(photo above by MK Metz; photo below by Steve Baldwin)

My uncle Harvey died this weekend. He was failing, but I didn't expect him to go this fast.

When I was a kid I didn't know him or his kids well, given he lived in New Jersey and we were up in Massachusetts. We'd see them once in a while, but when he and his wife divorced we saw them even less. He got married again around the time I moved to New York City, and though he was still in Jersey I started seeing him and his wife, Charlotte, my favorite auntie, once every couple of months. Plus we'd go to Massachusetts together every Thanksgiving to my mother's, until that eventually slowed due to illness, family fighting, and my mother's illness and death. Over the last decade Charlotte and I became closer and I started to get to know my cousin, Sacha, and in time I became their family and they became mine.

Harvey was a writer, novels, and though none had been published it wasn't for not trying. He wouldn't let me read them, but I knew from conversation they took place in museums or cafes and had lots of intrigue and sex. They had great titles -- 'Sunday Afternoon at the Beauborg' - and in between working on books he'd send letters to creative types he felt a kinship with but felt needed some guidance. 'Dear Quentin Tarantino,' one such letter began. While 'Pulp Fiction' is a work of art, 'Jackie Brown' is awful. What you should've done is...'

He and my mother had two other brothers, one of whom we'd sometimes visit on Thanksgiving. This brother was recently thrown out of an assisted living facility for asking the female residents "Would you like to see my penis?" The other brother, Malcolm, is a poet who lived most of his life with his mother (except for a brief sojourn on Leonard Cohen's couch in Montreal and a briefer visit to the local insane asylum), and now lives on his own near where they all grew up. The brothers were never close; if anything they were highly competitive, so none were expected at the funeral.

Harvey wasn't religious, so instead of a service six of us met yesterday morning in the crematorium at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn. Green-Wood is a historic landmark, a Gothic Revival relic set in a park-like setting, though the crematorium is glass modern with a hint of Asian temple. It was quiet, sedate, and once inside we were led to a room that had a long pine box at the head and multiple rows of semi-circular padded pews. We walked to the box then sat together in the front pew. The box was a simple rectangle, the top doweled on, and we talked about what we'd miss and what we loved about him. After about fifteen minutes the director came in and gently let us know it was time, and that he'd be back shortly, meaning they were taking Harvey in to be cremated. My aunt stood up to go in with him and we all stood and joined her. I don't know if this was the plan, but the director nodded, then opened a pair of invisible doors. The six of us followed him and the box through the doors.

The room we were now in was like a wide hallway. Harvey's box was on a casket carrier and a worker wheeled the box head first to align with set of doors that were a little bigger than the box. There were eight sets of doors altogether, stacked in two rows of four. The worker unclasped the doors, swung them open and I could suddenly hear the roar of the furnace fire. I glanced in and could see light reflecting off the wall about ten feet in. I realized this was the actual oven. The worker then rolled the box off its carrier into the face of the oven, onto a conveyer belt made of metal rollers. The carrier also had metal rollers -- they were like the kind airports have for handling luggage or the one that the Stop & Shop Supermarket had when I was a kid for loading in heavy boxes. He guided the box into the neck of the furnace and my uncle quietly rolled into the heat. The worker closed the doors. And that was it.

It was so final, so complete. My aunt and cousin wept quietly and I wept with them. Then we came back out into the main room and my aunt's sisters had to go the bathroom, and after they did that we all went outside. Down near the cars I noticed a headstone topped by a statuary that had been worn away by weather and time, a possible cherub that now had spindly arms and moss-mottled legs. Death is impermanence, life is filled with impermanence, and I frequently hear how we are powerless over it. Yet what I was feeling was absolute permanence, absolute life. Green-Wood is home to a flock of wild Quaker parrots, which adds mystery and 'other' to the already surreal landscape, and as we got into our cars and headed for the Brooklyn Bridge my feeling of humble quietude matched the fury of the furnace.

Many of my favorite recipes come from Cooks Illustrated. When blueberries are out of season I make this with chocolate chips and sprinkle sugar on top instead of the lemon/sugar topping. Also, I like turbinado sugar for baking. I give it a few spins in the food processor to improve the texture before adding it to the recipe, but use as is for topping.

If buttermilk is unavailable, substitute 3/4 cup plain whole-milk or low-fat yogurt thinned with 1/4 cup milk.

