Category Archives: Writing

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Proximity

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For some reason, I kept this word in my head all night as a blog idea.  ‘Proximity’.  And now, I’m not sure what I was thinking about.  Keeping ideas close by seems to be more and more difficult as I age.  I am working on re-writing a piece for a magazine memoirs contest.  I have bits of a puzzle, snippets and scenes and questions from the past that I’m trying to work together in 1200 words or less.  How do I keep an idea near at hand in this maze?  I started humming a song while doing the breakfast dishes.  My mind is fixed on a video of Mandy Patinkin in Sunday in the Park with George singing “Putting It Together” — Having just the vision’s no solution/everything depends on execution/the art of making art/ is putting it together.

Here in proximity floats my past, visions of Jim and the kids, emotions of fear and sadness, questions of destiny and salvation.  I have to escape to the present occasionally, get into my body, do something ordinary like make a meal.  I am making turkey stock right now.  The bare bones simmer away with chunks of onion and carrot and herbs.  Is this how I will write my book?

Too bad I don't have an aroma camera!

Margins, edges where things come together, are rich places of biodiversity on the earth.  Wendell Berry writes in Home Economics:

“The human eye itself seems drawn to such margins, hungering for the difference made in the countryside by a hedgy fencerow, a stream, or a grove of trees.”

I suppose I am hungering for the differences in life, longing to live in proximity to those places where life happens in all its majesty and danger, and aching to observe and record some epiphanies.   Not that the recording matters.  The living is what matters.

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So Many Books…

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…and so many writers.  I was preparing shipments for our online book business (Scholar & Poet Books – available on Amazon, Alibris, ABE and Half.com books; pardon the Christmas season advert, but it might help!) this morning and thinking about “being a writer”.  I am planning to enter a Memoir/Personal Essay contest at the suggestion of my teacher.  I had a dream that probably relates to this idea a few nights ago.  I dreamed that I was in a dance studio with gym mats on the floor and a wall of mirrors.  I was in line to attempt a splits leap.  I had a press photo of David Hallberg in mind, and I wanted to see if I could look like that.  Of course, I know I can’t, but I wanted to try.  So I got to the front of the line, and all the others are turned to watch me go, and they totally blocked the runway.  I kept asking them to move, but they were still in the way.  And then some of them started pulling up the mats.  “Hey!  I still haven’t had my turn yet!”  I was trying to put the mats back and move the people and all chaos was breaking loose, and I woke up.  So I told Steve about my frustrating dream and how I just wanted a chance to try, even though I knew I wouldn’t be able to do it well.  He responded, “You know who those people are in your way, don’t you?”  Of course.  Everyone in your dream is you.  The people getting in the way of me attempting my big leap are…me.

David Hallberg (photo by Gene Schiavone)

So I’m going to submit an entry, and I’m going to call myself a writer in my mind because that’s what I’ve been doing since my last birthday: writing.  And I’m aware that I may never make any money doing this.  I look at the book jacket photos of writers and handle their wares on a daily basis almost.  I read blogs by published writers.  I still have a feeling that they are a different breed.  They have degrees in writing; they have ambition.  I have thoughts.  I am dreamy and lazy and I don’t “work”.  And I’ve never lived in New York.  It seems like any “real” writer must have lived in New York at some point.  Too bad.  At least I can get out of the way of my own runway and give it a shot.   I am old and not too flexible and I’ve never been able to do the splits.  But it might be fun to catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror as I go leaping by.  It’ll probably end with me having a good laugh.

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If Music Be the Food…Play On!

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Steve purchased 32 CDs through an e-Bay auction last week.  Beethoven, Bruckner, Handel, Haydn and Schubert, mostly.  I think he’s trying to collect at least one recording of every Schubert piece…and there are more than 900 compositions cataloged.   Last night, he put on Beethoven’s first symphony when I got home from class.  I poured myself a glass of Cupcake Red Velvet and settled in under the blanket on the squishy couch with him.  Closing my eyes, I got an immediate visual memory of my father in his brown chair with the matching ottoman sitting next to the stereo cabinet, reading glasses and a glass of Kirigin Cellars Vino de Mocha in a wooden coaster beside him on the redwood burl table.   My mother is in the red rocking chair, knitting away on another warm pastel hat for a preemie at the hospital.  There’s a fire in the fireplace, and I imagine myself and Steve lying in front of it on the oriental rug.  We are all enjoying early Beethoven together, eyes closing in pleasure, warm and satisfied against the chill of a dark November.

