FPM: Asphalt Shakespeare and The Lovely Fullness of Skirts

Seeing these lovely full skirts around that seem to foreshadow fall. Not that I want the summer to be over. I'm not going to mention the heat. I don't want the summer to be over, although I don't relate to what many people are wearing this season: like strapless knickered rompers. Do you know them?

Summers there is free Shakespeare all over the city. My favorite is The Drilling Company, whose productions in a municipal parking lot on the lower east side are called Shakespeare in the Parking Lot. This past week, I saw their Julius Ceasar in which Ceasar was reconfigured as a Bloombergian bureaucratic dictator, and many of the key roles, like Marc Antony's are played by women. Lots of photos below. (Doesn't this play have the best speeches ever?_

I am writing in a public/private space in an unusual neighborhood. I'll tell you where next week.

I need a camera.

I don't like what I'm wearing.

This week, I read Ann Beattie's novella Walks With Men, which is set in NYC in the very early '80s, back when AIDS was referred to as the "gay cancer." A young woman--a rebellious Harvard grad--makes it big with her writing but is emotionally inhibited and controlled by a variety of men, one, in particular twice her age, becomes her husband and svengali and then mysteriously disappears. Subtle and spare, unlike most of Beattie, who I think is a rather messy writer. I recommend.

FPM: I'm in Love with Chunky Green Heels and Halloween--IN PROGRESS

This first image is not from Halloween night, but a few days after. I thought I'd collect images of unusual items people were wearing for no reason. Here is the first. Other things I've been doing since the close of October 31 (my favorite day of the year, I believe):

1. Writing: On November 1st, I started a novel for National Novel Writing Month. To be on target, i should have 25,000 words at this moment. Instead, I have a mere 19,447. I guess I'm a bit afraid of being "Craptastic!" which is the operative word of Nanowrimo.

2: Losing: Items like my camera and then finding them again.

3. Weeding: The mammoth collection of children's books we keep in this tiny apartment.

4. Job applying: I sent out an application package the other day for a teaching job at a community college, which is my response to the dearth of available library jobs right now. I'm trying not to get too depressed about this. Failing.

5. Excavating and organizing my tights: Every day I wear a skirt, boots and tights. Sometimes the same combo for days.

6. Reading: Michael Chabon's Wonder Boys about a writing professor and famous writer whose novel is long overdue, his wife has left him, his student has just killed his lover's dog, and he's in love with one of his students. I'm reading this because my NaNoWriMo novel features a writer and academics and quasi-bohemians, plus Mormons and post-Mormons.

7. Thinking about Thankgiving: Where shall we eat?

8. Assessing Halloween 2009: I was Abraham Lincoln. My friend, Sean, from Chicago--a lover of puns--appeared as Lucy-fur. We took the kids trick or treating in the East Village. Halloween was curiously subdued this year. The energy on the streets was rather low. Was this due to the fact it was Saturday and I was out on the early side with children? Still haven't figured this out. How was your night? Do you remember?