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.