MISSING PIECES
I am not such a whiner
about all these missing pieces
I say are in my life well what a
crock that is if I tell the truth
which I unusually do anyway
naturally I would say
normally but what would that mean
then I would say without guile
what missing pieces do I mean
anyway
missing pieces floating
floaters in my vision
rosy glasses and pasts
filled with young fantasies
creative failings dreams
darts and downers and
all the high times on not
one substance without
substance at all
who is calling and why
why the whine in the begging
why the begging at all
who is at my door my window
my heart who is first who
is second why utopia why not
human I love I like I hate am
loved liked hated no big deal
just am just am just am
here are the missing pieces
notice how not one of them
fills in the blue sky of this
puzzle not at all so how the
hell did they get into the box
anyway who knows
time has taken away all the
answers to all these questions
I never even lived the kind of life
that would get the questions
right not once not being a thinker
only a ball of feelings and lovings
and likings and hatings practicing
compassion with passion without
one real prudence whatsoever
now an older woman crying out
into this wilderness make ready
the way of the love that I look for
who can live with me I never even
caused one wave have no opinion
held dear enough to defend give
sex like bread you have to have
every day or perish am way too
cheerful about every damn sunset
I am easy to live with and that's why
life keeps going by like a river that clears
it's own snags and makes its water course
calm though swift and sure to the sea
nourishing with no famine to excite the soul
into panic or waves or stones or disaster
what do I want is a good question with
no answer in sight I think I do not want
always have enough always get what I need
desire even usually well unusually even
satiated not unusually needing more
turning for the kiss that always comes always
deep and full and welcoming without end
cry easily over happiness easily over pain
forget about pain too easily go through every
bad time like some amazing child adventure
laugh at the flames and the hurts and the glories
and the victories and the failings that are not
victories at all forget every thing so called bad
in the past remember only the loving times
as if that was a life any life even mine
I am making up this story about wanting and why this
is a new question I have it all except life eternal of
course which is always a question whose answer is
not pleasant no way yes I do not want for not even you
not even food or drink but I need and the need
is sending me into arms and legs and lips and hands
as if there was no death in sight
missing pieces never to be found live with that one love
that no one never will find or then nirvana which naturally
no one gets to really have why did I imagine that I
would be the first take this first love take it into being
being the last love and all the other loves around me
like comets go past whistling me two me three me four
don't forget us too you love us too you know that's real
then give me this day my daily bread and I will bake biscuits
for you and we will share these missing pieces between us we
will make a collage of them away from the puzzle we will
never solve even once since there is no question to ask not
worry about the pieces missing in the blue sky that were
never there once upon any time any way
we will take our missing pieces deep inside and home with us
build a fire with them warm our souls with them hold each
other by the flames tenderly and fiercely and kindly too
saying through our smiles and our tears we wipe from the
other's face through the kisses and the holding on
my god every single missing piece is going down
into glows and ashes whatever was there surely for real
went out burning
5/28/12
THE QUALITY OF 'THE TRUTH' is a serious reflection on direct and indirect LIES. yep. Non-Truths...everywhere - in all of our lives - in all of us...no judge here...just reflection in a crystal wind....
THE QUALITY OF 'THE TRUTH'
When I was young, I got into trouble for lying...a lot....
I made-up stories to defend myself when I was scared...I made up stories to have people like me more...I made up stories because I was a daydreamer and the real world was scary and sometimes unhappy and often not that interesting to me...I felt very trapped by the real world...wasn't really that happy with it....not at home...not at school...not anywhere...ever, really...yet, often - very often, really - I was a very happy child...pleased with much of the world I lived in, and very much loved....
My lies were all elaborate stories...they went on way, way too long...so everybody could figure out eventually what was going on...especially the adults...some thought I was cute...some, that I was creative...others, that I wasn't a very good young person, because of being a kid who told lies....
Somewhere along the line, I found that the truth was really more interesting, a lot of the time.... and...when I told the truth right away, problems got solved faster...not better, necessarily, but surely faster...and a lot of times, I avoided all the drama that goes on when people find out that they're being lied to - or that they were lied to...people who were going to leave anyway, just left faster...people who were going to stay solved stuff faster with me....
I found that I could still get really hurt...that I could really hurt others...but the hurt of the truth was kinder than the hurt of the lies...it was cleaner...you could pull the ends together and they would heal: there wouldn't be the jagged, ragged, infected edges of the wounds to have to fester and to heal painfully...it was as good a thing as a wound could be....given that wounding helps, at times...
I don't think I've ever convinced one other person that the Truth is entirely the way to go....most of the people I know don't even find this quality in me very attractive...I've been told it's just a cover for attempting to get away from the stuff I do, so that people can't get as mad at me for the stuff I do that they don't like....because I'm covering it all up by "being honest about it to everybody"...well, that may be true, besides...people want me to feel as bad as they do when I hurt them...If I don't, they feel cheated of their revenge.....this is very understandable.....but I can't change this. not at all. telling the truth is what I do now...it's just not always the answer to any question asked....it's one of the answers...but not the only one......
Right now, I've finished watching someone I care about with all my heart...tearing apart someone he knows very well...by obscuring the truth.....she is feeling very confused and very upset...because she doesn't have the truth to deal with....he's been ripping at her...and ripping at me - when all he means is: to be kind: with his inability to be truthful to her....he is being truthful with me....for the first time in his life: completely truthful to a woman...but he can't carry it forward to her....I won't make up the reasons why, because I wouldn't understand them anyway....
all I can see is what years of lying to others - and to your own self, in the long term...can do....I can see that in his life....it is more than just a tangled web - like in the saying "...what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive...."....it's Lives: real people's lives, that get tangled - very tangled....and everybody trips and falls and gets hurt in all the webs of deception...including the one who is lying...who is under the pressure of his (or her) own making: falling into all the pain and anxiety worse than any of the victims of the lies....
It is all a terrible, terrible, terrible thing...watching it happening is one of the worst things ever.....not being able to do anything about it all is terrible as well: and, of course, stopping someone from lying is not something anyone can do....and reacting to the lie is not something anyone can stop doing either....so, lying is just as bad as truth-telling in this way of looking at things...you can really get into a Lot of trouble, a whole lot of trouble, either way....it's just a choice really: which way to you want to get into trouble...by telling the truth or by telling the lie?
In the short run. lies sometimes seem to work...in the long run, they never do...they are always found out. it is just a matter of time...a short time...or a life time...it doesn't matter: the truth will out"...and somehow....
every one involved actually knew that it was a lie, some how...all along.....and now, they also feel that they were not smart, or were fools, or dumb, or not aware, or - worse, still - unworthy...somehow...of the truth - that they were not worth enough to tell the truth to...it's not really what happened, but it sure feels that way - to many people - when they have been lied to....
I think that is enough about the truth. about lying....
both are devastating at times...
both can feel protective and even beautiful at times....
both can hurt, and wound, and even kill...
both can bring love and light to others....
but only one can bring redemption.
of your own self.
of My own Self...
this is what I've experienced....
the biggest reason between a lie and the truth:
is what The Truth does Inside for the person telling it:
what is builds inside...instead of destroying....
the sense of self un-compromising the self...
being honest to the self...
so that the self is not twisted
but grows: healthier, and sometimes, even correct...intact....
perhaps the word Integrity
means it best:
Being Whole
Because the Truth has the quality
of real Wholeness - of Integrity -
of Being....
it carries, always, a glint of deathlessness.
the Truth can always survive...
the Lie brings death....
I carry. I will carry...I will speak
The Truth
to my dying day.....
When I was young, I got into trouble for lying...a lot....
I made-up stories to defend myself when I was scared...I made up stories to have people like me more...I made up stories because I was a daydreamer and the real world was scary and sometimes unhappy and often not that interesting to me...I felt very trapped by the real world...wasn't really that happy with it....not at home...not at school...not anywhere...ever, really...yet, often - very often, really - I was a very happy child...pleased with much of the world I lived in, and very much loved....
My lies were all elaborate stories...they went on way, way too long...so everybody could figure out eventually what was going on...especially the adults...some thought I was cute...some, that I was creative...others, that I wasn't a very good young person, because of being a kid who told lies....
Somewhere along the line, I found that the truth was really more interesting, a lot of the time.... and...when I told the truth right away, problems got solved faster...not better, necessarily, but surely faster...and a lot of times, I avoided all the drama that goes on when people find out that they're being lied to - or that they were lied to...people who were going to leave anyway, just left faster...people who were going to stay solved stuff faster with me....
I found that I could still get really hurt...that I could really hurt others...but the hurt of the truth was kinder than the hurt of the lies...it was cleaner...you could pull the ends together and they would heal: there wouldn't be the jagged, ragged, infected edges of the wounds to have to fester and to heal painfully...it was as good a thing as a wound could be....given that wounding helps, at times...
I don't think I've ever convinced one other person that the Truth is entirely the way to go....most of the people I know don't even find this quality in me very attractive...I've been told it's just a cover for attempting to get away from the stuff I do, so that people can't get as mad at me for the stuff I do that they don't like....because I'm covering it all up by "being honest about it to everybody"...well, that may be true, besides...people want me to feel as bad as they do when I hurt them...If I don't, they feel cheated of their revenge.....this is very understandable.....but I can't change this. not at all. telling the truth is what I do now...it's just not always the answer to any question asked....it's one of the answers...but not the only one......
Right now, I've finished watching someone I care about with all my heart...tearing apart someone he knows very well...by obscuring the truth.....she is feeling very confused and very upset...because she doesn't have the truth to deal with....he's been ripping at her...and ripping at me - when all he means is: to be kind: with his inability to be truthful to her....he is being truthful with me....for the first time in his life: completely truthful to a woman...but he can't carry it forward to her....I won't make up the reasons why, because I wouldn't understand them anyway....
all I can see is what years of lying to others - and to your own self, in the long term...can do....I can see that in his life....it is more than just a tangled web - like in the saying "...what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive...."....it's Lives: real people's lives, that get tangled - very tangled....and everybody trips and falls and gets hurt in all the webs of deception...including the one who is lying...who is under the pressure of his (or her) own making: falling into all the pain and anxiety worse than any of the victims of the lies....
It is all a terrible, terrible, terrible thing...watching it happening is one of the worst things ever.....not being able to do anything about it all is terrible as well: and, of course, stopping someone from lying is not something anyone can do....and reacting to the lie is not something anyone can stop doing either....so, lying is just as bad as truth-telling in this way of looking at things...you can really get into a Lot of trouble, a whole lot of trouble, either way....it's just a choice really: which way to you want to get into trouble...by telling the truth or by telling the lie?
In the short run. lies sometimes seem to work...in the long run, they never do...they are always found out. it is just a matter of time...a short time...or a life time...it doesn't matter: the truth will out"...and somehow....
every one involved actually knew that it was a lie, some how...all along.....and now, they also feel that they were not smart, or were fools, or dumb, or not aware, or - worse, still - unworthy...somehow...of the truth - that they were not worth enough to tell the truth to...it's not really what happened, but it sure feels that way - to many people - when they have been lied to....
I think that is enough about the truth. about lying....
both are devastating at times...
both can feel protective and even beautiful at times....
both can hurt, and wound, and even kill...
both can bring love and light to others....
but only one can bring redemption.
of your own self.
of My own Self...
this is what I've experienced....
the biggest reason between a lie and the truth:
is what The Truth does Inside for the person telling it:
what is builds inside...instead of destroying....
the sense of self un-compromising the self...
being honest to the self...
so that the self is not twisted
but grows: healthier, and sometimes, even correct...intact....
perhaps the word Integrity
means it best:
Being Whole
Because the Truth has the quality
of real Wholeness - of Integrity -
of Being....
it carries, always, a glint of deathlessness.
the Truth can always survive...
the Lie brings death....
I carry. I will carry...I will speak
The Truth
to my dying day.....
REALITY is a poem looking into two hearts that are more and more one with every passing day...trite. true: Real....
REALITY
you have become
a Reality
no longer a dream
a love to remember
one to live
instead
to live in real time
in real ways
the day by day
by night by night
world that is
Reality
the sounds of sleep
aches and pains
sorrows and fears
angers and hurts
petty arguments
without questions
or answers
weaknesses
lazinesses
and all the strengths
besides and all
the closenesses
loving times
natural moments of
peace and even joy
of hope and grace
dance and song and
canoes on rivers
rivers and ships
and oceans
all the Songs
to ever Sing
flights of soul into
human arms
locking of hearts
into true eternity
Reality
embrace
Reality
embrace
Reality
Embrace
you have become
a Reality
no longer a dream
a love to remember
one to live
instead
to live in real time
in real ways
the day by day
by night by night
world that is
Reality
the sounds of sleep
aches and pains
sorrows and fears
angers and hurts
petty arguments
without questions
or answers
weaknesses
lazinesses
and all the strengths
besides and all
the closenesses
loving times
natural moments of
peace and even joy
of hope and grace
dance and song and
canoes on rivers
rivers and ships
and oceans
all the Songs
to ever Sing
flights of soul into
human arms
locking of hearts
into true eternity
Reality
embrace
Reality
embrace
Reality
Embrace
WITCH HUNT CHANT is my Magic Poem against those around me who would tear me down...and there are one or two...they are warded-off with my Powerful Spirit right now...hand in hand with My Death they wait...still...they will have to wait a long, long, long time....
WITCH HUNT CHANT
witch hunt
Which hunt will take me down?
none but Death
is my equal
I stand
with my strange
integrity
with no champions
close at hand
no knights
in the hood
no soldiers
to keep me
from the hounds
nipping at my heels
not alone now
not ever again
but undefended
by choice
awake
ready to bolt
before they try
the drowning bit
which I would not
survive
of course
thereby proving
that I am not
so magic
tho I am
Witch
extraordinary woman
in ordinary times
being judged
by ordinary
men
even
women
someday
my champion
will need to
come forward
and he will
then
even death
can not
win
what ever
it was
death wanted
Love
will take
death
down
yes
yes
Love will outstare
every
no
every
single
no
witch hunt
Which hunt will take me down?
none but Death
is my equal
I stand
with my strange
integrity
with no champions
close at hand
no knights
in the hood
no soldiers
to keep me
from the hounds
nipping at my heels
not alone now
not ever again
but undefended
by choice
awake
ready to bolt
before they try
the drowning bit
which I would not
survive
of course
thereby proving
that I am not
so magic
tho I am
Witch
extraordinary woman
in ordinary times
being judged
by ordinary
men
even
women
someday
my champion
will need to
come forward
and he will
then
even death
can not
win
what ever
it was
death wanted
Love
will take
death
down
yes
yes
Love will outstare
every
no
every
single
no
FINER ARTS FINER CRAFTS is a proseic little piece about the ordinary pleasures of extraordinarily wonderful little arts and crafts possible over a woman's lifetime...in this story: mine....it's gentle....
