Good news and free money

The president is giving away money and I had a great reading last night.

I had to slog through a freakish ice/slush/snow storm spritzing my face as I didn't see a single cab the whole width of Manhattan. But the eerie tunneled streets and mist rising from still warm sidewalks made SoHo into something more strange and beautiful than the trendy celebs that glide in and out of its shops. Who knew who anyone was in all that snow? People were the negative spaces, the street lamp and neon lit snow were the show.

As I walked further and further east, I wondered if anyone would show up. Would this Bluestockings bookstore be welcoming and hopefully rather dry?

My shoes took on more water and my purse strap broke but I still pressed on. I added my footprints to a dog's across an otherwise blank median strip and then I was there. The place was PACKED and I didn't know most of them. My husband Jim was there waiting for me (he gave up one of his cherished Tuesday nights of sketching with a live jazz trio, two models, and a bar). Glenn arrived, as did Gordon and Len and Roxanne. The bookstore is a neighborhood place that the neighborhood uses like a big book filled livingroom, with eats and teas. I read last. The fifteen minutes went by terribly fast and slow, the way they do when I'm exhilarated by having a responsive audience, a whole room full of (mostly) strangers laugh, or sigh in sympathy, and acknowledge the stories I shape into poems. I'm more confident when people want to hear where I'm going. I loved Julie Porter's poems about meat, she's the pitmaster of an amateur barbecue team. Thank you Meghan, Word of Mouth, and Bluestockings for giving us a good place to read. I sold three books.

Slides and whispers

My daughter Caitlin is applying to many colleges, several of them art schools requiring color slides. Remember those? Little cardboard edged pieces of plastic that one's parents put in a carousel and shined ghosts of summers past onto a wall.

She finished the last painting yesterday. I need them to arrive at the Rhode Island School of Design by Thursday. Two days.

If you, like me, have been so immersed in digital cameras, it is hard to remember how to do these things. I think in flash cards, keychain mini-drives, and printer's ink, which are sold in my drugstore, where do you go for slide film? And where is my old analog camera anyway? Don't those use little round batteries, batteries that have to be dead by now?

I discovered there are specialty photographic services shops that will take a digital image and turn it into a slide for 20 bucks an image for a 1 day turnaround... but my good digital camera still has Yellowstone National Park dust polka-dotting the sensor. I've been meaning to take the Nikon d70 somewhere to get it cleaned.... I wiped the sensor once--it turned out OK--but it was a sweat inducing horror that I don't want to experience again. One wipe too hard and 600 bucks of camera is scratched worthless.

My friend, the talented professional photographer, Lynn Saville, said her slide film had expired and I'd need to buy her new "daylight" film, and I would have done all that, but she had a class to teach and Caitlin couldn't get the film and portfolio to her in time.

Then through Caitlin's highschool (LaGuardia Arts) I got the name of a photographer, Peter Brandt, who snaps slides of art student's portfolios all the time. He has the film, the lights, the lenses, the set-up. He gets it developed. ASAP. Thank gawd. Of course, this costs.

So why was I up at 6:30 am snapping shots of her portfolio just in case? Because you never know. I should be thinking about my reading tonight... Shhhhhhh, just one more spotty shot, bracketed...

Interstitial serindipity

It was my triboro day.

MANHATTAN, Upper West Side: It was wonderful to be in a room full of creative, accomplished, fascinating, and decidedly unconventional people discussing ways to enlarge the reach of an organization dedicated to works and artists that fall between genres. We introduced ourselves as puppeteers, editors, readers, poets, graphic novelists, translators, performers, novelists, film makers, educators, sculptors...who each do at least three other creative things. We sat in a book-lined living room--Edwardian flavor--with a view of park, piano, and walls and tables filled with art. So many of us said we had been told to do only one thing! If nothing else, we applauded our right to engage outside labels. I loved that group energy, there ought to be a name for that creative fusion. Half networking, half synergy. Creative Units? Whatever it is, it makes me want to grab paper to draw and write.

