Body

Yesterday I sat around with Morris at Au Bon Pain and found at least some words because of his comforting presence. It's always wonderful to talk to a friend, a talk that dissolves into watching. By leaning against the wall, he faced a man who appeared ancient, as pared down as possible, pale face, white beard, worn clothes, who had a tray of food when we sat down and was reading the New York Post by the time we left. It was impossible not to think of him as a character in an Isaac Bachevis (spellling?) Singer story, a wraith of a fellow who might have spent his youth praying. He wore two gold rings on his left hand, and rarely looked up. "He's turned into himself," Morris said. We both longed to know his story.

But the point of this blog is that Morris and Elaine's son is a movement artist, if that's the correct title, and involved in performance and well as in studies and his fiance has her degree in movement therapy. And Morris and I started talking about related topics which brought me to telling him of a blog that the Cuban in London had written about going to a ballet when he was quite a young man, hardly dressed in the manner of the rest of the audience, and hardly possessing the same color skin. The point of it was how he felt as an outsider (an idea that could take me in another interesting direction entirely) and the importance of being at this performance and the way it connects to his view of dance and the body. Now, the Cuban was far more eloquent about this than I'm conveying, but what I gained from reading were a rush of thoughts about my own relationship to dance and the failure it had to thrive, perhaps a cultural failure, but never-the-less a failure.

My mother was the force behind my interpretive dancing lessons taken with Miss Ingalls in a second floor studio she rented on Main Street, perhaps near Jimmy Gureci's Meat Market, where we fluttered around like butterflies holding parachute silk scarves she'd tie died, clambering like bears, hopping like frogs and dancing freely to Satie. My mother would never have permitted me to take ballet lessons, though I must have wanted the strict form, a teacher who told us what to do and scolded us if we didn't do it right, the desirable black leotards (instead of blue) and, holy of holies, toe shoes. We danced barefooted or wore soft brown dance shoes with elastic. I wanted, at the very least, soft black ballet slippers.

But my mother had her ideas, one of which was not using coloring books because they confined you in the lines. Perhaps she didn't think that, but it's what I imagine. No comic books, no Sunday funnies, no Saturday afternoon movies with the other kids and Miss Ingalls Interpretive Dance based, loosely, on Isadora Duncan. (Years later I worked at Abromovitz, Brienes and Cutter (are those names spelled correctly?) in the Corning Glass building, in a windowless room, with a group of architect planners, Bernie and Arthur, and a young Frenchman, Jean Pierre, who designed the models, tiny trees, wee pedestrians, cardboard buildings. He was the nephew of Isadora and Menalcus Duncan and he, Jean Pierre, had been so poor that he always kept a twenty-pound bag of rice around in case his fortunes decreased again. He alsos grew vines from the tops of sweat potatoes. They festooned the columns and supportive strings.)

After she did, subdued hell broke lose in what was left of my family, but eventually I did, sometime in high school, go back to classes (Thursday) with Miss Ingalls. She was horrified when she came to watch a modern dance performance in which I was a sinner (red, sleek leotard like costume) in a saints and sinners something or other that I can hardly imagine. All I remember is a glimpse of that red satin. (I'm still a person who wishes she had a gold tooth and wore spangles instead of turtle necks.)

The upshot of all this is that when I was too sick with ulcerative colitis to start college, and had to move to that one-room studio on Charles Street in the Village with my father who thought he was finally free (both of his second wife and me), I taught dance with her, Ruth Ingalls, on 57th St. By taught, I mean that she paid me a bit and I performed sometimes or demonstrated. The most interesting, important feeling was that the arms rise from lifting the back, pulling up the rib cage and stretching. It was quite a wonderful feeling and I never imagined that I'd entirely lose that lift. "Breathe," she would say because I was already holding my breath, waiting for the next catastrophe to fall. That particular version was the 12-year-older Italian man who I'd run to in order to avoid living with my father who was still often sleeping in the bathtub, the only door that closed in his place. And the Italian had to go the dance classes with me, to watch me. He was small and wirery and had the hardest time stretching even the tiniest bit.

Let's gloss over the rest and finally get me to the first year of college and all the following mishaps. I could have studied with Jean Erdman at Bard, but for some reason I wanted to major in literature and to write. I passed over the possibility of taking her classes entirely (modern dance, pshaw) and took sculpture with Harvey Fite, instead. And other stuff like creative writing which I was no good at. And then blah, and blah, pregnancy, abortion, quitting school, getting married, leaving him, and no concern at all for dancing.

Except when my daughter was born so was the love of watching her run and leap, listening to her stories,  dance classes at Henry Street Settlement, etc. Some time in here I took a few Tai Chi classes with Ed Young who also illustrated (present tense probably included) childrens' books. And more importantly,  for a while there, I somehow found myself in a company of odd dancers who were free form performers....but I was extremely sick, the result of a long ulcerative colitis attack, and missed the performance I wanted to be so much a part of.

In all that time, except for that brief excursion with this tiny mad company, I did nothing physical except walk. I did like to walk. My back hurt so I stopped wearing clogs which I'd liked to wear. But I still walked.

