NINA FARINA

I am slightly alarmed at the sudden dissapearance of a website that I liked to read but didn't always agree with. I especially don't like the lack of reason or how suddenly this happened. I am wondering if the owner of the website was being harassed. ???

Where did she go?

1. So my computer has decided it doesn't want to charge itself anymore. This makes me rather sad as I loved her so and really wanted to get certain things off of her. I think she heard me talking about buying a desktop but I never planned on puttiner her out to pasture. I hope she comes back to me. Is there some diety I could pray to to make it work again? Fortunately I am rather blessed and John has a laptop I can use to keep my small business running. Even more fortunate my mom has told me that she will buy me a new computer for a birthday/Christmas present. I am not rather blessed I am very blessed. I know other people in my position (those who work from home) would have been completely screwed by their computer suddenly crashing and I am not.

2. Speaking of small business. Apparently one of my friends owns a store that sells work by local artist. They saw my hair clips at a party, asked me to bring some of them by to our open mic night (it is music not poetry but still very wonderful) and now they are giving me counter space at their store to sell the earrings and hair clips I make. It is so funny because I didn't understand Raina and Maria's addiction at nationals, I caught the addiction and now have a way to make money so I can feed my habit. Thanks ladies. Making the hair clips is so meditative I really needed something new.

3. Just as I was in getting anxious about paying the December batch of bills my former boss calls me with two new assignments he wants me to work on. It seems that I will be working for myself for a while. I hate how the money comes in waves but the waves seem to crest just when i need them the most. I told John last night people need to really trust God to take care of them, they spend so much time trying to take care of themselves that they don't LET God take care of them. And then I get Todd's email and it is all good.

4. The situation I am in right now is almost ideal. If the contracts were steadier (and if I had health insurance) I would like it more but I have tons of time to create so it is great for now. In a couple of months it will get tired but I will deal with that then.

5. Being on the pill has helped (I am sure making sure I work out is helping too), the pain is gone, the swelling is going down woohoo!

6. John and I move this Saturday to our much bigger apartment in a better location I am super excited and would be even more so if the building manager would get back to me with our lease signing time etc. etc. so I can set up our utilities and such.

blanket request (that i'll add to the htmal at some point) if you post an anonymous comment can you please sign it with your name. it's kinda weird not to know who is saying what.

Sometimes cases yield very amazing quotes

"Words are not pebbles in alien juxtaposition; they have only a communal existence; and not only does the meaning of each interpenetrate the other, but all in their aggregate take their purport from the setting in which they are used of whic they relation between the speaker and the hearer is the most important part." Judge Learned Hand, NLRB v. Federbush Co., 121 F.2d 954, 957 (2d Cir. 1941).

Birth Control Post #4 Could be #5 I lost count

This one is graphic. More so than the others. About two years ago I stopped taking oral contraceptives. I wanted to stop messing with my bodies hormones. Little did I know that for years my body's hormones were messing with me....

Really all my issues started when I was 15 and I was kicked from doctor to doctor and they either told me that my pills were to blame and I should switch and eventually I was told to stop and see how my body does by itself.

Well my body has been kicking my ass the past few months, severe pain when I had my periods, each period was longer and heavier, nausea when I had my period, leg pains, frequently going to the bathroom when I had my period, bowel problems and the most fun was pain during sex. I have been given a billion STD test and two sonograms and they never saw anything so the doctors sent me on my way (my favorite was the doctor who just told me to take a ton of ibuprofen to deal with the pain and that was that).

Thanks to my mom (in a really sad way) I now know what is wrong with me. My mom's cyst (the major surgery she had in January) were the results of endometriosis. It takes a woman an average of 11 years to get a diagnosis. All my problems started when I was 15, because my medical care was so jumpy (being off insurance, on insurance and at different schools) no one could string all my symptoms together. Well after bleeding for 16 days and doing my own research I realized that I have what my mom had. And it is a little scary,

Meriam-Webster definition of endometriosis

"the presence and growth of functioning endometrial tissue in places other than the uterus that often results in severe pain and infertility"

The only way to confirm endo is through laprascopy and I don't want one of those. (un)Forunately, with a mom who is diagnosed and having every single one of the symptoms (I did not list them all but I do) I found someone who is willing to put me on hormone therapy without a laproscopy. I remind myself my mother successfully had four kids with this disease. I get a little nervous because she had two of them by the time she was the age I am now. Getting pregnant is generally good for those with endometriosis because it suppresses periods for a while (and with each period it gets worse).

So I am now on a pill where I will only get my period every 3 months. The doctor flat out told me I really should have my first child by the time I am thirty because the longer I wait the harder it will be. 30%-40% of women with endometriosis are subfertile or infertile. All these years the reason birth control may have worked so well for me is that I could be subfertile...but again mom had four kids with no fertility drugs so hush evil part of my head that likes to worry.

