HAPPY 2014

NYE

Glittery tutu
-thump thump jackhammer morning
The beat of your soul

FOREVER 

LOU REED

You may have heard.
This past October,Lou Reed died.
When I heard the news ,I cried.
All day.
I didn’t know why but I could not stop crying.
Then I realized.

Lou Reed’s death was a reminder of so many other deaths.
The death of a Times Square that was neither family friendly nor Disneyland.
The death of Avenues A,B,C,D were NO taxi would come to pick you up. Ever.
And the death of the bright and beautiful people who flitted through those worlds.
And mine.

I realized.
I was crying for Lou Reed.
I was crying for New York.
I was crying for me.

I happened to visit my mother during this time.
Searching for some family papers
My mother said ”Look what I found.”
Amongst the death certificates,Holy Communion cards and birth announcements
She had kept a copy of my high school newspaper
And the review I wrote of a Halloween Lou Reed concert.

Thank you,Mom.
Thank you,Lou Reed.

6) Lou Reed - Ride Sally Ride - live in Paris, 1974

SHOULD OLD ACQUAINTANCE BE FORGOT...

"KAREN AS A PUPPET"

GREER LANKTON

September 1978/Brooklyn , NY/ Pratt Institute

Willoughby Hall

While I waited for the elevator in the Pratt dorms,I had my first encounter with Greer Lankton. 

A rail thin , dishwater blonde blonde introduced herself in a raspy,uneven voice, "Hi,I'm Greer. I live down the hall."

We became immediate friends.I recall telling my mother that I had just met my first friend,Greer.

"But",I said, "I don't think she's really a girl."

"That's nice", my mother said.

My mother took the only photograph that I have of Greer.

...

As the story went,Greer had applied at Pratt and been accepted when she was still Greg.By the time she came to Pratt, she was in pre-op sex reassignment stage-the year of hormone "treatments" and living to "pass as the other." In 1978, Pratt did not know what to do with this situation and therefore refused to give Greer a roommate.The administration, instead, insisted that she live in a studio apartment, meant for two and pay double occupancy.
This was also the year that "Debbie Does Dallas" had scenes filmed at the Pratt library.

...

Greer's family ran a bible camp in Michigan where she helped out.It was there she went to recover after her sex reassignment surgery in the summer of 1979.Upon our return to school,I  ran into Greer and asked about her surgery.She said she had to wear a dildo inside of her all day long and that she was in hideous pain.

...

Her talent astounded me- it seemed endless, limitless. She could lay out a piece of fabric,cut,snip and sew up something to wear in an instant.During one visit,she did a wonderful portrait of me titled "Karen as a puppet." She quickly captured my spirit as well as her perception of friends.I have carried that portrait with me for over thirty years.

Greer seemed to be able to do whatever she wanted- life drawing,sewing,doll building- with incredible ease and boundless imagination and ingenuity.
She was at once all of us and yet not like any of us.

excerpts from my "Memories of Greer"
 From the catalog for the re-installation of "It's all about ME,Not You."
Mattress Factory
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
www.mattress.org 

With Christmas behind me,looking forward to a New Year...

A (PREGNANT) CHRISTMAS MEMORY

Christmas memories
Are like the ornaments
That I have hauled around for dozens of years.
Some are fancy
Bright
Shiny.
Others are tarnished
Faded
Fragile.

I take them all out each year.
It can be exhausting.

However,one memory stands alone.
The Christmas I was nine months pregnant
Living in Oaxaca.

The streets were lined with lights and poinsettias.
Flooded with tourists.
And everywhere,
There were  nacimientos (Nativity scenes)
Tiny and life-sized
Simple and elaborate.
Mary and Joseph
Angels and lambs
And empty cribs.
No Baby.
“Where’s the Baby ?”I asked my friends.
“The Baby isn’t born until Christmas”,they said.

With my big belly,
I could have been popped into any Nativity scene.
I looked, as my New York friends said
Like a “Living Noguchi.”
I felt as if filled with helium
And indigestion.
I understood why all those Madonnas in religious paintings
Have their hands placed under their breasts and on their bellies
Looking so pious.
They were actually trying  to push down their indigestion.

In Christmas Eve tradition,
All the churches sent processions to the Cathedral in the zocalo
Little Marys and Josephs
On donkeys
On floats
On foot
Cradling their curly haired Babies.
Guarded by angelitos
With sparklers.

