And Jesus wept.

Or at least Divine M did.

*The City is off my list now for yet another reason.

I wanna see the NYPD try to enforce this in Chelsea and Spanish Harlem. Ha!

I don't know about you, but I don't plan on spending much time in a place where you need a license to dance. After all, this shaped my identity formation almost as much as Cyndi Lauper did.

In other movie news, I'm scrambling to watch all the nominees for Best Picture before Sunday. I caught Departed and Babel last night and today while waiting for the Consumers Energy people to come out and fix my damn furnace. I'm fixin' to lose a finger and three toes, here! Anyway, Departed was so expertly cast with such gorgeous shots of Boston, I can't help be partial--especially because it's about the Irish mob in Southie (I know it's wrong, but I love all things gangsta and all things Irish, so the combo is irresistible to me). But Babel hit me hard. Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu is a genius of a different variety than Scorcese. I love the postmodern things he does with narrative, not because it's intriguing, but because its gut-level effect is so profound. It gets me deep without my even trying. I cried four times watching that thing, and not from the pain of my appendages freezing off. Babel made me forget about how cold I was.

I still haven't seen The Queen, Little Miss Sunshine, or Iwo Jima. Have you? I'ma try to get LMS on DVD before Sunday. . . .

I think movies might be returning to their glory days. I'm excited.

*Thanks to BFF for the link.

I love Ash Wednesday

. . . for a couple of reasons:

1.The return to dust/reminder of our mortality is a favorite theme of mine (in life and in writing)--and the Catholic Church gets ritual right: you have to give them that;

2.It marks the beginning of lent, and I love lent: the notion of meditating on suffering that leads to rebirth;

3.10 years ago I went to Ash Wednesday mass in Dublin with a dear friend there, so I always think of him and how I feel like we consecrated our friendship on that day. That mass also marks a personal turning point for me;

4.It means Paddy's Day is near!

I didn't actually go to mass today, although I tried to make it work. Teaching, going to the gym, going to class, going to the orthodontist, getting work done and sleeping in all took precedence. But my heart was in the day and its significance. I spent lots of time thinking about Kiki's mom--he was waiting to hear the results of her most recent scan. She has skin cancer and they were afraid she found a previously undetected mass. Turns out it was scar tissue. He cried with relief. I declared, "Not turning to ashes yet, bitches!" He laughed. That shit's better than mass.

I don't give up anything for lent. I kind of like the idea of penance, but I don't need that ritual to connect with or be reminded of suffering and death. I do go to La Mexicana Mercado and eat their Friday fish stew specials, mostly because I like hanging around Mexicans in their dusty bakery and cafe. I also love Easter, not because I believe in the literal resurrection of Christ, but because I love the promise of spring and seeing the daffodils poke their golden heads through the frozen earth; and I believe in new life, new love, endless possibility, transformation and reclamation.

No ashes, no giving up chocolate or martinis. But lots of thought and heart. This is the gift of choosing Catholicism because its practices fit my pagan soul, not because my 'rents forced me to participate in institutionalized traditions before they made sense or exposed me to such horrible, pervasive images as the Sacred Heart of Jesus bursting out of his chest (not to mention real, live, damaged, criminal, mentally ill authority figures) as a wee child. Score for liberal humanist ideals in parenting!

Anybody else love today? Or did you enjoy Phat Tuesday more--who has a good Mardi Gras story? I do: New Orleans 1995. But I'll save that for another time. Anybody eat those Polish donuts filled with prunes I don't know how to spell--something like paczkis? I did. My favorite Polish colleague brought some in. I sucked the prunes out of the middle and wished they were poppy seeds instead. My Bohemian blood trumps my Polish sympathies, what can I say?

More than enough.

Love and Blood.

. . . on Valentine's Day, bitches.

I am happy for those of you out there enjoying time with a sweetheart. I am, really. But more than I'm happy for you, I'm bitter for the rest of the lonely community of humans who are suffering in the Western world's way of pushing stupid cupid and all the shit they want to sell us all under the guise of LOVE.

Fuck that kind of love. It's not the love I believe in.

I taught a kick-ass lonely-hearts-club spinning class today. "Listen, bitches, we're loving ourselves on this day!" I yelled through the microphone to great cheers.

I also learned, via the Soviet, that gay men can't give blood. No shit. I looked it up. The Red Cross says:

You should not give blood if you have AIDS or have ever had a positive HIV test, or if you have done something that puts you at risk for becoming infected with HIV.

