brain? plasma?

and then

lacy told her the sky was not growling it was just thunder. or as peter would say just air rubbing up against eachother.

peter just

told bird that the lightning was angels taking a picture of her for god all mighty. then he decided she was agnostic. now he is singing her hey by the pixies and she is barking along with him...........................................................................................................................

Boston?

Bird and I had a moment where we seriously considered moving to Boston again... because our vet did. Without any warning. But luckily I'm not quite that kind of gay. So while I do feel betrayed and kind of rejected Bird and I are staying put. Sometimes when we walk Bird looks up and me and then rests her chin on the back of my leg and I hear that queen song My Best Friend. Embarrassing I know.

...

they can land that plane on my heart i don't care

-bright eyes


as you all know erin and i have been erin and i since we were 18 living in a roach infested brick building on the charles river, chugging vats of bacardi lemon and popping ecstasy like advil. and not much has changed except maybe drink and dose of choice. and throughout the years erin has copped many a feel but never with any success or effect other that the rare but pointed elbow jab to the ribs or glass of red wine tossed in her direction. as of late i have been mildly insomniatic and erin pointed out the other night that i have been coming home after her and leaving before she wakes. i kind of like it even though it seems like some sort of cosmic joke. more life doesn't mean better life... anyway earlier this week when I had the opportunity to sleep till noon i stayed up with erin talking shit and making fun of her for buyin a sandwich, a jar of pickles, hotdogs, muenster cheese and a package of smoke salmon from hanna food at 3 am. Peter says he saw her in hanna food and all she said was "hi boyfriend" took his ruben from his hands and starting eating. again erin went to bed before me. and although i planned to sleep till 10 sure enough i shot out of bed at 6:20 am. shit what time is it i'm late my phone is dead fuck. none of this was true of course. and in the manor erin has dealt with me for the past 9 years she rolled over put one hand on my shoulder one hand on my boob said don't worry i'll walk the dog all with her eyes closed and commenced to snoring. the thing is this time it worked. after prying her slumbering arms off me i feel back asleep and was almost late for work. running out the door saying erin remember what you said when you grabbed my tit you're gonna walk the dog right?

there is a similar narrative where a dog barks and the person i'm lying in bed with sits up and starts strangling me...

point is erin and amy left for the far coast today and i am sad... and it's quite possible she was getting me back for this...

Beach House

Josh has got me stuck on this song. It's better if you listen louder. It seems to go with peter's new poem and I think I kind of hate the video...

new peters

flowers and white wine

i'm goin through what i recognize as a brief but obsessive period that involves me drinking white wine with ice cubes in it like dolly. grant got me flowers because he wanted to cheer me up. wicked cute... i woke up at 6:30 this morning at adams house which was nice. i walked home got a bodega coffee and erin's laundry and the newspaper and when I got there bird gave me a hug. which was rad.

found

notes my grandma kept in a small white envelope
note one: my grandpa
note two: me
note three:Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton

sooner...

wish i found this sooner... wish my friend would come homo sooner...

Peter and Me and Erin's Earring

Are not actually brother and sister even though all the gays of the gay bar seemed to think so Sunday.
Note: Peter

happy

Me: Hey Mom. How's it going?
Mom: Great. We trimmed the bushes out front so it looks like we give a shit. You know that happens once every three years.
Me: Fun.
Mom: Well, I would like to come visit you soon but I can't seem to plan anything for the future.
Me: Why?
Mom: Because I don't believe in it anymore.
Me: Why?
Mom: Because I'm depressed because my mother is dead.
Me: Oh.
Mom: Here's your father.
Dad: Hi Anna. How are you?
Me: Good. (By the way a total lie.) Happy father's day.
Dad: Oh thanks. I had to buy my own cake today.
Me: You what?
Dad: Yeah. I was going to have them write to Carl on it but it seemed too sad so I just walked away.
Me: With the cake?
Dad: Yeah. Ha.
Me: Why don't you and mom come down here and cheer up? (Irony alert silently blaring in my head.)
Dad: I'll ask her about it.
Me: Why don't you just buy the tickets. You're a grown up. You can do it.
Dad: Well you know me. I've never been able to plan anything.
Me: Why?
Dad: Ha. Well I guess maybe I've never believed in the future.

photo: erin

me my ma and ev in philly

thank you svennie miss you

My Mother Was a Hard Act to Follow

(by my mother Mary Dowd)

she was so beautiful
so charming
so skilled in all the social graces

her clothes were perfect
her make-up was perfect
her house was perfect
and as we all know well, her hair was ALWAYS perfect!

