Tonight I Think About Tomorrow

Tonight I think about tomorrow. 

Fourteen years ago.

We went to bed innocent and woke up completely startled. 

Furniture and dogs were kicked. 

Implacable disbelief. 

Merciless reality. 

Overturned lives, loves, plans, convictions.

Our world changed. 

We began to think and feel as others have for centuries. 

Fear. 

Anger. 

Distrust.

In fourteen years I have heard about conspiracy, lack of evidence, missing recordings and documents.

One thing remains. Loss. We are stuck with that.

Loss of freedom, confidence, loved ones, futures.

What have we learned?

Little to nothing.

The fighters continue to fight in the wrong arenas. The radicals continue to terrorize and strike where the desert is no longer about camels or oil or negotiations. 

The vital organs cling to reason, wisdom, compassion, with heads in the clouds 

and argue about camels, 

arenas 

and 

fighters.

Tonight I think about tomorrow. 

Fourteen years ago.

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Thank you for reading.

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Swing Your Lantern High

Our children need us. But we need them, too. I needed mine, God knows. They kept me stable, going from day to day, year after year, when things around me sometimes felt like more than an earthquake. I know what Biden is talking about here, climbing into bed with them and holding your hand on their little tummies, the up and down, in and out, knowing that one thing is consistent, their sweet breath, their complete innocence, their dependence on you. Bless you, Joe; my heart weeps for you. I won't ever forget hearing my grandmother telling a friend on the day she buried her youngest son "We aren't meant to bury our children."

As Vice President Joe Biden's son was dying of brain cancer this spring, he delivered a speech at Yale that addressed to his own losses and talked about how important his bond with his children was to him. . . Click on the above for Vice President Biden's full speech. . . Thank you for reading.

Zero for the Mother

I weep for the marbled murrelet,

mollusks, brown pelican, the cutthroat trout,

and southern sea otter, least tern, red throated loon…

an infinite list of

Innocent, defenseless life that swallows elixir of death

and then is

… gone.

We insist on constant exploitation of endangered habitat

With no concern for our stewardship

Oblivious to 

Extinction by numbers, perishing in bleakness, desperation;

For nothing but lack of concern,

gluttony for money.

From the ether come the screams of John Muir, Rachel Carson, Farley Mowat,

When a tube buried deep within the earth

Burst

Its contents slithering like a slick venomous serpent and

allowed for Mankind to be engaged, once again, in the decimation

Ten by ten,

Thousand by thousand.

Score for casualty, score for excess, score for greed, score for ignorance, score for suffering, score for death, score for oil, score for tragedy.

Zero for the mother.

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Thanks for reading.

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Endangered and Threatened Marine Species

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Far From the Madding Crowd – The Movie

I’m not sure I’ve done a movie review on my blog but the images of this film are firmly lodged and this keeps me from doing real work….

Hardy took his title, Far From the Madding Crowd from the 1871 Thomas Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, a lengthy poem in which Gray lifted phrases from Dante and Petrarch; lots of thieving going on here.

The place, far from the madding crowd, in Gray’s poem, is a graveyard. Reading the piece, one can almost imagine Gray having gone forward in time and looking back to write about regret, peace, retribution, forgiveness, love, envy.

Each one of Hardy’s Crowd characters can be found in this poem on one line or another. Gray’s poetry depicts sheep grazing over rolling hills as the sun lowers on the horizon; woods and farm animals taking to roost or burrow for the night; images of a happy family household; the small hamlet; the wealthy kingdom; earls and land gentry; rich and poor.

Tribute of a sigh is another line in the Gray poem that Hardy could just as easily taken to describe his romantic and tender novel.

In the outer hallway of the massive theater where we had escaped to watch our movie, ticketholders pressed against one another in anticipation of another movie, Mad Max in 3D, a movie full of special effects, raw language, terror, violence and bloodshed. Our screen held the attention of a mere forty or fifty moviegoers, comfortably seated and ready for a different type of action.

There's little bloodshed in Far From the Madding Crowd but there are soldiers and there is much death, tragic in all cases. There’s no sex but there is so much lust packed into about 4 minutes of the entire film that I turned to my friend, shaking my head and, feeling woe for all womanhood, whispered “fucking hormones” in her ear.