And time passed, and the gods moved me to Brookline when Krissy was nine, and to another set of problems that moved Krissy along, year by year, until I did take some yoga classes....and then, relatively recently, Chi Gong, and Tai Chi (except that the man I was living with made fun of me every time I started to practice, so I never, ever settled in to knowing the form that I spent so much time and money learning.)

I never understood that my fatigue and aching muscles were from fibromyalgia. They seemed like the product of ordinary neurosis and a life not well lived. And I had long been concerned only with the head, a lesson mis-learned from my father who actually did keep swimming and walking well into his dotage, never gained weight and always seemed comfortable in his body.

I have never been comfortable in mine. I thought I was a head, eyes, detached from the rest of me which is why, I'm sure, I'm seventy-one and truly bending forward, uncomfortable with various aches. And I'm not sure that many white middle-class women of my age were or are. We weren't programmed to achieve or become professionals, nor were we programmed to be relaxed, fit and pliable.

But it's more than that. I was not part of a group, a culture if you will, where the body, as a tool, element of movement, music, was integrated. I can hardly imagine Auntie Marion dancing in the kitchen, much as she loved Balanchine. Dance was to watch in high priced seats, performers at the top of their skills, Maria Tall Chief among them.

These thoughts have been rattling around since I read the Cuban's blog. They were more articulate when I was driving back from visiting with Morris, but I didn't catch them last night, so this is the best I can do before they submerge again.

Dream

This is the second time I've written a long, long, irreplaceable entry on Tuesday Poem instead of in my blog. Here is the attempt at replacement....

Perhaps he had phoned or just turned up at the door, a black artist, a musician, who wanted to talk except that I hardly knew any of the jazz groups he was talking about and couldn't remember the names of those I knew (except Archie Shepp, lithe and summery, darker than the dream fellow, New York, all those years ago, but I didn't mention him) and so he got bored of talking to an audience who didn't understand his references and besides he really wanted to go to bed with me, but I had no interest in that so I followed him, a long walk in the city, that led to his place, a house where he must have been squatting, no electricity, but an upholstered chair in the living room, windows all around, and his friend who seemed crazy, a young, large white man, and then lots of other guys, who were drugged or crazy and all white, like everyone was using the place as a crash pad so I asked to leave and as we went up the driveway, a man, white, was walking two black dogs, rather large, like English setters, but the wrong color and we knew something was wrong with him, a dangerous look in his perhaps blue eyes, so I went ahead and took shelter up stairs and on a front porch with three older men, perhaps even old, who had to be homeless, all that flesh and baggy clothes, not any interest in protecting me, but I hid between them until a small, brown dog that had been unleashed rushed at me and I grabbed the scruff of his neck and he dangled and snarled and at one point got his teeth into my wrist, but he unlatched and I held him away from me and then, somehow, I was in a room and a woman was walking in the door, looking for the dog her friend, an old lady, had lost, a dog that looked just like the dog I was holding, almost in her face, so I had to quickly make up a name for it, pretending I'd had him/it a long time, my dog, and then I was outside and holding another dog, too, also small and snarling and lighter brown, also by the nap of the neck, wondering if and where I could throw them so that I could get away and then throwing the newer menace onto very lush green grass in a park, sure that he'd come back to attack me, but instead he ran after a small, fluffy, beige dog dragging the leash, and now I had only the first dog to toss away, in a strange area that seemed almost like gray lava, hillocky and dippy with what I hoped was a muddy pond that would mire him down so I could run away as fast as I could which I did as soon as I hurled him, but I am slow, I told the musician who was much faster at escaping, I am too slow and worried that I'm not fast enough since the stone is pitted and difficult to climb, but I do and find stairs leading up to what might be a church with a side door that opens from the top down so that it lies flat at my feet, revealing two other doors that are open so I enter this huge room, high ceilings that I'm sure belongs to a monk who writes at the somber, wide table with a quill pen on it and a set of folded papers that have, I think, drawings on them which I look at briefly as I try to find paper so that I can leave a note, briefly considering whether I should write a prayer, but I don't believe so that's impossible, besides there's no scrap paper only a bed which appears like a gray wool low rectangular tent that I peer into and find a matte, double bed size, half of which is a dog bed, but now lights go on in the other room and I walk to the door and peer in while the artist, musician, crouches by the door behind me, and see three women who must have come back from shopping because they are putting bags on the wood counter in this crowded kitchen. Two are older with gray and yellow and white hair and the other is taller and a bit younger, also with white and yellow hair, short and wispy as was theirs, and I ask for help and they explain that they are artists, but I'm not sure what type because only the younger, taller one says that she is a sculptor because she is so pathetic. I follow them back into the large, dark wood paneled room and watch as one spills miniature replicas of food on a round table and suggests that they have a pretend tea party but I tell them that I've just seen an exhibit or a store front display of curious replicas of everyday homey objects and am trying to tell them about how they might make them -- clay -- when the younger, tall woman repeats that she is a sculptor and is pathetic and the others tsk, tsk, her for a self deprecating remark, as they had done when she said this before, and the alarm clock rings because it is 5:30 and I'm supposed to take Tulip to the groomer by 7.

I am relieved to be away, but exhausted.
It's only after I've written this dream in the Tuesday Poem that I am curious about what would have happened and certain that it explains how I've been feeling for the last three weeks -- speeded up, worried, whirling.

