i was born in manhatten. mt. sinai hospital in 1965. that year the Beatles released I am the Walrus. i was a catholic school girl for only two years and it's funny because one of the students asked me for a book he wasn't sure we had on reserve. he described it as being maroon in color. i looked at him and asked him if he went to catholic school...he laughed and said yes and asked me how i knew. i said only catholic school kids used the word maroon instead of purple/red. it was a standard color for uniforms...maroon socks, maroon plaid with gray and the white blouse, black shoes...

anyhow, my parents moved out of the projects after the 4th mugging of my dad. we moved "upstate" (HA!) about 40 miles over the hudson and north. i ended up, though, going back...back to attend college (Hunter) and finally moved to brooklyn with a bunch of other girls. i worked in the city temping all over: uptown, downtown, midtown, way the hell uptown. i've performed in the city, at art galleries, at the limelight, at orchard beach, at wave hill up in da bronx, a beautiful park with a mansion...we danced in front of a lily pond. and of course, i danced at hunter's danny kaye playhouse.

those years of visiting the metropolitan museum of art, MOMA, city center, lincoln center performing arts library, brooklyn academy of music, dance theatre workshop, the joyce...i love that city. where else can you go to see the sugarcubes alone and hook up with people from out west? where else can you stand on line in alphabet city, bullet-holed buildings, with 400 other people waiting to get into the world to see bowie with the tin machine? where else can you catch the wonderful surprise to your sucky day when a man on a unicycle rides by with a parrot on his head?

bleeker bobs, canal jean, the pink pussycat, the old ritz (which is gone), astor place, st. john the divine, the cloisters, the delacorte theatre, some dive on the corner in the bowery...

like lou says: there's a little bit of magic in everything, and then some loss to even things out...