Ingredients:

Lemon-Sugar Topping 1/3 cup sugar (2 1/3 ounces) 1 1/2 teaspoons finely grated zest from 1 lemon

Muffins:

2 cups fresh blueberries (about 10 ounces), picked over 1 1/8 cups sugar (8 ounces) plus 1 teaspoon 2 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour (12 1/2 ounces) 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder 1 teaspoon table salt 2 large eggs 4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter , melted and cooled 1/4 cup vegetable oil 1 cup buttermilk (see note above) 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

FOR THE TOPPING: Stir together sugar and lemon zest in small bowl until combined; set aside.

FOR THE MUFFINS: Adjust oven rack to upper-middle position and heat oven to 425 degrees. Spray standard muffin tin with nonstick cooking spray. Bring 1 cup blueberries and 1 teaspoon sugar to simmer in small saucepan over medium heat. Cook, mashing berries with spoon several times and stirring frequently, until berries have broken down and mixture is thickened and reduced to 1/4 cup, about 6 minutes. Transfer to small bowl and cool to room temperature, 10 to 15 minutes.

Whisk flour, baking powder, and salt together in large bowl. Whisk remaining 1 1/8 cups sugar and eggs together in medium bowl until thick and homogeneous, about 45 seconds. Slowly whisk in butter and oil until combined. Whisk in buttermilk and vanilla until combined. Using rubber spatula, fold egg mixture and remaining cup blueberries into flour mixture until just moistened. (Batter will be very lumpy with few spots of dry flour; do not overmix.)

Use ice cream scoop or large spoon to divide batter equally among prepared muffin cups (batter should completely fill cups and mound slightly). Spoon teaspoon of cooked berry mixture into center of each mound of batter. Using chopstick or skewer, gently swirl berry filling into batter using figure-eight motion. Sprinkle lemon sugar evenly over muffins.

Bake until muffin tops are golden and just firm, 17 to 19 minutes, rotating muffin tin from front to back halfway through baking time. Cool muffins in muffin tin for 5 minutes, then transfer to wire rack and cool 5 minutes before serving.

There was once this blue chip art dealer who used to schlump around her home in a frumpy house coat and slippers while wearing a million dollars worth of jewelry. She was my idol.

My thing with beautiful jewelry started after 9/11 - literally, days after. I was roaming up Prince Street looking for nothing, simply getting out to get out of my home and head. The wind had changed direction and my neighborhood was filled with a smog of white ash and the few of us out wandering stopped for brief hello's even though we didn't know each other. After a few blocks I was ready to turn around and absently stopped outside a jewelry store, Reinstein Ross. In their window they had postcards of their jewelry leaning on tiny stands, showing dainty and carefully made gold and beaded rings and bracelets, and I just stood there, staring. Their jewelry was charming and sweet and, maybe because of how little it meant in the big picture it suddenly meant a lot.

Over the next few years, if I found myself midtown with time to kill I'd roam into Bergdorf's and look at their jewelry counters, then walk down Fifth Avenue and bang out Tiffany and Van Cleef's windows. I still do that and once in a while I even go online to look at what's coming up at the Sotheby's or Christie's jewelry auctions. What I've discovered is I don't envy or covet or lust for these things; it's more, there's something about the perfection of beauty that lets me clear my head, shake out a demon or two, let my thoughts mindlessly roam.

I'm quite happy flopped on the couch, fishing around in my pants for nothing in particular, Joe sitting next to me mining a pint of ice cream as we stream tv episode after episode like a couple of crack heads. When I'm on a deadline, like I am now, I become a real bore since all I can think about or see is the thing I'm working on. Zoning out on a tv show or a Lorraine Schwartz bracelet is the pause that lets me reset.

Usually when I'm working like this I don't go out much, but this week I said yes to everything. I had a concert, a quiet dinner, a dinner party/game night, a birthday party (great drag queens), a lunch and a book party. My friend Pam shares a similar love for jewelry and she invited me to the book party because it was being held at Verdura, which meant good jewelry ogling.

Pam first needed to make a pit stop at Taffin, James de Givenchy's jewelry showroom, a jeweler high on my ogle list. By the time we got there most of his inventory had already been put in the safe, but he led us around his showroom before the rest went in. I found myself staring into a glass dome that held an exquisite diamond bracelet that had half-inch long bronze colored eggs hanging from it. The eggs were elegant, studded with tiny diamonds, and I couldn't figure out what they were made out of. He took the bracelet out of the case and fastened it onto my wrist and surprisingly, despite the size and number of eggs, the bracelet weighed nothing. I looked closely at the eggs, still not able to figure out what their material was.