I was there because I ran into Ellen Kushner at AWP and she introduced me to Lawrence Schimel. Between us we had Irish tea, beer, halvah, and mashed potatoes as we discussed the oddness of presenting our works at both literary and fantasy/scifi conventions. A seemingly uncrossable divide. No so, said Ellen... she told me about her organization and invited me (and my friend Deborah Atherton) to come to a tea at her and Delia's home (as in Delia Sherman) and be part of a brain storming session for the Interstital Arts Foundation which she and Delia helped found a few years ago.

Deborah and I walked to Broadway, on our ways home, and agreed we felt like we fit right in. Deborah is a perfect example of a multi-talented, cross-genre artist, she's a literary short story writer, librettist (one opera was based on her science fiction novel another on Mary Shelley--with monster as a thematic character), novelist, co-author of an upcoming non-fiction book on creativity, writing coach, occasional tarot card reader, and a grants writer. She and I have been in River Writers, our writing workshop, since it was founded.

QUEENS, Rego Park: Before the tea, I had been to a baby shower for Glenn Mathes and Ryoko in Queens. I even got to wave hello to Jayme Adelson-Goldstein and Jane Spigarelli, authors of several books I designed for Oxford U. Press, because they video called Glenn (one of their editors) and watched Glenn and Ryoko open gifts. I blew kisses to California. Ryoko had hands drawn on her belly. A nice touch. Jayme and Jane held their hands out as if they could touch her and mini-man within. I also ate carmelized bacon. Who knew you could do that to bacon? It was salty and sweet and crunched like a crème brûlée.

BROOKLYN, Borough Hall: In the morning, I'd had my first pilates session with poet/editor/pilates instructor Barbara Elovic. After the workout, as I waited for my body to stop feeling like limp pasta, we talked about feminism, poetry, and the oddness that muscles have both greek and roman names. She gave me a copy of To Genesis, a poetry book she part of, four poets exploring old testament stories. Like Poets' Grimm, the old tales make a great framework to explore current lives and beliefs.

I felt as if I had traveled everywhere, my pedometer logged nearly 10,000 steps. And as promised, today I am not sore from the pilates workout.

AWP and me. Or, have book, need markets

No, I didn't actually go to the biggest baddest literature conference happening in NYC this year. It was booked so early I couldn't get in, but on Saturday, the last day, the bookfair was open to the public.

The bookfair filled three huge floors of the Hilton. Apparently the first floor is usually clogged and tumbleweeds move freely on the third. To my delight, both the Alimentum and Marsh Hawk Press tables were facing each other on the second floor limbo. This facingness allowed me to move back and forth and eat chocolates placed to entice. I talked to Paulette, publisher of Alimentum, about designing a color insert of a heavily illustrated piece. Cool. Then back at MHP I talked to Sandy, our managing editor, about going to the AWP in Chicago next year. If I help run the table I can get a good chunk of my expenses covered.

I sold a copy of my book. I gave some copies away.

I walked around and handed out hot pink flyers advertising our book contest. I didn't have to look far for the hungry new MFA students. Barbara, who is the heart of the press, was endless energy presenting our books. Rochelle, who is not well, managed to be there every day and spent the afternoon telling our latest prize winner, Karin Randolph, how to promote herself and sell her book. I met people who felt like instant friends and hugged friends for an instant.

I found tables of publishers and writing programs that I love EVERYWHERE. Small Beer Press, A Public Space, Poetry, Tupelo, The Frost Place, Fairy Tale Review, Edward Tufte of the fascinating visual information books (the assistant says he likes to be called E.T.) and on and on. Tables and journals and books, oh my.

But all this muchness has a downside. It is now absolutely clear to me that more than enough poetry is published in the US. One could feel like a mere drop of sweat in an incredibly large bucket. Best not to think about that. One writes. Others write. Some are driven to publish and we thank them for it.

Best of all an agent and two publishers may be interested in helping to bring The Poets' Grimm (fairy tale poem anthology) back into print. Our publisher went out of business. Used copies are selling for $100 on Amazon and we get weekly emails from teachers and readers wanting the book. Have market, need books.

It's official, I'm an occasional muse

Since this is becoming a habit, I thought it fair to note I charge nothing for unintentionally inspiring other writers.