Except that all that work was wasted
and Tulip's groomer had called in sick so she has an appointment tomorrow, but it's for 10 o'clock.

Must Be Well

I must be well because yesterday I found myself in the car, my mind speeding, on the way to deliver tomatoes from the garden to a friend in Paneras and then on to the Computer Loft in Allston, hoping that my problem of why the Epson archival printer wasn't working would be solved. What had happened in all this endless attempt to end up close to the same point I'd been when the G-4 crapped out after 10 years of valient service. I was manic, too speedy by half, with a feeling I haven't had in ages -- being wired for sound. I almost turned around because the speed of thought and worry seemed dangerous.

But I got to the Computer Loft, saw Alex (who was putting on his backpack to leave the shop, oh, and alas) who had been on vacation in the Bahamas for the Labor Day week...I had to sit and wait, hoping that he'd find time for me, and, not to waste time and to finish something I hadn't had time to do, I took out the two sheets of e-mails that M. had sent me earlier in the week.

The best, very best, most perfect, were two quotes from Beckett --

1. Now we must chose, said Mercier
Between what? said Camier
Ruin and collapse, said Mercier
Could we not somehow combine them? said Camier

and

2. Moran has been told that his boss, one Youdi, has
remarked that life is a thing of beauty and joy
forever. Moran puzzled, tentatively asks his infor-
mant, "Do you think he meant human life?"

I can't tell you how much reading these helped. I'm not an out-loud smiler, but I smiled. Comforted.

Alex did find time for me, checked to see whether the driver had been loaded. It had. Probably the problem was something I'd done. I could, he said, if I had trouble, contact them by web and they would take over my computer and see what was happening. "You can even watch while they move around inside it." How is this possible?

It was. My printer didn't work. I contacted Service via the web, some pleasant fellow moved around inside my computer and put the name of the Epson someplace (it had already appeared to be there, but it wasn't) and the damn thing works now and I can get ahead with printing a show for the Chelsea City Cafe about the Chelsea Community Garden. An I-took-it-on-crazily-and-expensively-and-voluntarily-fool-that-I-always-am-project.

When I lived with L. I taped drawing paper to a wall of his grand front stairway and traced the shadows of the leaves as they moved across it. I made countless drawings like that and truly learned that the earth does revolve around the sun. I'd intended them as a wall for an installation of one of the clay pieces that's now stored in the attic in the endless boxes.

Finally Back

When Sally was here and we walked the dogs near Starbucks, she took this picture of me at one of my favorite places -- under the Orange Line tracks where there's always different graffiti. I look like a happy five-year-old, but a good looking, healthy one, for which I thank her very much!

So, here I am, back, almost turned back into a normally functioning person. Not quite, but almost. Recently in the Times, there was an article on "Keeping Old Bodies Strong," in which Andew Pollack said,

"In addition, geriatric specialists, in particular, are now trying to establish the age-related loss of muscles as a medical condition under the name of sarcopenia, from the Greek for loss of flesh. Simply put, sarcopeenia is to muscle what osteoporosis is to bone."

It's a very interesting article, more scientific and medically driven than what Jane Brody might have written about the need to exercise often, with stress on the aerobic along with weight bearing exercises that build muscle. It was a timely piece to read because, though I don't imagine my colon is entirely calm yet, I'm most aware that I'm physically much weaker than I was last summer when I could water buckets on the track. When I go out there now, and help Monica spread shavings in a stall and then rake the shedrow, I definitely feel it....and usually lie down afterwards. It's a matter of building up, not with the ferocity with which I tackled walking once I'd been warned about the drop off of energy after finishing the last bit of prednisone. But, never-the-less building up.

It's hard for me to accep the slow process of it all. I'm so type A, alas. But maybe I learned that lesson by the punishment my body inflicted after I walked too much, too soon, too up hill, after lying down for two months. The point of all this is to absorb an idea that's very hard for me -- exercise has to be part of daily life as does stretching. I just didn't get this early on, having decided that daily life was about thinking and perhaps doing a bit of something creative, taking pictures maybe. I ignored physical exercise as easily as I did doing the dishes, making the bed and vacuuming.

To my suprise, and to do a favor for a friend, I will be teaching one class this fall....I said yes instantly because I've been dreaming about how to get my job back. Now I don't have to dream that anymore and can go on trying to figure out where to buy the child Krissy clothes in my dreams...At night I worry terribly about that and when I wake up, I can't remember where I bought them when she was a real child.... I know my mother shopped in Macy's and Lord & Taylors, classy department stores that I could never afford. Where on earth did I shop? My dream self would certainly like to solve that problem.







The job offer came in nicely just after a downpour of expenses. One was the loss of my G-4, ten years old, just in its prime, I thought, but evidentally equivalent to an unhealthy geriatric state. Because my programs -- Finalcut Pro and Photoshop -- are old, and I have many, many files that depend on them, I am now using my laptop as the main computer and have bought a refurbished MacPro which I will eventually get up the courage to use. My goal was to finish printing eight months of daily 2008-2009 self-portraits before having to upgrade to a new Photoshop program. I doubted how much flexibility my learning curve has at this moment and preferred to put off finding out for a while.