From cane towers
Homemade fireworks
Lit by someone’s cigarette
Whistled into the sky.
Exploding into a bright rain of color.
With each boom,
my baby jumped in my belly.

I feared contractions
And birth.
It is tradition in Mexico
To name your child after the Saint on whom’s Feast Day they are born.
I said to my kicking belly. “Please,baby,not now or I will have to name you Jesus”.
(Frankly,it’s the only time my child ever did what he was told.)

Church bells
Sang out midnight
And the Baby,in every church,in every home,
Was placed in His crib.

I happily waddled home.

NOCHE DE LOS RABANOS/

NIGHT OF THE RADISHES

from "Pictorial Oaxaca"

It is tradition.
Each December 23
They come from the Seven Regions of Oaxaca
In celebration and competition
To carve their radishes.

Early morning stalls are set up
Around the zocalo.
Tourist,local and vendor alike
Gather to watch.

Families work through the day.
From their hands, the giant radishes
Emerge.
Dancing
Praying
Zapotec gods ,Virgens and cathedrals
Tehuanas,iguanas and Frida.
There is no end
To their imagination.

Long lines form in the evening
As the judging begins.
Fireworks sputter,boom
And slice the night.
As bandas play.

After all,it is a fiesta
And life is a fiesta.

In the morning
It will all be gone.
Swept away.
And you think,

"Was it all a dream?"

While strolling down "Memory Lane"...
I took a stop at The Love Club /1982

My fashion show with the late Steven Amaral

invite design: Stephen Piersanti

hair/make-up: Robby Nelson
jewelry: Paul Smotrys
photo: Daniel Perry

"NUN DOG"

Ercoli/Biello

THINKING OF YOU, LYNN

I DREAMT I WAS "THE TATTOOED LADY" IN MY MAIDENFORM BRA...

                                                                                                                                                                    I DREAMT I WAS "THE TATTOOED LADY"IN MY MAIDENFORM BRA...

Every year when I was a little kid,
Sideshows set up with “The Big Top”
In Lighthouse Field.
Elephants trumpeting
Echoed throughout our urban landscape.
Electricity of anticipation filled the air.
The circus was in town.

“I saw the The Tattooed Lady from the circus at the supermarket today”, my mother said.
My imagination drew a colorfully engraved  exotic beauty.
“What did she buy?What was she wearing?” I thought.

That night we went to the circus and passed the sideshow tent.
The Tattooed Lady was  garishly painted on the canvas flap.
“Can I  please go in to see The Tattooed Lady?”, I asked.
“No”,my mother said, “you are too young,”
Trained not to talk back, I thought "Too young?Wasn’t she in the supermarket today?”
What was going on inside of that tent?
That night I dreamt of The Tattooed Lady.

At 21,I decided to get a tattoo.
On my lunch hour.
Harry’s Tattoo Parlor in Chinatown
Five dollars.
On my wrist,outlined in black.
Tiny red heart.
“Buzz”
The sting of the needle.
On flesh
“Buzz”
Vibrations.
Of the adrenaline rush.

My mother was horrified when she saw my tattoo.
“Only ex-cons,prostitutes and sailors have tattoos”,she said.
A perspective of her times.
My boyfriend was horrified when he saw my tattoo.
“Only ex-cons,prostitutes and sailors have tattoos”,he said.
A perspective he used.
To drift away.
(I never liked him much anyway.)

That night dreamt  I got another tattoo.
And another.
And another.
And I was The Tattooed Lady.

Being Kafka’s 'Metamorphosis'

My biggest yoga fear.
Getting stuck.
In an asana(posture).
I often joked about it
With an analogy of my yoga struggles-
“ Have you ever read Kafka’s ‘Metamorphosis’?”

Then one day
It happened.
In a quiet Mysore room.
Only the sound of breath.
I was working on Bhujapidasana *
“Arm pressure posture”
Curled up like a little bug.
Balanced on my arms.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Head to floor
Five breaths.
Inhale.
Up.

Well,I got my head on the floor.
Then,I froze.
“Dear Ganesh”,I thought,”It’s happened.My biggest yoga fear.I’m stuck.”
I held my breath.
My muscles locked.
I felt a little like Vincent Price in “The Fly”
“Help me, help me”
Caught in my web of fear.

