This is one of my favorite performances. I remember cheering Amy on with my sister the night of the Grammy’s – everyone expected her to be a hot mess and she blew everyone away and played up every single line of every song. She pulled it off and we couldn’t stop talking about it when it was over. I will always be cheering Amy on and all the women out there who struggle just like she did. <3

If you don’t have Back to Black, download it, buy it, listen to it beginning to end. You will be moved. The whole thing is a masterpiece. RIP Amy.

This blog got me through a lot of hard times, a lot of challenging times, through a time when I had no idea where I would end up or what would happen to me. And it’s time for me to focus on other things, on my personal writing and on a new job. When I start blogging again, it will be with a new site and new everything.

To everyone who reads or has read my posts at all, thank you so much. This space gave me an outlet when I needed one most and it got me through some hard challenges and emotional times. But it’s time for me to move on now on this Jan. 2, 2011.

With all good thoughts, I’ll look back on this blog and know that it was a redefining time in my life, revisit it and smile. It’s time for an all new time now.

<3

Charles Dickens

Schedules consume you, deadlines come with each day, priorities change and so do you.

I’ve never been someone who had that one lifelong best friend, but I’ve had and have good friends. In a year that has meant a lot of change on many levels, I’ve drifted away and apart from a lot of people. A month ago I started a new job that I dove into right away. I barely had time to text my sister let alone keep in touch and up to date with friends. And I never heard from a lot of them, either. But I didn’t even think about that. Everyone is busy and I had a tough job to do.

I don’t like to get on here and talk about me and my life and bla bla bla, but I just wanted to say that I think everyone should take a step back sometimes and think about who a true friend is in life. It’s someone you can pick back up with after a month not being in touch. It’s someone who doesn’t judge you for working hard and immersing yourself in a new project that you want to make successful. It’s someone who isn’t going to stand over you and verbally punish you for not being in touch when you were busting your ass and trying not to cry to get through the challenges on your own. It’s someone who doesn’t hurt you when you come out the other side from one of the hardest uphill battles that you actually just completed, and even YOU can barely believe it in the first place.

A friend is a friend.

In “Black Swan,” his genius work paired with Natalie Portman’s performance provides a focused lens on a woman’s self-loathing, desire to be perfect and battle with her worst enemy – herself.

The men around her use her until there is nothing left. Her drive steers her to madness. The male gaze is studied heavily throughout the film. Male power and manipulation articulated in a way I am not sure other directors could pinpoint. Nina is a humiliated, fragile and impressionable young woman with the weight of her mother’s broken dream on her back. The pressure is palpable, the self-destruction violent.

The most telling aspect of seeing this film was listening to the crowd’s reaction. In her most humiliatingly sad moments, the audience laughed. More than once.

And I think this speaks to the message Aronofsky himself is trying to convey about women in society today.

And exactly how society as a whole feels about them.

A devastating film that I know so many women will identify with in varying ways.

This year, I am reviving one of the most fun Christmas traditions – the Advent Calendar countdown. It makes me happy.

My Advent Calendar.

Also — my dad just launched a blog called, “Born Weird.” Check it out right here at http://knsrex.tumblr.com/.

Pretty cool stuff all around!

I am blessed. I am thankful. I am humbled.

Happy Thanksgiving.

My precious motto for work and life. This is how I start my day now. Write one good thing to yourself when you wake up. It helps.

I didn’t recognize half of the people at my father’s funeral, and I wondered if he would have snickered and jeered at the people in his audience. The cathedral felt damp and cold and I could see the snow falling lightly through the stained glass window onto the worn down cobble stone streets. My hands felt numb and my heart restless as I glanced up at the multiple portraits of Jesus and the Virgin Mary. I wondered when my father had been here last, and if he had felt the tension within the ancient building as I had.

My eyes landed on the sea of sympathetic stares cast my way, as I sat impatiently waiting for the organ music to fill the quiet and distant stretches. I didn’t know how to feel as their sad and deepened faces turned my way, I had nothing to offer them except my own confusion. This isn’t how I pictured it. I expected it to feel warmer, as if I could feel him standing in the same room. But all I felt was emptiness, as I overheard cars racing and zooming by as if today were any other day. But then again, I guess no one ever gets to plan their father’s picture perfect funeral. Near the end, my mind eased back into focus as the final prayer had been said, my grandmother gave one eardrum bursting cry and the room eerily darkened as the sun was shielded by the clouds.

The one good thing about funerals is that you never have to worry about what to eat, the food just magically appears and your aching stomach is grateful even if you don’t know who it came from. After the ceremony there was a brief gathering in the basement of the church where family and friends could eat and mingle. The idea of this funeral luncheon made me feel uneasy and anxious, being that the last thing I wanted to do was to talk to anyone, let alone strangers. But I figured I didn’t have the say or strength to do anything, and wasn’t about to argue with my grandmother, in church no less.

I sat listlessly at one of the many folding tables and began to examine all the different types of people in the small cramped basement. A stocky heavy set man, with thin wire framed glasses and a nervous look approached me slowly. His face was reddened and his big swelling eyes expressed curiosity as he came within a foot of where I had been sitting. I smiled appropriately and nodded my head, but the lingering awkwardness in the air suggested that he wished to speak.

“You look just like him, ya know?” the man said knowingly.

“Yeah…a lot of people say that…thanks” I replied sweetly.

“I was one of your dad’s best friends in high school…course I hadn’t seen him for about twenty odd years…it’s a shame, Boo Boo was a great guy,” he said kindly. My mind felt foggy as he spoke and although I was listening intently I could have sworn that I had misheard him.

“I’m sorry…what…Boo Boo?” I blurted loudly.

“Oh, he never told you? I guess he wouldn’t have, that was a long time ago…Boo Boo was his nickname in high school. He even got it embroidered on a football jersey once,” he said cheerfully.

