​The writing on the Roman wall said simply this:
I was here.
I (my name) was here.
I made my mark.
I wrote it here.
And neither your paint or your bleach or the history books
Can ever erase me.
Small and insignificant I may be,
A humble grain in the sands of time,
All memory of who I was
Or how I lived or who I loved
Or what I did will one day disappear --
Everything except for what I wrote:
I (my name) was here.
 
Rosalind Resnick
Feb. 23, 2016

​Everybody seems to have a story about a taxi.
Driver or passenger, it doesn't matter.
I'm a New Yorker so maybe it's not surprising
That one night during the Clinton Administration
I took a cab back to my house in Brooklyn Heights
And the driver turned around and asked me, "Aren't you Monica Lewinsky?"
I guess that was a compliment considering the fact that I was pushing 40.
Speaking of pushing, there was the time that my boyfriend --
A taxi driver from Rimini, Italy, the town made famous by Federico Fellini --
Asked a passenger to get out of his cab and help him push his taxi up the narrow street of a little hill town to the man's medieval villa.
Invited in for a drink, my boyfriend politely declined, explaining that he didn't have time, that he had to get back
(A strange excuse for an Italian, I know).
A couple of days later, browsing the titles at the newsstand,
He discovered that man in his taxi was the famous writer Umberto Eco.
In today's world of smartphones and social networks and seamless webs,
There's something about those taxi tales that makes me smile.
Perhaps because they're a throwback to the days when journeys were destinations and
Literature unfolded one step at a time.
 
Rosalind Resnick
Feb. 20, 2016
 

They say that love has no rules.
If that's the case, then why do we keep playing?
Why do we keep feeding coins into the slot machine
And spending our hard-earned money on lottery tickets
When everybody knows that love is a sucker's bet
And that, in the end, the house always wins and we'll be lucky to stagger out the door with a hangover and empty pockets?
Why do we bother making a list of what we're looking for in a potential mate
When we know we're just going to crumple it up and throw it away
The minute the guy with the pecs and the aviator sunglasses walks into the room or the girl with the million-dollar booty flashes us a smile?
Why do we ignore our mother's advice and her mother's advice
And run, not walk, from the safe but boring family friend or the boy or girl next door?
Even the hottest sex cools off eventually
And the molten lava that melts our hearts will one day turn to rocks that we will use to pelt each other from across the room?
They say that love has no rules,
And I agree.
No rules that is except for this one:
Humble yourself to love's beauty and power.
Do not try to escape your destiny.
Accept that, no matter who you are,
King, queen or chambermaid,
Love conquers all.

Rosalind Resnick
Feb. 2, 2016