I wish that this were possible.  I even imagine Jim lying on the tan sofa opposite the fireplace and wish I could picture Steve’s dad there as well.  It comforts me to think that music bringing us all together.  Music has been at the foundation of all of our lives in different ways.  My father and mother courted by going to concerts in college.  Jim’s mother, my mother-in-law, was a concert pianist.  Steve and his dad would listen to records in their den, shutting out all distractions.  My dad, Steve’s dad, and Jim are dead, but they seem to keep resonating music nevertheless.  We listen to music intently, we feel it and breathe it.  There is no TV in the room.  We haven’t got headphones or ear buds.  We let the music fill the space available.   In this way, we live with music and it nourishes us.  That is something we share in common, something sacred, I think.

Of course, there are other ways to relate and other kinds of music.  My kids and I crank up Beetles tunes and sing along or belt out show tunes together.   I’m introducing my youngest to opera now, and wondering how much they choose to listen to “Classical” music on their own.   I know that my oldest cherishes the music she sang with her father when they were in Chicago Master Singers together.  Now, she’s the lead vocalist in a punk band.

But it’s all good.  If we’d lived 150 years ago before recorded music was available, I’m sure we’d be picking up instruments and singing to ourselves all the live long day.  It’s impossible for me to imagine our life without music.  And something about the darkness of the season makes the music seem all the more life-giving.

So, I think I’ll turn off this computer and go downstairs where Steve is playing his CDs.  I’m as thankful for this abundance as I am for food.

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Homework

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So here’s my assignment for the week: write a description of one of the characters who will be in your memoir.  Here’s what I have written.

“When I met Jim, he was a warm, charismatic 17-year old. Everything about him was golden and good. He was an A student parented by professional educators, a member of the Mormon Church who spent an hour in seminary every day before school, an athlete competitive in tennis, a baritone soloist with the school choir, a blue-eyed blonde with thick, curly surfer locks and a regular California dream. And the crowning touch? His grandfather was an Italian immigrant. I was introduced to him at our high school’s International Talk-In, where locals were given the opportunity to mingle with exchange students. I was then the Vice President of the Italian Club, a thorough Anglo hopelessly enamored of all things italiano. My best friend at the time, the President of the Club, Lynn Panighetti, introduced us. Jim enclosed my right hand in a bear paw and then wouldn’t let go. His long lashes fluttered in befuddlement as he pretended our hands were magically glued together. He was a flirt, a funny one, and I was instantly flattered and powerfully attracted.

His right hand was broad with short, stubby fingers. He would later lament how often he “fat fingered” the keys of his computer. He had a scar on his fourth finger from a machine accident he had while working in a cannery at age 15. He told me after we’d been dating for a few years that I could have all of him except the thumb and two middle fingers of his right hand – he needed them for bowling. Eventually, he qualified for PBA membership; he always pushed himself to achieve the highest level possible in any of his pursuits. His hands matched the rest of his mesomorphic frame. At 5 feet 8 inches tall, with a massive barrel chest, he resembled a friendly teddy bear, especially to my 15-year old eyes. I nicknamed him Winnie the Pooh.

Thirty years later, that stocky body was swollen with toxins and dialysis solution as a result of his failing kidneys. His barrel chest sported a 6-inch scar where they had split his sternum to perform double bypass surgery on his 31-year old heart. A longer scar down his right calf marked the place where they had harvested a vein for the graft. The kids called his lower legs “cankles” because they looked like calves and ankles combined after neuropathy and edema developed. His polar bear feet with the sideways little toes were in pretty good shape for a diabetic. He had lost only one toenail to ulcerating infection. His hair was still thick, too short to be very curly, and just barely graying at the temples. His beautiful Italian mouth fringed by the ginger mustache looked about to smile, but it wouldn’t. His ears were blue with what our daughter identified as ‘circumaural cyanosis’. (“See, Daddy, I’m really smart,” she sobbed.) He was dead.”

I have become rather moody while taking this course.  Finished Joan Didion’s memoir about her husband’s death (The Year of Magical Thinking) last night and did a little research.  Her only child died at the age of 39 just a month before it was published.  Recent images of her are gaunt and haunted.  Interesting that she was an Episcopalian, like me.  Her New York life reminds me a little of Madeleine L’Engle’s (another Episcopalian), but she is more neurotic, less serenely spiritual.   L’Engle’s memoir of her marriage to actor Hugh Franklin was a favorite of mine about 20 years ago.  (Two-Part Invention)  I feel rather like I’m swimming in the shallow end of their private pool.