And then there are the teeth, four of them, the most expensive of which will be $5,000 for a post implant, blah and blah. How is that possible?

It rained and the roof leaked. It's much harder to put that off than it is the teeth ... so on the three hottest days last week, three men worked on replacing it and finished before the hurricane. (Now I know how to pronounce that in Spanish.) A bit more has to be done, but it's slightly cooler.

A few weeks ago, Smith and Krissy drove me to Portland to visit Jeannie and another high school friend, Helen. Jeannie and her husband, Kilt, have a Schnauzer named Zeus. I was obsessed with getting a photograph of him because his face has such interesting coloring and texture. It looks like a mask. I didn't suceed, though I almost drove him nuts. Obviously seeing Jeannie and Hellen was far more important than the dog, but I was, never-the-less, fascinated by him.

To my astonishment, K. & C. also picked me up. On the way back, we stopped at Salisbury Beach, a tatty old place on the ocean which I've always liked. We shared a butterscotch soft ice cream sundae which was like heaven I thought. (My stomach thought not.) And I dragged them into one of the amusement/game spots where I could take lots of oddment photos.




Though I'm back at blogging, nothing is the same. My spot doesn't looke the same, my familiar blogs don't appear neatly on the side so that I can read them first. There's no listing for bold or italics and no yellow warning when I've mispelled a word. Oh, that's a big loss!

I'm hoping, after this initial plunge, that I'll find everyone who I lost and feel confident about blogging. My best wishes!

Convalescence

Mim understood perfectly, perhaps instinctively, that I was bewildered by all the possibilities of sandwiches that we might order in the little take-out shop that she likes so much. I almost ordered what she had, but she was intent on making at least a few of the chalk-board choices clear to me, reading the ingredients in the turkey sandwich, mentioning the chicken, tomato, lettuce, mozzarella and spicy mayonnaise that was listed near the top on the right side, too difficult to read myself. I had fastened my hope on a vegetable something that was printed in larger letters, closer to the bottom, easier to read.

But the chicken sandwich she described sounded good. And it was. And so was talking with her.

It hadn't dawned on me that since I'm capable of driving to Davis Square in Somerville, a very big step in this wretched process called convalescence, that I'd be a bit vague about other demands of going out to lunch with a friend. But I didn't have to cover that up or be embarrassed about how long it's taking to be returned to something like the self I was four months ago. 

What maxims, those wretched sets of words that come unwanted into your mind at odd moments, had she learned as a child, I wondered. Was her mind cluttered with - a stitch in time saves nine; you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear; if it was a snake, it would have bit you; if wishes were horses, then beggars would ride; it's a long row to hoe? My list is mid-western, most of them born of farm work. There are others -- keep your chin up along with that inevitable stiff upper lip and carrying the world on your shoulders. I even concocted some Biblical notion of hiding one's light under a barrel from something I must have overheard. 

 


In the last couple of days, Bogie and I went out to Revere Beach for a rice pudding, the only item I find edible on the menu at Santorini's where Krissy, Chris and I had gone for dinner the night before.

That wouldn't have been my choice of restaurants, though I'd been there with  my friend, Joe, the last meal we had together. He particularly liked it because the owners once rented small apartments to folks come from the track and he'd lived in everyone of them, enjoying the breeze from the beach. He'd wanted to take me there so that I could tell his son that he wanted his ashes scattered across from the restaurant since it meant so much to him, a task that I was never able to accomplish since it would have been intrusive in the sad circumstances after his death last fall.

So, I knew that there wasn't really any food that I like on their very complicated menu -- fried this, fried that. But Krissy and Chris had eaten calimari (sp?) there when a friend visited from L.A. and so it seemed like a good idea -- hot night, beach across the street. 

I couldn't figure out what to order, so I depended on advice from the counter lady who swore that the hot turkey with green peppers and onions was to die for. She didn't exactly say 'to die for,' but that's what it tasted like before it had the decency to take itself off into the garbage and I ate a little of Krissy's rice pudding, which convinced me that there was something edible on the menu.

When I first joined the Community Garden in Chelsea, I wasn't well enough to do any of the work, so Krissy took over, planted everything from seed. After two or three weeks, I realized that we could get a second plot that I had enough energy to fuss with. It happens to be booby trapped with an insistent weed that sprouts from the tiniest bit of root left in the soil when you try to dig it out. It wraps itself around them, clinging onto the tomato plants and the zucchini that I planted from seeds that Parker sent. 

Krissy is totally possessive about the garden she started and resists my suggestions. Even if I bring out the fact that my beloved grandfather gave me various important gardening hints and that I got my girl scout garden badge (just before my mother died), she wants to learn it all by herself. She's delighted that all the carrot seeds she planted grew, content with a line of green fringe. The concept of 'thinning' them out is not something that she'll consider. 

I think we are both surprised by the green beans on the bush beans (she doesn't like green beans and I don't care for them all that much, but they grow quickly and produce nicely!!!). She's delighted that cilantro from seed actually grew. We don't know when onions and garlic are ready to be picked. The lettuce I chose must have been chickory, terrible. The peas were planted too late, but it's fun to watch them reach for the next level of string.

