Dan Hartman turns a frown upside down.

I had a rather rough day yesterday. It was just one of those days that seemed like things just weren't going to go right in that 24 hours. I met up with a friend to hear him spin some sleazy disco and he laid down some tracks. I knew I was safe from the day when that bass drum kicked in.

Three Risilient, Beautiful Women

Each of them took their own path twelve years ago and through all the difficulties and monstrosities that they faced they recoiled and sprang back not losing their charm, wit, and beautiful vulnerabilities. They are living proof that a mass of complications succinctly placed one after the other does not always leave you embittered and old. I'm so happy they are back in my life. I love my Chach, Ass, and Lo.

Sonnet 116 at 3:00 AM

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose Worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom:
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

At times I find myself unable to sleep and I will wonder around familiar verse and script...mostly dusty books. I have always found that this is my favorite sonnet. It speaks volumes of truth and over the past year it has been a liniment for my own heart. If love has waned or sauntered off due to circumstances or differences it wasn't REAL love. True love is constant through any difficulties. True love is unchanging no matter what obstacles or hard trials that you will find throughout life.

Falling In Love With Julian Casbalancas All Over Again

Food For Thought

A long conversation with Yuri and I found that his humor and his perspective was a comfort.  "Jonathan, only a masochist would love such a narcissist.  He did you a favor by cutting you loose."  And perhaps he is right.  His voice is so mellifluous and he seems to have always gotten me even when I never really got myself.  I cannot be more thankful for some honest to God truth delivered in a time when I truly do need a good catharsis. 

In The Gloaming

I spent my first night on a beach sulking and crying in a foreign land.  The stars fell into the sea.  I put this compilation together out of a few of the songs that were playing.  My feeling, my emotions are what make me human but I find that they are what are keeping me from truly unraveling.  My armor has fallen in a pile at my feet and I feel so safe to just let these feelings bleed out of me.

Summer Courses Over...Heading For Tel Aviv

After what seemed like an intense think tank session placed inside a pressure cooker summer courses are over.  I now get to relax and thankfully I have family that pitched in together so that I could go visit.  It's been over ten years since I was last in Israel.  This should be pretty interesting.  Two weeks of sun and being in what I remember as one of the greatest places on earth.  I will be in Tel Aviv-Jaffa for six days.  I'm really excited to see the renewed Israel Museum.  I'll be in Jerusalem for only a couple of days.  I plan on making a visit to the Kotel, or as many know as the Wailing Wall or Western Wall, to lament losses over the past few years.  I definitely intend to put a prayer in the Kotel about Eric and I.  I will then be off to the kibbutz where I will see more family.  Masada is beautiful and I worked there for a summer a long time ago.  I plan on not doing much work this time but just dropping by the Sea of Galilee and maybe letting some of this grief just melt off of me.  It has become a privatized kibbutz since I was last there so I guess I will see how the new take on socialism is now.  I couldn't have asked for a better gift from family so far away that has been so concerned about me.  Thank you so much Yuri for instigating this whole thing.  I am happy that my distant family took you in when I left so long ago.  I love you forever.  Maybe this time we won't have to sneak around so much.