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This week I learned that the premise for Yann Martel's Life of Pi is taken from and earlier German book. This fact liberates me completely. For me coming up with fantastical tales is no problem--it's the premises I get hung up on. No more!

A writer is someone who can make a riddle out of an answer.

--Karl Kraus

_____

My life is much richer now than it ever was on the west coast. One rolls out of bed and the world comes tumbling in. I was lonely, utterly alone (even when I was lucky enough to be in a love relationship), and totally uncultured during my entire stay out west. Now I am bubbling over with verve and satisfaction, constantly interacting with people, witnessing daily all the world has to offer. My life was almost lost and I have recovered it successfully!

Meeting up with old friends and having deep, substantive, meaningful discussions is making my life complete. It feels spectacular to have people wanting to see me again (and letting me know as much!), to have real friends deeply concerned for my welfare, to feel hip and in sync and admired instead of vilified at every turn. I would say, roughly speaking, that I'm in my own heaven on earth. And I will not leave again, not the deep-seated sense of belonging, of being where I should be, of being in the one place that makes my heart sing.

*Poem*

This attempt at poetry is inspired by my old friend Pam Tanowitz's show called Be in the Grey with Me; Pam is the choreographer for and founder of the Pam Tanowitz Dance Company. I haven't seen modern dance in ages. With this show the company veritably blew my mind.

The Dance Language

I saw a stage show last week.

Unlike most of the stage shows

I've seen in my life,

in this one no one spoke--

they danced!

At first I thought,

"How can so many be on stage

not talking to each other?"

(the playwright in me did)

but then I realized that

in dancing in fact

they were speaking volumes.

It took a full two days

before it really started

to sink in just how much

had been spoken

without a single word uttered.

I find now I'm desperate

to understand that

dance language better,

or even just at all.

What a feat, I thought

as I sat mesmerized,

to get all these grown adults

to put on costumes

and prance, hop, and fall

all over the stage,

fully aware of all the people

watching. We could not pull

our eyes away, and the dancers

ate it up. The more we looked

the deeper they sank into

their roles. The deeper they

sank into them the greater

the spectacle became.

I have never seen a language

so evocative and inspired.

I speak several tongues

and modern dance is not one.

It is certain to be

the next one I learn though.

My array of options for

communication is, I see now,

starkly lacking.

*Shows*

So I saw this stunning dance performance last week (see above) and this week I saw one of my favorite vocalists, Sonya Kitchell, in a phenomenal show at Joe's Pub, part of the Joseph Papp public theater. I'm happy to report that Joe's Pub replaces what was lost with the demise of the Bottom Line--and then some. It's classier (albeit more expensive) and genuinely more enjoyable, and it has that same casual cabaret feeling we loved so much about the Bottom Line--that a place can be both classy and casual is a remarkable New-York facet. I went with my old #1 buddy Adam Schatz; we saw many shows together, back in the DAY!, and it felt like old times. The show was truly magnificent from beginning to end, with mostly new material and only a couple of older (still only a couple of years old) songs.

As we waited for things to begin I admitted to Adam that I had no idea what the instrumentation would be like but, I said, there would probably be a couple of jazz players on stage. My was I wrong about the gist of the show! There was already a double bass on stage when we arrived, no big whoop to see a piano and a bass on stage. But when the rest of the band came on, my jaw dropped. I double checked with Adam that I was actually seeing what I saw. The full band was double bass (the only jazz player), piano (played by Sonya), cello, two violins, and drums. It was a hybrid chamber-music orchestra. The music they made was utterly sublime, especially with Ms Kitchell's awe-inpiring voice. This was not pop, rock, jazz, classical, or folk. It was a kind of music entirely unto itself.

It was a very intimate experience. Ms Kitchell was singing to us and no one else. It felt as though we were basking in the glow of her presence. SK can do absolutely anything with her voice, and her compositions are nothing if not evocative. The past couple of years she's been relying on her world-class falsetto a whole lot; while I enjoy her falsetto a great deal, I prefer her legit voice a lot more (legit for a singer means the regular register of the voice, no falsetto). In one of her earlier recordings she has a moment when, instead of soaring into her fluttery falsetto, she chooses to sing a line in her lowest register. She sings "spread my wings" in a very low voice and it sends shivers down my spine (in a really good way). I will be first on the list for the new chamber-music album. I can't get enough!

*Quotations*

An interpretation of Islam that is in harmony with equality and democracy is an authentic expression of faith.

--Shirin Ebadi

[True of any faith.]

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.

--JFK

[Peaceful is the way of modern (peri-millennial) revolutions.]

Peace is not only better than war, but infinitely more arduous.

--GB Shaw

[It takes a great deal more attention and practice.]

The practice of peace and reconciliation is one of the most vital and artistic of human actions.

--Thich Nhat Hanh

[Looking at history it's clear that there is always art to waging peace.]

The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.

--Jefferson

[Can you say, "HEALTH CARE like the rest of the industrialized world has!"?]

We tend to think the problem is human beings have this natural tendency to kill, and yet in the middle of a hot war, WWII, a "good war," as it were, the US army was astonished to learn that at least three out of every four riflemen who were trained to kill and commanded to kill could not bring themselves to pull the trigger when they could see the person they were ordered to kill. And that inner resistance to violence is a well kept secret.

--William Ury

[Competition is the same. The evidence I've seen says that we will choose _not to_ compete if given the chance.]

Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.

--MLK Jr

[Our leaders have ignored this tenet.]

Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.

--Buddha

[_If_ you have inner peace, you can wage peace outside yourself successfully.]