Thomas Hardy, father of the cliffhanger (in his novel A Pair of Blue Eyes, written in 1893, Hardy chose to leave a main character literally hanging from a cliff staring into the flinty eyes of a marine fossil embedded in rock that has been dead for millions of years), knew how to create suspense and just a little bit of terror. There was always enough to keep his readers on the edge of their seats and coming back for more. During a time when women wore cuffs to their knuckles and collars up to the chin, Hardy was able to portray sex scenes that deliberately left Victorian housewives and maidens trembling. You just won’t get that in Mad Max.

Carey Mulligan’s Bathsheba Everdene reveals a handsome, stubborn, intelligent and independent woman, unable and unwilling to respond to the advances of two eligible men. She makes the worst decision of her life when she solves her problem by marrying a third and most aggressive bachelor. 

Matthias Schoenaerts, (a must-see in Rust and Bone) is outstanding as the Farmer Oak, who inevitably and deservedly will win the heart of Bathsheba. The supporting cast, especially Tom Sturridge as the sexy, bad-boy Frank Troy, are all worthy of statues. The cinematography stands alone, chilling and warming, all in stride. 

Skip Mad Max and have yourself a treat with developed characters and no special effects (unless you count Sturridge's ruby-red puckering lower lip.)
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Thanks for reading.

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May 3rd

This morning a writer friend sent a YouTube video via private message. It’s A Beautiful Day’s "White Bird." Not sure why James sent it, but no matter… it was a lovely gesture. "White Bird" has significance for me though I've not thought about the song in years. 
Today my mom would have been 94. The gorgeous woman with the camera here. The wind is blowing her skirt; it’s not a thread holding it in place, like a magazine shot. A gust just came along to make this photo perfect. She’s looking into the lens of a box camera and must have been heavily concentrating; one had to hold them very still to get a decent picture. A car is parked on the street behind her and I believe this is taken in Enumclaw. I wonder who is taking the photo of her but I can guess. 
I miss my mom. She was hard on me, most of my life, but she loved me dearly and I know that. It wasn't always easy being her daughter. She was demanding of everyone around her. She expected a lot. My mom had special disdain for people who slept well. She could not bear to let us kids sleep in and when we were adults, she deliberately made phone calls very early in the morning. The devil got his due when she was elderly and would miss the final moments of television shows and movies, nodding off.
My mother put me on rigid diets from the ages of about 12 – 15, until I rebelled. I was never fat but I was not sleek and thin like other women in my family. It bothered her immensely. And then I became a hippie. It nearly killed her but was nothing compared to what I did later, getting pregnant out of wedlock. Shame for the family. Twice. 
Mom and I became friends after my father died; he had always been my great defender and perhaps she felt the job fell into her camp. She read just about every word I wrote. She praised my writing and was proud. When she was dying, she asked me to print out some of my poetry and she would sit and read it, her head wrapped in a silly turban to hide the hair loss. I have a strong image of that. 
My mother shared her birthday with her sister, who was born on May 1st, five years later. They’re together now, having died two years apart. When I was young, our families got together for every occasion and made a very big deal of anniversaries, graduations, confirmations and such. There were a lot of photos taken; lots of shutterbugs in the family.

Many years ago I was living in Los Angeles and pregnant with my little girl. I had a close friend at the time and she was quite hip. Tanya’s mom owned a "poodle parlor" in San Diego and Tanya went by the last name of Lord, though that wasn't her real name. She moved in with me and we were soul sisters, doting on my baby boy and waiting for my next baby to be born. Tanya and I bonded in a way I never really have with another woman. Most people thought we were lesbians and we were not, but we never denied it. 
Tanya was a Taurus like my mom, and there were odd similarities I couldn't help realizing. it was a strange type of perfectionism they shared. Once Tanya took me to a party high in the hills of Hollywood. There were candles and flowers floating in the pool and famous people there but I'd been out of touch, having babies, so she explained to me who they all were. Tanya was very in tune with current culture and I've never forgotten when she brought albums home. It’s a Beautiful Day was one of her favorite groups. We listened to "White Bird," mesmerized by the melody and the lyrics. We spun that LP over and over until the grooves were deep as our thoughts and desires.
So this morning when James sent me the video, just as I was waking up and thinking about Mom’s birthday, clouds of images took over. 
I lost touch with Tanya long ago. I've no idea where she ended up. Mom's been gone for five years this July. My hair's turning gray and my children are different people from those to whom I gave birth. 

