Who Could Resist?

After her last visit, Susan suggested that Krissy and Smith start doing stand up a la Nichols and May. 
I, of course, would not be part of it, though I'd like to stand in the wings....a figure of rectitude.
I am afraid that Susan and I will have to write the script which wouldn't be all that hard. I've already thought up quite a few scenes.
Yesterday they got me to take photographs for a little animated video he is making so that they can show it next Tuesday night over in Sommerville. It involved a glorious white wig for Krissy, very red lipstick, an apron. He wore glasses and a tie. There was a teddy bear, my car, the couch and many, many images taken with my Lumix, me saying, "Stop. Wait" etc., photographs he imported into his computer and worked on in photoshop so that they now look somewhat surrealistic and like paintings.  

Krissy and I made a couple of videos when this once-a-month-what-do-you-have-as-a-short-video was a happening in Brookline. One of mine got in the best of 2008. That was a treat....  I dragged Lorna and Warren over to see it, just like it was a big event. Fun.

Not A Good Steward

I have to admit that I was glad that Bacall was going outside. Her litter box smells worse than any litter box I've ever smelled. and it had been in the hall since Tulip arrived in late June. And I hoped she'd begin to use the great outdoors. And, besides, she longed to go out.

So, I did call her when she didn't come back. Often. From the back porch. But not going all around the neighborhood shouting her name. And I didn't worry enough. I seem to have become dulled. It's harder and harder to find enough energy to worry a lot.

But I was glad when she called out when I was walking the dogs on Thanksgiving night. And that she walked ahead of us back to the house. And that she drank lots of water. And that she could eat. And now, except for the right side of her mouth which will never recover, she's recovered in the last week. She eats dry food along with wet, she stretches, her tail is occasionally almost as high as it was and she looks about the same if you don't look too closely. And she won't ever be an outdoor cat again. (I am not even that unhappy about her pooping behind the bathtub....Krissy cleaned it up when I couldn't reach it....and maybe she knows the new place for her litter box.)
Tulip's quite a fine little dog, and what would a person expect rescuing her over the internet? I wanted a dog with hair, rather than fur. And she looked sufficiently peculiar, tongue lolling. But I didn't know that one of her areas of trauma would be the tangles, that she'd bite if I tried to cut her bangs. And she's not much better when I try to cut out other knots that appear here and there, not so close to her face. She'll need to go to a vet who will prescribe some sedative and then to a groomer who will work on a flattened dog. I just don't have the energy for that right now. But Tulip doesn't seem to mind the visual obstruction.

Tulip is not like Bogie, the consummate gentleman who would never poop in the house unless he was terribly sick and I wasn't home. Tulip is perfectly capable of peeing and pooping if she needs to, if I haven't responded to her tiny signal, but I may have that under control since she now gets walked three times a day. The time change did her in, or did me in.
Bogie needs a grooming. And we were on our way. But yesterday it rained early. And my power steering has begun to act up if I drive through puddles. Chris has taken the car to the shop twice, but they can't find out what it is unless it actually happens when it's on the lot. I was smart enough to decide how stupid it would be to drive a car that doesn't turn a corner when it doesn't want to after it refused to turn into the bank parking lot. Next Friday for the groomer. What to do about the car...... The place I've been going to, run by an incredibly pleasant, super talkative guy, costs me $1,300 just to walk into it. I can't keep going there.

Thoughts arising from "Steerage," by Bert Stern

I am slowly reading Bert Stern's book of poems and thinking. 

How can I get past --

                                  ....        "My mother

    who wanted not to be born grew up

    married, was my mother, suffered.

    All suffered to bring me here to this room

    where I write, bigger than the house

    my mother was born in."

That is from "Lotty is Born" in Part 1: Changing Places

The implicit weight of all that suffering and sacrifice, or the gift of family and birth, to the man writing that stanza, is, for me, loaded with images of steerage that I've seen, with what I've read about these struggles to start a new life after sacrificing the old one, being driven from the old one, the hopes embedded. But Bert's words not only convey push me toward thinking about those painful historical facts,

they make me think about why I'm here in this room, writing, why I feel cut off from that past and family while he carries them with him.

I can only imagine that my German grandmother, a dressmaker from a family of teachers, pushed her meek husband, a sculptor of religious statuary, to immigrant here in the late 1900's because she thought she could advance herself. Though they had five children, the family story was always about Antonia convincing bankers, in spite of her garbled English, to lend her money so that she could buy rooming houses in Chicago.     Money. Advancement.

