or cat…Alfred Kinsey “Silly” Cavanah Waxman-Berman looking oh so handsome…

I studied abroad in Australia..her name was Marilyn..buh, duh, bum..(I’ll be here all week - try the veal and don’t forget to tip your waiter)…no seriously, I did, and it was the University of Central Queensland in Rockhampton, Australia. Those who knew me before I left suggest that it was in the Beef Capital of Australia that I officially removed the stick from my butt, and while they may be right, I don’t think I was ever that bad. Really. Regardless, I had a friend named Mark, for some reason we called him Snoopy, although he looked nothing like the dog. He loved when I would talk like a girl from New Yawk, which was easy and all, being from New Yawk. He would ask me to say “Oh My Gawd A Chocolate Dawg” over and over, and then he’d laugh. Silly, childish humor, but it worked like a charm, and all I was ever doing was “feeling my roots”…

Although one should never forget their roots, “Confucious say” one should dye them as often as necessary. Again, be here all week, try the veal..yada, yada, yada…There is truth in that statement, although I lied about the Confucious thing, but as I return to New York, to my roots, after months of change, I realize how important familiarity is. And even if I’m just back for a touch up, I’m still back.

And I’m working on life in New York, even picking up shifts at an old job that I never would have left if I stayed here all along. But while I move along, at my pace, I watch this place whiz by me. Like some really cheesy late 80s/early 90s music video, with over the top neon graphics and extra frames per second, things move at high speed.
And I am working on my faster connection.

Because that’s so New York. Like small, cramped apartments and loud car horns, if you aren’t on speed you should act like you are. And that’s sort of what I appreciate around these parts. Today I saw some woman who had been hit by a car, alive and patiently waiting for an ambulance, and as I watched her, I also noticed that life continued driving, riding and walking by around her.

Expect nothing less here, and you can expect even more.
New York - it’s good to see you.

One day

In the past I said I had “reasons” to come back to NYC, and now these “reasons” are the present. So for the forseeable future (which in my life has an approx. 6 week time frame) I am back. As of tomorrow. Early. Probably before you wake up, and before I would normally sleep - at least on California time.

NYC. If I can make it here…

Los Angeles is a Martian city, a foreign, strange and plastic place. LA is a place where self-important people come to increase their self worth; it’s a place where beautiful people come to get noticed, and a place where the sun can actually affect a person’s brain capacity. Educated people flock there for one reason, and one reason only, entertainment. There’s nothing more important than the entertainment industry in LA.

I like to generalize. Generalizing allows me to take a large portion of one population and group them into a common category so I don’t have to get to know them individually. In LA everyone is similar, as far as I’m concerned, they all want to be loved and recognized for something, and they all want to be on TV.

Imagine how I must have felt then when I was called “so LA” by some inebriated u25 (under twenty-fiver) at a bar called Sharkeez in Hermosa Beach. I was wearing my bright green dress, the one with white polka dots, and a shirt that read LOWER EAST SIDE, which apparently is more LA than NY, jeans from Target, and pink New Balance sneakers. I am not a fighting girl, but them be fightin’ words.

I know I shouldn’t bad mouth LA because when you want to work in media, on any level, you can avoid it as long as you want, but you inevitably find yourself in LA at some point or another. I wanted to move there all throughout my u25 years, but never did, and now that I don’t want anything to do with a place where blonde is a state of mind, I will find myself out there sooner than I think (although I have no plans to move there and I really don’t want to be there, please, no). If that happens, you can all point fingers and laugh at me behind my back or to my face.

Which will, of course, make me angry. But I’ll have deserved it, for thinking I was so beyond LA.

One of the questions we were asked, as seniors in high school, and for the sake of yearbook filler, was where each of us; prospective lawyers, doctors, teachers, stockbrokers, producers, writers, drug addicts and freaks, saw ourselves in ten years.

“Living on Park Avenue with Skid Row” - that my friends, and any complete strangers who happen to want to know who Jamye Waxman is, was my answer.

Ten plus years ago, I wanted to live in a penthouse apartment on Park Avenue with a bunch of guys that looked like girls…I wanted to be Mrs. Jamye Bach, the ultimate rocker “chic”. I wanted to hear Seb sing “Oh my darling I love you,” to me - every single time he sang I Remember You.

I remember…being the only girl to go to rock concerts with the boys. Poison, Warrant, Tesla, Guns-n-Roses, Skid Row, Aerosmith, Bon Jovi, Faith No More, Metallica, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, and more I’m sure I can’t remember..I rocked harder and banged heavier than almost all of the girls and a lot of the boys. And while my taste in music has evolved, which is not necessarily a good thing, I can still put on Cherry Pie or Use Your Illusion 1 or 2 or Skid Row/Skid Row and be transported back to a time where I wanted to date guys that looked like girls and rock out to lyrics I could relate to. Sometimes I even find myself wanting to be back there, in the place where glam rock lived.