"The sunsets come; The sunsets go; The clouds roll by; And the earth turns old; And the young bird's eyes Do always glow…."

Happy Birthday, Mom and you, too, Tanya, wherever you both are.

Thanks for reading.






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Valentine’s Day – The Mouth of My Monster

February 14^th is different for me. Years ago, I was married on this day. Two months prior, I nearly bled to death. As life drained out of me and my skin color blended with the white sheets in the emergency room (you can’t believe it unless you've seen it), I received a proposal of marriage. It was meant to give me the will to live. It wasn't necessary. I was in good medical hands and had no desire to go anywhere. My life was my three kids and my desire for them to have a typical family. The five of us were coming to that but we had put off making a legal commitment. Three kids as part of my bargain didn't seem to represent a fair prospect for him.

                              ***************

They normally don’t allow people in the ER beyond the waiting room but he just walked in after locating me in the warren of swinging doors and bright lights. That was the kind of man he was. No was not in his acceptable inventory of responses.  Nobody stopped him. I saw his face among those who were tending to me; I accepted him to have found me. He later said he counted 17 people in that room, not including the two of us. I remember, even now, racing to the OR watching the ceiling tiles whiz by overhead, some pieces missing with wires and pipes exposed, like in a movie. I woke hours later in the ICU and watched flakes of snow whirling outside the foggy window. A nurse told me he’d just left; it was 5 a.m. and I should let him get some sleep. She phoned him and he was standing next to me the next time I opened my eyes. The weather was torturous. It was 12 degrees and he’d gone home and checked the wrapped pipes, turned around and came back. He brought my hairbrush. He was that kind of man.

                             ***************

Over the years, we had a grand party every Valentine’s Day. We invited everyone we knew and they all came. A bartender was hired; glasses were rented; food was cooked for days. It was a festive gala, a chance for people to dress up and make merry in what was usually the dullest, grayest time of year. Photos have been lost; tossed out, I suspect, by a bitter child. But that’s another story.

Malcolm Gladwell writes in The Tipping Point about the process of memory in his chapter about The Power of Content.  [Transactive memory is part of what intimacy means and when a unit is broken up, as it is in divorce, depression develops due to the] loss of [] external memory systems. 

And so… my recollection is only half of what it should be. I could make a pie chart of where collections of memorable events exist. I've lost much; I've way too many living ghosts.

                             ***************

I hate hospitals. The weeks and months of smelling those odors, hearing those sounds. I became far too familiar with routines, schedules and movements. I was often mistaken for a doctor or nurse, even without a uniform. 

We came to refer to it as the drive-by germ. It hit our house in late January, just as we were planning the next Valentine party.   

I slept in his ICU room for nearly a month. They moved him to a standard room and I had to sleep in a chair. I couldn't leave. He lost his ears, his toes, half his fingers. He was on breathing machines at 100% for too damn long. He lost his mind, his memory, the things we shared together, the things we cherished, the moments, the harmony, the sweet accord that made us whole.

                                ***************

I thought I’d gotten over him. Last year a phone call came in the night and we rushed to that place I hate…the hospital. It was eleven years since I'd seen him. You get over a person in that amount of time, right? Especially if that person is not even recognizable as whom he was to you, when he was a complete, sane person?

I honestly didn't think he’d make it through the night. There was blood everywhere, a huge gash in his forehead, broken bones on both sides on his body, his back. Intubated; those familiar tubes trailing from his nose and mouth, the pumping of air into lungs that resist each thrust. He’d been hit by a pizza delivery car; stepped off a curb in his usual oblivion and BAM! Here we were again.  

                                ***************

“He has nine lives,” we joked. It was funny. Sort of. He’s escaped death more than anyone I know, twice as a child in horrible accidents. I visited him three times again after that, twice in the ICU, where they had him stabilized; then again in a regular room when he was awake and aware. He didn't cling to my hand like he had when he didn't really realize who I was. He dismissed us all with the wave of his deformed, damaged hands.  I closed the door.