The Badge

I hope I'm equal to the badge. I got it on Tuesday and soon, hopefully, I'll be able to help Monica with small tasks. Right now, all the walking to her barn and then to see friends I haven't talked to in months was slightly, a little more than slightly, more than I could manage without losing the next day to back and leg problems. But it was well worth it.

And there's a goat on the other side of her shedrow, quite friendly, very fat, more gorgeous than Goatie who often slept in different stalls in the barn that Pam Angevine, a trainer, was in four or five years ago. He would prance and butt. This nameless goat pranced a tiny bit, but seemed fairly amenable to my presence. 

I'd like to have a goat and some chickens. As my grandmother said, "If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride. Actually, the badge, which allows me access to the backside of the local racetrack, is my prize possession....I guess dogs and a daughter aren't possessions, so you know what I mean. It allows me to eaves drop and converse. So, I got to talk with Monica who is my adopted daughter (though the paper work hasn't gone through and her mother would put up a big fuss), saw a lovely 10-week old Boxer puppy that Timmy Kirby, a taciturn trainer whose father had the Thoroughbred training business before him, had given his son for his 13th birthday, sweet square face, soft fawn fur.  And got to wave to Ronnie Prince, an exercise rider, and talk with Jim Greene, "Well, well, wait long enough and look what drags along..." (who with Shirley Edwards started the 8th Pole for health care and substance abuse problems on the backside) about the possibilities for slot machines which will improve the economic conditions at the track, something that folks have been waiting for, often hand-to-mouth, for the last six or seven years. 

I feel embarrassed that I have amassed so much material about the goings on with the folks on the backside, interviews I was allowed to make, photographs I was given permission to take, permission slips that everyone signed. Hopefully the guilt about this will start to push me along. That would be a good project for the next year. Guilt has to be useful for something...

Right now I've just been trying to get some semblance of my life back. Chris moved my bed back into the tiny bedroom that has no heat in the winter, the couch back here in the workroom, a little of the clutter managed, the bathroom floor washed. Now comes the kitchen. And then the management of much, much more clutter. But I don't care all that much. I'd just like to be writing again.

"Blue Latitudes" was so fascinating that I slowed down toward the end of it, surprised and disappointed when I got to the last page. I couldn't have imagined caring about Captain Cook or a youngish (forty-something) writer following the course of his expedition with a rather often drunken Australian friend (I would have imagined being turned off by massive, endless descriptions of drinking in Australia, and almost every where else Cook landed, since I think too much about the children of these drunks (if they have them), the damaged livers, the waste of money, but I found a streak of acceptance in my cold soul and enjoyed his fascinating writing, as detailed about the hazards Cook's men faced, as were the descriptions of  the folks he met along the way, his observations about the inevitable devastations that early European explorers brought to cultures they deemed inferior. 

I liked the writing of Tony Horwitz so much that I bought several other books on Amazon. com, one cost a penny plus postage. 

Though I'd tossed out all my Feynman books before in one move or another, I've just  bought replacements. This one doesn't add much except a longer story about his first wife which is admittedly very touching. I'm glad to have it, though reading it was like gobbling dark chocolate. 

I'm trying not to be cranky that I'm not walking well yet...... crankiness is a waste of time. A friend, who read the blog, agreed that I really don't have the energy to teach that six week class this summer. I was grateful that he weighed in on what is a very hard decision. Giving up. Giving in. Not accepting the challenge. But if I'm truthful, he's right. I don't even have enough energy for my own work to matter very much. Even my frustration is dulled.

Not Quite Me?

I am not quite me and am not even sure that I have enough energy to hope to become me again, but maybe that's because the end of prednisone brings it's own problems. Neither of my doctors know much about that, but if you look on line, it's pretty clear that being on it has fewer pitfalls (including the possibility of being effected mentally in a way that was, for me, a glorious high) than getting off it. The list of list of things to watch for once you're weaned off it is unpleasantly long.

I don't want to remain this person who would prefer to lie in bed, reading. And finds the idea of blogging, much less completing this attempt, very foreign, almost impossible. The old me loved to blog and found it quite easy to patch words together. Now I'm struggling for a decent sentence. But this is NOT complaint, but observation of a long process of becoming sick and recovering. 

This week I forced myself to get up at what was once my normal time, 6am, rather than sleep until 9, preferably 11. And I started working on the computer, the first work I've done since the middle of February, editing an insane poem I'd written about my experience last summer, working on the backside of the local racetrack, washing water buckets and making up the feed for 3-5 horses. It's a piece I love, but right now I'm not sure that the love is justified. At any rate, I decided to change it into a prose poem, only 109 pages. (Insert gales of laughter here at the audacity of this no-body thinking she would write a something  of that length and have a hope of anyone reading it...)  But at least I was working!!!!!!!!!!! And for that, I was grateful as I can be in this dull state of mind. 

This week, I managed 4 days during which I was up, often out, functioning for 12 hours. Tottering a bit, but not lying on the bed. On the 5th day, that bed looked awfully good and I understood that it was longing for me and obliged its need.

But things have been happening anyway. My friend Susan edited the poems that will appear in a chapbook and told me not to fret terribly that I didn't know how to spell Klimpt (is that the right spelling?) and Gauguin. (Oh, misery!) Who knows when the chapbook will appear. It was accepted over a year ago, but at least it's now copy edited! 

