Self Portrait Smiley Pants

Self Portrait Smiley Under Pants

Yesterday I bought five pairs of panties from a store that said: “No Return of Underwear.” Not one fit.

Today I bought three pairs of panties form a store with a sign that said: “No Return of Underwear. No Arguments.” They don’t fit, but one has a nice message.

Today I looked at myself naked.

There are long, hair-thin red lines across my body: arms, breasts, belly. They are slightly raised like a fresh tattoo. Where have they come from? I’ve been touched by something so light I didn’t feel its arrival. In my bed? In the store? At the dentists’? Or is it here on Canal Street penetrating through windows tightly closed to keep out the heat of the city. In this air conditioned home, am I living in a haunted apartment? Or did Ma B the curious ghost in Pukerua Bay follow me to New York from New Zealand? The air conditioner is old. Is it the same one that sat in the window prior to 9/11? If so, then I am living with many ghosts trapped in this city where the living won’t let them go.

Steve Cannon, Tribes Gallery, NY

Saturday, July 30, 2006
Getting some sugar from Steve

Installation at Tribes Gallery, LES, NY

Hanging out by the black pool in the garden at Tribes Gallery, on East Third Street on the LES, there for the annual art auction and exhibition. Great time chatting with Steve Cannon, owner of Tribes. The auction raises money for the space and for Steve to continue his fabulous work for artists, writers and the community. The black pool is part of an installation in his garden. Tribes Gallery, the only visual arts gallery in the world curated by a blind man.

Photo for FFF.

Om Shanthi 8th Avenue & 14th St. NYC

kiwis

with marge and barry, red dog cafe, wellington, june, 2006

Canal Street

Dancing in the streets
in New York City
where the Lower East Side meets
Chinatown

I hear Leonard Cohen
calling to me
‘Don’t cha know’
and I cry for him
that he never had me
for just one night

July 28, 2006
Photo by Guler Ugur

Swami Satchidananda, Yogaville, Virginia

The Meditator: My eyes were closed but I knew it was her when she left the room, a few minutes later she came back, her presence announced by the rattle of the door knob, then a sudden slam and the door closed behind her with a dull click. I felt her pass me with a carefree air as if she was entering a shopping mall, her scent momentarily distracting my own space. She walked back back to her mat as if she was the only one, the only one in the room. She had a distinctive walk: a drag and a shuffle, her back foot would drag behind her as her front foot shuffled ahead, shoulders drooping toward her belly, head moving forward past her shoulders, eyes fixed, chin jutting. I opened one eye and stole a peek in time for me to see her plop down on her mat, cross her legs and look around the room like a three year old waiting for something to happen and then like a three year old she suddenly noticed that everyone was still meditating in the exact same positions as when she left. She shrugged her shoulders, moved her head from side to side, as if remembering, ‘oh yes we are meditating’ and closed her eyes, her smile intact in the moment, in the present, oblivious and yet there.

drunk monologue fire

TimesSquare Flag ImagineNot Central Pk Boots

New York City. Just Like I Remembered It.

New York City. July. Summer. Hot.

I’m still walking on the left, crossing wrong, horns honking, people moving as one and a sea of bodies, grid lock, body lock, couldn’t move, waited for the flow to move me away, away from them, walking walking, walking, familiar sites, Empire State Building, Broadway, (The Color Purple is now a musical), Madison Square, Times Square, heat so heavy and hot you can see it, vapor rises and is stuck above my head, pushing on my shoulders. I craved something in nature. I made my way to Central Park, walked over thirty blocks in my cowboy boots, feet throbbing, I hit the grass, laid down on my back, head on backpack and inhaled deeply, nothing more sweet then grass when you haven’t touched it in a week.

The day I arrived in New York, TV broadcast the 'Sex and the City' episode I was in, so friends say, ‘hey, I just saw you in.... I was thinking of you because I saw you in... ‘ It’s such a small part I’m flattered people knew it was me so with confidence I headed off to an agent who called me, ‘Come in so we can get a look at ya.’ He gave me a full minute of his time, but I may be exaggerating by ten seconds; he sized me up in three seconds and said, ‘you’re a redhead, your resume says blonde, you should change it.’ I thanked him profusely while he eyed his lunch waiting for me to split. Back on the street I bought a cotton dress for $10. This is the New York I remember, street vendors including those selling hot dogs in a vat of boiling water with a smell like old sox on every other corner. I miss Thelma and Louise, my two islands from my sea view who appeared with the tide out my window in NZ. And no fantails in New York City follow me, eyeing me with curiosity. But we do have birds here. I heard them in the park.