You are at risk for getting infected if you:

• are a male who has had sexual contact with another male, even once, since 1977

. . . among a long list of other things.

I am livid. Just one more way to exclude people from something powerfully good and transformative because of who and how they love. Total. Bullshit.

Now, I'm not saying we don't need serious screening for blood donors. I, for example, cannot ever give blood because I once suffered from a particular form of blood cancer. Fine. But in terms of HIV, targeting an entire group of people is fallacious. Anyone who works in the health care industry is more likely to have been exposed to HIV than whole hoards of gay men. Yet, as a group, they're allowed to give blood.

WTF?

Eleanor Rigby

That's who I feel like today.

Last night I discovered my enneagram type. Any of y'all into that?

Apparently, I'm predominantly
with secondary leanings toward

and


which apparently makes me more of a conglomeration of JFK, MLK, Noel Coward, Mother Theresa, Bette Midler and Saddam Hussein.


Yep, sounds about right.

Great. What are you?

Beside myself

I made the unfortunate mistake of drinking coffee at 6 p.m. So here I am. Watching reruns of Will and Grace and Sex and the City. Eating rice cakes. Reading a magazine. Ordering books online. All at once. This is a dangerous time.

Yet somehow safer than yesterday when I was seriously considering planning a nervous breakdown. It's time, isn't it? Mama says it's a good age for it. Kiki says it can't be that bad if I'm planning it. I guess in the end I'd prefer to go abroad than out of my mind.

(A big, fat thank you alternately to S, mama, Kiki and M! for keeping me company in my pathetic, puffy, flaked-out state yesterday. Isn't it great how your best friends can keep you laughing your arse off despite yourself?)

Here's what I have to say about the Grammy's: Christina Aguilera. I want to hate her. I try to hate her. But that voice. Son. Of. A. Bitch. On the other hand, I want to love the Dixie Chicks. I do. I really do. But that singer needs to pick up a little finesse from the horsey twins behind her. Carrie Underwear took too much Xanax and Red Bull before the show. I cannot see anything redeeming about American Idol. Nothing. Mary J. Blige is a queen. Justin Timberlake, I can't help it, is charming, and I love him. Don't tell anyone. Smokey Robinson still sings better than any of those other bitches. But he really needs to take it easy with the Botox. His smooth lack of expression is worrying. In fact, it might have been a wax figure of him accompanied by a recording. I'm not sure. And Lionel Ritchie should have stayed home and force-fed his daughter a pastrami on rye.

In more useful news, I may have found real funding opportunities for the August trip down (my favorite) memory lane. I already need something else to look forward to. You see, the book just got fucking harder to write. Sometimes writers' workshops turn psychoanalytic in the worst way, and that's exactly what happened Saturday. Not yet sure what to do with it all. Except cry a while. February--just before the 14th--is a good time for that anyway.

I got to see Volver, finally. Penelope Cruz is my favorite. I love her cleavage like Almodovar loves her cleavage. She totally gives this gay man a hard on. Especially with her welled-up brown eyes, smeared mascara, and voluptuous self zipped up tight in pencil skirts. She is perfection. Even though I had to sit in the second row and the fire alarm went off in the middle of the movie, it was totally worth it.

My Monday's over, so I'll say little else about it. Except today would have been so much better if I were in Philadelphia. Why is it when I'm already bummed, I naturally think about all the people, places and things I miss? Why are absences so huge?

Killing time.

I am sitting in my favorite coffeeshop right now wondering who here might be hacking into my computer via wifi--thanks very much local tv "investigative reporters"!

Ooh. A slightly attractive dude in the corner just eyed me as if he were reading. . . .

Focus, M. Focus.

After having been snowed in for three days, and in coming to terms with this beautiful bleakness that is winter, I've found that I tend to revert to the kind of coping that has gotten me through much of my life. I daydream. Fatasize. Plot and scheme. And buy things.

Daydream/fantasy:
What if I took a cheap little flight from Paris to Dublin for just a night to suck down a few proper pints, dance in my old haunts and carouse with some of the people I love best in this world? Wouldn't that make my weekend getaway totally complete in its perfection?

Plot/Scheme:
How can I get someone to fund a longer, extended trip to Ireland for me to research the part of my book that takes place there? I want to retrace my steps of summer 1995--wind through the West of Ireland, sit on a cliff overlooking the sea until the salt air stiffens my hair. Then I want to go back to the Edinburgh Festival and take in as many performances as are humanly possible. This time I'd prefer to stay somewhere posher than some drunken Irishman's tent in a field outside the city. Or maybe not. . . .