I hope the pain that I have been having the past few months goes away. I don't think any cyst have developed and I think supressing my periods will work. I get a little scared but John and I will find out how much of a toll this has taken on my body a few years from now I guess. The good thing is having been on the pill for six years, practing yoga and taking magnesium/calcium should have also supressed it. The attack I have had is probably a result of bar stress and my uncle dying stress (because stress will always manifest itself some way). I regret stopping doing my yoga cause I was busy but at least I know what I can do to keep things from getting worse.

Randomness

1. My Rent fear has been subsided a little, just a little, by finding out that they casted Rosario Dawson as Mimi. First, when she sings "They say that I have the best ass below fourteenth street", it will actually be true. The girl still lives in the neighborhood (I know where but that is none of your business), she bought the building she grew up in and is still very nice to the people who lived in it and new her when she was a kid. Also she does a lot of fund raising for the local boys and girls club. I am very very glad they casted her.

2. Soon there will be a follow up to the birth control post. You know you missed them because there hasn't been one in a while. The preview is that I have been having medical issues and I shouldn't have let it sit so long but being uninsured that is what one tends to do. Cross your fingers for the gir.

3. I am beginning to wish there wasn't so much info about me on the internet. True, I put it there and I know now that it is out there there is no way I can get it all back. Just being able to find out who views you on friendster is kinda wierd and makes me wish I wasn't on there....not that I didn't view them right back and I can understand their curiousity but it is still a little strange....

4. I am so lucky to have been blessed twice. My mom rocks and my future mother-in-law rocks just as hard (but in a much different way).

5. Lately I have been digging the contract attorney/pseudo-housewife life I have been living. If I could find health insurance (really I did find it I just don't know if I want to join) and knew that I would get enough contracts I really think I would stop the job search. Having time to make my own jewelry, body sprays, play my oboe, play the bongos and write is super neato. yeah I said it neato.

6. Lost is the best show ever.

This is just straight crazy thoughts about Rent the movie
I wouldn't dare call it an essay and I didn't proofread

I was listening to the Rent soundtrack (from the original Broadway cast) and I figured out why the movie they are making about it pisses me off so damn much.

The musical is about Alphabet City being taken over, the corporations pushing out the artist/poets/musicians who have always lived there to make way for corporations. It covers how AIDS was taking out big portions of the neighborhood. Cyberland was killing reality and Larson wrote it all so well. "I'm forbidden to produce MILK, in Cyberland we only drink Diet-Coke"

Now East Village/Lower East Side/Loisaida jargon aside my father grew up in Alphabet City, I spent my summers in Alphabet City, I lived in Alphabet City. That neighborhood holds my heart in such a way and it did even when it was dirty and disgusting and junkies were everywhere. Even when they wanted nothing to do with it I loved Loisaida. And in law school I moved there not cause of how hot the neighborhood was but because of who was in it. Either way the truck of progress Larson wrote about so well had done its task... a bit.

And now they are filiming a movie about it, the squattors are all gone, the junkies get arrested and they are trying to capture the essence of a late 80s early 90s Alphabet City in 2005. And people are gonna LOVE this damn movie cause the musical was soooo awesome and they are gonna go to the neighborhood and what are they gonna see.

Who knows if we won or lost. I had my own reasons for leaving. Everyone has their reasons for leaving or staying and my decisions was 85% love and 15% political.** The artist are holding onto Loisaida and I hope they hold hard. I love that Oscar is teaching a workshop in the community garden. I love Ciao for Now, how well he treats his employees and that he uses responsible products but I get scared

Get scared at the number of fires that occurred while I lived there. It rose each month. Get scared that they are going to realize they put projects along the beautiful east river, that they are gonna find ways to kick the people out, rip them from their neighborhood and where are they gonna go. I get scared that watching Rent is gonna make little yuppie kids who had never heard of Alphabet City before wanna move there and they won't know who the fuck Jacob Riis is and they will think that it is okay that they are forcing poor people out because it's about economics and why should poor folk get river views.

And I hope when this happens the neighorhood will battle hard and regardless of where I am living I will go there to help.

I don't know if Rent the movie will fit Larson's vision. He died before it hit Broadway but he really did capture what was going on in Alphabet City so fucking well. If they execute this movie to have half of his magic it makes me afraid because anything that good is bound to make people wanna live there even more. I just hope they research about it and love it as much as he did.


**November 3rd I decided I had to move to a red state, John proposing ten days later gave me the red state I was moving to.

too important of a topic not to link to it
i love this counterclaim against the RIAA

So I guess I am not a lawyer/poet

I am a lawyer spoken word artist and spoken word is not as compelling.

Here is the quote I received

Discuss

"...[T]he poets who view themselves as 'spoken word' poets produce a different kind of poetry. We tend to
think of poetry as a rendition of the spoken word, but I think it fair to
say, that the language of today's spoken word artists does not translate
into the kind of poetry we find most compelling."