Though somewhere in the attic I have stored pages of information about my father's forebear's meanderings from one state to another, farmers, perhaps tradesmen, I can only imagine that they immigrated here, much earlier, because of opportunity. But the only story from that side of the family that influences me is that he got his PdD in math at a young age, without much effort.   Education.

I assume that I was an accident, not an unhappy one, after twelve years of my parent's marriage. My mother already had a sixteen-year-old son. And then she died, when I was twelve.   Disconnection.

Perhaps one of Bert's primary goals was to convey the sorrow, the hope, of his mother's hard birth, her voyage, strength of character and desire for family. But I thank him for  an uncomfortable prod into thinking about who I'm carrying 

and I thank him for "Driving Home from Elizabethtown"

"At the top of Spruce Hill,

just before the highway

plunges into the valley,

the wide sweep of mountains

gathers me in to its shadow

and silence, holds me,

until I am ready to fall

with the turnings of poplar

and oak. Through the windshield,

even the thin rain that takes on

gold light from the sun in its falling

is fuel for the burning."

(I hope he won't mind my reproducing this...) but this piece got past my aversion to descriptive work, any descriptive words in poems, paragraphs in stories, in articles. I skip over description, not caring the least bit about wide sweeps of mountains or poplars or gold light. It's all too tedious, as far as I'm concerned, but I came across this poem and stopped.  It surprised me.... and haunted me. And I am glad for it.

The irony is that when Bert generously gave me his book, he inscribed something which I hadn't read until long after I'd started reading the poems and come across his poplars and gold. He had quoted from this poem. Odd, I thought, that I had come upon it by myself, in spite of my innate resistance.      

Synchronicity

The Dishwasher's wife/beloved/partner mentioned synchronicity in one of her blogs around Thanksgiving. And that started me thinking about how my father discovered his unconscious when he was somewhere around seventy.

In his younger years, when he'd unfortunately been left to raise me, his main preoccupations were tumblers of scotch, martinis and ignoring conventions. He had sound arguments about why most everything was arbitrary including letters of the alphabet (I'm sure I absorbed that when I was around eight, long before my mother died, along with the fact that religions were designed to organize and confine and hardly to be trusted, much less depended upon.) Ceremonies like funerals and graduations were foolish. Novels were allowable, though non-fiction was preferable (and not to be trusted.) Poetry and philosophy were fluff, to be ignored. And, though he considered Darwin and Freud, admirable because of their formative and original thinking, the unconscious was of no concern, much less influential in daily life.

But by the time he became an excellent grandfather to my daughter, he'd begun to think about the importance of dreams, to write his down, had read a bit of Freud and Jung, and discovered The Tao of Synchronicity, a small paperback which he gave to Krissy. She believes in synchronicity, just as she believes in a diet of joy. And she still has that worn paperback, held together by a rubber band that her grandfather gave her.

This last Saturday at the Bagel Bards, I sat talking with Bert Stern, who gave me his new book of poems, Steerage. Somehow the name Taylor Stoehr and a program of teaching probationers about reading and writing came up. It turns out that Bert has been working in it with Taylor who became his first really good male friend in Boston.

A few weeks ago, a student in my class was reading while he waited for his film to dry. Noticing that the Xerox was of prison diaries, I asked who was teaching a course like that. He described this rather unassuming man with whom he's taken two courses. Taylor Stoehr. I hadn't known of anyone else in the University who was actually volunteering to work with such disenfranchised people. (Most of the more radical teachers are in the College of Public and Community Service, not in what was once the College of Arts and Sciences.)

I e-mailed Taylor Stoehr that afternoon and we met a week later. What I really liked about him is that he has no expectations about what the classes 'will do to improve' the probationers lives. He recognizes that most probably won't change all that much, except for the knowledge that they've had something like eight weeks talking in small groups, reading Fredrick Douglass' writing, written some themselves, and begun to build up some sense of trust in each other that naturally led to expressing difficult feelings and ideas. And they participated in an ending ceremony that acknowledged what they had achieved -- experienced -- though it might not be quantifiable.

This morning, after I took a page for xerox to the Department, I ran into Taylor heading toward his class. We talked a minute and he mentioned that Bert Stern told him that he knew me. And I said that Bert told me he was inheriting Taylor's copy of the syllabus for the prison diary course and I asked him for extras.

Today I will begin to read Bert's book.

Enough, enough, enough

but just a few more images. My forlorn face, oh, yes, lost my lunch money again, after I've had a haircut from the most beautiful Diana in Chelsea. 