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Christmas is difficult. We had such a multitude of traditions and so much fun; it’s never been the same. I've chosen to be in Mexico for the holidays, where the culture captures me and I don’t dwell on how our typical family completely fell apart, shattered in so many pieces, no pot of glue could put it together again.

Valentine’s Day, however, follows me wherever I go. Those many years ago, my first one without him... friends, who took pity, invited me to dinner. A mistake. After they talked about him through the entire meal, I excused myself to go back to the hospital, sit next to him and listen to the wheezes and beeps, the monitors and machines that were keeping him alive. I woke at dawn, drove home and fell back to sleep curled in a ball. Those things I remember.

When he came out of the coma, woke and spoke, he recognized no one and thought I was someone named Sheila. Slowly he began to come back to us but he never really reached that point where we knew him. His transactive memory was gone. It was the death of our intimacy.

                                ***************

My life has gone on. I've had magic and wondrous times. I've even had love again, which was something I doubted would ever revisit me in this mortal existence. I've been lucky and there are few regrets. Valentine’s Day though… it’s a burden I shoulder.

Thanks for reading. 

Heart in Her Hand painting of me by Michael Hale 

(At the time of his illness, a vaccination was being developed for meningitis, which is highly recommended for teenagers, who are more susceptible than younger children. Too late for Breeze, who lost his spleen as a young boy in one of the aforementioned accidents. Had it been only a couple years later, he would have been eligible and chances are we would still be making memories.)



                                           

PLEASE, LOOK DOWN, FAIR MOON

So many mother's babies have been lost in recent weeks, the result of horrifying warring. I was compelled to write a poem at the time of the deaths of three innocent boys, hitching a ride home from school. This piece was part of a challenge from Robert Lee Brewer, Writer's Digest poetry editor. Since it was entered in a poetry contest, I wasn't able to post it to my site but here it is, in its entirety, in memory of Eyal Yifrach, 19, Naftali Frenkel, 16 and Gilad Shaar, 16 and all the children and their families, lost in senseless battle, West of Jordan.
Using the form of a Golden Shovel poem, the writer must take another poem and using each word in that line or poem as an end word of their own piece. Once completed, the original poem is revealed by reading the final words of each line of the new creation. I used the Walt Whitman poem LOOK DOWN, FAIR MOON, which was an homage to young men killed during the American Civil War. According to one analysis [certain battles would drag on for many days at a time. As a result of this, oftentimes corpses had to be left where they fell on the battle field due to a lack of ability to go back and pick them up. The author of this analysis believes that this poem is based upon Whitman's plea for the moon to look down on such battlefields and clean and purify the bodies of the wounded.]





PLEASE, LOOK DOWN, FAIR MOON


Let’s say you don’t like the way these boys dress or look

Or perhaps you, helplessly, down

To your own calcified beliefs, have trouble being fair

In a world, under the same moon.

Maybe you see our children differently and

You’re not interested in how we bathe

These bloody issues, be they Israeli or Palestinian in this

Complicated and hard to be neutral scene.

Imagine the tears of three mothers and how they did pour

With aunts, grandmothers, friends and softly

Spoken young girls, all falling down

On knees with incalculable sorrow in the night’s

Mourning, a glow of love and grief like a dimmed nimbus

Like nothing you have ever, ever known, the floods

Of untold loss, without relying on

Memories of sweet babyish faces

That now, after sharing ten silent bullets, are left ghastly,

Found in an open area close to Hebron, swollen,

Left in a field in the West Bank; cheeks, hands, lips purple

These mother’s babies missing. Two. Weeks. Don’t tell me it’s not on

Your mind what had to be acknowledged in the

Cold bright room where they identify the dead;

Does it matter to what god they prayed? on

What day of the week? or the food on their

Breakfast plate? … now that they lay on stiffened backs,

What if it was your boy who died there with

His school friends, last seen at the hitchhiking point in Gush Etzion with their

Book bags over shoulders, dangling arms

About each other, cares toss’d

To the wind, with hearts opened wide,

Not knowing what fate was about to pour

Upon them from heavens and hells that have been turned up side down

While you were watching the five o clock news in your

Cozy home surrounded by family and the wealth of unstinted

Peace and security. Your borders are tight and the nimbus

Of tranquility makes you believe your circle is sacred

And your children are safe under that same moon.

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Thank you for reading.