned, so that we know that we are not alone. They had the courage to articulate their story, to be the ones who didn’t hide away, even in their pain.

Their voices cry, “Please, do something good in the world. Do something you are proud of!”

Some days I drown in the conventional thinking and I am suffocated and oppressed by my own thoughts.

Over the weekend, I saw an exhibit about the Feminist movement. I was reminded that women used to be warriors, queens, and they were equals to men and then one day someone decided to say let’s keep them at home and not educate them and make them weak. Let’s make them housewives. And now, after centuries of fighting for women’s right, to say that you are a housewife in Park Slope means that somehow you made it. Instead of getting our rights and doing something, we have convinced ourselves again to think that it’s good to do nothing, while our hearts starve to make a difference, to affect the world. But to do it and to get into that world, you at least have to act like a man. Intuition is witches talk. Emotions must be frozen while you work. Tears are for the closet and for the weak.

In my meandering digs information or for distraction online, I found a Ted Talk about this woman who became schizophrenic. It came on suddenly for her, she was normal except for well hidden depression and anxiety. She described the voice that she started hearing that sounded real to her. A voice that would become violent and aggressive when there was stress in her life.

I thought about my own voice. The people who talk to themselves on the street and us are the same, we just have it on mute. So then the voice that I hear in my head, and that schizophrenics hear is similar in that way. We also have a voice that is guiding us through the decision tree of each moment and that is just as real. On the days that life feels good and I know what my purpose is, I look around at the world with awe of beauty, but on the days that feel hard, the voice is meaner. It starts to say that I am not good enough and that I can’t really achieve my dreams. “Don’t even try, because you are not as good as others,” it says and I make decisions based on that. Is that my own voice, or is it years and years of being programmed that our views don’t matter?

“I don’t suffer anymore,” said a girl to me after she started medication.
“Really?” I asked in disbelief.

There is a lot to be confused about in this life on this world. I am experiencing a new world and I am not sure what will happen. It feels like it’s about to split in two and this tension comes in waves. The feelings, like the NEWS, have an explosive nature. Each one of us is a mine. Even in the happy moments, I remember that there is pain going on right now. Focusing on reality and reading reality is difficult, because what’s real and our own ideas of real is questionable. If we are just products of nature and nurture, why don’t we wake up and ask:

Who am I? And what in the Hell is going on in THIS World?

I don’t know why, but writing feels good to me and gives me momentary meaning. It helps with all those errands and feedings of this human body. I miss myself. Like a lost city soul, I go through my life with a pompous look in my face, pretending that I know it. I spew my opinions and judgements from small things to big, but the maze continues and there is no end until the end.

The tax man’s taken all my dough
And left me in this stately home
Lazing on a sunny afternoon
And I can’t sail my yacht
He’s taken everything I got
All I’ve got’s this sunny afternoon

Save me, save me, save me from this squeeze
I gotta big fat mama trying to break me
And I love to live so pleasantly
Live this life of luxury
Lazing on a sunny afternoon
In a summertime
In a summertime
In a summertime

My girlfriend’s run off with my car
And gone back to her ma and pa
Telling tails of drunkenness and cruelty
Now I’m sitting here
Sipping at my ice cold beer
Lazing on a sunny afternoon

Help me, help me, help me sail away
Well give me two good reasons why I oughta stay
‘Cause I love to live so pleasantly
Live this life of luxury
Lazing on a sunny afternoon
In a summertime
In a summertime
In a summertime

Ah, save me, save me, save me from this squeeze
I gotta big fat mama trying to break me
And I love to live so pleasantly
Live this life of luxury
Lazing on a sunny afternoon
In a summertime
In a summertime
In a summertime

Mr Bright lived next door to us on 2nd st. in Park Slope. At first, I thought his name was Mr. Right, but when I realized my mistake, it made more sense. He was more much more Bright than Right. The years have been kind to Mr. Bright, and although he had a walker and a curved withered spine, his eyes shone with a joie de vivre that is hard to find in a teenager. It was not that Mr. Bright was above us humans, with our dirty little secrets, flaws and misfortunes, it was just that he existed.