M. and S. at Salvation Army. S. has found a beautiful vest which has been carefully mended. M. says, "I couldn't buy it. It has too much of the previous owner left." 

I couldn't understand why on earth they could have so much fun poking around, looking at clothes, but S. found a wonderful bracelet and a coat for her son in Buffalo something or other, a consignment shop just down the street. 

I never know who I am in these stores and pick up something, "Look, M., a boiled jacket," which is something my aunt Marion would have thought was of value but I would never wear in a million years.

I had bought a wonderful vest, apparent in the photo, when Krissy and I went to Target the day before Thanksgiving. It was $7 and looks a bit like the dog ate it. Just my style.

After Bagel Bards, the Salvation Army, the hair cut, there was T.J. Max's where S. wanted to wander. I bought a coat. A very unusual coat that makes me look like I'm fun. I hope I wear it.

It was a long day. A lot of talking, interesting talking with B. at the Bagel Bards about his work with men on probation. What was such an odd coincidence is that he works in the program with Taylor Stoehr who I'd just met last week. A student had been reading prison diaries during my class and I asked who on earth was teaching that course. And he told me. And I e-mailed that professor because I had to meet another faculty member who is actually working with people in a way that doesn't invest himself in what they will later achieve with the material he's spending so much energy helping open them up to learning. 

It was remarkable to talk to Taylor Stoehr on the eve of his retirement, to listen to his pleasure in working with these men, his acceptance that it was valuable and important to take part in these classes whether or not the men go on to more education.  And it was really interesting to learn that B., a retired professor, a poet, a Bagel Bard friend, and he are great friends. 

Synchronicity as the Dishwasher's artist wife says.

I told you, I'm not depressed

I have only four more portfolios to grade.

I have taken tylenol.

This morning, Krissy helped me arrange the stuff for the Feet of Clay sale that starts on Friday. I hope most of this stuff sells, though I can't imagine it will. I loved making these drawings, but who on earth would want one? I have some bowls, a few plates with dogs on them. They might go.

I do remember that when I was quite young, probably when I was ten or eleven, my father and mother, had seen a play, or maybe it was a movie, and he laughed every time he repeated the line he'd heard, "God damn it, don't tell me I don't love you." I hope this was true......

Another of his favorite stories was about the man who was walking down the road and a little bird said, "Cheer up, things could be worse." And he did. And they were. It still makes me laugh when I think of him silently chuckling over this.

Krissy, Chris, the dogs and I are having pizza for dinner. Mushrooms and basil. Excellent.

I Got What I Wanted

Twenty minutes after I met X, a man I'd met from the Globe personals, I decided I wanted to sit across the table from this charming, gray-haired man who was quite like a five-year-old in his delight of his own stories and the way he wolfed down his Chinese food.

I was thrilled that he asked to see me again. And spent the next two years in the most foolish state for a woman was 56 when we met.

That first Thanksgiving, though, I almost left because he'd told me that his son remarked about his having met someone, asked if he was in love, or implied that he was in love, or implied that the feelings he had for this new person were strong, and he'd told him that he cared as much as he could. After he told me that I went upstairs and tore my photo off his office door, took it down from among the many, many cards and notes and photos he'd stuck up there. But I couldn't leave and replaced it a few days later.

He was/and most undoubtedly is/ a happy fellow, a man's man, a good conversationalist if the person is talking about something he's interested in. He's someone who will dance down the staircase, singing, who has beautiful stork legs, who enjoys morning coffee, the newspaper, delicious naps, all sports except when his team is loosing, potato chips and dips, liver pate. I've never met someone who was such a self-soother. You would think I'd have learned something, but I was hopeless, just lapping around, wanting attention. Wanting to be wanted. It isn't that I didn't enjoy myself with him, but I truly needed, oh, damn, needed to be important.

We were a parody of Women are from Venus, Men are from Mars. And could really have had fun if we were both able to play with those differences, but we couldn't. I wanted to talk them to death and he wanted to ignore them. Two bad strategies. But we managed for almost ten years. The last two were bad as I struggled, but....not a bad average.

I loved his sons, each unique, curious, interesting, smart. And the youngest would smile ever so slightly when I'd said something amusing, a fact that his father didn't notice, but I was encouraged, very encouraged and comforted, that this quiet kid had. His very quiet presence always meant a lot to me. 

I saw two of them recently, and the lovely wife of the oldest, and their absolutely precious baby with this tiny, smiling face, a little girl who totters nicely around, eager and enjoying. It was wonderful to have lunch with them.

And devastating.

The coyotes have eaten part of me in the last three years, since that bad breakup.