FINER ARTS FINER CRAFTS
There are certainly people who try almost everything once. I may be counted among those people. anything that interests me mightily, if only for a while, I try to do...some I have done pretty-well...others, not well at all. Take Arts and Crafts...I have practiced Arts and Crafts. all of my childhood and all of my adulthood. The results are, well...Mixed. to say the least!
When I was in second grade, I changed my writing-and-doing-art 'hand' from Left to Right. There were good reasons for this move. The thin, black-habited nun who was our teacher had slapped the left-handed kid two seats up from me, with a ruler, on his hand. He changed hands from left to right. I changed hands from left to right. Being a wee bit ambidextrous, this worked for me. No hits with the ruler. I gained a right-handed penmanship that is, to this day, an amazingly ugly scribble of a backhand. I also fixated all my art talent of any kind, I believe, at a seven-year-old level.
This is my rationalization for being such a klutz for the rest of my born days in the arena of Arts and Crafts. So bear with me here. I have a good excuse for my bad behaviors, especially in the Crafts Department. Really, I do!...Really!
Day Camp. In the summers, my sister Pat and I went to Day Camp. There, under the shade of the trees, on picnic tables, we learned Arts and Crafts. We made Rubbings on Paper with crayons, of interesting shapes. Lanyards woven from plastic strips, which we all loved. Clay Objects to fire in an Oven, which over-dried and broke. Clay ashtrays glazed and fired in a Kiln that were beyond the pale. Water-colors that dripped pastels all over the place. Paint-By-Number kits. even on Velvet! We were busy little artists and craftspeople!
By high school I had mastered all the Arts and Crafts of childhood and was satisfied that, along with being a ballerina and a famous singer and a brilliant writer, I also had it in me do do any Art or Craft of Adulthood. All had to do was learn them all. The raw talent, I was sure, was there.
The Singer and the Writer plans were all coming along nicely. Second Soprano. Some solos. Success, on a very tiny scale in a very small school. But, confident! Same for writing. Creative Writer. Destined for Greatness! The Arts and Crafts part wasn't going so well....
There was an Art Department of course. And, a Home Ec Department, that taught maidenly crafts, including knitting and crocheting and stuff...but my schedule was too full of academics and music to attend those classes. If I had, a little reality check would have surely happened. But, alas....
I began to take up the World Of Textiles Crafts. I had a little Inkle Loom, and wove some pretty useless belts on it. I wove several unusually unattractive small baskets, which my mom actually used, bless her...I attempted knitting, taught by people who could knit. Crocheting as well. Approximate ten or so rows in I would always lose interest in the "project", usually after pulling out dozens of rows where mistakes had been made and not corrected in time. The yarn would grow "tired" as they say, of all this pulling about, and would give up being compliant. Good call by the yarn...Embroidery. Ditto. I puckered up plenty of material in little knots that looked like tiny bird droppings on the cloth. Discard! I tried to sew using my mom's machine, and ran the needle into my finger, twice. My rows were, well, not rows...never mind Straight Rows. my mom gave up on me before I did. These were not good beginnings, I thought, in the Maidenly Textiles Crafts.
Art would be another story, but it was not another story. I tried water colors, chalks, crayons, pens, acrylics, and even oils. I used books to teach myself...the results looked, well, a lot like a second-grader's art....I told you so!
High School was over. I was in Nursing School, to become an RN. Many of the young women in my school knitted and crocheted. I continued to try to learn. Same ten rows. over and over. this was supposed to relax one. It didn't relax me at all. I switched to writing poetry. Ah, much better....
Now I was all grown up. surely I would pick up Arts and Crafts by osmosis by now. Around me, especially when I was on the Farm in Wisconsin, every woman was good at Some Art or Craft. I learned a lot from them...
I learned that, no matter how many kinds of needles and wonderful yarns you try to use, if you don't get past those first ten rows, you are doomed for all eternity in the knitting/chrocheting department. I did not get by those first ten rows. ever...
I learned that weaving a Willow Wands Basket is easy and fun and makes people admire your work who do not know how easy it is...
I learned that throwing clay pots on a kick wheel is truly impossible if you have no hand/eye/foot coordination whatsoever...
I learned that sewing is not so hard if you lay your kids down on the piece of cloth and just draw the pattern around them. And! that a Treadle Sewing Machine is fine for most sewing work, and you can stop the needle fast before it goes into your finger, since the needle is going slower anyway than the ones on the electric machine...
I learned that there is no time at all on a Farm for the Fine Arts unless you don't have to work out-of-home on account of your husband is rich. I personally didn't know any women who fit that description. So, no Fine Arts...
I learned that Paint is mainly for keeping up all the tons of wood buildings and gates and fences and stuff on your Land...
I learned that trussing and barding birds is the only real use for a large needle skill...
I learned that leather is punctured by an awl before you can get the needle through to sew it, and it takes a long, long time to sew leather...
I learned to save all my old clothes and cloth of all kinds and rip them into thin strips to make rag rugs. Then you sew them into noodle-like strips on your treadle machine, in your so-called free time. Then you sew them round and round into a very useful, pretty, Rag Rug...
So, I could make some things pretty well...clothes for my two daughters and my self. a willow basket. rag rugs. mended shoes tops. painted walls and fencing....
Now, back to city life. I became an Urban Farm Wife. I refused to give up on the Crafts! For the next couple of decades, I actually did try all that knitting/crotcheting stuff here and there...the same ten rows, eternally! Only recently did I pass on all but one of my knitting needles pairs and all but one of my crochet hooks!
I did weave another basket, when I got involved in working with Pomo Indian Women on the California Coast...I made one really nice pine needle basket. Well, to be honest, my teacher and I made one really nice pine needle basket...she fussed through every spiral with me, and, in the end, gently suggested that this may not be the craft for me...but, I did make the basket! I still have that basket! To prove that I can! And, I made a lot of tule reed baskets. I was determined! I just wanted the skill to make a basket if I need a basket, out in the wilderness or something. Not that I've ever been that far out in the wilderness that I would need to make a basket, but you never know! I still love baskets a lot. now I can make them. if need be....
I dropped the sewing. not enough time at this point in my life. I still mend clothes all the time. I have a lovely sewing box with old fashioned useful sewing things in it. The Treadle Machine is still in good repair, and sits in my oldest daughter's living room, since I don't have room for it. I would sew again on it. It works. I know its ways...lately, I bought another one...it needs repairs...maybe I will sew again some day....
Weaving. I gave a lot of effort to weaving...I did a whole strip of weaving techniques at the Glimrica Weaving Studio in Berkeley, California. my Swedish Weaving Teacher assisted me in building a Navajo Loom. I made all the wooden beaters and spreaders and Tamping Combs by myself. I learned to Warp the Loom. I began Weaving, using good Charro Sheep wool spun on the Navajo Reservation in the southwest. I was so excited about this project! I assumed it would only take time. turns out, it takes a lot, a lot, a lot of skill...half way through the project the weft began to pull in to the center...project over! no way to correct it! That project led to some interesting travels and writing tho...another story....
Then, there's Woodworking...I've a whole story about Woodworking. For me, it's not a craft. It's a Way To Be Alive...Woods....Woodworking for over twenty years...with Walter Fanning, my "Pops"...Together in his wonderful Woodshop, on old 40s iron woodshop machines, we built desks and beds and chairs and shelves and bookcases and tables of all sizes and many chests -especially walnut-cedar chests - and even fences for a Lighthouse Island in the Bay...I worked with him after work, after the kids were asleep, in early mornings...for twenty years...to this day: I cannot design One Piece of Furniture by my self. I was Pop's (Walter's) Apprentice...not a Master, like he was. He was a Master. I was Lucky....
About Art...The Fine Arts...when I went back to university, to get my second BA, and Teaching Credential, I spent part of the three years back in school taking Art History and Studio Art classes. I went crazy with ART! I tried every media I could...especially collage and acrylics...I had such a Good Time! Some of my work in Collage was shown. I even won a prize for one of my collages in a student contest - a second...I still have that Art Piece on my wall...the challenge was to create an art work using a very ugly building as the model, and making it beautiful, or giving it some life... I picked the plainest building on campus, and gave it a blue lake and a blue sky. wisps of clouds....
Well, it's been over a decade now...no further Arts and Crafts explorations in sight...Hard Times came and took the energy away for them, for a long, long time... Still, all the skills are there...waiting for me to use them when I wish and when I want and when I can!
I'm glad I've played with cloth and yarn and wool and paints and wood and leather and reeds and pine needles and willow wands!
Arts and Crafts. a luxury, really... a fine, fine luxury of life...
I'm glad I was given these times to do this 'work'...
I'm glad I made the Time....
There are certainly people who try almost everything once. I may be counted among those people. anything that interests me mightily, if only for a while, I try to do...some I have done pretty-well...others, not well at all. Take Arts and Crafts...I have practiced Arts and Crafts. all of my childhood and all of my adulthood. The results are, well...Mixed. to say the least!
When I was in second grade, I changed my writing-and-doing-art 'hand' from Left to Right. There were good reasons for this move. The thin, black-habited nun who was our teacher had slapped the left-handed kid two seats up from me, with a ruler, on his hand. He changed hands from left to right. I changed hands from left to right. Being a wee bit ambidextrous, this worked for me. No hits with the ruler. I gained a right-handed penmanship that is, to this day, an amazingly ugly scribble of a backhand. I also fixated all my art talent of any kind, I believe, at a seven-year-old level.
This is my rationalization for being such a klutz for the rest of my born days in the arena of Arts and Crafts. So bear with me here. I have a good excuse for my bad behaviors, especially in the Crafts Department. Really, I do!...Really!
Day Camp. In the summers, my sister Pat and I went to Day Camp. There, under the shade of the trees, on picnic tables, we learned Arts and Crafts. We made Rubbings on Paper with crayons, of interesting shapes. Lanyards woven from plastic strips, which we all loved. Clay Objects to fire in an Oven, which over-dried and broke. Clay ashtrays glazed and fired in a Kiln that were beyond the pale. Water-colors that dripped pastels all over the place. Paint-By-Number kits. even on Velvet! We were busy little artists and craftspeople!
By high school I had mastered all the Arts and Crafts of childhood and was satisfied that, along with being a ballerina and a famous singer and a brilliant writer, I also had it in me do do any Art or Craft of Adulthood. All had to do was learn them all. The raw talent, I was sure, was there.
The Singer and the Writer plans were all coming along nicely. Second Soprano. Some solos. Success, on a very tiny scale in a very small school. But, confident! Same for writing. Creative Writer. Destined for Greatness! The Arts and Crafts part wasn't going so well....
There was an Art Department of course. And, a Home Ec Department, that taught maidenly crafts, including knitting and crocheting and stuff...but my schedule was too full of academics and music to attend those classes. If I had, a little reality check would have surely happened. But, alas....
I began to take up the World Of Textiles Crafts. I had a little Inkle Loom, and wove some pretty useless belts on it. I wove several unusually unattractive small baskets, which my mom actually used, bless her...I attempted knitting, taught by people who could knit. Crocheting as well. Approximate ten or so rows in I would always lose interest in the "project", usually after pulling out dozens of rows where mistakes had been made and not corrected in time. The yarn would grow "tired" as they say, of all this pulling about, and would give up being compliant. Good call by the yarn...Embroidery. Ditto. I puckered up plenty of material in little knots that looked like tiny bird droppings on the cloth. Discard! I tried to sew using my mom's machine, and ran the needle into my finger, twice. My rows were, well, not rows...never mind Straight Rows. my mom gave up on me before I did. These were not good beginnings, I thought, in the Maidenly Textiles Crafts.
Art would be another story, but it was not another story. I tried water colors, chalks, crayons, pens, acrylics, and even oils. I used books to teach myself...the results looked, well, a lot like a second-grader's art....I told you so!
High School was over. I was in Nursing School, to become an RN. Many of the young women in my school knitted and crocheted. I continued to try to learn. Same ten rows. over and over. this was supposed to relax one. It didn't relax me at all. I switched to writing poetry. Ah, much better....
Now I was all grown up. surely I would pick up Arts and Crafts by osmosis by now. Around me, especially when I was on the Farm in Wisconsin, every woman was good at Some Art or Craft. I learned a lot from them...
I learned that, no matter how many kinds of needles and wonderful yarns you try to use, if you don't get past those first ten rows, you are doomed for all eternity in the knitting/chrocheting department. I did not get by those first ten rows. ever...
I learned that weaving a Willow Wands Basket is easy and fun and makes people admire your work who do not know how easy it is...
I learned that throwing clay pots on a kick wheel is truly impossible if you have no hand/eye/foot coordination whatsoever...
I learned that sewing is not so hard if you lay your kids down on the piece of cloth and just draw the pattern around them. And! that a Treadle Sewing Machine is fine for most sewing work, and you can stop the needle fast before it goes into your finger, since the needle is going slower anyway than the ones on the electric machine...
I learned that there is no time at all on a Farm for the Fine Arts unless you don't have to work out-of-home on account of your husband is rich. I personally didn't know any women who fit that description. So, no Fine Arts...
I learned that Paint is mainly for keeping up all the tons of wood buildings and gates and fences and stuff on your Land...
I learned that trussing and barding birds is the only real use for a large needle skill...
I learned that leather is punctured by an awl before you can get the needle through to sew it, and it takes a long, long time to sew leather...
I learned to save all my old clothes and cloth of all kinds and rip them into thin strips to make rag rugs. Then you sew them into noodle-like strips on your treadle machine, in your so-called free time. Then you sew them round and round into a very useful, pretty, Rag Rug...
So, I could make some things pretty well...clothes for my two daughters and my self. a willow basket. rag rugs. mended shoes tops. painted walls and fencing....
Now, back to city life. I became an Urban Farm Wife. I refused to give up on the Crafts! For the next couple of decades, I actually did try all that knitting/crotcheting stuff here and there...the same ten rows, eternally! Only recently did I pass on all but one of my knitting needles pairs and all but one of my crochet hooks!
I did weave another basket, when I got involved in working with Pomo Indian Women on the California Coast...I made one really nice pine needle basket. Well, to be honest, my teacher and I made one really nice pine needle basket...she fussed through every spiral with me, and, in the end, gently suggested that this may not be the craft for me...but, I did make the basket! I still have that basket! To prove that I can! And, I made a lot of tule reed baskets. I was determined! I just wanted the skill to make a basket if I need a basket, out in the wilderness or something. Not that I've ever been that far out in the wilderness that I would need to make a basket, but you never know! I still love baskets a lot. now I can make them. if need be....
I dropped the sewing. not enough time at this point in my life. I still mend clothes all the time. I have a lovely sewing box with old fashioned useful sewing things in it. The Treadle Machine is still in good repair, and sits in my oldest daughter's living room, since I don't have room for it. I would sew again on it. It works. I know its ways...lately, I bought another one...it needs repairs...maybe I will sew again some day....