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Affairs of the Heart

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“Sudden massive coronary events” are dominating my thinking lately.  I am reading Joan Didion’s account of her husband’s death in The Year of Magical Thinking and recently browsed the pertinent pages of Ekaterina Gordeeva’s book My Sergei while waiting for Steve to glean salable items from Good Will on Tuesday.   I am also writing my own memoirs of my husband Jim in a Continuing Ed course.  What struck me this morning was the role of the grieving person’s best friend as hero.  Not the knight-in-shining-armor type hero, but the simple, calming presence modelling a way to be.  In a moment when shock obscures all notions of how to act, having a trusted person exhibit some caring, helpful behavior is a distinct grace.

My mother was that hero to me when my sister was killed in a car crash.  She and I were traveling across country together, enjoying the freedom of being 20 and (almost) 17 when it happened.  My mother cobbled together connecting flights to reach me in Nebraska the next morning.   She got me discharged from the hospital and set up in a hotel with her while she went through all the details of bringing Alice’s ashes back to California.  We went to the mortuary the next day.  I was still rather zombie-like while my mother handled the business.  Then the director asked us if we would like to see the body.  “Absolutely,” was my mother’s reply.  For some reason, I hadn’t realized that was why we were there.  I hesitated.  Mom led me into the room while the director closed the door.  “Oh, honey,” she sighed as she approached the table.  “No, she’s not there.  She’s gone.  Look here…” she began to comment on Alice’s wounds, on her swollen face and how old she looked, as if she were a battered wife decades in the future.  My mom said something about all the suffering her daughter had been spared.  Then she tenderly bend down and kissed that pale, waxy forehead.  My mother has never looked more beautiful to me in all my life than she did at that moment.  Strong, compassionate, wise and incredibly beautiful.  I wanted to be like her, so I kissed my sister’s forehead, too.

My mom (photo credit DKK)

Gordeeva writes about her coach, Marina, prompting her to go into the ICU room where her husband lay.  “Don’t be afraid.  Go talk to him.  He can still hear you.”  She goes in and begins to unlace his skates, a normal gesture that helps loosen her words, her tears, her emotions.  I remember our priest asking me and two of my daughters if we’d like to anoint Jim with some olive oil, bathe his face, and prepare his body to be taken away.  It was a relief to excuse ourselves from the people downstairs in the living room and go up to him together, to say our goodbyes together, to touch him one more time.  I am so grateful someone thought of allowing us that right then.  We had another opportunity to say goodbye to his body at the funeral home later when my two other children came home.  By then, I could take the lead with them and encourage them to approach.  I can’t remember who started humming “Amazing Grace”, but we all joined in, musical family that we are, and swayed together, arms and bodies entwined.

In the aftermath of Jim’s death, my youngest daughter and I fought frequently.  I didn’t know how to talk to her, to listen to her anger directed at me and recognize that she wasn’t hateful, only grieving.  Steve was the one who suggested that she was hurt, not hurtful and agreed to sit by me while we attempted an honest conversation.  My instinct was to run away.  I was grateful to observe someone who could be calm and present, reasonable and compassionate in the face of powerful emotions that frightened me.  He is adamant about not rescuing me, but equally determined to be the best friend he can be.

I hope that I will have opportunities to be a great friend to someone in grief.  I would like to be a conduit of such grace.

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Morning Pages

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With the time change, morning daylight becomes precious.  It’s dark by 5pm now, so I like to get up and get going early.  My partner, however, stays up working late into the wee hours and sleeps in.  I woke up at 7, but decided to stay in bed.  Early morning brain work is often my most productive, so I just lay there and thought about my Memoirs assignment.  How would I describe my late husband in detail?  As I pictured him from toe to head, each part brought back associations and memories spanning the 30 years we were together.  Doing this in the quiet, safe, wordless place where I sleep was a great indulgence.  I didn’t feel the need to come up with verbiage or sentence structure or decide what might be better left unsaid.  My brain wandered through different decades and moments without the need to assign chronology.  In this floating place, I felt more connected with his entire person, without delineation.  When Steve rolled over, I put a hand on his shoulder and suddenly began to weep.  Why just then?  Perhaps the absence of tangibility in my relationship with Jim just would not be denied at the moment I became aware of touch.

We are still one.