I tried to get the attention of the woman next to me.
“Psst.Psst.”
No response.
She was too damn focused on her practice to notice.
I was stuck.
“Kafka’s ‘Metamorphosis’  This is it.” I thought.
I laughed.
Crash.
I collapsed.
The floor shook.
My teacher came over,looked at me and raised an eyebrow.
“I got stuck in Bhujapidasana” I said.
“Oh.Head up your ass”,he said
And walked away.

Now,many practices later
Yoganidrasana*
“Yogi sleep posture”
Lie down.
Ankles crossed behind the head.
I recently saw a photograph of a young boy in this asana.
On the cover of “The National Enquirer”
I thought,”I see people do this everyday.”

And so, I attempt it.
With block and blanket.
A little bug on her back
Wiggling into the modification to cross my ankles
Behind my head
“Right over left or left over right?”
I can never remember the prescribed order.
All those legs behind my head!

I laugh
Once again.
Kafka’s “Metamorphosis”

*to see these asanas and others,please checkout the website of my current teacher-David Garrigues -www.davidgarrigues.com and YOUtube his fantastic Asana Kitchen videos.

Going Nowhere

Tiny stone temple

Echos of snowy silence

-Lacy entrapment

Put it on a T-shirt....

Words to Live by:
(and oxymorons to ponder)

"If your earrings are big enough,no one will notice."
                                                    - Stephen Watkins

"I created the reality you are living in right now."
                                                  -Raymond Ercoli
                                 raymondercoli.blogspot.com
 
"Sometimes, it's enough just to get through the day."
                                                      - Carl Pelizoto

"You can lead a horse to holy water,but you can't make him think."
                                                         -Lauren B


"More is less...more or less."
                                 -me
"Vertigo:it runs in my family"
                                 -me

                                           Punk Snob
                                           Belch

                                          Yoga mogul
                                          Yoga bully
                                          Yoga police

                                          Yoga diva
                                          Yoga chic
                                          Yoga porn

"Words on a t-shirt make it cheap and sexy"
                                     -Madeleine Darling fashion editor/Vogue 1906-1982

Confessions of a Yoga Hussy....the beginning

My confessions.
About my love affairs.
With words.
With people.
With images.
With the ordinary.
(which is not)
With life .
And it's oxymorons.
And,yes,yoga....




The Ashtanga Yoga School of Philadelphia( http://www.aysphiladelphia.com/)where I practice- honored me by asking that I write something for the website as "featured student".
This is it.
And so it begins....


Confessions of a “Yoga Hussy”
I did not choose this ashtanga practice- the practice found me.
Never in this lifetime have I been a Flipper,Flyer or Bendy Barbie.My mother often tells the story of my early childhood dance lessons and how it took a year for me to finally master a cartwheel.

I live and breathe fashion- went to design school in New York,worked on 7th.Avenue.All flash and glam.
I  disco roller skated,went to the gym,pumped iron,did aerobics,studied tae kwon do and took up spin class.Once I got a yoga video out of the library and attempted “Tree” and “Mountain” pose- not too successfully.
A friend suggested  “Bikram yoga” -I liked the intensity. That studio brought in a teacher from New York and made the switch to Ashtanga. Within no time this was to evolve into a Mysore room.Not quite sure what that would really mean,I googled some images and thought “what the hell is going on in there?”
That was over a dozen years ago.
The practice found me.
And I found my practice.

I never did a backbend or headstand until I was more than several decades into this life.At AYS I am often in a room where I have tattoos older than most of the lovely people practicing beside me.When an asana looks so impossible (and many do)
I think “I’ll save that one for my next life.”
The breath- yes,that natural habit we all have- has so much power.And yet,I STILL cannot harness it!
The bhandas! The roots/locks- still so often elude my attempts.
But I will continue to try.
Nothing is perfect.
Or permanent.

It is difficult to articulate all that transpires and transforms from practicing Ashtanga.The blogoshpere and Facebook are chockablock with those perhaps more eloquent than I on this matter.However, for me,this practice changes everything-internally,externally,redefines ego and humility ,discourages competition and encourages introspection,learning and re-learning.
Again.
And again.
It sometimes shouts but more often it whispers - very quietly.
So as is life on and off the mat.

I have been studying and “flowing on the crooked path” with David Garrigues shortly after he settled in Philadelphia.