Weaving. I gave a lot of effort to weaving...I did a whole strip of weaving techniques at the Glimrica Weaving Studio in Berkeley, California. my Swedish Weaving Teacher assisted me in building a Navajo Loom. I made all the wooden beaters and spreaders and Tamping Combs by myself. I learned to Warp the Loom. I began Weaving, using good Charro Sheep wool spun on the Navajo Reservation in the southwest. I was so excited about this project! I assumed it would only take time. turns out, it takes a lot, a lot, a lot of skill...half way through the project the weft began to pull in to the center...project over! no way to correct it! That project led to some interesting travels and writing tho...another story....
Then, there's Woodworking...I've a whole story about Woodworking. For me, it's not a craft. It's a Way To Be Alive...Woods....Woodworking for over twenty years...with Walter Fanning, my "Pops"...Together in his wonderful Woodshop, on old 40s iron woodshop machines, we built desks and beds and chairs and shelves and bookcases and tables of all sizes and many chests -especially walnut-cedar chests - and even fences for a Lighthouse Island in the Bay...I worked with him after work, after the kids were asleep, in early mornings...for twenty years...to this day: I cannot design One Piece of Furniture by my self. I was Pop's (Walter's) Apprentice...not a Master, like he was. He was a Master. I was Lucky....
About Art...The Fine Arts...when I went back to university, to get my second BA, and Teaching Credential, I spent part of the three years back in school taking Art History and Studio Art classes. I went crazy with ART! I tried every media I could...especially collage and acrylics...I had such a Good Time! Some of my work in Collage was shown. I even won a prize for one of my collages in a student contest - a second...I still have that Art Piece on my wall...the challenge was to create an art work using a very ugly building as the model, and making it beautiful, or giving it some life... I picked the plainest building on campus, and gave it a blue lake and a blue sky. wisps of clouds....
Well, it's been over a decade now...no further Arts and Crafts explorations in sight...Hard Times came and took the energy away for them, for a long, long time... Still, all the skills are there...waiting for me to use them when I wish and when I want and when I can!
I'm glad I've played with cloth and yarn and wool and paints and wood and leather and reeds and pine needles and willow wands!
Arts and Crafts. a luxury, really... a fine, fine luxury of life...
I'm glad I was given these times to do this 'work'...
I'm glad I made the Time....
THE SWORD AND THIS WOMAN'S MIND is a reflection about the short time I was in 'Lessons' with Scott Flint, one of the most powerful Martial Arts Persons in our Country. This was an honor for me...and taught me more, much more, than I ever expected....
THE SWORD AND THIS WOMAN'S MIND
Iaido. This is the name of the Japanese Sword Martial Art Form that I haD chosen to learn at my son's Karate Dojo...his is a Taiwan-ranked Black Belt in Karate, but he also wears the beautiful clothing of an Iaido Swordsman, with a Japan-tested Credential as an Instructor in Iaido.
Even before I came to work for him, to help him to set up his Day School, West Wind Academy, in his West Wind School Systems (three school sites), my son had encouraged all of his family members to learn the Martial Arts in his schools. All of us except the littlest children at present, did take lessons at one time or another during the twenty years he has owned West Wind Schools. Everybody else did Karate. I decided to try Iaido, after watching a beautiful Demonstration he gave our family of this ancient and beautiful Martial Arts Form...
Even though he assigned the true Master of his System, a patient, good-hearted, internationally-high-ranking Instructor, as my teacher, I was lazy and fitful about the lessons. practically ungrateful! sometimes. about making it to class and so on, even rude. I was pretty passive-aggressive about the whole experiment. I just couldn't get into wielding a sword to pretend to slash at an imaginary opponent, with such decisive, vicious strokes as well! I am not sure why my wonderful, expert teacher was at all patient with me. When I asked my son why, he said, "O, Mr Flint thinks you will be a good student some day." This was said with no trace of sarcasm or cynicism at all....Hmmmmmm, I thought...
I discontinued the lessons, blaming, partly-honestly, severe health problems....
Then, five years ago, I came to work, as I mentioned, as the English and Social Studies Teacher for thirty students ages three through eighteen. The six-hours straight of the work day with the 'kids', and all the prep time and so on, were exhausting! Still, my son requested that I get back into some form of martial arts training again. I agreed to try Iaido again. Same Teacher. Same Problems. The students were impressed, being Karate, and not Iaido students. Plus, none of them had the famous Mr. Flint as their Instructor! I must be special! O, I was 'special' alright!....
See, I would practice and then, due to illness and pain and so on, I would not practice. Mr. Flint would teach me all the terminology, patiently and very well, and I would forget it (I am NOT good at languages either...) (especially Japanese!)...I would make feeble attempts at striking with the sword. I would be accurate. then careless. He taught me warm-ups and stretches to help my back. His patience was, and is still, endless, completely, and relentlessly... endless!....Still, so little progress made! How could he keep on teaching me, when I resisted every move! I found them all, every one, Violent! Simply Violent!
Every single Iaido form, every stroke of the sword, is meant to kill. Every one. This, for a person who had trouble killing flies! Quite literally! This, for a woman who could not whip a horse effectively At All! Ever! This, for a mother who had never been able to spank her kids! She had only made them laugh, when she once tried! I Was Not Capable Of This Violence! So why was Mr. Flint still being so patient with me?
Then, one day, not that long ago...
He asked me if I had ever cast a line in...fishing!...I had! Use that cast, he told me, when you strike with the sword. I did. it came back into my wrist, into my arm, into my shoulder. The sword flew through the air like line with the weight and hook at the end...to catch a fish. to cause the fish pain...even for just a little while. Violence, of a nature. of a natural sort....
Suddenly, everything fell into place: Mr.Flint's calm approach to the Violence of the Martial Arts of which he is a True Master. It is all One Piece to him! The Wonder of the Natural World and the Violence of the Natural World: They are One Experience. I could see now why he is also such a fine Science teacher for our school. For him, there is no Either/Or...only Human with Nature: Human Nature: What Humans really do....the Sword is simply an Extension of that truth....
I could do that. I knew, all at once. I could do that. If I had to, I could wield a Sword. I could slash another human being in half, if I or mine were in harm's way. I could kill. I am as we all are naturally: human. I am Human.
This Sword. this foreign, heavy, sharp, unspeakable Sword. this is no Object for Play. This is no Object for Art. Still...
I bow to the Sword.
I bow to my Good Teacher.
My Beginners Sword is merely Wood.
My Beginners Mind is merely Wood.
I raise it. I bring it down.
it whistles through the air like Fire and Steel.
the Kindest Cut of All....
Iaido. This is the name of the Japanese Sword Martial Art Form that I haD chosen to learn at my son's Karate Dojo...his is a Taiwan-ranked Black Belt in Karate, but he also wears the beautiful clothing of an Iaido Swordsman, with a Japan-tested Credential as an Instructor in Iaido.
Even before I came to work for him, to help him to set up his Day School, West Wind Academy, in his West Wind School Systems (three school sites), my son had encouraged all of his family members to learn the Martial Arts in his schools. All of us except the littlest children at present, did take lessons at one time or another during the twenty years he has owned West Wind Schools. Everybody else did Karate. I decided to try Iaido, after watching a beautiful Demonstration he gave our family of this ancient and beautiful Martial Arts Form...
Even though he assigned the true Master of his System, a patient, good-hearted, internationally-high-ranking Instructor, as my teacher, I was lazy and fitful about the lessons. practically ungrateful! sometimes. about making it to class and so on, even rude. I was pretty passive-aggressive about the whole experiment. I just couldn't get into wielding a sword to pretend to slash at an imaginary opponent, with such decisive, vicious strokes as well! I am not sure why my wonderful, expert teacher was at all patient with me. When I asked my son why, he said, "O, Mr Flint thinks you will be a good student some day." This was said with no trace of sarcasm or cynicism at all....Hmmmmmm, I thought...
I discontinued the lessons, blaming, partly-honestly, severe health problems....
Then, five years ago, I came to work, as I mentioned, as the English and Social Studies Teacher for thirty students ages three through eighteen. The six-hours straight of the work day with the 'kids', and all the prep time and so on, were exhausting! Still, my son requested that I get back into some form of martial arts training again. I agreed to try Iaido again. Same Teacher. Same Problems. The students were impressed, being Karate, and not Iaido students. Plus, none of them had the famous Mr. Flint as their Instructor! I must be special! O, I was 'special' alright!....
See, I would practice and then, due to illness and pain and so on, I would not practice. Mr. Flint would teach me all the terminology, patiently and very well, and I would forget it (I am NOT good at languages either...) (especially Japanese!)...I would make feeble attempts at striking with the sword. I would be accurate. then careless. He taught me warm-ups and stretches to help my back. His patience was, and is still, endless, completely, and relentlessly... endless!....Still, so little progress made! How could he keep on teaching me, when I resisted every move! I found them all, every one, Violent! Simply Violent!
Every single Iaido form, every stroke of the sword, is meant to kill. Every one. This, for a person who had trouble killing flies! Quite literally! This, for a woman who could not whip a horse effectively At All! Ever! This, for a mother who had never been able to spank her kids! She had only made them laugh, when she once tried! I Was Not Capable Of This Violence! So why was Mr. Flint still being so patient with me?
Then, one day, not that long ago...
He asked me if I had ever cast a line in...fishing!...I had! Use that cast, he told me, when you strike with the sword. I did. it came back into my wrist, into my arm, into my shoulder. The sword flew through the air like line with the weight and hook at the end...to catch a fish. to cause the fish pain...even for just a little while. Violence, of a nature. of a natural sort....
Suddenly, everything fell into place: Mr.Flint's calm approach to the Violence of the Martial Arts of which he is a True Master. It is all One Piece to him! The Wonder of the Natural World and the Violence of the Natural World: They are One Experience. I could see now why he is also such a fine Science teacher for our school. For him, there is no Either/Or...only Human with Nature: Human Nature: What Humans really do....the Sword is simply an Extension of that truth....
I could do that. I knew, all at once. I could do that. If I had to, I could wield a Sword. I could slash another human being in half, if I or mine were in harm's way. I could kill. I am as we all are naturally: human. I am Human.
This Sword. this foreign, heavy, sharp, unspeakable Sword. this is no Object for Play. This is no Object for Art. Still...
I bow to the Sword.
I bow to my Good Teacher.
My Beginners Sword is merely Wood.
My Beginners Mind is merely Wood.
I raise it. I bring it down.
it whistles through the air like Fire and Steel.
the Kindest Cut of All....
WHEN YOU SING is a love poem...for my Music Man....
WHEN YOU SING
When you sing
I hear you singing
young
shock of yellowish hair
glasses askew
thin wiry frame
hazel-blue eyes
sweet with love
voice true
smile
all for me
all for song
besides
your heart
your body
your laugh
your words
your love
your spirit
I have always
missed
your song
your fingers flying
on the banjo
nimble
full of fun
your music
I was so
proud
to share in
my music man
my music man
When you sing
I start to cry
for all I lost
I weep
to be honest
hard
like
the saddest song
you could sing
I want you
to sing me
a love song
make it so true
it will take away
all the pain
of all those years
I never sang with you
tho I sang
Denny's Song
almost
every day
of my whole life
that song
carried all my tears
straight into tonight
while I write
this poem
crying
for all the lost songs
all the lost years
wishing
with such hope
for all the songs to come
in your arms
while I listen
proud
to sing along
again
again
when
you
sing
When you sing
I hear you singing
young
shock of yellowish hair
glasses askew
thin wiry frame
hazel-blue eyes
sweet with love
voice true
smile
all for me
all for song
besides
your heart
your body
your laugh
your words
your love
your spirit
I have always
missed
your song
your fingers flying
on the banjo
nimble
full of fun
your music
I was so
proud
to share in
my music man
my music man
When you sing
I start to cry
for all I lost
I weep
to be honest
hard
like
the saddest song
you could sing
I want you
to sing me
a love song
make it so true
it will take away
all the pain
of all those years
I never sang with you
tho I sang
Denny's Song
almost
every day
of my whole life
that song
carried all my tears
straight into tonight
while I write
this poem
crying
for all the lost songs
all the lost years
wishing
with such hope
for all the songs to come
in your arms
while I listen
proud
to sing along
again
again
when
you
sing
LOST AND FOUND is a poem of the Last of the Memorial Day Reflections about Loss...Arlene was my Friend...we wrote a 'Book' together, long ago...really quite a Story.....
LOST AND FOUND
Somewhere
in the great
Lost and Found
in the sky
is the soul
of Arlene
who was as complex
a piece of human
as one could be
she would
love too hard
laugh too hard
sing too hard
work too hard
laze too hard
talk too hard
lie too hard
hate too hard
help too hard
hurt too hard
live too hard
and
she
died too hard
All of that is in
this really great
Lost-and-Found
in the sky
where
I'm going to send
her writings
her tapes
her videos
her pictures
her 'Book'
forthwith
there all of her
and all her
stuff
will sit
all dust
for
all time
and no one
will claim
anything
because
all of
her
is
really
gone
and you can
look for all time
in that Lost
and Found
still, will
never
find
one
Arlene
ever
again
Somewhere
in the great
Lost and Found
in the sky
is the soul
of Arlene
who was as complex
a piece of human
as one could be
she would
love too hard
laugh too hard
sing too hard
work too hard
laze too hard
talk too hard
lie too hard
hate too hard
help too hard
hurt too hard
live too hard
and
she
died too hard
All of that is in
this really great
Lost-and-Found
in the sky
where
I'm going to send
her writings
her tapes
her videos
her pictures
her 'Book'
forthwith
there all of her
and all her
stuff
will sit
all dust
for
all time
and no one
will claim
anything
because
all of
her
is
really
gone
and you can
look for all time
in that Lost
and Found
still, will
never
find
one
Arlene
ever
again
LOST OUT HERE IN THE STARS is a reflective autobiographical piece about Loss...it is a Heavy One, indeed...so read it or no...it has its place in this life of mine...I've been writing a few lately about the 'harder' bits of my life...in the main - most of you know - I've had a Great and Often Happy Life! Still, of course, some times...there is Sorrow....
LOST OUT HERE IN THE STARS
I was only sharing this story with one other person. He was the only one. This is about the worst in me and the most painful parts of my life. It's not for anyone to read. It's for madmen only...so, read on, if you wish to...these are mine....
Loss is probably the scariest word after Death. Death being huge Loss, so Loss, all the same...
I keep thinking about Loss in my life, since I'm going through another one much of the time...because I'm not very dramatic about the pain of Loss, and don't appear to be mourning, I notice that some people respond to me as if I was a bit of a cold fish about grieving Loss. my inner experience is not like that at all...
I lost my Grandpa Amann when I was just a kid. My sister Pat and I couldn't go up to see him...they didn't let kids into dying people's rooms back in that day...So, we walked around the hospital holding hands and sobbing and singing this song we made up: "Our Grandpa was a Mighty Tree. All men must die. But why must he?" We were so sad.