Today is tomorrow's yesterday. Make the best of it for it will never come again.

--Janice Markowitz

[It does me a lot of good always to keep in mind this simple notion.]

Language ought to be the joint creation of poets and manual workers.

--George Orwell

[We need the dreams and idealism of poets and the good sense of manual workers.]

*Expat*

On a couple of occasions I have lived in and worked in other countries, thus I am a has-been expat. My longest stay was in Taiwan, a little more than a year, and I also spent about four months in Tokyo. While in Taiwan I came across a couple of books that described in detail the psychological, sociological, and other travails of those living overseas, particularly in east Asia. I found that the basic arc of changing attitudes described applied equally during my time in both countries: at first you went through disorientation, then glee at finding a place for yourself, then fascination with the host culture, then suddenly disgust with it and all those in it (this has to do with an inability to find the same outlets you are used to, for leisure, for pleasure, for midnight snacks, etc.), then finally a making of peace with where you are.

The phase of disgust was most interesting, and it quickly turned into searching for "replacements" for my old likes and haunts: smoking pot in movie theaters became smoking hash in so-called MTVs (where one rented a room to watch videos of bootlegged movies of every provenance), gawking at pretty ladies became harassing female servers at the local karaoke bar, midnight snacks switched from falafel stands to noodle stands. Still the old _kinds_ of pleasures were there for the taking, it just took further investigation beyond the surface to find them. The interim stage, when one fears they are not to be found at all, yields all sorts of incongruous thoughts, misplaced resentments, and unjustified malignments. Overcoming these maladjustments gives one much room for growth.

*News*

"18,000 people in our country die each year unnecessarily because they lack affordable health coverage."--Institute of Medicine of the National Academies

To me the health-care problem is a slightly different manifestation of the hunger problem: a massive cultural failing to take care of one's own. Some 20% of our nation is said to be at or below the government-set poverty line; health insurance for that mass of people is not even an option, at least not _real_ health insurance that takes care of real problems. Hunger problems are especially bad right now, as evidenced by the following article and increased pleas for help from hunger-aid organizations. This week, because of a matching grant, I made a small donation to Feeding America. Won't you consider doing the same? Every penny counts; one dollar can provide 14 meals or more. Please give today. From BBC News:

"One billion people throughout the world suffer from hunger, a figure which has increased by 100 million because of the global financial crisis, says the UN. The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said the figure was a record high. Persistently high food prices have also contributed to the hunger crisis. The director general of the FAO said the level of hunger, one-sixth of the world's population, posed a "serious risk" to world peace and security. The UN said almost all of the world's undernourished live in developing countries, with the most, some 642 million people, living in the Asia-Pacific region. In sub-Saharan Africa, the next worst-hit region, the figure stands at 265 million.

"Just 15 million people are left hungry in the developed world. "The silent hunger crisis--affecting one-sixth of all of humanity--poses a serious risk for world peace and security," said Jacques Diouf. "We urgently need to forge a broad consensus on the total and rapid eradication of hunger in the world and to take the necessary actions." The increase in the number of hungry people was blamed on lower incomes and increased unemployment, which in turn reduced access to food by the poor, the UN agency said. But it contrasted sharply with evidence that much of the developed world is richer than ever before.

""It's the first time in human history that we have so many hungry people in the world," said FAO spokesman Kostas Stamoulis, director of the organisation's development department. "And that's a contradiction, because a lot of the world is very rich despite the economic crisis." Mr Diouf urged governments to provide development and economic assistance to boost agriculture, particularly by smallholder farmers. "Investment in agriculture must be increased because for the majority of poor countries a healthy agricultural sector is essential to overcome poverty and hunger and is a pre-requisite for overall economic growth," he said.

"The UK's international development ministry (Dfid) said the figures were "a scandal" and said it was helping some of the poorest farmers in the world to boost the amount of food they produce. "In the last year we have pledged more than £900 million to lift millions out of hunger to help farmers boost agriculture production," a Dfid spokesman said. The UN warns that poor people living in cities will probably face the most severe problems in coping with the global recession, because lower export demand and reduced foreign investment are likely to hit urban jobs harder. Many migrants to urban areas would be likely to return to rural areas, it added, transferring the burden.

"Incomes have also dropped "substantially" in some developing countries where families depend on remittances from relatives working abroad. With the financial crisis hitting all parts of the world more or less simultaneously, developing countries have less room to adjust, the UN agency says. Among the pressures is the reality that borrowing from international capital markets is "more limited" in a global crisis, the FAO said. Food costs in developing countries now seem more expensive, despite prices in world markets declining during the food and fuel crisis of 2006-08, it added. They remained on average 24% higher in real terms by the end of 2008 compared to 2006. "For poor consumers, who spend up to 60% of their incomes on staple foods, this means a strong reduction in their effective purchasing power," the FAO said."

*Synesthesia*

A natural perfumer sent the following video to the natural-perfume list this week. This strange little movie makes so much sense to me I'm left thinking, "Duh. Of course words are food and music is undergrowth and smells are colors." Still I find this exhilarating and fascinating:

http://www.territimely.com/_/v/2-short-films?video_id=34

*Music*

Top Ten Joe Henry songs:

12. Ohio Air Show Plane Crash

11. Parker's Mood

10. You Can't Fail Me Now (co-written with Loudon Waiwright III)

9. Civilians

8. Flag

7. Dirty Magazines

6. Civil War

5. God Only Knows

4. Loves You Madly

3. Time is a Lion

2. This Afternoon

1. Our Song

Peace, love, and ATOM jazz