He laughed to himself, shaking his head slightly.

“Oh…I never knew he had a nickname”. I wondered if he had had any others.

“Aw, well I’m sure you won’t know everything there was to know about him, even the best of us have our secrets” he said softly. I thought about his comment and the cliché of it, yet it reigned true to the moment. He winked at me and gave me a reassuring nudge on the shoulder, before he waddled back into the ocean of visitors.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” I whispered back to myself.

My father had always comes in waves throughout my life. Turning up on momentous occasions to capture Kodak moments. Despite his sporadic absence, my father’s distinct characteristics and qualities lingered in my memories like faint ghosts. The scent of his aftershave, the black plastic comb he carried wherever the destination, the smell of stale coffee on his breath, the way he read a newspaper- reading it from front to back page no matter the story. I remember simple mundane things he used to do without hesitation and the way we shared little secret rituals together.

After leaving the church, a number of close family and friends returned to my grandmother’s house to regroup them selves. Somehow if we were all together, we wouldn’t feel so alone. I looked around the room at my family members’ faces, all resembling hints of my own, full cheeks, small noses and bright blue eyes like my dad’s. There were scattered photographs of my father on the kitchen table; all of them were at different times and places in his life.

My favorite was one of him as a young boy smiling wide and squeezing one of my aunts, like he couldn’t have loved her more. We went around the table telling different tales and stories about him, some hysterical, others shocking and perverse. As we told our stories, there was yelling and laughter, correcting the exaggeration of the stories, setting them back in proper time. The expulsion of the memories seemed to heal something inside us. That night it felt right to talk about my father’s embarrassing nights or delinquent youth, and no one felt morose or melancholic. We all had a story to tell.

The earliest memories I have of my father are the ones of him singing. He would take my sister and I on long drives to destinations unknown with the music blaring loudly as we coasted down the streets and highways. He taught us all his favorites, mostly Beatles songs, and grinned from ear to ear when we howled the lyrics misconstruing all the words. He would beat the steering wheel furiously as he tried to mimic the tempo and rhythm of the music. I remember seeing the passionate look in his eyes when he sang certain songs, furrowing his brows as he sang the words, always meaning more to him than which met our eyes. The windows rolled down as the wind danced around us, blowing our hair around in every direction. In those moments, the world stopped; as the music circulated all around us making our adventure seem timeless. I’d glance up at my father innocently and finally beg to know where it was that we were going. His response was always the same, with a hint of excitement and happiness he’d reply, “Crazy, wanna come?”

Outside, I peered over the ledge of the second story balcony of my Grandmother’s house contemplating the day’s events as they had unfolded. I leaned slightly against one of the wooden planks, which was ornamented with a hanging decaying flower basket, and wrapped myself warmly within my overcoat as I began to shiver. It had been one hell of a day. Everything had felt like one big blur and the crisp cold night air although, frosty, consoled my aching head and heart. I could hear the laughter and cries from indoors, and smiled lightly to myself as I weaved all the images of my father that were in the memories of others.

I started to think about all the different versions of my father, the ones he left behind for others, the untold stories of his life and wished I could have known them all. I imagined him as a little boy, maybe seven years old, who stood short in stature but wasn’t afraid to defend his sister. I pictured him at ten years old, with a short clean kept haircut my grandmother would have insisted on. I envisioned him as a sixteen year old teenager sneaking his friends out the back door after he had sold them pot, before his parents got home from a night out. I can only imagine the type of things he got away with.

I tried to think of my mother’s version of him. I wonder if she still saw him as the person she married when she was nineteen. They met on the ocean in 1982, and I think there will always be something magical about their meeting as complete strangers. They spent a few days together basking in new attraction but the fact was they had only known each other for those few days, and my mother although taken back by his charm, understood the protocol of vacation romance. Needless to say she gave no thought to giving him her address and phone number, knowing that he was just being polite and would probably never hear from him again.

Three weeks later my dad showed up on my mom’s front stoop, luggage in hand.

“Hi…do you remember me?”

The rest was history, re-written, destroyed and reconstructed again.

In some small way it comforted me to know that I didn’t know every detail about him. There was still more things to discover and love about my father that I had never known. Even if they weren’t exactly true or accurate.

I tiptoed my way down the old wooden steps that led from the balcony to ground floor, trying not to slip on the icy puddles that had accumulated over the last few days. The engine roared when I turned the key in the ignition of my grandmother’s ’93 baby blue Buick. I glanced back up at the house to see if anyone had noticed my absence, but through the windows I could only see the dim flickering kitchen light and the shadows of rustling bodies. With a steady hand, I put the car in reverse and backed out of the driveway quietly and carefully. As I thrust the car into drive, I felt exhilarated and carefree, I rolled down the windows despite the freezing weather and let the wind do it’s healing. I heard the faint music on the radio and felt hot stinging tears beginning to stream down my face as the streetlights lit my path along the curved narrow roads.

My heart felt calm and complete as I thought of everyone disgruntled over my disappearance, a wide grin smiled back at me in the review mirror. I gripped the steering wheel with my surprisingly sweaty palms and noticed the condensation dripping off the windows as I glided down Canary Street. Icicles hung off the old oak trees lining the street like thick tree trunk lamp posts. Everything looked beautiful as it bathed in the slim moonlight intertwined with fluorescent signs from gas stations and squeamish bars.

Driving without a destination, without a plan, was something I was acquainted with. My father taught me how to roll with the strides of change and how to let go of all concerns about where we would end up. It was one of the things I loved and hated most about him.

But tonight,I had no idea where I was going or what I was going to do when I got there. I didn’t know these streets and nothing was familiar.

But all of that didn’t matter. It never did.