Ten years, plus or minus a few, and today I find myself in Malibu…a glamorous place in Southern California, but not glam in that NJ glitz sort of way. I was walking in the cliffs with my family and I thought about how it was February and how glam life can be, without having the material things that we associate with riches. And I realized that living on Park Avenue with Skid Row was more about me getting what I want in life..the combination of luxury and uncertainty, and how that was exactly what I had.

Although the heyday of glam rock has (at least for now) come and gone, I will always be thankful that Sebastian, Rachel, Dave, Scotty and Rob taught me about who I am, was and continue to be…

The youth gone wild
“Let me hear you get wild….”

Drifting off..between sleeping life and waking life..into that unconscious void where we try to stay alert long enough to remember and try to fall asleep soon enough to avoid staying alert too long, I often find myself thinking…heavily.

What if we could all dictate our thoughts onto paper, without ever writing a word? Would we still have difficulty expressing ourselves, expressing how we “feel” or what we are really thinking? If our thoughts were immediately typed out and printed on some low grade office paper, the 8 x 10 variety, and we could distribute them to all intended parties, would we want to be able to so readily express ourselves? Or would we still shy away from telling people the truth?

Sometimes I hold a lot back, and I am not sure if it’s healthy. Sometimes I say too much, and this might not be healthy either. Is there really a perfect balance?

What part of thinking do we not communicate because of the lack of proper explanation? How often do words fail us? If we knew our thoughts were going to be recorded, would we try to think differently? Or would none of this matter at all?

Sometimes I wish the person my thoughts were directed at would just understand exactly what it was I was thinking. It might seem like too much information for one person to process, or maybe it would be an invasion of privacy for the person doing the thinking, but how great would it be if you could be so in tune with another person that thinking was effortless? Perhaps then you could just be and not worry so much about what others thought..of you..of them..of life in general.

Do you get me?

VD in SF at CH (City Hall) a.k.a. HISTORY IN THE MAKING

It’s 10PM on Sunday, February 15th, the final component of the trilogy known as “Significant Date Weekend 2004.” Even though I am writing delirious thoughts at a Kinko’s at a time that is, to most of my close friends and family known affectionately as 1AM, I am happy to be writing as an unscathed survivor.

I have no fear of Valentines Day, and although this may sound bitter, trust me I’m not, I think Valentines Day is nothing more than a Hallmark holiday, just as Sweetest Day, or Sweethearts Day, I forget which is the correct name, is an American Greeting Cards holiday. Its October 21st for those of you who have no idea what Sweetest Day is, and I’m talking about a holiday I learned about while working in Bucyrus, Ohio. Point being I don’t really care about Valentines Day or Sweetheart Day (I don’t even care to look up the correct name), I want someone who doesn’t have to be told that there’s a day he should buy me flowers. I want someone who shows me they love me all the other days of the year. I don’t like that it’s the one day to recognize love, and that we have to recognize it at all when it should be expected and why don’t we ever recognize independence, celebrate alone time, the fact that someone got to know himself or herself really well, without the company of another person.

I don’t like Friday the 13th either because I am how do you say….super (thanks for asking) stitious. And I don’t walk under ladders or accidentally drop mirrors as a general rule.

Friday, the 13th was scary because of the movies. Although I always opted for Freddy Krueger and the boiler room scenario, because it seemed less real even though it scared the buh-jesus out of me, and even if I didn’t go into my basement until after I turned 18 for the pure fear of who I might encounter there, I think I was more frightened of Jason. Now I ponder…was Friday the 13th scary before Jason, or did Jason make it scary?

Okay, so I hate this weekend for the superstition surrounding one day and the saturation surrounding the other. But now it’s Sunday, the 15th, and I don’t have to worry for a few years because it won’t be Friday the 13th again for a while, at least not followed by VALENTINES DAY, the 14th.

And on Sunday the 15th, I am staying in Santa Cruz with my mother, who is hopefully sleeping in what has amounted to the nicest motel I have stayed at in a while, and we are traveling down the Pacific Coast Highway <1> to Los Angeles. It’s a really pretty drive and I am excited to see more beautiful scenery tomorrow!

This is my last full week in California for a little while, maybe even shorter than I think, but longer than I know. Who knows really and who thinks often? Now I am trying hard…or hardly trying…to say a lot of things that mean a lot to say. Not really, but you get the drift. What I’m going for. The least you could do is humor me…Or not really. Really. How did we get from there to here?

I am delirious….