Last night in my writing group, Bill Fowkes told me he was reading a piece that I could have written, inspired by me. And in fact, it was. A recent rant on the perils of being a book designer turned into his very funny story "Dummy Copy, This is For Position Only." I was telling the members of River Writers that I place dummy copy into design proposals but then some editors actually start editing the fake text. I then tried placing "Greeked" copy, which is actually Roman, and an editor once got upset that it was gramatically screwed-up Roman...and corrected it. I just have had the worst time getting uber verbal clients to disregard the words and concentrate on the page layout, color treatments, heading hierarchy, and the other elements that make up a design. But when Bill's story gets grabbed by a lit journal, please do not assume that I am the protagonist of the story. I have never, to my knowledge, packed or used a loaded gun.

When I told my friend Joe Hayes that I'd like to write a multi-generational one act play using my own experiences as a starting point he got so excited for me that he gave me a great plot device, the mother, the grandmother, and the granddaughter are on a bus, talking. He even wrote some dialogue... A month went by. Another. Then, sheepishly, Joe said he couldn't get the idea out of his head and could he please write my play. And he did, it's called Slow Ride. I said sure, whenever I get around to writing that play, it wouldn't be the same as his. I'll have my characters walking in a park. Or riding in a hearse. Sitting under an umbrella on Coney Island. Or maybe just waiting endlessly in a waiting room...er, someone has done that one.

Evil Trump tower kills one

Working a block away from towers that fall is never a comforting experience to New Yorkers, especially since 9/11. The boom, the sirens, the crowds staring... one of my coworkers burst into tears "I'm worried!" A small knot of us went to the sidewalk to see what was going on. Trumps' tower looked like a monster took a bite out of it. The Trump SoHo has been going up faster than a mushroom and apparently safety has plummeted as it nears it's full height. Today scaffolding gave way and two men and a whole lot of wet concrete fell. One man landed in a net. He's in the hospital. One man didn't. He's in the morgue.


The view from our building was disheartening. I turned to my boss and said, "you were right to never walk near it." We silently watched news helicopters, ambulances, and black unmarked vehicles pull onto our now blocked-off street. "If that crane fell, would it reach us?" I asked idly. "No, I don't think so," said Jason, "but it would crush that storage building." "Oh," said my boss, I have things in there." "Anything you need?" asked Jason. "Oh no, just family heirlooms, nothing I really need to go in there for."

But, as so often happens, when something is too horrible, you just have to laugh. From where we stood, a poster advertising the storage building appeared to reach over to the tower. The theme is that storage is so compelling you will put everything you own, including all your clothing, into their care. A naked woman, back to us, is contemplating her nicely emptied closet. Just beyond the edge of the ad, I could see the tattered netting and splintered wooden scaffolding. "Well, both buildings now have cracks in them," I say.

As I photograph the poster, a passerby tells me how shameful I am to photograph a tragedy and laugh about it.

See Céline in a black box shine

Last night I saw one of the best off-off Broadway productions I've ever seen. Adapting the life and novel of Louis-Ferdinand Céline, The Flying Machine theatre company and the prodigiously skilled and talented actor Richard Crawford, with writer/adaptor Jason Lindner and director Joshua Carlebach, have created a night of riveting, hilarious, disturbing, and unforgettable theatre. We saw Journey to the End of the Night in previews, go, go buy your tickets now.

Crawford plays Céline, the scabrously funny and misanthropic author and his bumbling and opportunistic younger alter-ego Bardamu from his eponymous novel. He also manages to morph his expressive features into an entire cast of characters with the flick of a hat brim or a squint of revulsion. The black box setting perfectly encases his claustrophobic world, his "salon." He hunches over a desk, riffles through old drafts and publications, and we meet an author whose ground-breaking nihilism, satire, and profanity is not what he wishes to be remembered for. Instead, the joke is on him, in one hysterically funny scene he offers up the worst bourgeois recipe for respectability, a ballet of cavorting Greek gods tainted by his lascivious trivializing. It is the rude, crude, outraged, anti-semitic, and dreadfully honest man himself that heats up the night.