Another friend scolded me mightily for not telling him  that there are some of my daily self-portraits (1972-73)up in a current show in the Museum of Modern Art in NY. I knew about it because Susan, bless her heart, called me up to tell me that she'd seen my name in the review in the Times. (Evidentially you can see the images on the MOMA website, though I'm not going to look them up right now. MOMA bought some work, and I'd donated other images, some time around 1973.)

I've never been too excited by things like this, though as two friends pointed out, THIS IS REALLY IMPORTANT and WEREN'T YOU LUCKY TO BE  MENTIONED when there are a 100 (I'm not sure if this is true, but maybe it is) women photographers in the show. And I am lucky.  I will ask the friend who scolded me and told me to make some use of this opportunity what to do.

But now that I've edited the poetry into a prose poem, I'm at a loss, drained. What can I do except read and go to the movies, an easy drive that I can manage. (Observation, NOT complaint. It's remarkable to be able to drive and to be at the movies again!) 

So, I've seen "Exit Through the Gift Shop," a film that I believe was edited by Banksy. It certainly tweaks the art market very cleverly. Unfortunately, a lot of the footage was taken by a Frenchman (if any of the narrative is true) who swirled his video camera around with terrible casualness. Both Krissy and I felt sick because of the sloshy quality (I closed my eyes for much of the film, but still know that I liked the premise a lot).

I saw the Air Doll by myself. Usually I'm sort of fruity about ideas like having a central character be a sex-doll, but everyone was so tragically (and somewhat realistically) alone that I found this Japanese film very touching, as well as quite beautiful. (The actress who portrayed the doll was remarkably poignant.)

I wouldn't have been unhappy if I hadn't seen The Secret in their Eyes, except that the male actor has a remarkable face that I could have looked at for hours.

"The Outlaw Sea" awakened me to a broader level of disaster -- pirates on the open sea and the ecological catastrophe of ship-breaking on the shores of India. 

The essays of Jeremy Bernstein were pretty interesting to read after Richard Feynman, though I certainly didn't really understand them. 

I couldn't bear to read more than the first quarter of "Eleni," a well-researched book about the murder of Nicholas Gage's mother in the Second World War, her sacrifice to save her children. 

I was annoyed by Donald Hall's book of poems, though the first few pages provoked some interesting early memories and thoughts about my own writing. 

All of the books have been borrowed from my supplier, Warren. (Some day I will go to the library again. When?)  Now Krissy is borrowing books from him since she fell in love the M. K. Fischer and "A Year in Provence" that he'd lent me.

Oh, well, we'll see what happens. I think I have to face that I won't be able to teach the six week, three morning, summer Photo I class that begins in mid-July. That means I'm entirely done with teaching. 

Hummmm. What next?

Perfectly Reasonable Deviations

I have tried not to buy more books since I plan to move in the next few years and my task is unloading, not acquiring. But I found myself on Amazon, buying three of Feynman's books, second hand, partly because of this quote -

"One of the first interesting experiences I had in this project at Princeton was meeting great men. I had never met very many great men before. But there was an education committee that had to try to help us along, and help us ultimately decide which way we were going to separate the uranium. This committee had men like Compton and Tolman and Smyth and Urey and Rabe and Oppenheimer on it. I would sit in because I understood the theory of how our process of separating isotopes worked, and so they'd ask me questions and talk about it. In these discussions one man would make a point. Then Compton, for example, would explain a different point of view. He would say it should be this (italics) way, and he was perfectly right. Another guy would say, well, maybe, but there's this other possibility we have to consider against it. So everybody is disagreeing, all around the table. I am surprised and disturbed that Compton doesn't repeat and emphasize his point. Finally at the end, Tolman, who's the chairman, would say, "Well, having heard all the arguments, I guess it's true that Compton's argument is the best of all, and now we have to go ahead."

     It was such a shock to me to see that a committee of men could present a whole lot of ideas, each one thinking of a new fact, while remembering what the other fella said, so that, at the end, the decision is made as to which idea as the best -- summing it all up without having to say it three times. These were very great men indeed.

    Page 109, Richard P. Feynman, Adventures of a Curious Character, with Ralph Leighton.

(My appreciation puts aside all question of women not having been players in this particular setting, of nuclear warfare as well as of oil spills, environmental hazards, the state of our economy, greed on Wall Street, etc., and just concentrates on a meeting during which no one has to repeat himself to have been heard.)

and one more quote -- In physics the truth is rarely perfectly clear, and that is certainly universally the case in human affairs. What is not surrounded by uncertainty cannot be the truth." from the introduction to "Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track," a beautiful collection of Feynman's letters edited by his daughter.  

While I dislike the word truth, in this context, I really appreciate it. Oddly, the quote reminded me of my struggle for tenure during which a tenured friend from Woman's Studies carefully removed any hint of reasonable doubt from the text I had written about my teaching, scholarship and service. I knew she was right and that one is not allowed to express even an ordinary amount of self-deprecation or reflective musings in presenting oneself to any of the committees, but I just hated to submit to this cleaning up. However, I needed the job. 