“A person, a stranger, who you will never see again, can affect you in unimaginable ways,” my sister said in a phone conversation, in one of our many meandering life discussions. Before she even finished the sentences and the explanations of her theories, the speedy light technician in my brain spotlighted Mr. Bright and the memory of the first time I met him.

He was coming back to his building and I was checking my texts on the stoop. I knew he was my new neighbor, but he didn’t realize it yet. I saw him pushing his walker along the cold fall sidewalk, he had two bags of groceries and they seemed to get tangled on his walker with each step. There was not much in them. How cruel was the aging process, I thought, that this poor man could not even get two almost empty plastic bags home without having to endure aggravation of his physical limitations.

“Let me take these bags for you,” I said, feeling uncomfortable for sounding like a cliche. He happily handed them over and continued to hobble slowly behind me towards his home.

“I always have angels who comes when I need them,” he said in a matter-of-fact voice, “thank you.” His simple phrase filled me with quiet warmth. His voice was high and beautiful.

Why this little memory out of the other more significant moments that overflow the limited RAM space of my mind? Something about this moment gave me hope for humanity, hope that we are angels, angels who help each other, and one day when I am stumbling along, I will feel this way. And maybe I am being helped now, even if, I am not as aware of it as Mr. Bright.

Lyrics:

“Heart Of Gold”

I want to live,
I want to give
I’ve been a miner for a heart of gold.
It’s these expressions
I never give
That keep me searching for a heart of gold.

And I’m getting old.
Keep me searching for a heart of gold
And I’m getting old.

I’ve been to Hollywood
I’ve been to Redwood
I crossed the ocean for a heart of gold.
I’ve been in my mind,
It’s such a fine line
That keeps me searching for a heart of gold.

And I’m getting old.
Keeps me searching for a heart of gold
And I’m getting old.

Keep me searching for a heart of gold.
You keep me searching and I’m growing old.
Keep me searching for a heart of gold
I’ve been a miner for a heart of gold.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfuWXRZe9yA

I learned to say “This too shall pass” when I am in pain, but I forgot to do it when I was happy.  The fall from happiness is the hardest fall.

I am coming back to myself today, but it’s confusing because I don’t know who I am.  I watch people for clues and study their reaction to me, what do they see and why does each one have a different reaction?  I feel the sad disappointment of the world’s inconsistency, but there is no one to rely on but myself.  At these times, it’s just about moving myself forward.

I can see the faults of others but for my faults I have excuses and justification, I am slowly freezing in the cement of time, repeating the same mistake for an eternity of a lifetime.  I programmed a perfect loop in my head and each time I hit a certain point in the algorithm,  there is a bug.  I used to have nightmares that were made of these infinite loops when I was a programmer, now I understand how they could happen.  I am sad.  I am sad.  I am sad.  I am sad.  I am sad.  But it’s ok……. I am sad. I am sad.  I am sad.  I am sad.  I am sad.  I am sad.  But it’s ok….

n = I am sad+1

Isaiah turned five years old yesterday.

“She is an older woman”, I used to think about women with 5-year-olds.  I look around at the beautiful faces of friends.  We hang on to our youth like we can control time.

I gave Isaiah a figurine of Yoda.  He told me he really liked Yoda for a while, but this time, he looked at him closely and said, “Mama, I don’t like him.  Look at his eyes, they are pointing up and look, he is walking with a stick, that means he is dying.”

Behind Blue Eyes

by the Who

No one knows what it’s like
To be the bad man
To be the sad man
Behind blue eyes

No one knows what it’s like
To be hated
To be fated
To telling only lies

But my dreams
They aren’t as empty
As my conscience seems to be

I have hours, only lonely
My love is vengeance
That’s never free

No one knows what it’s like
To feel these feelings
Like I do
And I blame you

No one bites back as hard
On their anger
None of my pain and woe
Can show through

But my dreams
They aren’t as empty
As my conscience seems to be

I have hours, only lonely
My love is vengeance
That’s never free

When my fist clenches, crack it open
Before I use it and lose my cool
When I smile, tell me some bad news
Before I laugh and act like a fool

If I swallow anything evil
Put your finger down my throat
If I shiver, please give me a blanket
Keep me warm, let me wear your coat