The theatre, even some of the seats, sported artifacts from the 40s. Being previews, the seats were also filled with the creative team. I hope they heard me laugh, groan, and clap till my hands hurt.

I love what can happen in black box theatre. This just couldn't happen in the Winter Garden or Marriott.

Photo by Piotr Redlinski

Welcome to 2008

Here's the view from 54th, looking down 7th Avenue at Times Square. We had just exited the huge Ziegfeld theatre after a late showing of Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd. It was annoyingly difficult to get there, all the streets had pens filling with the silly hat and noise-maker crowds and manned blue barricades. We had to detour for many blocks and at each corner, we were let through, one by one, pleading with police officers that we needed to get to our movie.

Sweeney was bloody. Was good. Was visually stunning. But I rather wished the same vocal coach that turned the cast of Chicago into actors that can sing had been hired to teach Johnny and Helena how to sing and act at the same time. The theatre was perfect, all crimson and black and imposing. One forgets how good it is to see a movie in a space other than the living room. How it breathes better with an audience.

Our friend Len noticed the disclaimer that no animals were harmed in the making, but where does that leave the cockroaches? They were most certainly harmed in Sweeney and Enchanted. I am not suggesting a movement to save the roaches, maybe the motion picture industry folks need a new disclaimer, "no animals harmed... but uncute insects fair game."

Random googling on my name

Sometimes I have to see what surfaces when I type "Carlson Elephant House." This is how I discovered I'd had a poem on Verse Daily. Or that I'd gotten a good review for The Elephant House. Or that another review is in the works... Yesterday my search pulled up more than a tire or boot from the meta-ocean. The Elephant House made it to the 30 book list of "Some Recently Published Books of Poetry You Might Want to Read"! Thank you John Hewitt and the Writer's Resource Center. Woo-hoo.

And then there are great readings

So from the worst venue, to the best. I asked Matthew Thorburn to read with me (I'd loved his reading at the Center for Book Arts). After a book exchange he decided I wasn't a random loon and I set it up no less than three times at Book Culture which went through, count 'em, three events coordinators. But it was all worth it... Enough people filled the seats, the book store provided wine and nibbles, and the gracious Kelly Amabile--the new events person--made us feel most welcomed and did lots of promo. Jeanne Marie Beaumont introduced us, delightfully, and Matthew read his thoughtful lovely poems. He takes time with them, they broaden. And although we write quite differently, we share some streaks of humor and subject matter. Go buy his book of poetry, Subject to Change.

I enjoyed reading this time. More than I ever have. I'm finally getting more relaxed up there on the singular side of the podium. My aunt Sonya bought a copy of my book, which really touched me, not a lot of poetry books among her political bios. I read some of my new shaped poems, showing them first, like a picture book. It was so lovely seeing faces I know and love among the audience and some I didn't, and they seemed like they were enjoying themselves.

Matthew had a good time. We enjoyed meeting his wife. See his blog. Thanks for doing this with me Matt. Here's our Book Culture interview, I think Matthew reads less junk than me...

Reading with the stars and curry

I've had terrific readings and then there are the ones that are funny later. The Phoenix Reading Series at the Bengal Curry restaurant offered blasts of door-opening chill, take-out customers, fluorescent ambiance, and a chugging soda machine. Luckily, I was reading with Margo Berdeshevsky and Yerra Sugarman. Alicia Ostriker (really good poet) sat in our audience along with Michael Graves the organizer (selling his book) and three attentive guys who also came for the open mike. See this story about the readings.

Yerra (middle of photo) read from a long sequence about an aunt, coma, and holocaust. There were lines of heartbreak that made me want to read them to figure out how she wrote it.

Margo (on left) turns out to be a childhood friend of my painter friend Jada Rowland. I heard how she fell through the ice in a pond near Jada's home on Staten Island when she was 7... She is still taking risks, she explores the role of myth and healing in the face of disasters from war and nature--she volunteers and reports in these places. Like Jada she used to be an actress; she read with enough passion that even the poori customer looked up.

After all that really good heavy stuff, I decided to drop some levity. I read my new shaped poems, many of which are well...sexy with a twist. The three guys waiting to read brightened up, although with such a small audience it felt odd to mention lust. Alicia chuckled.