We had our first cookout which Krissy and Chris managed. My friend, Monica, a Thoroughbred trainer who has returned for this season at Suffolk, brought over Mariska who is just a year and a half and the most delicious little girl! And then the next day, Monica ran a horse in the 5th and we went out to see the race (she knew the horse wouldn't do well) and I finally got to see Clemente again. While I've always prided myself on understanding folks whose native language isn't English, Krissy is far better at understanding his fantastic stories, I'm sad to say. He's the most charming fellow....and, as usual, snuck up behind me, grabbed my neck and I screamed. He gets a great kick out of this.

I figured out how to deal with physical therapy. I just lie and tell her whatever she wants to hear. But I am better and if it weren't for having done too many of the prescribed exercises I'd be back where I was four or five weeks ago, walking a bit faster.  But what the hell....   One more dose of prednisone tomorrow and we'll see how the body does on its own. And when I get up to speed. I'm dreaming again, after a long reprieve that must have been due to the illness so all night I try to find a job, try to get back to teaching or accepted somewhere else and wake up worrying, slightly depressed... But we live in hope.........

Four Steps Forward, Three Back

A week ago yesterday, when I saw the physical therapist, she upped my exercises, put me on the stationary bike at no traction (I could only last six minutes) and said, "Don't lie down, don't lie down, don't lie down."

When I went to see the special, first time since right after I got out of the hospital, I had to admit that I truly hadn't realized how sick I was. And he agreed. I seem to be doing well, though he assured me that another colonoscopy would still show inflammation. The prednisone, now down to 5mg for two weeks and then I'm free of that, will be supported for another six months by Asacol which I've been taking all along. I see him in another three months. And, "Oh, by the way," he said, "don't take what the physical therapist says too seriously." The message was, "You were very sick." I asked if my mind will be back in another month and he couldn't assure me that it will. It all takes time, I gather.

And, after that I had four good days! Walking slowly but without pain. (And lying down when I needed to.) Unfortunately, I did the exercises given to be by the physical therapist. I had been doing them every other day, but thought --- what the hell, I'm feeling good. I should (oh, there is the should that has so poorly guided my life) do them every night. The 4th night, I had an instinct that I shouldn't do them, but I was watching "Biggest Looser," a program that Krissy watches and that causes her to cry. Well, if they are forcing myself, I should, also, I decided, even though it didn't seem to pleasant to lie there, lifting my left leg up and down. 

Since I can NEVER tell if I've injured something until the next day, I didn't know that I wouldn't be able to walk for the next three days without pain and the cane, having transferred the misery to the other buttock.

Naturally, this Friday, as in yesterday, the physical therapist said that she couldn't do much for it but put on heat, ice and some electrical stem because this new injury would need to be evaluated again and she'd need another prescription. (She did a bit of evaluating and it's clearly muscular.) I do understand -- she can't just go poking around if a doctor hasn't seen me, etc. But I could have cried. This time the three days was too tedious. The pain is hardly anything to write home about, but my spirit was a bit broken and I actually felt cranky.

She said that I should cut down the exercises, every two or three days, and don't do this and don't do that one, and don't lie down.

I am better today (at least from noon on, before that it was tough-and-go) probably from the ice, heat and electrical stem. But only slightly. However, I should be walking more easily by tomorrow. 

I haven't put up my Tuesday Poem, read any blogs, done much of anything but lie here for three days and a half days....     

Krissy has a great knack with Craigs List. Amazingly, if you look at the photo of her, you will see a cat carrier in which Mr. White, who she'd been feeding, is happily in here. A capable woman, a cat lover, came, picked that bedraggled old thing with green eyes up by the scruff of the neck, gave it a shake and it immediately fell in love with her and stopped trying to scratch. It folded itself neatly into the carrier and waited patiently until she drove it away. I am in awe of Krissy's ability and glad that she was right, that somebody would be willing to come to the backyard and take that cat away so we could go outside without getting the terrors and wearing boots.

The most interesting book, even though I hardly understood it, that I've read is by Steven Pinker. Fortunately, my supplier, Warren, had an extra so that he's given it to me and I can reread it, underlying certain sections and still not understanding it because grammar is something I picked up by ear. I find it unnatural to follow his very interesting logic.

I've been reading a lot of books that I can't follow, like two by Richard Feynman's, but they are so full of his remarkable spirit, the stubborn clarity of his mind, the curiosity, that I hardly mind that I don't understand the physicals. The Oliver Sachs book about his trip with a group were hunting for fungii in Mexico was equally baffling because I don't know the anything about this distinctive preoccupation (though I love to read things I don't understand and applaud that so many of us are involved in esoteric, specialized preoccupations that we find commonplace). I'm not particularly fond of Sachs, though I once thought I was. He just can't compare in the department of moral clarity that Feynman occupies (pardon me for saying this.) I liked the memoir by Hildegard Knef more than the one by Jill Kerr Conway which made me envious for the confidence I never had when I entered college. (I don't know how to delete the second image of it...but again, what the hell.)

I did get back to editing a very long poemish thing that I wrote that summer, which seems quite strange and remarkable. And hope to get back to reading blogs. And to walking.................................