I went to a party and saw friends I haven't seen in so long, they didn't even know I was gone. This summer there is Hamlet in the Parking Lot, a Lower East Side annual summer event. A theatrical group performs Shakespeare every summer. If you are lucky you might see a local drunk who will walk right onto the pavement, into the performance space, stop and watch, then the audience begins to laugh, he (or she) will look at the audience, smile and continue watching, sometimes walk away, oblivious, sometimes not.

I'm staying in Olivia's apartment on Canal Street in Chinatown, part of the new Lower East Side. New and improved. Average rent two to three thousand a month. There are two bars below me, both with enthusiastic patrons. The building shakes from the subway, not unlike the soft earthquakes I felt in my cottage in Plimmerton. The sounds of helicopters are now part of my sound landscape along with the garbage trucks that arrive promptly at 4 a.m. at the moment when I’m about to fall asleep. Jet lag is a drag.

Wairaka Rock, Pukerua Bay

My Last Day in NZ June 28, 2006

On my last day in New Zealand I walked along the beach in Pukerua Bay as if it was all new again knowing it’s the last time.

A beautiful solo walk, listening to the waves hissing as they retreated, a curious fantail followed me and I meditated on a rock near Wairaka Rock where an unfaithful lover is turned to stone by her jealous man, a Maori Warrior. Then NF appeared high on the hill. We went inside a massive rock, next to Wairaka Rock. Deep in the hillside, into a cave, with black jutting edges we listened for the voices. Later we described to each other the soft high pitched cry of a woman’s voice surrounding us in the the womb.

A walk back along the path I pointed out to NF where I saw a cat guarding a memorial cross, facing Kapiti Island. There was a plague honoring a surfer born in 1964, with the date of death, November, 18, 2006. Today’s date is June 28, 2006.

Then off to Plimmerton to the Italian cafe where I had my last flat white with soy and a cheese- less pizza. Back to IP’s I continued packing and we went to Hell’s Pizza where we got vegan pizza to go so we could watch New Zealand’s only soap opera, Shortland Street. I have more than enough carbs for my 24 hour journey. I miss my daughter Dana.

At Waikato University, Hamilton, NZ, June, 2006

Playmarket

At the 2006 Playmarket Aotearoa Playwrights Conference in Hamilton for the week of June 17th. A photo of me at Waikato University and a photo of Nail with his hairdresser, ex-drug dealer in recovery.

Another Moon from my view of the sea

Goodbye Full Moon

Full Moon
at 3 a.m.

Full Moon over Mana Island, Plimmerton

Sex Disease and flowers

Clarification on my Santosha Blog


I knew I had the wrong spelling for my white flowering plant that I gave Rose, but it took Maili, a friend in New York, who lives in the building I left a year ago, to set me straight:

“Hahaahahaa!!! Oh, Diane, you crack me up!
Okay, here's what you're looking for:
Chlamydia is a bacterial venereal disease.
Clytemnestra was the mythical wife of Agamemnon, the mother of Electra.
Clematis is a climbing flowering vine, which you always get confused with....
Cyclamen, the tuberous, white-flowering plant that you left with me when you emigrated, which is still alive, and has flowered a few times, but has never been quite so happy as it was in the living room window of L 1507 [or whatever the number was]. He misses mommy, I suppose.
You are welcome. Love,
Maili ["The Dictionary Bitch"]”

My Last Walk

Mark, my yogi friend in New York, after reading about my walk from the train to my home by the sea says: "“A little reality check while you pack your bags: NYC subways, when they're full, carry between 110 and 175 passengers per car, depending on which size car, adding up to 1,100 to 1,450 people riding every train. So how far do you have to walk on your country lane to bump into 1,450 folks?"

My last walk.
After getting off the train I began the 20-minute trek in the dark, up hill, without seeing a soul. The waxing allmost full moon lit the way and I could see the stars over the sea through bushes and trees over rooftops. I picked a small sprig of jasmine and lavender from dark bushes, rubbing the lavender into my wrists and inhaling the sweet jasmine. My walk was very still except for each step from my soft-soled hiking boots and the clinking of the ends of two zippers on my backpack. I was one with the stillness. No birds, no dogs, no train or cars, not even a distant TV. I listened for approaching traffic behind me, coming up the hill or suddenly appearing in front of me, around each bend, leaving no room either way: on my right, a high cliff, and on my left a slopping ravine.