He sat at the edge of the bed, his naked back to me.  He was working up to rising, about to stand on his unsteady, swollen, deadened feet and shuffle off to the bathroom.  Something prompted me to scoot forward and wrap my legs around his waist and lay my cheek between his shoulder blades.  “You will always be the love of my life,” I whispered.  “You know that, don’t you?”

He did.  He does.

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To Ad or Not To Ad

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That is the question: whether it is nobler to support the hosting web manager directly or to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous advertisements that defray his costs.  Or to take up arms against capitalism and occupy cyberspace, thereby ending it.

My apologies to the honorable Bard.  I woke to a dilemma this morning when my sister noticed a “goofy” ad showing up on my blog that was totally incongruous to the serious, graceful tone that I’m trying to achieve.  I found out that through the Terms of Service that I agreed to when I started this blog, I had given my permission for WordPress to run ads on my page to defray their costs.  If I want to ensure that there will be no ads on my blog page, I can pay a yearly fee of about $30.  So much for the idea of truly “free” hosting.   To be fair, though, this is only the second time since August I have seen an ad on ANY blog that I’ve visited.  I suppose I harbor a vain hope that there is a way to avoid capitalism in my daily life, and unfortunately, that is just not possible.  What I do have is choices about how I will interact with this system.

What kind of choices do I get to make?  Well, I can choose to avoid advertising by paying the fee, like I would do with Public Television (if I had a TV).  I can choose to support local small businesses, like the family operations that fixed my car this week.  I can choose “no ad” products at the market and avoid mega-stores and franchises.   I can unsubscribe to all the junk mail I get online or through the Postal Service.  Come to think of it, I need to find a better way of doing that.  I am still getting junk mail in my late husband’s name at my current boyfriend’s address, which is kind of creepy in an absurd sort of way.  It will be four years in February since he died.  How do you turn that sewage off??

The fact that advertising is so ubiquitous is one of the things that makes it so objectionable.  We are bombarded to the point that we stop paying attention.  Our awareness is compromised, and that goes against the very thing I am trying to develop in my life.   How many advertisements do you see in your average day?  If someone came up with statistics about how many you encounter, how much time you spend reading them or viewing them in video, how much time you spend trying to dispose of them or avoid them, how much money you spend funding them (whether directly or indirectly), and how much noise and visual pollution they add to the environment, don’t you suppose you’d be surprised?  Possibly appalled?  Angry? Or wouldn’t you care?

I think that the sheer volume of advertising and the phoniness of it creates an atmosphere that is potentially damaging to the human spirit.  I want to point my canoe in another direction entirely.  My relationship with my blog host is not one that will allow me to get away from using currency, but I can get away from using advertising.  I wish I could trade singing lessons or a home cooked meal for the use of cyberspace. … Yeah, that would be neat.

Hey, WordPress! I'm making risotto tonight!

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Encounters

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I went for a walk on Saturday morning.  Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, I didn’t bring my camera.  The day was sunny and warm enough to be autumn.  On greyer days this week, it seemed more like winter.  Consequently, many of my fellow suburbanites were outside exhibiting their leisure preferences.  We are an odd lot, I think.  Some quirky, some staunchly mainstream seeking credence for their peculiar habits.  If you have a dog or a bicycle or Spandex athletic gear, you are allowed to be out on the paths.  You fit in.  No one stares.  If you’re wearing a mink, a wedding gown, or sitting in the lotus position on a fallen tree, you’re a little more suspect.  I have a story about all three of these.

At the end of my block lives an elderly lady with a cocker spaniel.  She takes him out to the sidewalk on a leash regularly.  The last two times I saw her, she was wearing a midi-length fur coat about the same color as her dog.  As I walked down the street, she faced me full on.  When I got within about 20 feet from her, she called out, “He’ll jump on you!”  I stopped.  “Would you like me to cross the street?” I asked.  “I don’t care what you do.  If you come near him, he’ll jump on you.  It doesn’t matter to me.”  I crossed the street.  “My, your hair is very long!  It goes all the way down to your waist!” she called.  “Yes, it does.”  “Do you live with Scott Peterson?”  “No, I live at the end of this street, at the corner.”  When I am older, can I make blunt comments out of the blue at passers-by?  I hope so.  I like the directness.  No little niceties required.