"It's an AK47," he said.

"You mean the gun?" He nodded. "You're repurposing AK47's?"

"It's a new material I'm working with." He pulled out a 4-inch egg, also studded with diamonds. Small squares of metal overlapped to create a surface that stayed cool despite my hand being around it. Maybe I was cool to it; magnified to this size, the egg felt like a grenade. It got me thinking about a piece of jewelry's history, how it moves from hand to hand, auction house to auction house, mother to daughter, friend to friend, father to son, the meaning it imbues and embeds and carries. James de Givenchy seemed quite respectful of the material, and though I later read about this collection being an agent of change and of being about new possibilities, I got the sense that he had removed it's history and was in the process of simply making the metal his. Is that what we all do with history?

After Taffin we went to Verdura and once Pam said her hellos (she does PR for a publisher) we wove through a few rooms, ogling this and that. I love Verdura's old-school cuffs and jewelry from the '40's, especially the over the top tacky pieces. Verdura I would pile on, and as the rooms got more and more crowded that's what women were doing. I've never been to a book party where guests were that interactive with their surroundings, but then again I've never been to a book party that was catered like this one was. Whoever did the food was killer -- fried sage leaves, yellow pepper mousse in parmesan spoons, salmon wrapped in crepes with chives, filet with a red pepper coulis, arctic char on a puree of fava beans -- all of it bite-size and beautiful. After Pam and I had our eye fill of jewelry we found a nice couch to sit on where waiters brought tray after tray of these gorgeous little snacks, and since no-one else was eating our couch became food central. I stuffed my face and would've knocked over a few Gulf Stream socialites to palm a few more of those sage leaves if I had to, that's how good they were. After an hour I was ready to go home, as was Pam, and though the waiters were sorry to see us go we happily rolled on out of there.

Happy Thanksgiving, courtesy my friend Darragh:

What Security Cameras Also Catch

Rockaway is still devastated. People who live there have to get to work and the MTA trucked subway cars in on flatbeds to act as shuttle trains. Here's more information and some great photos.

Every so often I dig through the settings on my phone to get to my personal dictionary. This dictionary saves 'my' words - words I text, email or use to search - that aren't in the established dictionary. It saves misspells, too, which is why I go in now and then to clean it out.

I'm always surprised by how revealing the word list is. This week was a self-portrait: Amex, because I got hacked; Abeille is a restaurant where Dawn and I recently had breakfast; Addidas because I need new sneakers; blunch because we couldn't decide on breakfast or lunch and split the difference.

Scrolling down the list, ass is followed by asshat and I can't wait to get to shituation because I'll have to pass pooblem, a dictionary favorite. These etched their way in when I was struggling with something I was working on and texted Brian, a fellow writer:

Me: 'I have a pooblem.'

Brian: 'A shituation?'

Me: 'Deficately'

Brian: 'Ass me anything'

Me: 'I tip my shat to you'

I'm elegantly redeemed by Nauman, Guggenheim, Didion and DiSuvero, but barely, since suddenly there's fuckle. There's also Falafart, farted, Farticle, farting, Fartis and Harrfart. Stuck in the middle of this, next to Frankenstein, is Fluffyllis. I don't know what a Fluffyllis is, but I'm keeping it.

Chemo is still there from when my mom was still alive.

Dupchik is from THIRD ROCK FROM THE SUN, LoM is for the American TV version of LIFE ON MARS, there's NUMB3RS and FREAKS - egad we watch a lot of TV. And we eat: avocado, Babbo, Citerella, cockles, cupcake, donut, edamame, greenmarket, hummus, lychees - I hit rigatoni and still, the food keeps coming.

CAA, WME, Miranda, ProdCo and FTVS let me feel optimistic workwise, as does shortlisted. Musicality makes me feel smart, but then there's narraring. Prunes makes me wonder how old I am, but craption tells me it'll all be okay. It's a curated document of a life, this dictionary. It says I like to eat, work, watch TV, read, look at art, make up words that celebrate bodily functions, and spend time with my beau and friends. That's pretty much right on the truth.