The next deaths, of my Gramma Amann, my Uncle Henry, my Aunt Peggy...they started to add-up into my teens...then there were a couple of deaths of young folks too, fellow students I knew....one was my friend Charlotte's guy. a popular, good-hearted, lively, athletic boy...he died of knee cancer....
there were losses that weren't deaths too...leaving states to move to other states...losing friends made....all of these loses were sad and weeping was going on, as sincerely as a young person can cry and then I'd think, "Be strong, Kathy. You have to be strong. Mom and Dad expect you to be their good one. the strong one."....I thought this was what grief and loss were all about...how is a young person to know?
I was walking on a beach in Evanston, Illinois when I was in Nursing School. It was evening...It had been more than a few years since my Gramma had died...suddenly, for no reason I can imagine...I began to cry about her death...about the loss of her in my life...I cried and cried and then I sobbed...I couldn't stop....all the losses were piling in on me, one after another. I was finally starting to get it...what Loss really is....I began to think of all the young men I had thought I had casually 'broken-up' with, in my young dating past as well...the sobbing renewed...one stood out in particular...
He had been my First Real Love...every memory of him was completely intact....every kiss. every hug. every 'making-out' time. all the fun times. the jokes and the laughter. the canoe on the river. the anniversary with the candles on the glove compartment door. the prom. the operetta. the summer musical. the singing. the banjo. the Community Center and Pheasant Run performances. the soft summer nights. the sound of his laugh. his arms. his intensity. his sorrows. the joy we gave each other. the pain I gave him in the end. the reasons I left.
Just as suddenly as the tears had come for my Gramma, the tears came for him. I sobbed all the way from the beach back to the dorm. not caring who saw. I cried for innocence lost.
What I experienced most was the Empty Places where those two people had been. my Gramma was dead. my First Love was married. they were gone for me. I could not see them again. The Weight of the Empty Places was intense and terrible. I knew I had to shelve this Intensity somewhere...and so, deep, deep, deep within me these two Great Losses went. Never to be forgotten, ever. But, never to be touched, if at all possible. The Pain of them was Too Great to touch....
Each time, for the next decades, that I lost a relationship, any relationship even a friendship at work, through a move to some other location... a once happy lover-situation gone flat and unhappy... in the 'end', three serious and good Marriages gone...through the years: three major 'Boyfriend' Relationships, gone...through years of struggle without resolution...any friendship where we had grown apart over time and growth as people...I mourned. I mourned Alone....
a Brief Reflections about Alex...I was married to Alex for three months: A German Musician on visas here for work on and off through the years...arranger for a few famous Folk Performers...younger than I ...I had known him since Nursing School...he died in a motor-cycle accident in Big Sur along the coast. His parents came and took his body home. That's all I want to say about that. There was Much Love and Understanding between us. My children barely knew him. No one else knew him hardly at all. Over before it all actually began. And...closed into a capsule inside of me forever. silent as its own tomb. part of the Silences in me...as we call carry our Silences....
It was important to me to be strong, to be very strong. First, to hold the world together for my kids, then to hold it together for myself. My life was filled with hard work and responsibility. I was determined to do two actions about life: not to let grief and loss tear me down...and, to try to live a fulfilling, happy life in spite of loss...but, a Life Alone. Standing Brave. Alone...not lonely...I've always had plenty of people about...but, Alone.
Anyway, I didn't want to hold on to grief..to let sorrow take any energy away from my daily life, from my daily love, from my daily bread. No changes in me, at work would be seen. No sorrow would distract from my kid's lives. No loss would deter me from meeting my own goals and being 'positive' about every day of my life...I simply would not be vulnerable to loss....
I wish I could say this approach was a really fine way to deal with life. It works, alright, but I wound up feeling Very alone about my life. If I don't share grief with someone, people don't lend me a helping hand. They figure I am strong. That I don't need to depend on them. That I don't need them to cope...I even took all, and I mean All, of the blame for any relationship loss. I protected the people I left, especially, or those who were too hurt to stay around me any more... I have always made it clear that nothing was their fault...which really wasn't that fair to them... they wouldn't grow as people, if I took all the blame for their actions and reactions...but, that's what I did...that's what I'm doing right now, to this very day.
With Death, I really cut off. I cry for a little. then I shut the place down where those people lived and loved with me. I call them the "Empty Places"... Those loses: Grandparents. Alex. my Parents. Pops. the good Friends. All dead and gone. I see them in the back of my mind every single day...people think I am really good at listening and being there for them for months, years, whatever it takes, for them to work through their griefs about death. they don't realize that I am there for them, because I am Never, Never far away from my own Dead Ones. I spend much psychological time avoiding the huge holes left in my life, like avoiding land mines in a war zone... I just don't show it on the outside... ever again...
I never feel that I have permission to break stride. I feel that I have to be the woman who can make it through anything, anything that life throws at her....
There have been other losses that I have played-down in public, and sustained as heavy blows inside: mainly physical ones...only one person in my life knows that I survived thyroid cancer...I suck up around the back pain that has been always there to some degree or another since I was twelve years old...I once shocked a good friend by telling her that I had no idea what one comfortable day would feel like, as I had never had one, because of my back. I just don't talk about it...
I have a heart that has electrical problems. It may make it another twenty years. It may not. It sustained some death-defying months only a few years ago. Only a wonderful cardiac catheterization procedure, called an Ablation, saved me from dying...I have actually "almost died" from two anaphylactic allergic reactions in my life...once I almost drowned...Physical Losses. They take the stuffing out of me. they take Sex away from me. Sex being a goodly part about who I am. So I lose Sex during times of pain as well. and this last husband had to cope with that too, which wasn't fair to him...for which he was lost to me as well....
Then there's money losses...the losses of homes and material things...these have been so common in my life, that I have become relatively unattached to the material world...I have walked away, so many times, from all of my material "assets" in order to gain my own soul back. and once, to gain the full custody of my children. I have not regretted these losses at all. Still, they have left me relying entirely on my own self and upon my own work for all of my everyday needs. I have no debt, but I have few belongings of anything but sentimental worth, as I head into the last quarter of my lifetime...
Something happened in just these last few years...
For the first time in my life, I saw very little hope. The year had been full of heavy responsibilities and losses...nine deaths...a major move that led to severe back pain for seven months...care taking for a few months, during the pain, of my spouse...working at my teaching job full time while in pain...I was completely exhausted. My spouse was exhausted too, especially as his youngest daughter almost died of a massive strep infection during this same period. There was no relief in sight....I was beginning to give up...all I saw ahead was caring for my husband as he aged, until he would die. Or, of having pain for years and years, and maybe even burdening him more, or others... Then I would be too old to have anything left in life myself. And, too depleted, physically...
I decided to try to change, somehow...to approach life without this constant preoccupation with all the loses I had sustained over my whole adult life...I had to feel hope again....
Hope came in a way that I least expected. My First Love came back into my life again. He became more than a renewal of a sustaining friendship. He became the Hope at the bottom of Pandora's box. That is its own beautiful story. Still, it is a story of loss in itself...
Because I have become close to this man again, my husband divorced from me...Once again, I lost family, his family...some of our mutual friends, who polarized one way or the other...money...(It's so telling that money loss, especially for women, is so connected to losses of people through deaths, divorce...)...Once again, I faced loss...only, this time, I do not feel as alone...
This time, I am trying, every day, to confide more in my adult children...to talk with them as honestly as I can, about the losses I am sustaining, and about my relationship with this man who is my lifeline at this time. They are all welcoming to me, and listen, and love me so much. It's interesting though. They still expect me to be "fine", to be "strong". they are so used to my being capable and strong, that they cannot relate to any signs of weakness from me at all...that's what my years of standing alone in severe storms taught them: that Mom can take anything, and not buckle under....
I find myself letting my good friends know...and they too -unremarkable enough!- expect me to come through all of this "fine". What they cannot imagine, and I cannot tell them...
Is that I am finally relying on someone. I am finally depending on somebody. I am finally accepting the protection of a man. My First Love. I have given my need for emotional support to him. He has accepted the burden of me. In exchange, all I have to offer him is my love. my respect. my sustenance. my deep gratitude. my understanding and acceptance of him as he is, which is easy for me to do, with him... my my very self as a person.
Ironically...he was two thousand miles away and he was married to a good woman. he too may also be lost to me some day. He doesn't believe so, but I am less trusting than he... After many, many years of deprivation in his own life, he still has the courage to believe in a good future for the two of us... I believe we will always be close in our hearts. I simply do not trust fate. It will take a long time for me to really trust that we will have a future in the same place on the earth, in the same lifetime...I admire him so for wanting to be with me, after all I have told him about myself. I will have to wait and see. I have left this part of our path to him. I can't even imagine any more how something this good could happen for me. that I could finish the last decades of my life without being still all Alone inside. Loss has followed that closely on my every footstep....
Still, I am going forward as happily and confidently as I possibly can. This man has shown me his deep understanding and acceptance of me as I really am, without my having to be the one who feels I sustain the whole show by myself. Without me hiding so much of who I am... He's made me feel that I don't have to hide my vulnerabilities any more. I would give my life for him, for having made me feel that safe, that understood, that free to be my own self completely, without censure, without criticism.
You know, my second husband and my present husband have been very kind. They took care of me and I took care of them, for many years. It may have been my fault that I didn't share everything about who I am and what my true nature is and was...I will never know. I feared the loss that their criticism and censorship took in our every-day lives, without adding the pain I expected to feel if they rejected me more than that. I may have been wrong, though, about those perceptions...I'll never know, now....
I have felt, my whole adult life, alone inside...lost out here on this planet under the stars. In spite of so much good love and so many good times in my life...in spite of my many, many flaws and mistakes in relationships...
I swear to the stars above. I have never hurt another on purpose. I am so sad that my nature has seemed been so wrong, so unsettling, to some of those I have loved. They have discounted so many years of happiness and care from me...Tho it's only been a few of the many people I love and have loved in life, they have been key people, who were with me for a long time. In return for my rejection of them, after years of trying to compromise about differences and unmet needs, They have struck out at me hard. I have taken the responsibility and the blame. over and over and over.This is my greatest loss of all. the loss of respect from them for all I had been to them and for them. The years I had been so good with them and for them. Because I left them. this has been my greatest sorrow.
Loss is inevitable. It is so final. we are all so vulnerable to loss. For me, it has been worse than Death. I have faced Death before. It's not so bad...
But, to be lost out here in the stars...
lost out here in the stars....
that is the worst that life can bring...
and here I am...again
Bowed often...but never Broken...
Too Strong with Love -
Too Full of Love -
To ever be Broken...
I was only sharing this story with one other person. He was the only one. This is about the worst in me and the most painful parts of my life. It's not for anyone to read. It's for madmen only...so, read on, if you wish to...these are mine....
Loss is probably the scariest word after Death. Death being huge Loss, so Loss, all the same...
I keep thinking about Loss in my life, since I'm going through another one much of the time...because I'm not very dramatic about the pain of Loss, and don't appear to be mourning, I notice that some people respond to me as if I was a bit of a cold fish about grieving Loss. my inner experience is not like that at all...
I lost my Grandpa Amann when I was just a kid. My sister Pat and I couldn't go up to see him...they didn't let kids into dying people's rooms back in that day...So, we walked around the hospital holding hands and sobbing and singing this song we made up: "Our Grandpa was a Mighty Tree. All men must die. But why must he?" We were so sad.
The next deaths, of my Gramma Amann, my Uncle Henry, my Aunt Peggy...they started to add-up into my teens...then there were a couple of deaths of young folks too, fellow students I knew....one was my friend Charlotte's guy. a popular, good-hearted, lively, athletic boy...he died of knee cancer....
there were losses that weren't deaths too...leaving states to move to other states...losing friends made....all of these loses were sad and weeping was going on, as sincerely as a young person can cry and then I'd think, "Be strong, Kathy. You have to be strong. Mom and Dad expect you to be their good one. the strong one."....I thought this was what grief and loss were all about...how is a young person to know?
I was walking on a beach in Evanston, Illinois when I was in Nursing School. It was evening...It had been more than a few years since my Gramma had died...suddenly, for no reason I can imagine...I began to cry about her death...about the loss of her in my life...I cried and cried and then I sobbed...I couldn't stop....all the losses were piling in on me, one after another. I was finally starting to get it...what Loss really is....I began to think of all the young men I had thought I had casually 'broken-up' with, in my young dating past as well...the sobbing renewed...one stood out in particular...
He had been my First Real Love...every memory of him was completely intact....every kiss. every hug. every 'making-out' time. all the fun times. the jokes and the laughter. the canoe on the river. the anniversary with the candles on the glove compartment door. the prom. the operetta. the summer musical. the singing. the banjo. the Community Center and Pheasant Run performances. the soft summer nights. the sound of his laugh. his arms. his intensity. his sorrows. the joy we gave each other. the pain I gave him in the end. the reasons I left.
Just as suddenly as the tears had come for my Gramma, the tears came for him. I sobbed all the way from the beach back to the dorm. not caring who saw. I cried for innocence lost.
What I experienced most was the Empty Places where those two people had been. my Gramma was dead. my First Love was married. they were gone for me. I could not see them again. The Weight of the Empty Places was intense and terrible. I knew I had to shelve this Intensity somewhere...and so, deep, deep, deep within me these two Great Losses went. Never to be forgotten, ever. But, never to be touched, if at all possible. The Pain of them was Too Great to touch....
Each time, for the next decades, that I lost a relationship, any relationship even a friendship at work, through a move to some other location... a once happy lover-situation gone flat and unhappy... in the 'end', three serious and good Marriages gone...through the years: three major 'Boyfriend' Relationships, gone...through years of struggle without resolution...any friendship where we had grown apart over time and growth as people...I mourned. I mourned Alone....
a Brief Reflections about Alex...I was married to Alex for three months: A German Musician on visas here for work on and off through the years...arranger for a few famous Folk Performers...younger than I ...I had known him since Nursing School...he died in a motor-cycle accident in Big Sur along the coast. His parents came and took his body home. That's all I want to say about that. There was Much Love and Understanding between us. My children barely knew him. No one else knew him hardly at all. Over before it all actually began. And...closed into a capsule inside of me forever. silent as its own tomb. part of the Silences in me...as we call carry our Silences....
It was important to me to be strong, to be very strong. First, to hold the world together for my kids, then to hold it together for myself. My life was filled with hard work and responsibility. I was determined to do two actions about life: not to let grief and loss tear me down...and, to try to live a fulfilling, happy life in spite of loss...but, a Life Alone. Standing Brave. Alone...not lonely...I've always had plenty of people about...but, Alone.
Anyway, I didn't want to hold on to grief..to let sorrow take any energy away from my daily life, from my daily love, from my daily bread. No changes in me, at work would be seen. No sorrow would distract from my kid's lives. No loss would deter me from meeting my own goals and being 'positive' about every day of my life...I simply would not be vulnerable to loss....
I wish I could say this approach was a really fine way to deal with life. It works, alright, but I wound up feeling Very alone about my life. If I don't share grief with someone, people don't lend me a helping hand. They figure I am strong. That I don't need to depend on them. That I don't need them to cope...I even took all, and I mean All, of the blame for any relationship loss. I protected the people I left, especially, or those who were too hurt to stay around me any more... I have always made it clear that nothing was their fault...which really wasn't that fair to them... they wouldn't grow as people, if I took all the blame for their actions and reactions...but, that's what I did...that's what I'm doing right now, to this very day.