We're coming into Winter. The air was cold but my body warmed to the fast pace. Passing one house I heard the rustle of bushes from a distant hill, moving towards me, getting louder, feeling closer and closer. A werewolf? Lurking in the dark ready to pounce? I am the dark, I whispered. I walked around the final bend, leaving the rustle of dead leaves from a dog or perhaps an opossum behind me. The darkest part of the journey was now in the past and I saw the sea, lit from the moon and stars. I followed the end of the winding road to my driveway and checked my mail. I hadn't seen another soul since I got off the train, twenty minutes ago, not even those sitting in their living rooms watching the blue glow. I lit my torch (flashlight) and walked down the fifty steps to the bach, (cottage) my home. This part of the walk is very dark from the bushes and trees, even with the moon I wouldn't find my way without my tiny torch attached to my keys.

Once inside I checked the rooms, lit a fire, went through more papers, and went to bed with the usual two hot water bottles. Around three a.m. I woke to a room full of light. The full moon was low in the sky over Mana Island, reflecting on a silver and calm sea from the sky all the way to me. I heard a noise. Is that what woke me? What could it be? There it was again. What is it? It was much too dark and early to be a bird; it would be hours before dawn. There, again, a long soulfull cry. Who was calling me? Were they saying stay or go? Please?

It was so quiet I could see the stillness and hear my heart beat. Re-entry back to New York City could be bizarre.

Mud Self Portrait Pataka Musuem

Santosha

As the sun sets I hear little tiny paws running up and down my walls. Each night they come for warmth. Mice? The walls are thin and I expect one of them to poke its head through some crack and run across my floor over my feet, but they never do.

A year ago I came to New Zealand with two suitcases and a computer. I shipped a container of ‘stuff’, ten boxes, which arrived two months later. Everything I felt I could not do without, but did live without for two months: tax documents, books, yoga manuals, original artwork, drawings, tapes, photos, DVDs, CDs, vegan hiking boots, German knives, gifts and many portfolios documenting my work as an artist and performer. Now with only 21 days to go, I have the opportunity to once again donate, throw out, store or ship back the same stuff, as well some new things: quartz from the Sounds, black shirts from the Salvation Army, and twenty pieces of new art work made from stone, wood, glass and photos. If anyone needs free pots and pans that have never cooked meat, let me know.

I haven’t looked at my cartoon portfolio since I put it in a box headed for here. What do I do with this? Ship it again? I’m tempted to throw it out, since there are few that I still enjoy.

Santosha: Contentment: ability to be comfortable with what we do and do not have. Santosha is one of the Niyama’s from the eight limbs of yoga. A way for me to practice non-attachment. It’s all very simple, letting go and letting be. My printer and chair go to Helen the web queen; the only novel Tennessee Williams ever wrote to NF; my Chlamydia flowering plant to Rose, my oldest friend of eleven months; and the Possum Killer can take back the blender if he remembers he gave it to me.

I’m getting lighter making decisions on what to keep, leave, ship. Even my guitar can’t come with me unless I pay Air New Zealand $200 US dollars to take it on board. Kazz Funky Blue has offered to hold it for me when I return. She is certain I’ll be back. In the meantime she can become a blues woman.

Today the weather is nasty. It’s Autumn, soon to be Winter. (Thank the goddess I will not spend another winter in NZ.) I have never experienced this kind of cold. Without central heat, a space heater does some good. But typing with tip-less gloves? I wear an undershirt, shirt, vest, scarf, and jacket along with two heavy hot water bottles, one under my t-shirt, one in my lap. If you could see me walk to the kitchen or bathroom holding on to two water bottles you would have a laugh. There was hail this morning, and it could get down to minus 5 C so the telly weatherman says. Or is it the tellie? I still can’t convert Celsius to Fahrenheit, but it’s cold. Today is a holiday. The Queen’s birthday. I broke a tooth. There was a mild earthquake Saturday night. I felt the earth move.

The Cottage, Plimmerton, New Zealand. Home

Countdown Day 28

Countdown 28 days to be...

To be -- here in New Zealand. Only 28 days left, one moon cycle left from when this journey began June 10th 2005. Embracing the end of this journey with sadness and joy. After being in bed for three days from a bad cold and scratchy throat probably received from a handshake from NF, a poet at the Newtown Community Center Friday night, I feel well enough to venture out for air. Although having an excuse for doing nothing but drinking ginger lemon tea and reading Pinter for long stretchers in bed hasn’t been so bad. Last Friday night the Word Collective recorded all the poets including an indescrible bit of a skit involving small animals and an operation on another poet by Susan Freeman and a new SCUM Manifesto by Kazz Funky Blue, artist/performer extraordinaire. And yes, that is her real legal name. Delightful. The Word Collective offered a CD from their previous event during the past Fringe Festival for only $5.00 in which I participated. At www.dadashopping.net there are photos of poets including me with the American flag/scarf wrapped around my eyes, a proud moment of poetry and patriotism.