Best of all, I traded books with my fellow readers and the three of us had dinner with Alicia. Even if our waiter blundered our orders at Elephant & Castle the conversation about poetry, teaching, travels, and our lives, was a delight.

Wow! Alimentum wins design award!

I've been co-designing, with Peter Selgin, each of the five issues to date of the wonderful journal Alimentum: The Literature of Food. It won in the in New York Book Show 2008 category of General Trade / Quality Paperback! I get to go to the swanky reception March 11th, 2008. Too cool. Fun magazine, with poems, stories, non-fiction, interviews, and things that are clearly undefinable but always about food. Buy one, makes a great holiday gift too.

Witching Hour at the New Museum Opening

It is not often I choose to be in the hottest spot in town and raise the age average just by being there. Last night after an annual dinner with my college buddies (Bœuf bourguignon, shooting pool, sipping port, and spinning vinyl 70s albums) in the burbs, we got a ride from our friend Len to the opening of the New Museum in downtown Manhattan. After waiting on line at 2 a.m. for free standby tickets, we were in.

The coat checker looked at us and said "you're up late, aren't you?" Did she say that to anyone under 30?

The inaugural show, "Unmonumental," celebrated collage, found objects, and unusual juxtapositions, such as a crotched yarn dumbell curving into a clay grip or glowing fluorescent tubes piercing sofa beds...

The dealers were long gone, but the crowds when we were there had to be 90% emerging, as in young, artists. The people--dancing and laughing--were more fun to watch than the artwork, much of which fell into the art school project camp with a few notable exceptions. I loved the Louise Nevelson (sans black spray-paint) inspired fountain of chair and loveseat frames, the 7 points-of-view video story (tip your hat to Rashômon), and the slowly melting life-sized naked wax woman candle--haven't we ALL had days like that.


Jim noted that even if you didn't like a piece you had to admire an obsession that makes an artist sew thousands of buttons onto a mattress.

I made friends with a trio of artists who desperately wanted some gum so I shared my Orbit mint mojito with them and we bonded. I was yelled at by a museum guard for taking their photo as they stood in front of the elevator doors. "She must be new, they are all new, you should be able to take a photo of your friends when there is no art showing," said the guy. We all chewed our gum vehemently in agreement.

On the top floor a man served bags of red candy and all down the stairs red hots and Swedish fish were ground into the new white floors and a thousand eager finger prints grayed the doors... Target, a huge sponsor, somehow made their red logo artsy and cool in the skylight lounge.

Len, who works with museums, was delighted with the architecture--open with skylights--and mission, "there is no permanent collection, you know," he gestured, "ephemeral pieces like the melting wax woman drive traditional curators and collectors crazy."

We got to bed by 4 a.m. When we finally crawled out, the first snow had powdered fire escapes and rooftops.

----------------

Jim and I with our bags of red candy

Len with Target logos

What takes sixteen sticks & four hearts?

Last night my friend Len, who always knows he can call me at the last moment, invited me to join him for a free percussion concert in the Winter Garden. By percussion I do not mean the construction going on at night in the pit of the World Trade Center... this was the uber talented and hip group So Percussion performing three pieces of new music. They played beads, coils of metal, flower pots, xylophones, and a variety of drums. The music was melodic, varied, enticing, and recorded live for the New Sounds Live radio program at WNYC 93.9. I loved it all, but by the last piece I was ready for it to end, percussion is not soothing, like mime or opera in subtitles, it takes extra concentration to enter their world. Funny how less makes more in art...by ignoring perspective or light source in painting or writing haiku, people take some choices away and what is left evokes all.

The talented Ms. Lisa Moore played a variety of percussive instruments and mostly the Steinway grand in the Martin Bresnick piece as images by Goya filled the stage. I did this sketch of her. But Arvo Part's Fratres for Percussion Quartet and Paul Lansky's Threads were just as wonderful, even without the pianist.

Eye of Sauron rises over SoHo

True story.

Russ, who works where I do, saw a woman fall to the pavement in front of the rising Trump Tower. "You OK? What happened?" He helped her up. She said she was OK but she'd been looking up up up at it and lost her balance. "Don't look at it, it's evil," says Russ. "Yeah, it is," she agreed.