With Death, I really cut off. I cry for a little. then I shut the place down where those people lived and loved with me. I call them the "Empty Places"... Those loses: Grandparents. Alex. my Parents. Pops. the good Friends. All dead and gone. I see them in the back of my mind every single day...people think I am really good at listening and being there for them for months, years, whatever it takes, for them to work through their griefs about death. they don't realize that I am there for them, because I am Never, Never far away from my own Dead Ones. I spend much psychological time avoiding the huge holes left in my life, like avoiding land mines in a war zone... I just don't show it on the outside... ever again...
I never feel that I have permission to break stride. I feel that I have to be the woman who can make it through anything, anything that life throws at her....
There have been other losses that I have played-down in public, and sustained as heavy blows inside: mainly physical ones...only one person in my life knows that I survived thyroid cancer...I suck up around the back pain that has been always there to some degree or another since I was twelve years old...I once shocked a good friend by telling her that I had no idea what one comfortable day would feel like, as I had never had one, because of my back. I just don't talk about it...
I have a heart that has electrical problems. It may make it another twenty years. It may not. It sustained some death-defying months only a few years ago. Only a wonderful cardiac catheterization procedure, called an Ablation, saved me from dying...I have actually "almost died" from two anaphylactic allergic reactions in my life...once I almost drowned...Physical Losses. They take the stuffing out of me. they take Sex away from me. Sex being a goodly part about who I am. So I lose Sex during times of pain as well. and this last husband had to cope with that too, which wasn't fair to him...for which he was lost to me as well....
Then there's money losses...the losses of homes and material things...these have been so common in my life, that I have become relatively unattached to the material world...I have walked away, so many times, from all of my material "assets" in order to gain my own soul back. and once, to gain the full custody of my children. I have not regretted these losses at all. Still, they have left me relying entirely on my own self and upon my own work for all of my everyday needs. I have no debt, but I have few belongings of anything but sentimental worth, as I head into the last quarter of my lifetime...
Something happened in just these last few years...
For the first time in my life, I saw very little hope. The year had been full of heavy responsibilities and losses...nine deaths...a major move that led to severe back pain for seven months...care taking for a few months, during the pain, of my spouse...working at my teaching job full time while in pain...I was completely exhausted. My spouse was exhausted too, especially as his youngest daughter almost died of a massive strep infection during this same period. There was no relief in sight....I was beginning to give up...all I saw ahead was caring for my husband as he aged, until he would die. Or, of having pain for years and years, and maybe even burdening him more, or others... Then I would be too old to have anything left in life myself. And, too depleted, physically...
I decided to try to change, somehow...to approach life without this constant preoccupation with all the loses I had sustained over my whole adult life...I had to feel hope again....
Hope came in a way that I least expected. My First Love came back into my life again. He became more than a renewal of a sustaining friendship. He became the Hope at the bottom of Pandora's box. That is its own beautiful story. Still, it is a story of loss in itself...
Because I have become close to this man again, my husband divorced from me...Once again, I lost family, his family...some of our mutual friends, who polarized one way or the other...money...(It's so telling that money loss, especially for women, is so connected to losses of people through deaths, divorce...)...Once again, I faced loss...only, this time, I do not feel as alone...
This time, I am trying, every day, to confide more in my adult children...to talk with them as honestly as I can, about the losses I am sustaining, and about my relationship with this man who is my lifeline at this time. They are all welcoming to me, and listen, and love me so much. It's interesting though. They still expect me to be "fine", to be "strong". they are so used to my being capable and strong, that they cannot relate to any signs of weakness from me at all...that's what my years of standing alone in severe storms taught them: that Mom can take anything, and not buckle under....
I find myself letting my good friends know...and they too -unremarkable enough!- expect me to come through all of this "fine". What they cannot imagine, and I cannot tell them...
Is that I am finally relying on someone. I am finally depending on somebody. I am finally accepting the protection of a man. My First Love. I have given my need for emotional support to him. He has accepted the burden of me. In exchange, all I have to offer him is my love. my respect. my sustenance. my deep gratitude. my understanding and acceptance of him as he is, which is easy for me to do, with him... my my very self as a person.
Ironically...he was two thousand miles away and he was married to a good woman. he too may also be lost to me some day. He doesn't believe so, but I am less trusting than he... After many, many years of deprivation in his own life, he still has the courage to believe in a good future for the two of us... I believe we will always be close in our hearts. I simply do not trust fate. It will take a long time for me to really trust that we will have a future in the same place on the earth, in the same lifetime...I admire him so for wanting to be with me, after all I have told him about myself. I will have to wait and see. I have left this part of our path to him. I can't even imagine any more how something this good could happen for me. that I could finish the last decades of my life without being still all Alone inside. Loss has followed that closely on my every footstep....
Still, I am going forward as happily and confidently as I possibly can. This man has shown me his deep understanding and acceptance of me as I really am, without my having to be the one who feels I sustain the whole show by myself. Without me hiding so much of who I am... He's made me feel that I don't have to hide my vulnerabilities any more. I would give my life for him, for having made me feel that safe, that understood, that free to be my own self completely, without censure, without criticism.
You know, my second husband and my present husband have been very kind. They took care of me and I took care of them, for many years. It may have been my fault that I didn't share everything about who I am and what my true nature is and was...I will never know. I feared the loss that their criticism and censorship took in our every-day lives, without adding the pain I expected to feel if they rejected me more than that. I may have been wrong, though, about those perceptions...I'll never know, now....
I have felt, my whole adult life, alone inside...lost out here on this planet under the stars. In spite of so much good love and so many good times in my life...in spite of my many, many flaws and mistakes in relationships...
I swear to the stars above. I have never hurt another on purpose. I am so sad that my nature has seemed been so wrong, so unsettling, to some of those I have loved. They have discounted so many years of happiness and care from me...Tho it's only been a few of the many people I love and have loved in life, they have been key people, who were with me for a long time. In return for my rejection of them, after years of trying to compromise about differences and unmet needs, They have struck out at me hard. I have taken the responsibility and the blame. over and over and over.This is my greatest loss of all. the loss of respect from them for all I had been to them and for them. The years I had been so good with them and for them. Because I left them. this has been my greatest sorrow.
Loss is inevitable. It is so final. we are all so vulnerable to loss. For me, it has been worse than Death. I have faced Death before. It's not so bad...
But, to be lost out here in the stars...
lost out here in the stars....
that is the worst that life can bring...
and here I am...again
Bowed often...but never Broken...
Too Strong with Love -
Too Full of Love -
To ever be Broken...
WATER COME DOWN is poem at the edge where Water becomes Waterfall - Water falling - full of Life and Promises....
WATER COME DOWN
all this creation
is coming down
water
from a high, high
place
where I live
now
never
alone
because of
Love
so great
it cannot be held
by sky
by land
by soil
or
even
by blood
by water
there are loves
that pass
time
space
heaven
even
this inch of
hell
that come
bidden
and
unbidden
fate full
hap less
too full of
joy
to be
too close
to be
mere
comfort
too alive
for death
to mean
one single
thing
out of these
places
water comes down
carries Life
creates
all that Life
could ever be
all this creation
is coming down
water
from a high, high
place
where I live
now
never
alone
because of
Love
so great
it cannot be held
by sky
by land
by soil
or
even
by blood
by water
there are loves
that pass
time
space
heaven
even
this inch of
hell
that come
bidden
and
unbidden
fate full
hap less
too full of
joy
to be
too close
to be
mere
comfort
too alive
for death
to mean
one single
thing
out of these
places
water comes down
carries Life
creates
all that Life
could ever be
BETWEEN 'MY' MEN AND ME is gently confessional: it is my true 'take' on all of my 'Relationships' with Men in my lifetime so far...that's all this Is!....
BETWEEN 'MY' MEN AND ME
Lately, I am faced again with looking at how men and I interact with each 'other'... how we get along...in romance. in friendships. in brother and sister relationships. in marriage. in this life time - in times of life, when they are 'significant others'....I am most aware that I have never been at the end of any relationship with a man, where I have not been truly surprised by all the things I Did Not Know about this guy. and, how little they knew about me...and I don't really understand that.
Right up until the 'breakup' of any relationship, I always think, very seriously, that I have worked hard to understand the loved person, to be there for him, to be receptive and sexual and easy to be with. it's my nature to try to do that. I've never been perfect at that, especially as I never felt 100% 'committed' to any one man, but I thought it was what a woman, or, at least, what I should do to honor the relationship. to be present to the person while living with them. I really thought about that and tried. and, I usually thought I succeeded.
I also convinced myself, over time, that the guy I was with really understood me pretty well, because I was so honest with him, and told him so much about myself. I thought he had told me all about himself too, although I actually don't recall anyone ever saying that they had told me everything about themselves, except for my newly re-found 'first love' guy from my past, who I'm with now...never once did they say that. I just assumed that.
I truly thought that, if some one said that he really loved me, then he really was going to make the same effort I did with him... to get to know me and love me as I am. That was my first big mistake, and I made it over and over. There were many, many aspects of my personality and habits that all of my men, in some way or another, did not appreciate and like or want to understand. I learned, very quickly in life, actually, to simply supress those parts of my personality with my man at the time. to show only those 'parts' of who I was, or am still, with him. to make him 'happy', to create an aura of peace and love in my home. After all, I had many friends all the time, to share the parts of my life with that my men might not appreciate...
I figured there were lots of things I wasn't happy about with my mates of the time, and, I would have to be patient with them, so they were being patient with me...or something....I think, now, that I simply have never really understood other's personalities at all....that I have real blind spots, profound lack of foresight, insight, or hindsight, even!
As my guy, Den, has reflected to me, I wanted to always never be the one who would put the wedge in that would destroy the peace and good will in our home...this was my flaw, I think, that I would do too much for this "peace" I wanted at home. But, I don't know, even now, how I would have changed that, would have changed my self....
I've been 'accused' at times of being too permissive and appreciative of my men, not seeing them as they really are...that may be true. I knew all their faults, tho, just as I knew my father's, who I also appreciated very much. I have always strongly felt that too much is expected from decent men by women in our culture. that they want them to be more than human. that they fault men their flaws as human beings...maybe I'm too harsh and generalizing about women in this regard too...I'm not sure any more...
At any rate, there have been times, often, that I did not see the flaws in my men for whatever psychology was going on in them and in me. that I have felt badly when I found out about betrayals of theirs later....but, I can say, that I've taken the brunt of the hurt. accepted my responsibility in it. soon forgiven the person. eventually forgotten the pain. gone on to better and happier times. enjoyed all the other loves in my life while I recovered....with my Children, Grandchildren, Friends...gone on to love again....
If all that is wrong...if I've learned little from each encounter...then that is who I am....I cannot deny my own flawed humanity...have no desire to do so.....
What I do desire, with all my heart...is to continue my honest ways. to love fully no matter what the past has been. to make brave leaps of faith into the future...to experience life really fully...very fully....with all the feelings possible...all as completely as possible...with every inch of my being, of my soul....my spirit as a human and as a woman...and to love the man I am with that fully, that passionately....
I do desire, in these times, to live out the rest of my life with this one man. Denny Alan McCue. an insightful, creative, warm, loving, giving man who is flawed. just as I am. we are not being wonderful as we could be in this world. but we are being human. we are being true to this love. we are being very happy when we are together. we are having adventures together. we are solving problems together.
we are one, together...we have probably been one since the first day we saw eachother's faces. we always have that truth between us for fifty-some years....
the truth can never be destroyed. life can be built on it, as firmly as any thing human can be.
Between men and me, at least I have had that...the truth a
s I have known it. imperfectly. humanly. without blame. with joy, often. with pain, often. All of this has been a Good Life...
I am a human with no regrets. I've lived life as I thought was right and true at the time. truly, the best I could....
Between men and me, there has been love.
Between this one man and me, there is love.
and no regrets
at all....
Lately, I am faced again with looking at how men and I interact with each 'other'... how we get along...in romance. in friendships. in brother and sister relationships. in marriage. in this life time - in times of life, when they are 'significant others'....I am most aware that I have never been at the end of any relationship with a man, where I have not been truly surprised by all the things I Did Not Know about this guy. and, how little they knew about me...and I don't really understand that.
Right up until the 'breakup' of any relationship, I always think, very seriously, that I have worked hard to understand the loved person, to be there for him, to be receptive and sexual and easy to be with. it's my nature to try to do that. I've never been perfect at that, especially as I never felt 100% 'committed' to any one man, but I thought it was what a woman, or, at least, what I should do to honor the relationship. to be present to the person while living with them. I really thought about that and tried. and, I usually thought I succeeded.
I also convinced myself, over time, that the guy I was with really understood me pretty well, because I was so honest with him, and told him so much about myself. I thought he had told me all about himself too, although I actually don't recall anyone ever saying that they had told me everything about themselves, except for my newly re-found 'first love' guy from my past, who I'm with now...never once did they say that. I just assumed that.
I truly thought that, if some one said that he really loved me, then he really was going to make the same effort I did with him... to get to know me and love me as I am. That was my first big mistake, and I made it over and over. There were many, many aspects of my personality and habits that all of my men, in some way or another, did not appreciate and like or want to understand. I learned, very quickly in life, actually, to simply supress those parts of my personality with my man at the time. to show only those 'parts' of who I was, or am still, with him. to make him 'happy', to create an aura of peace and love in my home. After all, I had many friends all the time, to share the parts of my life with that my men might not appreciate...
I figured there were lots of things I wasn't happy about with my mates of the time, and, I would have to be patient with them, so they were being patient with me...or something....I think, now, that I simply have never really understood other's personalities at all....that I have real blind spots, profound lack of foresight, insight, or hindsight, even!
As my guy, Den, has reflected to me, I wanted to always never be the one who would put the wedge in that would destroy the peace and good will in our home...this was my flaw, I think, that I would do too much for this "peace" I wanted at home. But, I don't know, even now, how I would have changed that, would have changed my self....
I've been 'accused' at times of being too permissive and appreciative of my men, not seeing them as they really are...that may be true. I knew all their faults, tho, just as I knew my father's, who I also appreciated very much. I have always strongly felt that too much is expected from decent men by women in our culture. that they want them to be more than human. that they fault men their flaws as human beings...maybe I'm too harsh and generalizing about women in this regard too...I'm not sure any more...
At any rate, there have been times, often, that I did not see the flaws in my men for whatever psychology was going on in them and in me. that I have felt badly when I found out about betrayals of theirs later....but, I can say, that I've taken the brunt of the hurt. accepted my responsibility in it. soon forgiven the person. eventually forgotten the pain. gone on to better and happier times. enjoyed all the other loves in my life while I recovered....with my Children, Grandchildren, Friends...gone on to love again....
If all that is wrong...if I've learned little from each encounter...then that is who I am....I cannot deny my own flawed humanity...have no desire to do so.....