In September 2011 I got offered a three-month freelance gig at Random House Books. I make my living as a writer and artist and my income has highs and lows. I was in the thick of a low when this gig came from nowhere, a true gift from above.

I hadn't worked for anyone in 20 years and had never worked in book publishing. My last job had been at Business Week Magazine as an assistant art director, a job I made part time then no time once I started exhibiting. This job was in the cookbook division, working on a new networking site centered around cooking. The website was in the test phase and I would be comparing print cookbooks to their digital versions. Any error, whether font or image or style or a 1/4 teaspoon that should be a 1/2, I would submit to be fixed.

My first week there I barely looked up. There were 8 freelancers and we were divvied between Mac and Microsoft to make sure the domain worked on both platforms. I got Microsoft, a foreign territory, and this mixed with publishing language, style sheets and the website itself made my focus absolute.

My second week there I was starting to get comfortable and while pondering lunch a fellow freelancer came in, wild eyed, carrying piles of books. She dropped the books on her desk and whispered, "They're free." Free? Heat started working its way up my face. She nodded. "5 floors are moving. Editors are cleaning out their offices and whatever they don't want go in red bookcases." My dignity and cool -- free books! -- chucked their dignity and cool and I quickly stood. I was going on a book run.

We hurried out of our office, then immediately slowed as we walked past offices, cubicles, conference rooms. I had a nonchalant smile pasted on, casual, calm, hello I live with ease. On the elevator my co-worker hit the button for 17 and our ID's got us through electronic doors. We entered the massive floor and my heart started hammering - there were red bookshelves everywhere. I took a second to case the floor and headed toward the back.

On the first red bookshelf I found PRIDE AND PREJUDICE by Jane Austin and PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES by Seth Grahame-Smith. Pluck pluck, my pile started. I added BRINGING OUT THE DEAD by Joe Connelly and SPARTINA by John Casey. OLIVE KITTERIDGE by Elizabeth Strout and A GATE AT THE STAIRS by Lorrie Moore. I love my job! TELL-ALL by Chuck Palahniuk, LAY THE FAVORITE by Beth Raymer, ROBOPOCALYPSE by Daniel H. Wilson, Claire Messud's THE EMPEROR'S CHILDREN - these were hard cover first editions! Kate Christensen and Jonathan Tropper were piled on Tim O'Brien who was sitting on SUNDAY SUPPERS AT LUCQUES by Suzane Goin.

I looked around at empty boxes, but knew they were for editors. Living with spiritual principles means no stealing so I grabbed my load, told my co-worker I was heading back - she had a Picasso book by John Richardson! How did I miss that?! Oh my God was there another?! - and took the stairs down. My office had walls of empty bookshelves and I dumped my load then headed for the elevator. It was lunch time. I was on lunch.

A week later I had filled 12 bookshelves. The free books sitting idly 10 floors above had become an obsession, one I was coming in early for, leaving late for, not taking lunch for. And then I heard that Judith Jones, the editor for Julia Child, Madhur Jaffery, John Updike - the woman who wrote MY LIFE IN FOOD and had discovered THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK - had emptied her office, and my eyes rolled back and a full book seizure hit: I had to get up there. Right now.

I love to read and I love to cook and it means something to have THE BREAKFAST BOOK by Marion Cunningham with what might be Judith Jones's 'what the - ?' notes and corrections sprinkled throughout. I wasn't just grabbing to grab, but knew I was heading toward the shitter when one afternoon - by this point I was taking the stairs since I couldn't wait for the elevator - I got stuck in a stairwell, unable to enter a door I had gone through the day before. The move had begun and, panic rising, it took 15 floors of trying doors before I was able to enter a floor. Despite this, my fix was only brought under control when the move finished and the red bookcases disappeared.

Post move I wandered to the new floors and discovered that each floor had a shelf, sometimes a bookcase, that held free books. By now I was out of shelf space at home and roamed mostly to step away from the computer and clear my head. When the freelance job ended I was glad to be back home, though I would still twitch for those red shelves. When I get the itch now I glance over at THE DIVE FROM CLAUSEN'S PIER by Ann Packer, THE PESTHOUSE by Jim Crace, READING LOLITA IN TEHRAN by Azar Nafisi and THE COOKBOOK COLLECTOR by Allegra Goodman. They're books I've yet to read and they take the twitch away. Just for today.

