So i was seething because he hadn't shown up, but after a while even that gets as boring as olives in martinis and predictable too and i never figured myself for predictable. if anything i've been or he tried to derail me anyway, and quite successfully for a few months when i wore way too much black and i truly mourned and sat shiva for more than the requisitite number of days and sometimes i still do... can you sit shiva off and on...? What would Shiva do? Head to the Mitzvah (Mitzve) and purify, purify, purify. I drink purified water and wonder if i cleanse the insides too, does it work that way? Or do you have to really shave everything off and clip your nails to the quick and be dunked so that the water runs up your not so jewish nose because really, you're only half and you've got that slight hook but not enough that most people notice, except these two guys in Paris who once guessed and you wonder if it was a bet between them. That the one would say to the other, She is! Mais non! Mais oui! Who knows; qui sais...

Anyway, wasn't the point anyway. I've long ago lost the thread of that story. All i remember is that summer with my cousin and how we... we... oui! Yes. And it was... and we were... there beneath the orchard pear, surrounded by the musk trees who bore witness to such kiss and then we...and he... and i... and all the birds took flight to hear this first song of solomon and the starlings in the chatterbox  tree flew and dispersed and that is exactly as it should have been because everybody's first should be like that. Really. Pastoral and lovely and something you can easily write about later in life, but that you don't tell a soul, you just put into black and white type and if someone finds it then so be it, and if not, then so be it.. Doesn't matter really, just so long as you know where  your head is at and your not grading papers on the subway platform with your present red-pen, that you pulled from the bun in your hair such that your long locks (blonde) came tumbling down (shoulders) and when you shrug a little wave forms, so you have these permanent waves at the ends of your hair because you must shrug a great deal - like  you just don't know anymore, and you don't... so you shrug it off like, "je ne sais pas maintenant" parceque.... parceque a friend says he'll practice French with you and writes to you only in French, including instructions on how to input some code on the computer, which you can understand the point but to actually DO it, now that's another thing entirely. Still, you're up for the challenge. The golden ring. 

There's this old Jewish guy on Madison and 37th and he sells all of these beautiful gold bands. Sad in a way because a lot of them are second hand or pawned so that means someone got divorced or broke up and didn't want the bands anymore, yet it's hopeful in some way because someone else comes along,  happy and united with a lover and they buy one of these bands or a diamond ring and they form their exquisite union. How lovely is that? I go to him because I like Ephraim and he remembers my name all of the time, which is unusual but good too. I bought a ring from him one August day after i had a fight with my cousin. A simple gold band and i put it on my ring finger on top of the band he had given me and i swore so many things to myself - made a thousand vows and Yes's and deliberations took place but ultimately it was a vow to be true to the self and i was and i am. I made the terrible mistake of taking it off (you should never take off a gold band), and I can't find it now, so what does that mean? I look for signs in everything. I have every last little scrap, did you know? Are you reading this? Do you know who YOU are? I wonder... If you think you do, you're probably wrong. Or maybe not. I'll never tell. Unlike you, i know well how to keep my secrets and protect  my loves. Traitor. You offered it all  up on a silver platter like I am some mackerel to be served, stinking and raw, a whore, right? for dinner to the fish-wife who had eye-balled me all along anyway, so no big loss. Someone who would go through my suitcase in my absence and do my laundry when i was out with ... and i always was grateful until a friend said "She was looking for signs of..." and it disgusted me to think that. How wretched. A spying, suspicious, ugly Shiksa bitch - Catholic and catholic. Ordinary in every way.

One can't see it. Yet I saw it. Everytime i look at you i wonder what the hell you are thinking when you are not La Bete and you always said me La Belle and i cupped my hands and let you drink from there and in the mirror pane one day you saw me standing next to you and saw only total innocence you said... just total innocence, nothing else and that's right, because there was or is nothing but total innocence so why did you expect to see something else? Were you surprised.

The hell with all of you. That's what he said. He wrote, I hate you God almost as if I believed in you. I can relate to that... I hate God almost as much as if he existed. I used to believe strongly he did; so strongly and I an Officiant, i should know better and yet yet yet yet... life has a funny way of changing one's perspective. Try living with the sword of Damacles over your head every day, then be knifed in the back by your best friend in the world and it changes your perspective. You can (stupidly) pray to some god (Beware a man whose God is in the sky, said Shaw), or you can take some practical action or you can be passive and mourn. I chose to mourn. What was i supposed to do? Drop to my knees and beg God to give back what He had taken? I had believed up until that point, you see. So  things changed and I changed and gave up and said Arete!

A pantheon of gods is far more interesting and mythlogically speaking I am or was one of them anyway, though it's sort of ironic how history repeats even despite our best efforts to not make it so. Me, Cytherea, Aphrodite - News Flash - falls in love with Ares, Hermes, births Eros with Hermes and another child (who shall remain nameless because his name is your name, right? If you don't know, then I won't bother explaining because you ought know this by now). So there i was, a goddess, falling in love, deeply in love with my own cousin Hermes and giving birth to love itself - Eros - when we are broken up by that God of War, Zeus, our angry father and of course, Ares who doesn't like this at all but then again, they had a rather on again off again relationship so what's his chief complaint?

What's the point to this ramble? There is no point. It's automatic writing. I'm typing as fast as my fingers will allow. You don't like the direction I"m going to? Do  you like the attention? The keyboard is black (smart) this way you don't leave messy fingerprints on it ... honey and all that.  Oh honey! I'm only happy when it rains. onlyhappywhenitrains like the song and it's raining outside and i'm laughing my way through it as i carry a heavy load of papers and bags and my hair has fallen down and my Spring dress, which i put on this morning when it was warm, but now it's chill and i'm not so chill because i'm freezing, if  you get my point. Flush blush rose crimson hush in the face, i look damp and blessed with holy water, which is what falls in this pure baptismal rain. I am or could be The One. I know this ... what did he say? "I don't look so good from a distance, but I tell you I'm the one..." That's so me. God that's so me. I don't look so good from a distance but I tell you i'm The One. If we even know what that means tho... the one who....? Just The One. You can't be God's special chosen one if you don't believe in Him, so give that up but you can still be that one. That girl with that thing who walks with a switch in the hips as your fine-boned feet step off the curb in their ankle-strap  tango shoes and you cross that broad avenue and you meet that others eye at the intersection of x and y and there you are, in that moment, in a New York Minute and it's all you ever needed to feel alive, that slight gleam in the eye, the brief flit of acknowledgment which means nothing and everything and all that counts is that on this day, you know that you are happy with yourself and immune to ridicule and there is no label that anyone could or can ascribe to you that would stick other than just plain "Wonderful" (which, by magic, someone says to you....) and there you are, you in your tango shoes, your long black skirt, your ivory silk blouse, the gentle curve of your breast, your hair falling about your flushed face as the rain falls steady and you know that all that matters is this moment right now.

s.r.p.