Autograph sketch book

When I sit and listen to people chatting or reading from their books my hands need something to do. As a kid I doodled non-stop, filling sketchpads and margins on mimeographed homework sheets. When I didn't have paper or pen, I nibbled my nails. Now I create a portrait and autograph book at the same time. It is, in fact, my restless fingers disguised as a project.

I draw them in pencil. If they are still moving their lips, I add some watercolor. Then I provenance it, put in my signature, and go after the poet or novelist with zeal. "Your autograph, please?"

"Oh, oh, is that me? You did that here just now?" and rarely, "please send me a copy."

At the World Fantasy Convention in Saratoga Springs last weekend, John Crowley gave an amazing reading from a work not yet in print, about the sexual coming-of-age of an unusually challenged and gifted young man.

Crowley uses a fountain pen with the same rusty brown ink I like. You have to love an author who uses the same tools.

I also enjoyed Patricia A. McKillip reading from a new novel that features a young and impressionable budding author. Very funny and apt. I sat up front and probably scared her, as I imagine I do for all of them. Sorry. It's either the sketchpad or sitting on my hands... Thank you all, my unwitting models, in pose and prose.

Sitting on the steps at Yaddo

I just spent four days in Saratoga at the World Fantasy Convention. One afternoon I snuck away with two artists (Donato and Alan Beck) to paint in the gardens at Yaddo, the famous artists' retreat that I hope, one day, to attend as a poet.

The gardens were winter ready, rose bushes clipped and covered with straw, fountains drained, and fragile bushes wrapped in wire mesh. Workers in the distance were busy with terraces. The sun came out and lit the fall golds and the little red berries in the bushes, the last pink roses, and off in the distance the imposing main house loomed--stone--from the crest of the hill.

But it was cold. I was painting with gloves on. First I took out my program from the conference and sat on that. The marble steps still radiated chill into my posterior. Rummaging in my purse there was only one other choice--I sat on my poetry book. I carry two copies around always in hopes that someone will stop me and say "hey, could I buy that copy of The Elephant House off of you?"

Then I just had to laugh, here I was at Yaddo--sitting on my own book. Brooding really. So I sat there laughing to myself. Then I look up and some inmates of the big house are walking in the garden. Oh God, I thought, did they see me laughing to myself, will they think I'm nuts? My second though was, of course not, I blend in just fine, this is an artist's enclave. I'm sure there are plenty of folks here that liken themselves to hens.

Happy 75th Birthday Helen Carlson

It was a crisp and sunny October 30th.

Projecting my mother into the present gets harder after 32 years...

The black hair would be mostly white and she'd need bifocals; but unlike her mother's they'd be progressives in light-weight black and silver titanium frames. I suspect her opinions on everything would be just as snappy, even if everything has changed.

I'd give her a &75.00 dollar Starbucks card (she would love the espresso shots) and a soft sweater in her burnt oranges. More than that, I'd take her to dinner with my daughters, my husband and me. But that is too small a group, I'm sure she'd have a bevy of fellow teachers, poets, and eBay ephemera merchants to toast her. We would make her laugh...

Too bad she can't be here, it would have been a hell of a party.

Emoticon at Princeton

Touring campuses with my daughter and ex is like falling down a rabbit hole. I imagine an avatar of my daughter jauntily walking from dorm to classroom as buildings are named and the campus briefly fills in and falls away behind us. Down and down we fall.

I'm wondering "why are looking if we can't possibly afford this, would she be happy and challenged here, why do so many of them wear those preppy wool jackets, does everyone belong to an eating club?" By this you can see we spent yesterday touring Princeton. "Very pretty," says Caitlin, referring to the stone and ivy clad walls and vistas of trees obligingly multi-hued. We heard about revolutionary war battles taking place on campus "right here a musket shot from Washington made a dent under the ivy," the 6-to-1 ratio of students to profs, the senior thesis, and the joys of a year abroad.

Just as our group of 20 was about to walk into another history drenched quad someone shouted "I HEART PRINCETON!!!!"