What I do desire, with all my heart...is to continue my honest ways. to love fully no matter what the past has been. to make brave leaps of faith into the future...to experience life really fully...very fully....with all the feelings possible...all as completely as possible...with every inch of my being, of my soul....my spirit as a human and as a woman...and to love the man I am with that fully, that passionately....
I do desire, in these times, to live out the rest of my life with this one man. Denny Alan McCue. an insightful, creative, warm, loving, giving man who is flawed. just as I am. we are not being wonderful as we could be in this world. but we are being human. we are being true to this love. we are being very happy when we are together. we are having adventures together. we are solving problems together.
we are one, together...we have probably been one since the first day we saw eachother's faces. we always have that truth between us for fifty-some years....
the truth can never be destroyed. life can be built on it, as firmly as any thing human can be.
Between men and me, at least I have had that...the truth a
s I have known it. imperfectly. humanly. without blame. with joy, often. with pain, often. All of this has been a Good Life...
I am a human with no regrets. I've lived life as I thought was right and true at the time. truly, the best I could....
Between men and me, there has been love.
Between this one man and me, there is love.
and no regrets
at all....
NO REGRETS is a partial List of the blessings of Life that a woman I know, well, has had...bless her, Life, as you always have...and bless every One she knows....
NO REGRETS
Things this woman had done in her adult years that she did not regret ever.
nor feel guilty about.
nor experienced shame for.
and will never:
here
in no order that makes any sense what-so-ever
without priority or thought or sequence of meaning:
1) having slept with over twenty men. most all more than once. because she loved sex so much her whole adult life - thought she'd just get that one out of the way...sorry to 'shock'....
2) not remembering some of their names - but caring about them all very much -
3) being totally honest when the other person didn't want her to be - and when they did want her to be -
4) being totally honest when the other person thought she was going to say something different than what she said -
5) not regretting choices about being with someone for a long long time - giving her all to that -
6) not regretting choices about leaving someone finally - leaving with as much dignity and kindness as she could -
7) being sad and very happy about love - the poignancy of love - the response-ability of love - the joys of love -
8) being sad about loss of love with men partners - especially of her 'First Love' -
9) having run-away from home at age twenty to marry some one her parents were obviously not going to like at all -
10) having loved him for long enough to have three great kids - the best-loving most creative and intense and honest kids in the world - whose work and care of humanity and brilliant brains and hearts are a gift to the planet and to the human race - loving their spouses and being loved by them right back -
11) having loved him for long enough to get close to three great step-kids - who are also wonderful folks in this world...for all the step-kids and their families she got to love through her marriages and relationships -
12) not having more than enough money all of her life - by choice and honesty of profession -
13) always having just enough money and very good jobs - one after another - all her life -
14) sometimes having a little more than enough money and wonderful jobs more often then most have in a lifetime -
15) spending any extra amount of money and time on great trips and family and stuff -
16) not worrying about money very much at all - not having many horrible debts in life -
17) not worrying about how much she owns - giving away stuff whenever she could - sometimes giving away the whole 'store' -
18) having served her fellow humans as an RN the best she could - especially the 'Psychiatric' patients and those in 'Home Care' -
19) having served young people the best she could as a teacher - especially the Health and Women's Lit and Contemporary Issues and the Geography classes and the Chorus and the Hikers and the Drama Productions -and the Compositions...the wonderful writers and artists still develping as kids -
20) for attempting to tell the truth in her writing craft - in her short stories - poetry - non-fiction work -
21) for not wanting anybody to proof-read her work and change one word -
22) for not caring if she's ever published just as long as she can write any way she wants - for having lots of people loving her stories and poems - being glad about that -
23) for having been married four times so far - and having two long-term live-in relationships besides - for having loved all six of those men very intensely and well as she could - for all the sex and the really good times for many many years with them - for all the love and attention and care they gave her -
24) for not being ashamed that three of those were divorces because she really couldn't live with them any more for her own reasons - for them accepting that as graciously as they all did -
25) for still being very sad and pretty private about how one of those marriages ended in a widowhood - not to be discussed with many -
26) for having never told one single secret that any one told her to keep quiet -
27) for having unwittingly told things that people assumed she would be private about -
28) for having been the trusted confidant of hundreds of people with no betrayal -
29) having left the Catholic Church at age nineteen - because it doesn't fit her adult values and life -
30) having much loved the Catholic Church rituals - especially the singing and the incense - for nineteen years -
31) for having found the best step-father ever for her children - for him still being in the family with his family -
32) for having so many completely diverse men and women friends who she adored and adores - and who loved/love her right back -
33) for letting people go when they needed to be let go - for mourning death and loss -
34) for letting people stay when they needed to stay - for giving all she could -
35) for letting people go when that was the honest thing to do - for holding on when it was the honest thing to do - with all the hundreds of wonderful lovers and friends and family given to her life -
36) for being able to sing all day and not caring if no one liked the singing or wanted to hear it - and in harmony - and the solos - the choruses - the Irish Groups - the Alpine Groups - the Folk Groups - the accompanists - all the wonderous singers around her -
37) wanting to play musical instruments and being equally horrible at every one attempted - for having great pianos -
38) wanting to ride horses and going far enough into it to jump a horse over a small fence a few times -
39) being a good endurance swimmer with really weird strokes all of her life - especially cold clear waters and wonderful rivers --
40) loving all rivers. period - and Canoes - and rocks - lots of rocks -
41) loving the ocean. period - and shells - lots of shells -
42) loving hills and mountains more than flat lands - for skis and snows - and sleds and ice skates -
43) hating hot, humid places with a passion - except Kawaii's Nepali Coast -and Hawaii's volcanoes -
44) loving the desert but never wanting to live there - loving all cacti - the colors of desert -
45) loving her father with all her daughterly heart - being 'just like your father' -
46) loving her mother as a duty - for adoring her mother until age thirteen -
47) enjoying most music indiscriminately - movies and TV too - and theater - and shows - for puttin on shows for others to perform -
48) loving most foods and drinks even though most of them could even make her really sick - especially Indian and Mexican foods - loving 'going out to eat' -
49) having had so many illnesses and physical problems that she can feel compassion for others - for always having the 'cure' handed to her -
50) feeling compassion for others even if she's irritated or mad at them - or they are irritated or mad at her -
51) adoring her children and grandchildren and great-grand kids and step grand-kids all all the children in her life with the same huge intensity most of the time -
52) for insisting on living life the way she wants to even if people get upset -
53) for being bright enough to live and think 'outside-of-the-box' as much as she can - for every creative urge she wanted to try - even sailing and hand gliding -
54) for wanting to and making 'leaps of faith' into the future as much as she can - whether any one approves or not - for them all turning out so incredibly 'well' -
55) not being private about her own life even when people get mad about that -
56) being able to take care of herself even when she's being mugged -
57) having lived a long good life so far in spite of lots of chances to die -
58) having really good luck most of her life - especially with good friends of all ages and walks of life -
59) being able to canoe well enough to love doing it for hour after hour without tiring much at all - rivers - did she mention rivers - and lakes too - lots of lakes - Canoes: love canoe-ing the way one loves a person -
60) for having learned a lot about Native American and Mexican American peoples over lots of years of kind contacts with dozens of people from these cultures and lots of other cultures besides -
61) for having survived every bad thing that ever happened to her with style and grace and amazingly good fortune -
62) having been able to dance and dance just as much as she wanted any genre of dance she wanted for as long as she wanted -
63) for having had amazing contacts with weavers and weaving and photos and photography for years and year - and fishing - wonderful spin-fishing for years -
64) for getting to become a good cook and yet have lots of years where others cooked for her - for having learned to preserve so many foods and drinks -
65) for having traveled all over the USA and parts of Canada and Mexico and through seven countries in Europe with very good luck as a traveler -
66) for loving art and having kids and grand kids who are artists - and having had a lot of times enjoying doing arts and crafts herself -
67) having old people as best friends and mentors all of her days - all of who were wonderful and crusty and wise - for having learned how to be a mentor for young people - having them seek her out for that for years and years -
68) for learning woodworking for over twenty years from a master who was her best friend - for making over two hundred pieces of furniture and stuff in his beautiful 40s wood-working shop by the stream -
69) for never ever having anything but absolutely great vacations every single year of her life - every single vacation -
70) for never having a day that she didn't find something beautiful in to hear or see or feel or taste or smell - every single day of her life -
71) for never having a day where she didn't have an ache or pain bad enough that she didn't get it about that all life is suffering and therefore enter joyfully into it -
72) for having the three best sisters in the whole world -
73) for having had several women friends who were exactly like sisters - really good sisters - and one of them her whole adult life - closer than a sister -
74) for having had men who were exactly like brothers for all of her life - who are still loyal to her and love her -
75) for loving reading and being very, very good at reading just about everything - especially poetry - for being a published poet -
76) being bad at math and not caring too much about that either - for not much needing math either -
77) for loving geography and folklore and history and lots of sciences -
78) for having had great teachers always - in every single school right up through all the good colleges she got to graduate from and attend -
79) having little but song and poetry in her head much of the day - thinking in song lyrics all day long - humming - always humming -
80) for great dreams almost every night of her life - hardly ever a nightmare -
81) being able to go to sleep at once and sleep heavy and well - for spooning with a loved man at this age in life -
82) for being intelligent enough without getting caught up in how smart she is -
83) for accidentally being able to appreciate almost every one just exactly as they are without wanting to change them all the time -
84) for not being able to hold a grudge for over a few minutes -
85) for not being able to be judgemental for more than a few minutes-
86) for rarely being angry at anyone - for letting it rip and roar when she has to -
87) for using anger usefully when it happens for her - for teaching some lesson that way -
88) for not being jealous or envious of people for any reason -
89) for being able to appreciate or understand all the sides to any story -
90) for being very patient with people by accident of personality -
91) for being able to be with people in great sorrow or pain and help by just being there - for listening pretty well -
92) having been present to assist at ten births - all living -
93) having been present at ten death beds - all peaceful -
94) having had time to say the right goodbye for most who died in her life -
95) for not having to have lived or been close to anyone who directly had to or did kill another person -
96) for having had times to be close to lots of wild and tame animals and birds and fish and insects who were all benign and beautiful in their own ways -
97) never worrying too much about how she 'looked' or 'looks' or her appearance much at all - looking pretty good most of her life - for being every size known to woman -
98) loving good jokes and funny times and getting to laugh a lot -
99) for believing in this good present and the possibly good future most times -
100) being a scuba diver for twenty-some dives and getting to visit under the ocean with all it's life - thirty-four times -
101) for having had the greatest childhood ever - being loved that much -
102) for having survived her teenage years well enough - being loved that much -
103) for years of gardening and farming and loving the soil and the rain - having been taught by master gardeners and farmers - for the flowers - the corn- the tomatoes all ruby in the sunset on the windowsill -
104) for having the best of 'First Loves' and getting him back again late in life to love fully again -
(105) for singer/songwriters/performers creating Songs for dozens of her Lyrics and performing them with joy, for us all -
(106) for Open Mics and Gigs with her True Love and Friends so often to such gracious responses -
(107) for all the old Ships she's seen and been aboard on bays and oceans and lakes -
(108) for winter skis and snowshoes and snow and sleds and beauty that never was too harsh -
(109) for Music every second of her life in her head and heart and thoughts and feelings -
(110) for all the tears. all the wonderful tears...all the smiles. all the wonderful smiles...all the years, all the wonderful years....
THE END OF THE BEGINNING...and for every thing she forgot to say, but truly wanted to say about this great, great, great Life of hers: thankful...thankful...thank-full....
Things this woman had done in her adult years that she did not regret ever.
nor feel guilty about.
nor experienced shame for.
and will never:
here
in no order that makes any sense what-so-ever
without priority or thought or sequence of meaning:
1) having slept with over twenty men. most all more than once. because she loved sex so much her whole adult life - thought she'd just get that one out of the way...sorry to 'shock'....