She knew everyone and everyone knew her
we used to get sick of hearing
‘oh, you’re Rosalie Dowd’s daughter
she ‘s so lovely
she’s so nice
such a wonderful woman

but it was all true
she had a dazzling smile
and an inner radiance that drew people to her
and made her unforgettable
what was her secret?
how did she manage to make such a lasting impression?
I’ll tell you
her goal in any encounter
corny as it may sound,
was simply to make the other person happy

and she was a born politician
she was always planning and scheming
ways to get things done
on a large scale and a small scale


whether it was some trip or treat for us
or redecorating her house Day Nursery
or the Holyoke or Providence Hospitals
or the many other charities she was involved in
she always managed to accomplish what she set out to do
without ever offending anyone, or making a single enemy

we used to joke that if she had been born a decade later
she would have been mayor of Holyoke
a few decades later and she might even now be giving Hillary Clinton a run for her money


she had several favorite sayings when we were growing up

“no cross, no crown”, would alternate with “offer it up”
when we were being particularly mulish about doing something for somebody else
or when she was dealing with my often difficult father
and his monolithic mother
who moved in with them on the day they got married and never left

another one was “what you put into the lives of others comes back into your own”
and if we were being really obnoxious, she’d add
“A THOUSAND FOLD”

A favorite quote, which she attributed to Yeats was
“I have found glory in my friends”
and she did
she had a genius for friendship
she cared deeply about all her friends and their families
she was always thinking of ways to help them, to please them, to surprise them,
or to just have fun
she was always making new friends, of all ages
and she nurtured her old friendships with loving care over decades
Ruth Geanocopoulos, Helen Ann Cosgriff, Marie Walsh, Mary Dupree, Babe Mahoney, Helen Hayes, Mary Major, Lortta Fitzgerald…
the list goes on and on

in recent years with her memory gone and her body so frail and crippled with parkinson’s
she was still making friends
I felt at this time she in some ways became more truly herself,
all her worldly concerns and worries fell away
and that inner radiance shone even more brightly
the friends and aids who helped take care of her grew to love her. they always felt that they got more out any interaction than she did, just by seeing her smile.

But don’t let me leave you with the wrong impression,
my mother was no saint
she liked a stiff drink
a good gossip
a fine meal
followed by 2 or 3 fine deserts
and she always had a good laugh with my father
at the folly and foolishness of our fellow creatures
she enjoyed all the material and sensual pleasures of this world

but she knew that the secret to being happy was to make other people happy

and she managed to teach me and my sisters the only lesson worth learning in this life
the one about compassion

My mother’s favorite saying of all was a quote form the Wizard of Oz
when the tinman get’s his heart
the wizard tells him

“you don’t measure your heart by the number of people that you love, but by how many people love you.”

wherever she went in this life my mother left a crowd of people who loved her
and her heart is wider than the sky

My Good Friend Is Leaving

photo: josh mizrahi

my even urban

I am experiencing great sadness today. My grandma died on Saturday and I knew it was going to happen. But I couldn't stop imaging her suffering and my mothers and that was really painful. I went to see her a couple months ago. She wanted to know why I was there. I spent the week leading up to her death waking up an hour before I had to and staring at Bird. She was very sick and I was spinning all this energy around keeping her alive and well which is not something new. Except that it was mirrored but me trying to figure out how to let me grandma die. Bird is really happy these day and it brings me great joy... it probably has a lot to do with the love of Amy and Erin. I drank a lot when I heard that Dolly passed and then I found myself crying on a stoop of a church on Montrose ave and felt foolish but glad. My great friend took me to see all the anchors on City Island today and all of us laughed a lot and then I started to fall into a thick migraine. It was an especially painful one and the laughing hurt but felt full. Erin and Bird lied with me while the heart brain belly pain ensued. Coming out of it I am left feeling all the things I've been avoiding. Cosmo says if we spend our lives living we will try to infuse everything we come across with life. How do you do that and let go of life?