10.6.05
I was waiting on the subway platform at Union Square to transfer to the R train to Brooklyn and the man next to me lost control of his cell phone and it flew into the subway tracks. The W train raced into the station, he pressed his lips tightly and winced a hint of pissed off, got on the train and sped off. When the train had gone, I looked down to the tracks and his phone was still there, unharmed...I would have thought it more important to retrieve my phone then to catch the train. But Mr. Downtown was not into waiting for it I suppose.

Last night was mixed. Had an amazing dinner at my friend's restaurant BEAST. But while I was there I learned that an acquaintance, Kamil, had passed away. He had been battling cancer for the past year and passed away late last week. He was 38. My friend Karyn had been going to visit him almost every day since he was diagnosed as terminal...I feel for her. She is going to his apartment tomorrow with another friend to pack up his remaining things. Much too early to leave this crazy planet. . . Much too early.

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10.4.05
I am eeeking closer and closer to a decision about when I am leaving New York... A film in New Mexico will lure me away in November and then it is a question of whether or not New Mexico can hold me there...or if I allow myself to be held...again. I have been going back and forth between these places for years now and I admit I may keep doing it for awhile, but for now, the desert is calling my name again...and no matter how hard I try, I can never resist her.

I slept a ridiculous amount of time today. Between the night and a few naps I just couldn't seem to feel awake. And then around 5pm it finally happened. Just in time for evening to settle in.

My neighbor downstairs in the garden apartment is burning tiki torches tonight. It looks like an episode of Survivor down there.

There's an article in the Times today that may interest some of my many bicycle riding friends...particularly those without vaginas. Read on guys!!!



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10.1.05
Exhausted this morning after a long day of work yesterday. Left my apartment at 4:50am and returned to it at 11:38pm... Ah the glamorous film business. The UPside? I did get to witness the genius of Eddie Izzard in a fantastical farm field with a sea of puppets and magical blue people.

Have you ever found out disturbing information about a friend of yours? It's strange, because obviously it both challenges our perception and reconfirms our inner suspicions...But ultimately we're sharply reminded that they are human or have secrets. Is secrecy safety? Or is absolute knowledge impossible? I think we're better off having certain fictions in our lives...but we grow and change because of the non-fictions.

I'm going to see Grizzly Man tonight and eat some yummy food with A. I like Werner Herzog's films and look forward to his examination of yet another intense strange segment of human existence. His film Lessons Of Darkness blew me away. So beautiful and awful are we--people and oil--destructive in our "progress".

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9.29.05

Scientists assure us that there are natural causes as well as human-causes. So don't feel too guilty driving your Hummer. But maybe you could...

...Look here:
Americans For Solar Power
Alternative Energy Store
The Solar Guide
Home Power Magazine
Real Goods Catalogue
Build It Green
Greasel



How often do you move? I seem to move every 2.5 years. Maybe that's my 2.5 children?

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9.28.05
People are like their dogs. Watch them.

There were three helicopters swirling above Prospect Park while I was there this afternoon. Their sound was constant. I stared at one of them and was suprised to find myself mesmerized by the fact that a heavy piece of metal could actually fly...Ok, I wasn't that suprised. Ordinary things hit me over the head every day. I walked home and never found out what they were chasing. Their sound faded away and was replaced by buses and trucks on 7th Avenue.

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9.26.05
Japanese Green. Plain.
Caught the first part of the Bob Dylan documentary on PBS last night...he seemed to credit growing up in Gallup, New Mexico more than Minnesota--something I had never heard. He was the guy who would borrow your records and forget to return them. He was a good copier before he was a great songwriter.


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9.25.05
Peter Gabriel calms me down. Earl Grey with honey.

Something in me, dark and sticky
All the time it’s getting strong
No way of dealing with this feeling
Can’t go on like this too long

I’m digging in the dirt
Stay with me I need support
I’m digging in the dirt
To find the places I got hurt
To open up the places I got hurt.

