Back in the ’90s, I hung out with Joth, Sara, Pino, Thomas and Thane, primarily. Had a job that took me around the country on private jets for five years: staying in four-star hotels and eating in five-star restaurants. No wonder I was unhappy.

During that time, I filled dozens of notebooks with hundreds of pages of purple prose and various tortured drawings. I also wrote five plays that got performed, four books, and a song for a Pink Martini album. So, I guess it wasn’t all in vain. Oh, yes, and we laughed a lot (when I wasn’t looking into the abyss), we drank a lot of red wine. And we laughed a lot. You can click any of the pictures to get a larger view.

This dried leaf was drawn in my notebook while I drank several cups of Torrefazione coffee. The place was a second home, a block from mine. It’s gone now. But I’m still here.

The picture of a leafy tree in summer was drawn looking out the window of the same coffee shop, on a brilliant Saturday when I wanted to swan dive off a bridge (probably), but was too lazy to get up from the chair.

The drawing below I made of a pool table, while my friends were playing pool (I hate games of any kind), and I drank martinis and bitched. On the facing page, I drew my rendition of one of my favorite drawings by Witkacy.

The person in the mask with the handcuffs was my rendition of a picture I’ve always liked by Man Ray. From a sunny, summer Saturday sitting at the coffee shop.

Yoko Ono’s piece of art work inspired the  drawing left and below, and then the stream of consciousness poem to the right of it, which later ended up in a mangled fashion in one of the S-o-C short stories in my first book, “Doll Head Eater.” You can buy that by clicking on this link.

Then, of course, there are hundreds of little snippets in the sketchbooks/notebooks of moments. Sometimes captured in words. Sometimes in drawings. Sometimes in both. You don’t always need a camera, nor should you always use one. But somehow … remember: a girl eating breakfast, her feet raised up on her toes. It looked like the morning after for her, and she never moved her feet for 45 minutes. The sunlight was just right, too. (On the same page: some meanderings about a 33-lb. cat. Typical.)