"Wow, yeah," shouted back our tour guide, adding that such unsolicited comments were usually much worse. But how perverse that the word love, represented by a heart symbol online, should then be used in a shout that is clearly seen in the shouter's mind as a text message.

Caitlin whispered to me, "at UCON they shouted: 'Send me your virgin daughters.'"

My first digital life drawing

I drew this with a wacom tablet and digital pen. I sat next to another laptop artist who told me I might consider NOT emulating natural media. "Draw it like it is done on a computer," she urged me. I'm sure she is right. Faced with something new, you can't help but look back. Gutenberg's press emulated monk's calligraphy, the Model T looked like a horseless buggy, and I used the "pastel" mode in Photoshop.
I peeked at the forward thinking artist. She was doing something wild with a starfield, superimposing the model on infinity. Maybe next time...

Stickley to the Man

I work near furniture showroom windows. Half of them have Italian sounding names and feature chrome, black leather, and glass. The other half have earnest Anglo Saxon names and feature oak, orange pillows, and golden lampshades. Both sell single's pads to corporate bonuses. To afford even the merest of foot stools in either camp is beyond my means.

I've been thinking about the yin / yang of the colors in the windows. One is a medley of browns, hugging just one warm corner of the color wheel; the other zips from blacks to whites and generates electric sparks of accent color. There are no pastels. In fact, it is the anti-pastel. I think you have to go to Martha Stewart to find those tints.

And where is the showroom window with the couches and chairs I really need? Surfaces that resist cat, dog, teens, and my own casual gestures with foods and liquids? Where? You too can shop at the Salvation Army Boutique, Housing Works, and shops liquidating during bankruptcy. Some of my furnishings were inherited from my Grandma Rose, another sort of liquidation. Think eclectic, please.

If my rooms were placed in a showroom, nobody wanting to create an impression would buy. But you could walk in and get comfortable in no time.

Rolling in Dirt with Eiko and Koma

My daughter Natalie tells me that only freshman pronounce the "Wang" in The Wang Center with an "a" so I learned "it's wong to say wang" and now when you visit Stony Brook University, you can sound smarter than a freshman.

Natalie is taking a movement class and one of the visiting dancers, Eiko, of Eiko and Koma, taught her class warm-up exercises. She rolled gently on the floor and showed them all how to stretch like animals in "delicious movements." Natalie said Eiko was a lovely old hippie who mentioned her sons were embarrassed by having parents perform in the nude.

"Eiko and Koma," my husband said, "I saw them once, they roll around naked very very slowly, you go into a zen-like state watching them. Hmmmm, I'll stay at your parent's house and read science magazines with your dad." So I went to the Wang with my daughters.

The title was Mourning, it wasn't going to be jolly. We were seeing it in previews, the premier will be October 18th at the Japan Society, New York City.

The stage was covered in thick dirt. Two semi-clad middle aged people lay on the dirt. A tree-like prop hung in the back of the stage. Off in the wings a woman, Margaret Leng Tan, sat at two pianos, one a grand, the other a toy. Which reminded me of a dog show with big and toy breeds except dogs don't have 88 keys. Of course toy pianos don't have 88 keys either and I wasn't close enough to count the octaves of wee keys...

After a long wait, in which I heard a great deal about shopping at a Long Island Mall from people sitting behind me, the man and woman began to roll very very slowly in the dirt. The rolling and movements changed and the music changed I was aware that Eiko and Koma were exploring natural and unnatural, human and animal, experiences of death and, finally, recovery and rebirth. The rebirth involved some fresh leafy branches that they carried and rolled through. Do they get scratched I wondered.

The zen-like state, as experienced by this viewer, was very close to nodding off, which my daughters observed with stifled mirth. They particularly liked how I made it look as if I was tilting my head to see better.

Tan's artistry on toy piano was surprisingly moving and odd and memorable.

We stayed for the Q&A since Natalie's class was there and expecting to write a report. Some people asked if it was all spontaneous. How odd that anyone should think so, it was clear to me that everything was choreographed, thought out, designed. Eiko and Koma were warm and humorous.

We agreed that if we saw it again we'd get more out of it. Like mime or shadow puppets, a new art form that takes getting used to.