It has been a long time since I have had insomnia, not that I ever really sleep that much. Since being at the ranch, I have, with one exception, woken up by 7:30am. The sun doesn’t rise, really rise, through my window until that time, and once it does, there’s some chemical release in my body that says parties over. Or maybe it just says “get up bitch”. Whatever internal clock is ticking away, my alarm always rings, loudly, by 8AM.

I have always been a morning person, even after I started working nights. My first few jobs in New York radio, actually in radio in general, revolved around the midnight hour. When I took my first producing position I didn’t get to bed until after 5AM and even then I would make myself get out of bed by 11AM. I didn’t want to miss a day, even if I knew I couldn’t miss a night.

I was talking to a friend today and she was saying how hard it was for her to sleep. It’s called insomnia, but where does it come from?

Tired Nature’s sweet restorer, balmy sleep!
He, like the world, his ready visit pays
Where fortune smiles; the wretched he forsakes
- Edward Young 1683 - 1765

“Insomnia - the problem probably stretches back to the beginning of time. These introductory words, penned by Edward Young, are from a collection of poems called Night Thoughts, the very title of which indicates that he too was a sufferer.”

I don’t need a lot of sleep. I think I function well on five to six hours a night. Most men I know need a lot more than that, and the women, well I don’t know how much most women need because what I know of most of the men that I know, has to do with the fact that they were sleeping in the same bed as me. And when I was ready to get up, they weren’t. Ever.

Is there something hormonally that lets ladies sleep less? Or are the women I know just more nervous or anxious? I don’t have the answers to these questions, although perhaps I should conduct my own online survey. Whatever the results, I don’t think I’d be convinced that the answers were accurate. That may be because I don’t believe in the accuracy of surveys because it’s so easy to lie.

Lie. down. in bed. until 9am. You may say I’m a dreamer…

I have been at the Circle W Ranch since last Monday. That’s a whole week of living in what feels, to a city girl, like complete isolation and spiritual recovery. My friend Grand Stoddard, a writer for Nerve and I have been doing some serious bonding. When I first got out here, Grant had been alone for a week. We talked about how being alone, in the middle of a 4,000 acre ranch, can really do wonders for your mental state. You have to learn to like yourself, or you aren’t going to be happy. And even though I like myself, it’s still hard to live with me alone, for over a week.

I think part of the reason I had to do this was to prove to myself that I could. That I didn’t need to go to a party, or be the life of one, all the time. That I didn’t need to be surrounded by others to find my own happiness, even though it’s easier to forget the things that make you unhappy when you have other company.

And it’s been good and bad. Grant and I get along really well, so that’s good. But I’m itching to go out, do things, meet the wackadoodles that I so often meet. My time here is more than halfway over. I leave the ranch, and all it’s inhabitants (we’re talking like five farmhands and a couple hundred of cattle) on Friday and head back to the bigger city of San Francisco.

And then it’s going to be another round of personal reflection for me. A couple more weeks of wandering about before I stop for a short respite. I plan to be in New York by the end of the month, and hang out there for at least a month. And when my job there is complete, I don’t know how I’ll feel or where I’ll want to be.

I got an email from an old friend today, he lives in Israel. One of his friends was seriously hurt in the latest suicide bombing, and he expressed his feelings to me about the whole situation. And it made me sad and scared, and more reflective. And I realize that all the thinking in the world doesn’t do good unless we take action. So I still sit here, safely nestled in the hills of North Fork, as he sits in Jerusalem not feeling as safe. And I realize that being alone with my thoughts isn’t the worst place to be. But I still can’t wait to see my friends.

the view from the porch

I am still alive although it’s been over ten days since I’ve last written. It’s not that I haven’t wanted to, it’s just that sometimes life travels faster than you actually do. And I am still traveling and life is flying by. Sometimes I feel as if I am having a nervous breakdown, as if I have too many choices. But I like choice, because it allows me to make decisions. I am never sure if they are the right decisions or not, but I guess the only way to know is to try.

I am spending the month of February in California. Not in one particular place, actually more or less all over the state. Right now I am close to North Fork, which is the dead center of CA. Yesterday I was in San Francisco, which is obviously not the dead center of CA since North Fork claims that title. Being here makes me realize that I really do love SF.

Still I am not ready to commit, “to settle down.” I have an exciting job opportunity next month which will bring me back east. I don’t want to jinx it just yet, because I haven’t actually started work, but it’s something I am really excited about for the sheer adventure of learning. And if all goes well I will have a lot of responsibility. And after six months of recreating my life, I will be ready.

But I am not done. I just wanted to touch base, let you know that I am living, breathing, eating, pooping and enjoying the warmer weather out west (although it snowed here yesterday, and I am only 10 miles from a lot of snow in the town of Oakhurst, which is rather close to Yosemite). So it won’t be too long before you shall hear from me again.

In other words…
I will be back.