No one knows what it’s like
To be the bad man
To be the sad man
Behind blue eyes

Sometimes my day is a long “to do” list.  I make a new list for the next day before I leave work.  The list grows if I don’t finish the list from the day before and sometimes important things disappear off the list like my dance class, writing this piece or enjoying my life.  Even though we managed to have a society in which we seemingly avoid imminent danger of bears and lions, sometimes I feel that I am surviving the daily life.  Will today be a good day or a bad day?  On a bad day I say, well, there will be tomorrow.  On a good day I say, well, there will be tomorrow.  But there are days when I want the world to stop.  I want the morning, the afternoon, the night and the understanding that all of this is not in vain.

Isaiah, my almost five-year old son, asked, “Why does the singer want the world to stop?”

To a child, life is adventurous, and a simple activity is interesting.  We are too old to see the world that way and we are too young not to, because not seeing it is miserable.  We are a paradox of trying to do what’s best for ourselves and our families while ignoring ourselves and our families.  Has it always been a race?  The spring brings back our love and inspiration and the rebirth of a sacred dream.  I wish the world to stop so I can figure out which way to spin.

“I Want The World To Stop”
by Belle & Sebastian

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sjSHazjrWg&feature=kp

“She is a hippie at heart,” my cousin Julia said about me in third person, to her friends.  I must have triggered it by talking about the Beatles.  I panicked inside, not wanting this conversation of explaining who I am or who I am not.  The group of boys with baseball caps pointed to the back and girls in denim shorts and tank-tops looked at me with disbelief.  Her? But she looks normal, kind of like us. I heard the question in their minds and a pause, waiting for me to deny the allegations.

I widened my eyes and smile and said, “Yes, I am a hippie, I just don’t wear the costume.”  I liked my own line so much that I repeated it almost each time, I was discovered as a hippie later in life.

How could wanting peace not be cool?  It is too hard to love unconditionally everything and everybody at all time, but being at war with the world and yourself is much harder.  I’d rather start by wanting love and peace instead of resolving to hopelessness, mistrust, sadness, isolation, self-doubt, hatred, and general dissatisfaction.  I don’t get to peace most of the time.  I try and try and fail sometimes having awful days instead of the good ones, I had prepared for myself in the morning.  Something goes wrong.  Sometimes there is a fight of wills, stress and time.

When my son, Isaiah, tries something new, he gets frustrated that he can’t do it right away.

“If you are trying, you are accomplishing,” I say to him, but it sounds much better in Russian because it rhymes.  

To live peacefully is to try for a lifetime, and if I am trying, I am accomplishing.

This is not nearly my favorite Cat Stevens songs, but if I saw a peace train, I would jump upon it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7iLPnDCQ1g

Peace train by Cat Stevens and Yusuf Islam

Now I’ve been happy lately, thinking about the good things to come
And I believe it could be, something good has begun

Oh I’ve been smiling lately, dreaming about the world as one
And I believe it could be, some day it’s going to come

Cause out on the edge of darkness, there rides a peace train
Oh peace train take this country, come take me home again

Now I’ve been smiling lately, thinking about the good things to come
And I believe it could be, something good has begun

Oh peace train sounding louder
Glide on the peace train
Come on now peace train
Yes, peace train holy roller

Everyone jump upon the peace train
Come on now peace train

Get your bags together, go bring your good friends too
Cause it’s getting nearer, it soon will be with you

Now come and join the living, it’s not so far from you
And it’s getting nearer, soon it will all be true

Oh peace train sounding louder
Glide on the peace train
Come on now peace train

Now I’ve been crying lately, thinking about the world as it is
Why must we go on hating, why can’t we live in bliss

Cause out on the edge of darkness, there rides a peace train
Oh peace train take this country, come take me home again

Oh peace train sounding louder
Glide on the peace train
Come on now peace train
Yes, peace train holy roller

Everyone jump upon the peace train
Come on peace train
Yes, it’s the peace train

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euuCiSY0qYs

When I lived in Ukraine as a child, most of the population was poor, so even though we had less than some of the poorest people in America, I felt pretty rich in our little apartment.  We also had a dacha* that I thought was a luxury.  The contrast of money versus poverty hit me when I entered my first day of my Jewish private school in Connecticut, America.  I was one of the only kids who didn’t have to pay tuition because I was newly imported immigrant.  A brown-haired girl sat with her legs on the desk, when I entered the class.  She had a golden tan that was not from the beaches of Connecticut and shiny, white, new shoes with mint green laces.  And suddenly, I felt poor.