This afternoon I take a bike ride with Chris and Marisa into the city, up the west side and around, finishing off with a sushi dinner before tackling the bridge back to Bklyn. We have learned to use our bike bells like a foreign language...indicating we made it across the intersection. All here/ All alive. Watch out for the guy in the wheel chair. Marisa almost runs into a roller-blader on the Brooklyn Bridge and a crew of men hauling giant rolls of carpeting across 32nd street. I see another billboard for North Country in Chinatown. We stop at a traffic light next to an ad for a t.v. show about Geena Davis as the first female president of the United States. (hmmmm) Chris comments that ABC is really a secret focus group to test the American public's openness to an actual female president: If the ratings are high, maybe Halliburton will see Condoleeza Rice as a good investment. If not, Geena Davis was too Thelma and Louise for us.



iPod Update--->What's on repeat: Johnny Cash, Scissor Sisters and Andrew Bird.


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9.23.05
I have learned that my friend Paul Roberts lost his livelihood to Katrina and has left Baton Rouge for Los Angeles. I saw him for the first time in ten years this August.

To send aid to the Community of Baton Rouge click on these organizations:
-The Foundations for Recovery
-MissionFish


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9.22.05

W readies Texas for Rita.
NOW we know what we're doing!

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9.21.05
10:34am - Before I forget, North Country (the film I worked on this spring) is emerging in the press as its release date nears (Oct. 21). Check out the web site as well as this Minnesota Public Radio Article about the real life women. This film was an amazing experience to be a part of. Niki Caro, you are my hero.

3:07pm - I drove past a man in Astoria, Queens whose shirt read, "TIME IS AN INVENTION". The car service 12.4 miles to Astoria to pick Anne up and bring her back to Brooklyn cost $55.00. Sometimes, ok, most of the time, I can't STAND NY.

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9.20.05
Recently returned from a month on the road...The unofficial "Break Your Own Heart Tour 2005" as it came to be known. (Still working on the T-Shirt design-lemme know if you're interested). I left work, got some wheels and headed west...the solution to most of life's dilemmas as far as I am concerned. I needed some space and a few thousand miles beneath me to feel whole again. A month and a few days later I returned to Brooklyn: the apartment, 5th Avenue, peeps, the loud bar downstairs, the roar of the bus stop at 6am, the rumble of the train, the air conditioned box of the bedroom...the sun and sky filtered through humidity and distant trees. The trip made sense at the time. Clarity was achieved. And now to be back in the city, the month has already evaporated into photos and notes jotted on napkins from gas stations, receipts and lingering thoughts of exit signs and desert air. I need to back track about three years to really tell the tale...but I will spare you and continue on as if we are old friends.

Minnesota was family and winding down from the city. The river. Small town peace and quiet. Patching holes in time. Apologizing and forgiving silently. Madeline is 2 this year. Eleanor is almost 90.

New Mexico was the cabin, breathing in my OTHER life, my OTHER body, my OTHER self. Catching up where I had left off, returning to these mountains that felt familiar from day one. People People People. Saw them, spent time with them, devoured moments with them, wished there was more tequila and more time to work out the details, do one last hike, another climb, more night skies, say that last word, ask you that one last question.

L.A. was to remember. L.A. was to check back in with my past life as a married woman, as a mother as a participant in a life...Having never been married or a parent, the roles still needed to be remembered and people needed to be seen. It was brief. I dipped my toes in the ocean but once. Just enough hours to look into your eyes and know that I was finally free. That you were free. And that anything that had been our child had always been free. I turned around towards the Mojave and knew that the miles had been worth it.

Packed into a Westvalia with recently closer friends. Taos. Colorado. Telluride Film Festival. F + C in their habitat. Conversations With Other Women. Walk The Line. I remember these best. Films that hit my heart dead on. I think of them even today. Seeds. Driving. Tequila. Air. Heat. Music Music Music. We return to Taos in a rain storm. Say goodbye. We plot the possible future but then realize it's no use. I forget my jacket at your house but cannot bear to go back and get it. I am exhausted and fall asleep at the wheel several times on my way south to Santa Fe. I sleep three more nights in your magenta sheets before catching a plane East. I leave the truck in Dyanna's gravel driveway. I'll be back for it soon enough. The air smells like sweet dirt...Driving away never seems quite right.