So yesterday I went with my mom and my old old friend Barb and Barb's husband Scott to the circus. Barb lives a town over, in Bellefonte, where all the circus folk were staying over the past several days, like they do every three years when they come to town, and so she was hanging out with them night after night -- while yours truly was recovering from illness and writing diligently at home, mind you -- and had stayed out late the night before dancing shockingly in dive bars with members of the circus band. Which is why yesterday the four of us were pulled down and put in the "celebrity" first row which we thought just gave us an amazing view of the show but turned out to also obligate us to don hats mimicking Bello the clown's hairdo and ride in an extended circus train over the floor whilst waving to the crowds. Luckily, I was holding a camera and no one else was.

Circus photos:





Photos to save for blackmail purposes:



Me and my mama:


The end.

I took a few quick shots of some of my mother's other photos, all from around 1989/90. Of course they are much better in person. But look!

My old roommate Ross:




Old boyfriend Jay:


Father:


Sister:


Me pre tresses blackening:


And loooovely flowas:

So I was just cleaning out this dresser when I found these cool old photos my mom took, back when she used to do tons of black and white photography and spend hours in a dark room each day. She used to make my father, sister and me sit for her, and we HATED it... and then I had this beautiful beau named Jay in college who would sit for her, uncomplaining, even after I broke up with him. There are still gorgeous, haunting photos of him scattered throughout closets and drawers in my parent's house. And at one point I lived with this punk rock boy named Ross, who wore all manner of collar and stud, and my mom had him pose under the moon in all these spooky black and white shots that made him look menacing and amazing (whereas in real life he was mild and sweet). She could do amazing stuff, and I've always been sorry she stopped. But she's always done creative, wondrous things, and made my sister and me read books and go see David Lynch and Almodovar movies as teenagers when we were more into John Hughes.

Anyway, here are three of yours truly at age 18, by my mama. They're pretty stunning photographs in person, but these are my quick shots of them:





Also: being back in Pennsylvania is LOVELY. Right now I'm sitting at my desk listening to the sounds of birds and lawnmowers, and everything smells like spring. Today I did a bunch of work and now my mom and I are going to see a Romanian movie.

The end.

I have had a very very busy few weeks as I've left my job and had lovely goodbye parties, including at my boss Julius's amazing brownstone in Park Slope with its tin ceilings and fireplaces and secret rooms and ghosts of dead children, and I had some fancy lunches and meetings and talks with book and film peoples and even, at Trattoria dell'Arte, saw Gloria Steinem, who was so super glamorous and cool in her big sunglasses and trench coat, her gray hair piled on her head. Oh and my mom has been here since Thursday, so we've spent many many hours playing canasta with friends and seeing movies like The Counterfeiters and The Visitor (which was so lovely) and eating Afghan food and right now I'm doing laundry and getting ready to meet Massie for brunch and then a massage and since the pope is at the WTC now and we're right next to it there are cops EVERYWHERE. I just went down to get Starbucks and was shuttled through a side hallway into a side street and in the lobby of this building alone there are about 10 cops and then the street is full of intimidating black cars and men in suits and just cops cops cops, in suits and in uniforms, and on my way back to this building a cop had to escort me and it ALMOST feels like we're in a spy movie. Except not. And then tomorrow I load up a rental car, say goodbye to my best friend Aoife, and move mahself to Pennsylvania. The end.

I've been having a very fun and magical and decadent time these last few weeks of being in New York (for now, tho I will most likely move back after my year of hunkering down and kicking ass in Pennsylvania): staying with my sister in her gleaming financial district apartment, going to tin-ceilinged old-timey glamorous places like Chez Josephine (complete with fake-accented waiters and feather palm trees) and the Bourgeois Pig (white chocolate and butterscotch fondue! tiers of fruits and cake!), seeing wondrous magic and burlesque shows at the Fortune Cookie Cabaret, having a beautiful trapeze filled reading at the Bowery Poetry Club (me, Marie Carter, and two astonishing girls hanging right above the crowd, reminding me of why I wrote a novel about a trapeze girl in the first place), talking about writing over piles of paella and sangria, shopping for weird and wonderful little things (I bought Tink's baby Aoife a bright pink tutu and leopard shoes at Bombalulu's; yesterday I got trays that make your ice cubes into jewels), getting massages and taking cabs everywhere, having filet mignon and cabernet in the middle of the day at Keens, and just spending lots and lots and lots of time with friends. I always appreciate living in New York and when I lived in Los Angeles, too, I would drive around and just look at the bougainvillea dangling off the buildings and all the crazy rich ladies gliding along in their Rolls Royces and feel like I had the biggest crush on the city. But I am really very madly in love with New York. Yesterday I had lunch with my coworker Alan, who said he did not see the charm of the garment district even as we passed store after store full of zippers and sequins, all of them looking about 5000 years old, so in order to prove him wrong I dragged him to 38th street just west of Eighth Avenue and pulled him into this crazy long shop that from the outside looks like nothing but inside is so chock full of antique sewing machines and mannequins you can barely move, and there's this giant bear fur hanging from the ceiling, and Alan walked around dumbfounded and in love and admitted that I WAS RIGHT.

Of course. Because this is the coolest city.

So anyway. tomorrow is my last day of work, and hopefully, if things go right, my last day of having a full time job EVER, and I feel heartbroken and exhilarated at the same time. Afterwards, my coworkers are having drinks with me at the DISTINGUISHED WAKAMBA COCKTAIL LOUNGE, which Anthony Bourdain describes like this: "Tiki decor and ultra-cheese kitsch with an element of danger. I believe people have died there."

I believe this is only fitting.

The end.

So I've worked near Penn Station for over 7 years and on Eighth Avenue for 4, and every day am meandering glamorously somewhere betwixt Penn Station and Port Authority on that drag of Eighth Avenue lined by fast food and XXX shops, but you tend sometimes not to notice your surrounds so much in this city and then two days ago I was innocently walking along with my friend Rob when my eyeballs fell upon the following horrifying display:



LOOK AT THAT BLOW UP DOLL. There she stands, a block up from my office, under the letters LINGERIES, in her pinstriped 80s style tie-sporting dress, somehow managing to elude my gaze for all this time but surely not my nightmares. Sometimes everything comes into focus and you understand finally, and fully, from whence all the bad thoughts come.