My walk to the town of Plimmerton is a two-lane winding road, in parts not wide enough for two cars let alone a pedestrian, an alien to some kiwi drivers, and the view is a breathtaking wonder of sea and bush and trees including manaka, which provides a delicious honey, claimed to be very healing, and in which I was forced to break my vegan diet after moving here (when in Rome syndrome). It’s Fall here. Spring in The States. And although it is very cold there are new flowers sprouting everywhere. I plucked one or two flower heads from lavender bushes along the road and some jasmine that makes my entire home smell divine. In the dairy, operated by Indians like all over the world, I buy a paper because Tuesday is the TV guide day, although I only get two channels, which I watch religiously to study actors. If today is Tuesday then tonight is Boston Legal on the telly. Next to James Spader I am in love with Shatner and the Blonde, Candice Bergen because she’s not Hollywood skinny. If I could only look like her maybe I would have an audition in the morning for one of the Hollywood movies, which will be shot here because there really isn't an actors' union here. I auditioned for 30 nights of darkness and rehearsed for a week my scream when the vampire crashes through my kitchen window, but at the audition they said, look scared but don’t scream. I should have known. Auditions are so unpredictable.

I bought a bag of potato chips in the dairy. The bag said with ready salt in big red letters, what that means I have no idea, ready as opposed to what? Not ready salt? And I bought a bag of tangerines since I am still craving mass doses of vitamin C. My walk back I saw the sunset although NF said on the phone the sun never sets in Plimmerton but I forgot to ask him what that means. I plucked more lavender and a sprig of rosemary by the side of the up-hill road.

Vegetables are roasting as I write this. Kumara, a kiwi vegetable that is better than an ordinary potato along with the plucked rosemary making my entire home on the sea smell homey, reminding me of thanksgiving in Detroit when I was growing up. A fire is blazing from wood I sawed myself. I collected it under this home and in the neighbors’ bush, all dead wood laying around waiting to be burned, turned to ash, to be sent back to the earth, to cradle the dead and honor new growth.

I saw new yellow daisies on my walk and I passed them in sadness and fear of their power. In feng shui two yellow flowers in a vase in the bedroom will bring you a lover, but with only one moon cycle to go and no apartment, no job, no money to return to in New York, I chose instead four purple flowers outside my door, from a vine, a weed, a nasty weed according to DOC (Department of Conservation). In feng shui, a certain color of purple in a flower, placed in the right direction, which I’ve forgotten, SE or SW, will bring money.

It’s cold, and the walk was brisk, I wore my black beret, but I don’t know what the temperature was or is. I guess something like 7 C but I don't know what that means in Fahrenhite. It’s cool to not understand Celsius, to not pre-judge how I should feel before stepping out, and to let the weather just be, just tell me and it told me cold. However, it makes baking vegetables quite a challenge.

Oh, yes, I’m going to miss these walks, and this view, the sea right out my window. I’m sipping on tea with a kawa kawa leaf in it for healing and special dreams. The Maoris I am told use the leaf for healing... a little bit of it dried sells for $20 in a small bag at the health food store. It grows everywhere. I picked a few from the bush a few steps from my door, after walking down the fifty steps to this cottage, nestled inside a hill, which provides -- what some real estate agents call – a million dollar view -- but would be gone in a flash in an earthquake. Twenty-eight days. The moon is in Cancer. It was new on Saturday and in Gemini. I’m in Plimmerton, New Zealand. May 30th. My vegetables are done. Rather were done fifteen minutes ago, but I like them roasted this way. And the chestnuts from the Bleakeys backyard are also roasted. Or maybe burnt as well. The Bleakeys are the most fun family I have met in New Zealand. A family that laughs together stays together.

Double fire

In the Now

Taking the twenty minute walk to the train in town I am struck by that annoying phrase, 'this is the first day of the rest of your life,' when in fact this is the last day of the rest of my life. In the last I see things new, as if I never saw before; to be at the end instead of the beginning of my journey I can stay more focused in the now.

Fire Photo

Fire

Burning. Tapas. Fire.
Photo by Guler Ugur originally shot a few summers ago when I was a blonde on a roof top somewhere on the lower east side, Manhattan. Now, creating and destroying at the same time in a fireplace on the sea in Plimmerton, New Zealand. One of many beautiful fire photos, a collaborative effort using Guler's eye for the original shot and now my heart to burn out the old and make way for whatever may come.

May 20 '06 7 am.

This morninig I am looking at long boats with people rowing past the tiny rock islands while birds are swooping before my window welcoming the day and my thoughts are: I'm leaving this? Oh man I can't believe it.

Paradise

May 18, 2006
I'll be soon leaving paradise to go back to New York

paradise?

This is my new blog. Stay tuned.