"How was it?" Asked the stay-at-homes.

"Slow, slow rolling," I replied.

My poem is on the Poetry Foundation Blog!

Rigoberto Gonzalez put the "Wednesday Shout Out" spotlight on The Elephant House today! Click on excerpt below, which presents Gonzalez's take on my poem "Case Studies," for the whole blog post. Comments on the poem are most welcome:

The curiosities and explorations of this poem from Claudia Carlon’s debut collection are central to the book—a poetic Bildungsroman, if you will, in which a young speaker’s nascent sexuality (and other important rites of passage) must navigate into the mixed messages and mysterious metaphors of the adult world. The poem is less about sex education as it is about the creativity and resilience of the young, and how during puberty we shape a context even for the most surprising of encounters. In this case, with the literature of fetishism, steamy romance novels, and pornography. Ah, memories.

"Possess Your Own SoHo" sez Trump

Near where I work, a Trump condo-hotel-luxury-tower is going up. Soon it will block all the morning light as I head for the office. Thanks Donald for the gray carpet.

I cannot stop wondering why I would want to possess my own SoHo. Couldn't I possess other more worthy edifices? Such as my own mind, for instance, it shows signs of being periodically vacant. Maybe I'd rather possess my own Paris (not Hilton) or possess my own really good diner on Rt. 347, the one with the moist grilled chicken and crisp but sour pickles? And what about all the other places that don't make it into the Trumpamerican skyline? Possess your own Levittown. Possess your own plot at Pinelawn Cemetery? Possess your own dreams, possess your own verse, repossess your own passion. If you must possess your own SoHo, please do it quietly and among consenting adults.

The traffic gets awful around here when folks try to drive to New Jersey after work. For some reason once drivers see the Holland Tunnel signs they no longer pay any attention to traffic laws, lights, cross streets, their memory of yesterday's commute, and pedestrians. They express their desire to have a revised reality by honking. I've seen traffic cops ticket one guy after another and none of them can stop themselves! They honk, they gridlock, they get ticketed, it's another form of possession I guess...

I was plotting a route across the mess when a woman in big sunglasses saw me looking at the satanic "Possess Your Own SoHo" sign and shook her fist at it. She shouted her story. Her neighborhood association had been so busy fighting towers of glass a little north of here, that they'd figured SoHo would quash the Trump thing. But nobody got on it. So, quite legally, Trump's tower goes up, up, up. Air rights. And once one too tall building comes in, it brings in more and when all the rich folks move in, out go us artists. "My daughter," she told me, "just graduated art school and do you know where she's moving, where she can afford to live and be an artist?" I didn't know. "Philadelphia, Philadelphia! That's where they're all going--forget Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Queens, no artists can afford New York City anymore."

Ok artists, you and Rocky can now Possess Your Own Philly. Really.

Jazz, models, and a glass of wine

Tonight I sketched while listening to a jazz duet, two models posed in fascinating angles to each other, and I sipped a glass of Merlot without spilling any of it. There is something richly perfect about life drawing at the Society of Illustrators.

The last few weeks I've sketched on my laptop using a digital pen and wacom tablet. And it was fun, the unfamiliarity of the medium--slippery plastic--and the odd disconnect of drawing on one thing and having the sketch show up elsewhere, kept me off balance as well. It lead to fairly wild stuff (for me) as I grabbed brilliant hues from photoshop and gave up any desire to have it look like anything.

But tonight, I just felt I had to draw with charcoal again, I love how it can dig into the tooth of the paper and give sharp lines or sweeping smudges. Once I get going, all my fingers get involved in rubbing the shadows into being. I draw and I see bone and muscle and attitude in the posture, in the way one person's ratio of sharps and curves repeat over their whole body. Sometimes the models made each other laugh. The shorter model took brave athletic poses with arms raised and body twisted.

Hard work, for the models and mucisians. Pure fun for me. And the jazz was so right for the room, inventive but smooth. The guitar was red, red as a tomato and the trumpeter wore red shoes.

Some of the regulars came by and were disappointed to see I was back to the ordinary magic of paper and pencil.