I came to New York a week after graduating from art school. Wearing a suit, bag and shoes my mother bought me I landed a job as an assistant to the owner of a by-appointment-only fashion salon. It was a glorified maid's job, but it was cash under the table. Plus, I could buy clothes at wholesale and I needed them.

The chain-smoking owner was a chic, fifty-something ex-Radio City Rockette. She ran her business illegally out of her posh twenty-fifth floor Lincoln Center pied-a-tierre, which she moved into after divorcing herself from her Long Island life as a doctor's wife. The two of us, plus Cocoa, her miniature poodle, made up her business.

My job consisted of offering tea to her semi-famous clients, vacuuming, discreetly retrieving and hanging up clothes as they were flung about, and feeding and walking Cocoa. Within two weeks I learned all there was to know about how not to run a business, and how to do it with Scarlet O'Hara pluck. The Rockette was at the tail end of her transformation from a suburban country clubber who nibbled lunch at the Nineteenth Hole to a cultured businesswoman with an urbane and exciting life. A dozen silly bill collectors weren't about to bust her fantasy, fiddle-de-dee.

Cocoa was as regal as the Rockette. When I'd run her out to do her business she'd glare if I tried to rush her, then she’d take her time choosing a perfect patch of grass that gave her lots of privacy.

One afternoon the Rockette was modeling clothes for her biggest client, a second tier TV talk show host. "Do you see how this blouse defines my bust?" the Rockette said, cupping her bosom to exaggerate her point. As she did, Cocoa began to heave. The Rockette snapped her fingers at me. "Pammy, please don't let Cocoa wretch on the rug." I scooped Cocoa up, grabbed her leash and ran for the elevator.

Outside, I gently put Cocoa down. She caught her breath as her heaving subsided, though her little body still jerked with each heartbeat. When she arched her back I saw she wasn't sick -- she had to poop. Cocoa looked around and she had to go so badly she could barely walk. There was no grass in sight but a tree had just been planted in front of a new, upscale restaurant. I carried Cocoa to the tree and she assumed the position.

A few seconds passed and she was still hunched over. A half-minute passed and she hadn't straightened up. I glanced down and found her big eyes pleading into mine. I had put her in full view of the restaurant! I blocked the diner's view, but Cocoa's expression didn't change. I stared at her, confused, then hesitantly glanced behind her. There, hanging out of her bum, was a three-inch hank of green yarn. People in the restaurant began to point, so I bent down, tilted her back until the string was on the ground, and placed my toe on the yarn. Ever so gently I stood, pulling her with me as I went. That yarn was over fifteen inches long and once Cocoa was relieved of it she wanted a cigarette as badly as I did. As I smoked, we couldn't look at each other.

I took Cocoa for a walk around the block to help her recover and she held her head high. If I just took the equivalent of a yarn dump in front of forty people, would I? Cocoa knew who she was and what she deserved and I wanted that. I wanted the expectation that I had a right to claim something for mine. That I could have this right was an epiphany. When the bill collectors came two months later the Rockette lost her business. She couldn't afford to pay me any severance so instead gave me a $1000 hand-made beaded belt. "Better you than the IRS, right Cocoa?" she said as she gave her little poodle a squeeze, then quickly dropped her on the bed and began to furiously pilfer her own stock. I gave Cocoa a little green sweater which she refused to try on, and as I left I saw Cocoa casually stroll onto a discarded $3000 cashmere jacket, hunch her little body up, and, ever faithful to her owner, take a massive crap on it.

(photo above by Pam Sommers)

My good friend Pam took the picture of the storm-damaged dumpling sign above and knew I'd love it. Not much is better than a nice dump.

Joe and I lost power, heat and hot water from Monday to Saturday. We have a gas stove and were able to cook, but by Wednesday we had to toss what hadn't been eaten since the fridge got warm. He had to go to Queens (he rode his bike) and I walked 40 blocks uptown to Pam's - she hadn't lost power - for a cup of coffee and a break from the cold. On my way back down I passed the Old Homestead restaurant and saw the staff grilling all kinds of meat out front. They were giving away steak sandwiches to anyone who wanted one since the meat had gotten to the 'eat it or chuck it' stage. It was nice to see that kind of generosity.

I moved to NYC over twenty years ago and immediately noticed all the hand-painted billboards. A lot of artists used to earn a living painting them and for a nanosecond it was my fantasy job. Custom billboards are now a rarity, but I noticed this one on my way to a meeting midtown.