Buying things:
So it's probably a good rule of thumb not to purchase accessories and/or cosmetics at the grocery store if at all possible. But I just couldn't help myself last night. I was in a janked-up, crashed-out, post-workout, late-night daze. I needed bandaids, which took me off my normally tread path on the periphery of the food isles. I bought a shimmery, apricot Revlon lipstick, some gold headbands (Wonder Woman, anyone?) to keep my short hairs off my face as I spin into oblivion, boxes and boxes of bandaids--none of which are able to help the gash on the tip of my right thumb grow back together, another 18 pound bag of Ruby Red grapefruits (God bless Texas), and a whole bunch of other shit I didn't really need as I aimlessly wandered around eating clementines from the box I dropped in my cart. Two days ago I ate five grapefruits. What is it with citrus and winter? Or maybe it's just me. As my mama said, "You must be awfully alkaline." I'm not sure how to take that.

How do you get through bleak times without self-destructing?

Wish Granted.

Snowed in again. Hurray!

Everything around these parts shut down, including both academic institutions that employ me, and all kinds of other places, according to the banner at the bottom of my television screen.

This is my favorite so far:

Monroe Community Church
God's Gift cancelled

What a shame, eh? You'd think the cold and snow would have no power there. . . .

White Out.

It would be much more enjoyable to get snowed in during the week, but this damn blizzard hit over the weekend. Gave me an opportunity to take down my Chri-muss tree (What? It ain't Valentino Day yet--give me a damn break), fire up the crotch pot and tidy up the hot mess that has become my house.

What would you do with two days trapped in your house with an acceptable excuse to blow off all your obligations?

I cranked up Prince and danced around my kitchen as I moved between cooking and doing laundry.

And to be honest, I did leave the damn house--the gym didn't close for the snow days, so today I still had to teach spinning. Then I decided to stay and take the next class. Why? Because it made me warm.

Friday, after spinning for three hours (endorphin high, anyone?), I got to see an extraordinary dance performance. Since I didn't have to review it, I just got to be a delighted audience member, pleasurably taking it all in. When the curtain rose, the dance transported me--right to the center of whatever tangible divinity we can access as mere mortals. The music, the skilled dancers moving through space together in their gorgeous bodies showed me--in an instant--what a glorious thing it is to be alive. To really be alive. To make meaning of experience and communicate it through symbols that penetrate all of us who take the human form is the highest of arts. And being in the presence of that is among life's greatest gifts.

I felt all that in about 3.2 seconds Friday night.

I live in a strange little city that doesn't make the map for the vast majority of people. Yet I get to take in the kinds of arts and culture on a weekly, if not daily basis, that truly fill me up. I also get to be in the presence of others who choose to do the same thing, and then are willing to sit back and talk about it with me. Often because I don't give them a choice in the matter (ha! LOVE being a teacher!), but still. I figured out how to teach Oscar Wilde in a journalism class, and I made my students read this. You should read it, too, if you're not familiar with it. God damn that man was a genius. And he continues to inspire me and give me new justifications for my life and choices. Love that!

After the dance performance, I hightailed it to a little brewpub where I met up with Kiki and the Bear to see a Glaswegian band headline a sold-out show to a roomfull of dirty hipsters, half of whom I knew. This means (1) this town is officially too small for me, and (2) Kiki, the Bear, and I were the only three present who had dragged a comb through our hair in the past three days. But the show was fun. The temperature outside had dipped well below zero, and as the little greaseheads in their flashdance outfits slipped outside to smoke their Gaulloises, I could feel the cold burst in and see the heat as it escaped. The small windows peering out of the painted, exposed-brick walls fogged up with condensation in the corners from the sweaty bodies bopping around like freshly-caught fish in a bucket. It made me smile and think, son of a bitch, this is what it is to be alive and young(ish) in Michigan.

But the fucking snow has foiled my plans for what Sid deemed the gayest Super Bowl Sunday party ever. Since K and B can't get out here without risking life and limb, we can't spend the afternoon watching this, drinking highballs and eating the roast beast I made in the crotch pot, slowing down only to catch the half-time show. I mean, hello? Prince, and perhaps a glimpse of those finely chiseled asses in tight, shiny pants?

I'll miss the boys. But don't you worry. I'll still be on that cruise ship--might even dress the part while I sing along. Too bad it's not as fun without an audience, though.