When I got to the park, I saw a bride, a photographer and a small entourage.  It seems like every weekend someone’s getting their picture taken in that park.  It has a nice bridge, and the fall colors are pretty.  High school seniors and brides and families who send photo Christmas cards love it.  This bride was picking her was across the grass with four people holding up her skirt.  Her shoes were whitish-gold strappy heels adding about 5 inches to her height.  Her hair was in a blonde up-do with tiara and veil.  She might have been a fairy-tale princess except for the odd way she was walking…and her voice.  Despite the outfit, she was a rather pedestrian pedestrian, another modern bride having her day.

I made my way toward the woods.  Just outside the parking area for the pool is a bike trail and a train track.  A speedy middle aged guy in a helmet wheeled in front of me up the path.  When I got to the crest of the train trestle, I saw an older woman in sweatpants stooping over to part the fallen leaves with her hand.  She wasn’t a biker, didn’t seem like a hiker, either.  I think she was looking for mushrooms.  An Old World forager.  I walked past the golf course and headed into the woods.  I didn’t recognize any trails, so I simply made my way across a dry stream bed and found a fallen tree.  I wasn’t too far from the road, but I was surrounded by trees and leaves and moss.  It was pretty quiet.  I flung my coat over the trunk and sat atop it.  From where I was, I could spot a paper wasp nest, woodpeckers, squirrels, and single leaves spiraling gracefully to the forest floor.  I looked up and breathed a sigh.  This is how I recreate.  No Spandex necessary.  One solitary walking man and two men and their dogs eventually strolled by, crunching their way through the underbrush.  They looked at me.  I looked away.  One of the dog walkers went by quite close and made eye contact.  I said hello.  He greeted me and kept his head turned toward me as he walked away smiling.  What?!  I’m sitting in the woods; you got a problem with that?  I suppose I can be defensive in my head.  I often feel awkward socially, perceiving judgment when there’s no reason to.

Later that day, we went to the top of Lapham Peak in the Kettle Moraine park.  The day had turned cloudy again, and smoke from burning leaf piles gave the atmosphere a mournful grey haze.  Our species has its own way of living on the land.  I find it interesting, diverse, idiosyncratic.  Almost as fun as watching squirrels.

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Slanting Sun

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My home is on the top of the world.

Having rolled over in orbit, I feel sun on my backside.

It’s summer in the underbelly; lucky Argentina.

The light angles in like a flashlight under my chin,

All ghoulish, accentuating contrast.

South windows are a dusty liquid filtering rays like pond scum.

I blub like a sluggish fish.

November runs on borrowed energy, bounced off a distant prism.

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Winter Metaphysics

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Winter is setting in.  We had some flurries yesterday.  I spent a lot of time writing online, concentrating on ideas, thoughts, feelings, and other stuff in my head.  It made me feel restless and a bit dyspeptic.  I wanted to walk; I needed to walk.  The harvest moon rose full at sunset, and we walked around the wetlands of the county grounds.  The cold was sharp and stung my nose and ears.  I felt my thighs and feet going numb.  It was a welcome discomfort, inviting me to feel my body and feel alive, real and physical.

Winter can be a time of cabin fever when things feel insular and unreal.  There are so many ways to distract myself from the basics, ways I can move from one bubble to the next without popping up for clear air.  So today, I felt like working with my hands.  I took my tools out to the backyard and broke apart the CD cabinet that’s been sitting there for 11 months.  It was good to observe rot and rust and decomposition.   I put the flat boards back down on the ground to make a home for insects and their relatives.  Come spring, I know where I can find some specimens for my nature walks.  I took a few other boards to make a bird feeder station on the old wicker chair.  Later, I’m going to make some broccoli cheddar soup.

Work, things, tools.  How do you see your relationship to the world?  Are things merely static objects?   Are things actually doings or beings as Alan Watts would suggest (e.g.  this isn’t a ‘tree’, it’s a ‘treeing’ – a dynamic process)?  If I pick up a dishrag and begin to clean, I am entering a relationship with the rag, the dishes, the water, the soap.  I want to know more about each of these things, pay attention and appreciate their qualities and how I experience them.

Is it living?

Sometimes, this seems like an unnecessary complication.  I learned from Sesame Street that certain things are alive and others aren’t.   Does that mean that I can control those inanimate objects and do whatever I want with them?  Great.  That sounds simple.  But what if that’s just one way of looking at things and not The One Correct Way?  What would I learn or experience about life if I looked at everything as a being?

These might be good questions for next week’s Socrates Cafe meeting.   Meanwhile, there are some pots and pans in the kitchen sink longing for a relationship with me.