Three Month on the Island of Indolence

I think that what had given me a bit of spark, or at least enough to last for a couple of days and lodge itself in my subconscious is that my cane and I reluctantly went to the opening day of Suffolk Downs (coinciding with the Preakness). I would have rather stayed in bed reading, but being at the track has consumed me for the last five years and I could almost remember that feeling. Besides Krissy really wanted to go. She gets a great kick out of (cliche?) betting $2 on some horse that I think has a chance because I know the trainer's history. 

My leg hurt, I could hardly remember the names of the people I knew, I didn't get the rush of joy that I always have when I'm at the races, but somewhere, down in my core, I was dimly happy to be there. 

Opening Day is always crowded. By mid-week, a few people will be there, the old die hards. But it was nice to see a large group of people on this 75th Anniversary of an institution that was once of important to Boston and the presence of many families, out enjoying this pleasant day and nicer to see that ride, Ronnie Prince, who you can just glimpse riding a pony in this photograph. I've known him five years or so. He's one of the folks I video taped and interviewed, a good exercise rider whose getting to be in his late fifties.

Having once again proved that I'm totally ignorant of the simplest and most practical details of life, I was actually surprised with Julie told me that lying down all the time after you've started physical therapy is counter productive if you've provoked your muscles by walking too much (honestly, walking two hours a day, up hills, are you kidding me? When you've been lying down for two months?). "I'm supposed to be up all day?" I didn't say, though I sadly registered the information.

She reminded me of my beloved auto mechanic (who had six children, I think) who chided me after I left my car overnight in his lot with the hazard lights blinking because I couldn't find the button to turn them off, "You are teaching at MIT and you can't figure out this small problem?" And he was right. There's a missing part of my brain, the part that says, "Take it easy" and "Go slow" and "Get up, damn it, don't just lie there."

My next physical therapy appointment is Friday and I can't say that I've done spectacularly well in the staying up department, though I had one day in which I spent five hours of feeling like my self, the self I remember from three months ago. That self worked on the computer for quite a while (Oh, actually, the computer and me, revising, working again!) and walked without the cane and without pain, even if slowly. But she had disappeared by the next day, perhaps because I'd done too much. Or perhaps because the call of reading Richard Feynman's letters was too great. I'd read most of his other books several times when I was in Nova Scotia visiting my parents. Of course, I didn't understand them, my father did, but I couldn't help but fall in love with his exuberant curiosity and enormous intelligence, his love of lock picking and bongo playing, his prankster nature combined with his no-nonsense approach to fame that strangely dovetailed with self-confidence. 

I did get up to go to the dental hygienist yesterday. She's fussed over my teeth since her children were quite young and used to stop by the office on their way home from school. I always liked to make my appointments late in the day so that I'd get to see them and overhear those parent/child conversations about what needed to be done later in the afternoon. Since she poked at my teeth three months ago, she helped her son move to his first real job after college, driving all the way to Ohio with his things. She was just a tad sad to see him go. I was quite pleased that the prednisone had, in some ways, helped the gums, which is not to say that there wasn't some damage done by my having gotten so weak, the electrolytes so out of balance, etc., etc. At least she promised me that she wouldn't go into any damage detail. I got a free pass for that session.

And then we went to Feet of Clay so I can take a leave-of-absence. I've just been paying the monthly fee while I lie here on this island of indolence. I'm not yet ready to start driving, since I've manage to put my right leg out of commission in such a clever way. And when I am back in the driver's seat, the car will head to Suffolk Downs and the barn area.  On Saturday, I was reminded of all the work that I have piled up....lots of video interviews of folks who work on the backside, and transcriptions from then that need to resolve in a book proposal. I have six months to a year of work to do with all that material if I can just get myself moving again. My brain has been extremely slow. And now without the prednisone rush that I got in the middle of the night for many, many weeks, I don't even have the illusion that quick, efficient thinking is possible. Of course, in the middle of the night, when I sprang awake and alive, I just lay there absorbing fascinating Public Broadcasting Programs or reading, so it didn't do me a bit of good in terms of my work...but it was such a nice feeling. Now that I'm down to 10mg a day, that's gone.

I think there will be one more session at the Victoria when I am driven out to finish my grades on Sunday. But then this pleasure will be over. Actually I don't like, have never liked, spending money on restaurants. It seems like such a waste. But I have to admit it's been a very good investment, both for my pleasure of eating and the company of Krissy and Chris who both love to eat out.

Last night I fell asleep early, as has become usual, and woke up in time to see this strange English man on Letterman. He was quite scuzzy looking, definitely shady, too anxious and eager, not all that attractive though I usually like men with very long hair, talking too fast with disconnected sentences (though he had quite a remarkable shirt and tie on). Russel. (Damn, how do you spell that?) It took a while to face that this was Russel Brand, whose book I had read and praised on my blog. And I did like the parts of it that dealt with his perfectly wretched childhood and his father's porn watching obsession that infected his boy at the earliest age. The Cuban in London made some salient comments about what his character really is, but I'd never gotten a glimpse of the person. I'm sorry that I did. In this case, Cuban, you were right, though I still thought parts of the book rang true, hard as that is to believe after seeing a bit of his persona.

Again, I'm very behind on blog reading. I hope to catch up soon and not lie there reading about the brain and early childhood language formation.