“Oh I wish that I could be Richard Cory,” punched me in my gut when I was in college and first heard the song.  I was working a job, while most of my friends didn’t have to.  The kids of Boston University drove around in BMW’s and didn’t seem to have a care how much anything cost.  The words, “I curse the life I am living and I curse my poverty,” made me turn to the speaker in awe, as if someone heard my tortured cries.  I wished that I could be Richard Cory, knowing well that money could not buy happiness or love, but it was tempting and the clothes were prettier.

What I love about this song is that even after Richard Cory kills himself, the character still wishes he could be him.  The allure of money is huge and people go out of their way each day to make more.  But if it doesn’t buy you happiness or love, what does it buy after our needs are met?

One friend said to me that it can’t make you happy, but it can make you free.  To which I added, free to be happy or unhappy.  And that freedom, the poor have as well.

*a small plot of land with a house that many people had for growing their own food outside of the city.

Richard Cory by Simon and Garfunkel

They say that Richard Cory owns one half of this whole town,
With political connections to spread his wealth around.
Born into society, a banker’s only child,
He had everything a man could want: power, grace, and style.

But I work in his factory
And I curse the life I’m living
And I curse my poverty
And I wish that I could be,
Oh, I wish that I could be,
Oh, I wish that I could be
Richard Cory.

The papers print his picture almost everywhere he goes:
Richard Cory at the opera, Richard Cory at a show.
And the rumor of his parties and the orgies on his yacht!
Oh, he surely must be happy with everything he’s got.

But I work in his factory
And I curse the life I’m living
And I curse my poverty
And I wish that I could be,
Oh, I wish that I could be,
Oh, I wish that I could be
Richard Cory.

He freely gave to charity, he had the common touch,
And they were grateful for his patronage and thanked him very much,
So my mind was filled with wonder when the evening headlines read:
“Richard Cory went home last night and put a bullet through his head.”

But I work in his factory
And I curse the life I’m living
And I curse my poverty
And I wish that I could be,
Oh, I wish that I could be,
Oh, I wish that I could be
Richard Cory.

Blister in the Sun, came out by Violent Femmes in 1983, and shortly after in 1988, I came to New Haven from Ukraine. There was a VH1 music video for the song in my memory banks of the strange little cat. The song was played at proms, dances, and later in life, in clubs, bars and coffee shops.  In High School, “I am high as a kite,” made us feel like we were listening to something illegal.

“Body and beats and I stain my sheets,” was pornographic and I couldn’t believe that we could dance to this, while adult supervision conversed, unknowing what the song was saying.

Recently, it started to haunt me.  I felt the songs gravitational pull and “I don’t even know why.”  I kept walking into spaces and there it was… again.

There was an earlier song, Little B, by the Shadows on an album, Out of the Shadows released in 1962 that was obviously borrowed by the Femmes.  The Shadows have been together, with some changes in lineup from 1950-2000.  While, Violent Femmes broke up when Gordon Gano (the guitarist) licensed “Blister” for use in a Wendy’s commercial, prompting bassist Brian Ritchie (the original founder) to unleash a lawsuit.  It is ironic that the song that broke them up, was originally someone else’s. The two songs have their own life force and both feel genuine.  I can’t compare the two, but there is plagiarism.

I saw a girl on the subway wearing shoes that I liked, if I see them I will buy them.

We plagiarise each other without realizing it.  Sometimes it’s shoes, but sometimes it’s also emotions, sometimes it’s even each other’s lives that we try to emulate.  There is a balance between being same as other people and being an individual.  Too different can end you up in isolation and the other side (too much like everyone else) will end you up in boredom.  The middle is that special feeling that Violent Femmes took what was not theirs and did with it something that made the world hear it.

I still don’t know what Blister in the Sun means, but sometimes when I am walking, I strut my stuff.

Lyrics

“Blister In The Sun”