2) not remembering some of their names - but caring about them all very much -
3) being totally honest when the other person didn't want her to be - and when they did want her to be -
4) being totally honest when the other person thought she was going to say something different than what she said -
5) not regretting choices about being with someone for a long long time - giving her all to that -
6) not regretting choices about leaving someone finally - leaving with as much dignity and kindness as she could -
7) being sad and very happy about love - the poignancy of love - the response-ability of love - the joys of love -
8) being sad about loss of love with men partners - especially of her 'First Love' -
9) having run-away from home at age twenty to marry some one her parents were obviously not going to like at all -
10) having loved him for long enough to have three great kids - the best-loving most creative and intense and honest kids in the world - whose work and care of humanity and brilliant brains and hearts are a gift to the planet and to the human race - loving their spouses and being loved by them right back -
11) having loved him for long enough to get close to three great step-kids - who are also wonderful folks in this world...for all the step-kids and their families she got to love through her marriages and relationships -
12) not having more than enough money all of her life - by choice and honesty of profession -
13) always having just enough money and very good jobs - one after another - all her life -
14) sometimes having a little more than enough money and wonderful jobs more often then most have in a lifetime -
15) spending any extra amount of money and time on great trips and family and stuff -
16) not worrying about money very much at all - not having many horrible debts in life -
17) not worrying about how much she owns - giving away stuff whenever she could - sometimes giving away the whole 'store' -
18) having served her fellow humans as an RN the best she could - especially the 'Psychiatric' patients and those in 'Home Care' -
19) having served young people the best she could as a teacher - especially the Health and Women's Lit and Contemporary Issues and the Geography classes and the Chorus and the Hikers and the Drama Productions -and the Compositions...the wonderful writers and artists still develping as kids -
20) for attempting to tell the truth in her writing craft - in her short stories - poetry - non-fiction work -
21) for not wanting anybody to proof-read her work and change one word -
22) for not caring if she's ever published just as long as she can write any way she wants - for having lots of people loving her stories and poems - being glad about that -
23) for having been married four times so far - and having two long-term live-in relationships besides - for having loved all six of those men very intensely and well as she could - for all the sex and the really good times for many many years with them - for all the love and attention and care they gave her -
24) for not being ashamed that three of those were divorces because she really couldn't live with them any more for her own reasons - for them accepting that as graciously as they all did -
25) for still being very sad and pretty private about how one of those marriages ended in a widowhood - not to be discussed with many -
26) for having never told one single secret that any one told her to keep quiet -
27) for having unwittingly told things that people assumed she would be private about -
28) for having been the trusted confidant of hundreds of people with no betrayal -
29) having left the Catholic Church at age nineteen - because it doesn't fit her adult values and life -
30) having much loved the Catholic Church rituals - especially the singing and the incense - for nineteen years -
31) for having found the best step-father ever for her children - for him still being in the family with his family -
32) for having so many completely diverse men and women friends who she adored and adores - and who loved/love her right back -
33) for letting people go when they needed to be let go - for mourning death and loss -
34) for letting people stay when they needed to stay - for giving all she could -
35) for letting people go when that was the honest thing to do - for holding on when it was the honest thing to do - with all the hundreds of wonderful lovers and friends and family given to her life -
36) for being able to sing all day and not caring if no one liked the singing or wanted to hear it - and in harmony - and the solos - the choruses - the Irish Groups - the Alpine Groups - the Folk Groups - the accompanists - all the wonderous singers around her -
37) wanting to play musical instruments and being equally horrible at every one attempted - for having great pianos -
38) wanting to ride horses and going far enough into it to jump a horse over a small fence a few times -
39) being a good endurance swimmer with really weird strokes all of her life - especially cold clear waters and wonderful rivers --
40) loving all rivers. period - and Canoes - and rocks - lots of rocks -
41) loving the ocean. period - and shells - lots of shells -
42) loving hills and mountains more than flat lands - for skis and snows - and sleds and ice skates -
43) hating hot, humid places with a passion - except Kawaii's Nepali Coast -and Hawaii's volcanoes -
44) loving the desert but never wanting to live there - loving all cacti - the colors of desert -
45) loving her father with all her daughterly heart - being 'just like your father' -
46) loving her mother as a duty - for adoring her mother until age thirteen -
47) enjoying most music indiscriminately - movies and TV too - and theater - and shows - for puttin on shows for others to perform -
48) loving most foods and drinks even though most of them could even make her really sick - especially Indian and Mexican foods - loving 'going out to eat' -
49) having had so many illnesses and physical problems that she can feel compassion for others - for always having the 'cure' handed to her -
50) feeling compassion for others even if she's irritated or mad at them - or they are irritated or mad at her -
51) adoring her children and grandchildren and great-grand kids and step grand-kids all all the children in her life with the same huge intensity most of the time -
52) for insisting on living life the way she wants to even if people get upset -
53) for being bright enough to live and think 'outside-of-the-box' as much as she can - for every creative urge she wanted to try - even sailing and hand gliding -
54) for wanting to and making 'leaps of faith' into the future as much as she can - whether any one approves or not - for them all turning out so incredibly 'well' -
55) not being private about her own life even when people get mad about that -
56) being able to take care of herself even when she's being mugged -
57) having lived a long good life so far in spite of lots of chances to die -
58) having really good luck most of her life - especially with good friends of all ages and walks of life -
59) being able to canoe well enough to love doing it for hour after hour without tiring much at all - rivers - did she mention rivers - and lakes too - lots of lakes - Canoes: love canoe-ing the way one loves a person -
60) for having learned a lot about Native American and Mexican American peoples over lots of years of kind contacts with dozens of people from these cultures and lots of other cultures besides -
61) for having survived every bad thing that ever happened to her with style and grace and amazingly good fortune -
62) having been able to dance and dance just as much as she wanted any genre of dance she wanted for as long as she wanted -
63) for having had amazing contacts with weavers and weaving and photos and photography for years and year - and fishing - wonderful spin-fishing for years -
64) for getting to become a good cook and yet have lots of years where others cooked for her - for having learned to preserve so many foods and drinks -
65) for having traveled all over the USA and parts of Canada and Mexico and through seven countries in Europe with very good luck as a traveler -
66) for loving art and having kids and grand kids who are artists - and having had a lot of times enjoying doing arts and crafts herself -
67) having old people as best friends and mentors all of her days - all of who were wonderful and crusty and wise - for having learned how to be a mentor for young people - having them seek her out for that for years and years -
68) for learning woodworking for over twenty years from a master who was her best friend - for making over two hundred pieces of furniture and stuff in his beautiful 40s wood-working shop by the stream -
69) for never ever having anything but absolutely great vacations every single year of her life - every single vacation -
70) for never having a day that she didn't find something beautiful in to hear or see or feel or taste or smell - every single day of her life -
71) for never having a day where she didn't have an ache or pain bad enough that she didn't get it about that all life is suffering and therefore enter joyfully into it -
72) for having the three best sisters in the whole world -
73) for having had several women friends who were exactly like sisters - really good sisters - and one of them her whole adult life - closer than a sister -
74) for having had men who were exactly like brothers for all of her life - who are still loyal to her and love her -
75) for loving reading and being very, very good at reading just about everything - especially poetry - for being a published poet -
76) being bad at math and not caring too much about that either - for not much needing math either -
77) for loving geography and folklore and history and lots of sciences -
78) for having had great teachers always - in every single school right up through all the good colleges she got to graduate from and attend -
79) having little but song and poetry in her head much of the day - thinking in song lyrics all day long - humming - always humming -
80) for great dreams almost every night of her life - hardly ever a nightmare -
81) being able to go to sleep at once and sleep heavy and well - for spooning with a loved man at this age in life -
82) for being intelligent enough without getting caught up in how smart she is -
83) for accidentally being able to appreciate almost every one just exactly as they are without wanting to change them all the time -
84) for not being able to hold a grudge for over a few minutes -
85) for not being able to be judgemental for more than a few minutes-
86) for rarely being angry at anyone - for letting it rip and roar when she has to -
87) for using anger usefully when it happens for her - for teaching some lesson that way -
88) for not being jealous or envious of people for any reason -
89) for being able to appreciate or understand all the sides to any story -
90) for being very patient with people by accident of personality -
91) for being able to be with people in great sorrow or pain and help by just being there - for listening pretty well -
92) having been present to assist at ten births - all living -
93) having been present at ten death beds - all peaceful -
94) having had time to say the right goodbye for most who died in her life -
95) for not having to have lived or been close to anyone who directly had to or did kill another person -
96) for having had times to be close to lots of wild and tame animals and birds and fish and insects who were all benign and beautiful in their own ways -
97) never worrying too much about how she 'looked' or 'looks' or her appearance much at all - looking pretty good most of her life - for being every size known to woman -
98) loving good jokes and funny times and getting to laugh a lot -
99) for believing in this good present and the possibly good future most times -
100) being a scuba diver for twenty-some dives and getting to visit under the ocean with all it's life - thirty-four times -
101) for having had the greatest childhood ever - being loved that much -
102) for having survived her teenage years well enough - being loved that much -
103) for years of gardening and farming and loving the soil and the rain - having been taught by master gardeners and farmers - for the flowers - the corn- the tomatoes all ruby in the sunset on the windowsill -
104) for having the best of 'First Loves' and getting him back again late in life to love fully again -
(105) for singer/songwriters/performers creating Songs for dozens of her Lyrics and performing them with joy, for us all -
(106) for Open Mics and Gigs with her True Love and Friends so often to such gracious responses -
(107) for all the old Ships she's seen and been aboard on bays and oceans and lakes -
(108) for winter skis and snowshoes and snow and sleds and beauty that never was too harsh -
(109) for Music every second of her life in her head and heart and thoughts and feelings -
(110) for all the tears. all the wonderful tears...all the smiles. all the wonderful smiles...all the years, all the wonderful years....
THE END OF THE BEGINNING...and for every thing she forgot to say, but truly wanted to say about this great, great, great Life of hers: thankful...thankful...thank-full....
SAIL AWAY is a simple little lyrics about escaping...went out of the Golden Gate into the Pacific today on a ship...thought about what it could mean to leave 'it' all behind me...if I was a person who wanted to do That....
SAIL AWAY
Why don't we just
Sail away
Somewheres south of here
Far away
Where we won't even be
That away
From our selves so much as just
Far away
Sail away
I so want to just
Sail away
Tho I don't even have
Any way
To make money to think I can
Get away
From all that I know that I
Need to do each day
Sail away
Such a dumb thing to say
Sail away
CHORUS
Like some kid
Like some stupid run-away
I'm too old
Not to be serious now
Can't you be
Like some damn rock for me
Can't you be
Some one
I can hold on to
So I won't
Sail away
From this reality I can't make
Go away
Pain is the word I must say
Go away
All I want is to
Sail away
Don't even know how to
Sail away
Don't even know how to
Sail away
Can't even begin to
Sail away
Sail away
Why don't we just
Sail away
Somewheres south of here
Far away
Where we won't even be
That away
From our selves so much as just
Far away
Sail away
I so want to just
Sail away
Tho I don't even have
Any way
To make money to think I can
Get away
From all that I know that I
Need to do each day
Sail away
Such a dumb thing to say
Sail away
CHORUS
Like some kid
Like some stupid run-away
I'm too old
Not to be serious now
Can't you be
Like some damn rock for me
Can't you be
Some one
I can hold on to
So I won't
Sail away
From this reality I can't make
Go away
Pain is the word I must say
Go away
All I want is to
Sail away
Don't even know how to
Sail away
Don't even know how to
Sail away
Can't even begin to
Sail away
Sail away
5/26/12
BARCELONA HOME is a simple little vignette about one small family in Barcelona, Spain...not so long ago....
BARCELONA HOME
Barcelona is a beautiful city...at least the areas that the traveler sees....all white and pastels and architecturally as fanciful as can be...due to Gaudi and other visionaries and artists through hundreds of years, who created the idea of this city as if they were painting it on a canvas...
while we were there for a few days, I felt at home in the oddest way, as if I had lived in this colorful, delightful play set before, in some more graceful, intelligent time and life....
Somewhere in this city of dreams, lived a couple named Maita and Pere, and their son Mark...
we were going to have dinner with them one night...
they're friends of my good friend Barbara, from the time they lived in the Chicago area...
I had met them in the Dordogne region of France, in the villa Barbara had rented in the countryside... they had driven over the Pyrenees to vacation with us. I recalled them as a delightful couple and child. fun. good-hearted. bright. (both university professors in Barcelona). exotic, in an oddly down-to-earth style.
Maita works as a counsellor, as well. She, I recalled, had a good ear for listening. her questions were always kind, insightful. Her reflections on life were always wry, original, full of life and compassion...she is a small, wiry, ordinary-looking person, whose smile makes her instantly beautiful...
Pere I remembered as tall. professorial - until he too smiled! then, he looked like his son. like a boy out to see the castles on a vacation across the mountains into France. Also, kind. good to his family...
both were great cooks as well!
Mark. sweet. small. good imagination. shy. he could play well without one toy at all...
What we didn't know, was that their apartment flat was right around the corner from our hotel!....
had we known, I would have been over there day after day...because our dinner with them was so kind and happy. I fell in love with their family entirely by the end of the evening!
It was not the food, though it was simple and delicious and nourishing and served in many leisurely courses with rich conversation as its best sauce!
It was not even the conversation itself, wonderful though it was.
It was the spirit of this family....
they owned very little, and yet had a full life of ideas. fun. music. books. friends. meals shared. careful reflections about life and...actually...a philosophy of life. a way of looking at the world. refreshing. new, for me. so, even exciting!
And Mark! his sweet room. his few precious toys. the little gift we brought for him: so appreciative and gracious in his little boy way!
It's hard to explain...
for me, these three were among the best that the cultures of continental Europe give the world...they were, in truth:
European Old World peoples, in the best imagination of that phrase...
Now, they have even added a little adopted daughter from China to their gracious family....
Of all the times I "felt at home" in Europe, and there were many that offered such a relief to us strangers in strange lands, I was most comfortable in this little home in this magic city.
Maita and Pere and Mark made a real home for us one evening in Barcelona.
for that, they deserve my affection and loyal friendship for life.
And, they have that.
In return, I have a Home to go to...
in Barcelona!....
WRITING SINEWS HOLDING LIFE is about my craft of writing...a 'career' that will take me home as Nursing and Teaching could never do...because it is my own self speaking my only singualr words....
WRITING SINEWS HOLDING LIFE
Reading came first. I was reading by age four, and I remember it. My mom was delighted with me, and my dad was proud of me. Precocious children, adaptive little blond cuties like I was, have their parent's love. I associated Reading with everything good in life quite early on. Writing was a mixed bag. I must have been enjoying learning to write, until somewhere in second grade. I remember a tall, thin, black-garbed nun going up and down our aisles of desks, checking our hand-writing exercises. She had a ruler in her hand. Two seats ahead of me, a little boy was writing using his left hand. She hit his hand, with a hard snap, with the ruler. As he cried quietly, she took the pencil from that left hand and wound his right hand around it. "You write with your Right Hand.", she commanded. I saw this. I transferred my pencil from my left hand to my right hand. The nun passed me by....
I did not know why I could write with the right hand, too. it turns out that I was ambidextrous all along.So was my sister....I have no idea why I was writing first with my left hand. But I never looked back. It's interesting. my art never got better after second grade...I'm not joking here! It's true! I have always figured the art had been a left-handed thing. When I transferred to the right, it "fixed", developmentally. That's probably scientifically bogus, but it feels right! Anyway, for some reason, after second grade I really began to WRITE, as in Creative Writing!
It started with stories...I told "stories to entertain my friends, to entertain my self! I wrote story after story in class too, to fill in the many boring minutes when the lessons were going too slowly for me. All except for math. I really concentrated during math. Unfortunately, focusing on math didn't help me much. I really didn't get it. Anyway, write, write, tell stories, tell stories...the third-grade nun was a little, sharp-tongued fat nun. She did not like me much. I did not like her much. She told my mom that I told lies, that I was a lier. My mom defended me mightily! "Kathy Doesn't Lie! She never lies. She just tells stories!"...I've never forgotten that wonderful defense! My hero! Mom...I kept on writing....
By eighth grade, I was honored with the Creative Writing Pin for Graduation, of course. I had it fixed in my romantic, idealistic young head: I Would Be A Writer!
High School...there were good writers in high school, Mount St. Mary on the Fox River, Catholic School for College-bound young ladies. But, of course, it was rare for one to win an award or contest that I didn't capture first place in, handily. Only Pamela Hall, my second "Best Friend" ever beat me to an award...in a Home Economics Essay Contest! And she was less domestic than I! which was saying something!
I won the Four Years of Excellence in Creative Writing Award for Graduation tho...I still have the little gold pin....
Came Nursing School...not Northwestern, where I had a Creative Writing scholarship...it was too small...my parents had no money for a university like that. I had a full scholarship to the Diploma Nursing School. I decided to save money when I was an RN, and go back to school to learn the writing craft...that didn't happen for a long time...
I married into a three-child relationship, and had three children all in a row besides...I have to say: I Did Not Write For Years. Except for Poetry...
Here and there, I wrote poems and typed them and kept them...I still have the folder... Several times in my early twenties, I had been published, in American Girl Magazine and in Seventeen Magazine. A few good poems. I took the poems to a Writing Group, while I lived on the Farm in Wisconsin.
The group was sponsored by August Derleth, the Poet Laurette of Wisconsin, at the University at the time. It opened doors and windows and vistas for me...Writers! The University of Wisconsin!...Then, he published two of my poems in an Anthology Of New Poets From Out Of Wisconsin! I was so thrilled! He published one of my husband's at that time, also. It was exciting! I still have a copy of that book on my bookshelf.
I wrote poems and journals for years. No time to write more! So many kids to raise! So many Nursing Jobs! So many relationships! So many residence moves! Finished a BA in Public Health Administration! Founded a Home Care Agency! Got a Public Health Certificate! Gardening! Wood working! Swimming! Singing! Scuba-diving! I was a very, very busy Person...no time, inclination, or energy to Write...except, of course, journal after journal of Poetry!
Then came 90s...The 'Kids' had all left the nest...for that matter, I had left the "nest"! My second husband and I had a divorce...my son and his girlfriend had moved out...roommates had moved out...my second daughter and my now ex-husband were moving in...I moved in with my new boyfriend, an artist and a dancer, a creative and very, very neurotic soul: it was time for me to learn Everything, to do Everything, to learn Everything that I had ever, ever wanted to learn! As far as writing was going, I had made some 'stabs' at nonfiction...none had worked out so far...
I am not sure why I was excited about the idea of nonfiction...perhaps it's because my life was so incredibly busy, so outrageously full, that I had no fantasy world to relate to! I read fiction, and disappeared into novels like vacation islands in a huge sea! I needed Escape badly! My world was way too real! Ideas for fiction, though, were nowhere inside of me...I was starting to live my dreams!
I was canoeing. weaving. dancing. ocean diving. horseback riding. singing. woodworking. taking two hundred hours of university classes towards being a School Teacher. Beginning my first teaching job. My personal fictions were coming true at last! So, for Writing, I turned to Non-Fiction! What was more exciting that the Real World?
I had amazing Luck and amazing Productivity and amazing Lack of Success! Here is a Little List of the Projects I attempted over the next ten years:
1) Interviews with well-known Weavers in the San Francisco East Bay Area, with photographs by a friend 'in' on the project...all Interviews and Introduction completed over a six month period; Publishers Proposal begun; First Chapter begun...Aborted, as the Weavers decided to ban together and write their own book...Final Outcome: No Book was ever written....
2) Interviews with the 'subject'; Classes with her in The Jewish Underworld and Jewish Prostitution in New York in the early 1900s; towards a book about one of her Ancestresses in New York, a red-headed Jewess involved in this Underworld: towards a book to be entitled "Five Times The Price"...about eight months of work...Aborted, as the 'subject' decided she and her family would be too embarrassed to reveal this woman's past on their family tree!...Final Outcome: No Book was ever written....
3) Attempt Number Three! This project took a decade...and, in many ways, is still not 'over'....
I met A.H. in a weaving class, in Berkeley. She was working on the large loom, making a huge project. I was designing and building a Navaho Loom, including making all the combs and shuttles and beaters by hand. I was using only hand-spun wool, and trying to make as close-to-a-Navaho Rug as I could...the Swedish Instructor and I were working together on it...AH was a gregarious soul, and so am I, so we soon became "friends". I even helped her quite a bit with her pregnancy and after the birth of her half-Navajo son, for which she gave me a small Navaho rug. We became closer friends. Soon, she was telling me all of the wonderful stories about her involvement with Navaho elders on the Reservation lands close to the Hopi Lands of the Southwest that I knew well....
Her work with the Weaving Women was wonderful to hear about! I soon knew all the details of the political, economic, religious, and personal lives of these remarkable families. They were all resisting government removal of their families off Joint-Use Lands of the Big Mountain Region, that the Hopi were reclaiming. AH sold their rugs so that they could keep resisting the moves into urban areas, where they were losing their culture, their health, and even their lives, as elders who knew only the ways of raising sheep and weaving...
Here was the Story Of Stories that I had been waiting for!
It was not long before AH and I were writing, and meeting, and talking, and revising, and working with audio and video tapes, and interviewing all the people involved in both the Big Mountain Support Group and in the Weaving For Freedom Cooperative. I was meeting movers and shakers in the drama of protecting and advocating for the remarkable resistance to Navajo traditional changes, of these remarkable women! I even went out to the Reservation on a food-run with AH and her supporters, an exciting adventure! That story, "The Hogan", gives a flavor of the experience of working side-by-side with AH...caught up in her amazing energy, persistence, and singular devotion to these women and their agendas! I wrote, and wrote, and wrote, and wrote, while she sent me paper after paper, tape after tape...met, time after time....
Then, we were ready for an Agent! We had completed the shells and remarks for all the chapters of her "Book". We had completed the Publishers Letter and Proposal. We were ready! AH had actually made contact with a well-known Television Personality, who's Staff Person was going to help us to find an Agent! We were growing excited and were feeling Great! Who knows where this "Book" would go in the great wide world? The entire Story had the makings of a Movie! AH even had a contact or two interested in that idea, from down-state...
Then she died. She was killed in a car accident, we heard, on the Reservation. The shock was terrible to all the people who knew her. She was only forty-five. At her Memorial, people asked me about the "Book". When I told them it had a copyright on it already, they lost interest at once. Her ex-husband reminded me that her oldest son had inherited her "Intellectual Property". I said I'd be glad to return it...The other major 'subject' in the "Book", the Navaho Elder who was her best friend and contact for almost twenty years, died within a month of her death. So, that was that.
Over the next, well, almost a decade, I tried and tried to have her son come and pick up all of her materials...all in a huge basket in my sister's attic...As I had promised her, I tried to interest people who could carry her project to fruition, dozens of contacts...all failed. It has been as if her Story and her "Book" never existed...I have been in an odd position about this, for a long, long time! With no real end in sight. Her son finally came for her materials...still: no 'Book' or documentary: No Anything At All....
And, with that, my attempts at becoming a Non-Fiction Writer Of Note - or even Not-Of-Note! - ended...of course, the Poetry of course, went on and on and on and on...all personal. some of it, good-enough. some of it, pretty fine!....
So, the 2000s...the last ten years have been very dry indeed. Struggles with severe health problems for me and for my third marriage have been over-whelming! Journal Entries and Poems have revealed nothing but Pathos, Disaster, and Endless Effort to transcend all that and live a happy life anyway! Deaths. Births. Work. Sickness. Injury. Surgeries. Moves. Money Losses. Not great Writing Fodder, really...keeping happy enough in the faces of many, many, many storms became my Life's Work. Caretaking and Working. Pain. Caretaking. working. pain...not much to write about, all and all...poems, of course...the life blood goes on.....
Then came a Muse... A person never knows when everything will change. One day a person has nothing to write. the next, she is writing every thing, down into her very sinews, bringing out all the life there is inside... my Muse is a Child from my own Child-time...we are an older man and an older woman now, but the Children in us both are whispering to me, writing all these stories...by the dozens, and more to come!
I am Loving Writing again! The gift this Man has opened for me is HUGE. The Writing is Opening my Life and Holding my Life all at once! So far, most is all Memoir. but it is working the sinews of my very soul and the words are spilling, and running, and swinging, and dancing across each page! There are short stories with characters I am amazed to be meeting!
Then there are the Lyrics...dozens and dozens of Lyrics! Over twenty of them have been crafted into Song by skilled Song Writers/Performers in the Bay Area...most of them are being sung!...they are, of course, still Poems...I am always writing Poems!....
Who knows where all this writing will lead....it is a beginning of some Path for which I have no maps, no compass. no direction known...I am even 'working' part-time now: all to WRITE.
Words Hold Life.
Writing is the Sinews that moves the Life.
It is, for me, another rich Kind of Loving...
I will Write now
all my days....
Reading came first. I was reading by age four, and I remember it. My mom was delighted with me, and my dad was proud of me. Precocious children, adaptive little blond cuties like I was, have their parent's love. I associated Reading with everything good in life quite early on. Writing was a mixed bag. I must have been enjoying learning to write, until somewhere in second grade. I remember a tall, thin, black-garbed nun going up and down our aisles of desks, checking our hand-writing exercises. She had a ruler in her hand. Two seats ahead of me, a little boy was writing using his left hand. She hit his hand, with a hard snap, with the ruler. As he cried quietly, she took the pencil from that left hand and wound his right hand around it. "You write with your Right Hand.", she commanded. I saw this. I transferred my pencil from my left hand to my right hand. The nun passed me by....
I did not know why I could write with the right hand, too. it turns out that I was ambidextrous all along.So was my sister....I have no idea why I was writing first with my left hand. But I never looked back. It's interesting. my art never got better after second grade...I'm not joking here! It's true! I have always figured the art had been a left-handed thing. When I transferred to the right, it "fixed", developmentally. That's probably scientifically bogus, but it feels right! Anyway, for some reason, after second grade I really began to WRITE, as in Creative Writing!
It started with stories...I told "stories to entertain my friends, to entertain my self! I wrote story after story in class too, to fill in the many boring minutes when the lessons were going too slowly for me. All except for math. I really concentrated during math. Unfortunately, focusing on math didn't help me much. I really didn't get it. Anyway, write, write, tell stories, tell stories...the third-grade nun was a little, sharp-tongued fat nun. She did not like me much. I did not like her much. She told my mom that I told lies, that I was a lier. My mom defended me mightily! "Kathy Doesn't Lie! She never lies. She just tells stories!"...I've never forgotten that wonderful defense! My hero! Mom...I kept on writing....
By eighth grade, I was honored with the Creative Writing Pin for Graduation, of course. I had it fixed in my romantic, idealistic young head: I Would Be A Writer!
High School...there were good writers in high school, Mount St. Mary on the Fox River, Catholic School for College-bound young ladies. But, of course, it was rare for one to win an award or contest that I didn't capture first place in, handily. Only Pamela Hall, my second "Best Friend" ever beat me to an award...in a Home Economics Essay Contest! And she was less domestic than I! which was saying something!
I won the Four Years of Excellence in Creative Writing Award for Graduation tho...I still have the little gold pin....
Came Nursing School...not Northwestern, where I had a Creative Writing scholarship...it was too small...my parents had no money for a university like that. I had a full scholarship to the Diploma Nursing School. I decided to save money when I was an RN, and go back to school to learn the writing craft...that didn't happen for a long time...
I married into a three-child relationship, and had three children all in a row besides...I have to say: I Did Not Write For Years. Except for Poetry...
Here and there, I wrote poems and typed them and kept them...I still have the folder... Several times in my early twenties, I had been published, in American Girl Magazine and in Seventeen Magazine. A few good poems. I took the poems to a Writing Group, while I lived on the Farm in Wisconsin.
The group was sponsored by August Derleth, the Poet Laurette of Wisconsin, at the University at the time. It opened doors and windows and vistas for me...Writers! The University of Wisconsin!...Then, he published two of my poems in an Anthology Of New Poets From Out Of Wisconsin! I was so thrilled! He published one of my husband's at that time, also. It was exciting! I still have a copy of that book on my bookshelf.
I wrote poems and journals for years. No time to write more! So many kids to raise! So many Nursing Jobs! So many relationships! So many residence moves! Finished a BA in Public Health Administration! Founded a Home Care Agency! Got a Public Health Certificate! Gardening! Wood working! Swimming! Singing! Scuba-diving! I was a very, very busy Person...no time, inclination, or energy to Write...except, of course, journal after journal of Poetry!
Then came 90s...The 'Kids' had all left the nest...for that matter, I had left the "nest"! My second husband and I had a divorce...my son and his girlfriend had moved out...roommates had moved out...my second daughter and my now ex-husband were moving in...I moved in with my new boyfriend, an artist and a dancer, a creative and very, very neurotic soul: it was time for me to learn Everything, to do Everything, to learn Everything that I had ever, ever wanted to learn! As far as writing was going, I had made some 'stabs' at nonfiction...none had worked out so far...
I am not sure why I was excited about the idea of nonfiction...perhaps it's because my life was so incredibly busy, so outrageously full, that I had no fantasy world to relate to! I read fiction, and disappeared into novels like vacation islands in a huge sea! I needed Escape badly! My world was way too real! Ideas for fiction, though, were nowhere inside of me...I was starting to live my dreams!
I was canoeing. weaving. dancing. ocean diving. horseback riding. singing. woodworking. taking two hundred hours of university classes towards being a School Teacher. Beginning my first teaching job. My personal fictions were coming true at last! So, for Writing, I turned to Non-Fiction! What was more exciting that the Real World?
I had amazing Luck and amazing Productivity and amazing Lack of Success! Here is a Little List of the Projects I attempted over the next ten years:
1) Interviews with well-known Weavers in the San Francisco East Bay Area, with photographs by a friend 'in' on the project...all Interviews and Introduction completed over a six month period; Publishers Proposal begun; First Chapter begun...Aborted, as the Weavers decided to ban together and write their own book...Final Outcome: No Book was ever written....
2) Interviews with the 'subject'; Classes with her in The Jewish Underworld and Jewish Prostitution in New York in the early 1900s; towards a book about one of her Ancestresses in New York, a red-headed Jewess involved in this Underworld: towards a book to be entitled "Five Times The Price"...about eight months of work...Aborted, as the 'subject' decided she and her family would be too embarrassed to reveal this woman's past on their family tree!...Final Outcome: No Book was ever written....
3) Attempt Number Three! This project took a decade...and, in many ways, is still not 'over'....
I met A.H. in a weaving class, in Berkeley. She was working on the large loom, making a huge project. I was designing and building a Navaho Loom, including making all the combs and shuttles and beaters by hand. I was using only hand-spun wool, and trying to make as close-to-a-Navaho Rug as I could...the Swedish Instructor and I were working together on it...AH was a gregarious soul, and so am I, so we soon became "friends". I even helped her quite a bit with her pregnancy and after the birth of her half-Navajo son, for which she gave me a small Navaho rug. We became closer friends. Soon, she was telling me all of the wonderful stories about her involvement with Navaho elders on the Reservation lands close to the Hopi Lands of the Southwest that I knew well....
Her work with the Weaving Women was wonderful to hear about! I soon knew all the details of the political, economic, religious, and personal lives of these remarkable families. They were all resisting government removal of their families off Joint-Use Lands of the Big Mountain Region, that the Hopi were reclaiming. AH sold their rugs so that they could keep resisting the moves into urban areas, where they were losing their culture, their health, and even their lives, as elders who knew only the ways of raising sheep and weaving...
Here was the Story Of Stories that I had been waiting for!
It was not long before AH and I were writing, and meeting, and talking, and revising, and working with audio and video tapes, and interviewing all the people involved in both the Big Mountain Support Group and in the Weaving For Freedom Cooperative. I was meeting movers and shakers in the drama of protecting and advocating for the remarkable resistance to Navajo traditional changes, of these remarkable women! I even went out to the Reservation on a food-run with AH and her supporters, an exciting adventure! That story, "The Hogan", gives a flavor of the experience of working side-by-side with AH...caught up in her amazing energy, persistence, and singular devotion to these women and their agendas! I wrote, and wrote, and wrote, and wrote, while she sent me paper after paper, tape after tape...met, time after time....
Then, we were ready for an Agent! We had completed the shells and remarks for all the chapters of her "Book". We had completed the Publishers Letter and Proposal. We were ready! AH had actually made contact with a well-known Television Personality, who's Staff Person was going to help us to find an Agent! We were growing excited and were feeling Great! Who knows where this "Book" would go in the great wide world? The entire Story had the makings of a Movie! AH even had a contact or two interested in that idea, from down-state...
Then she died. She was killed in a car accident, we heard, on the Reservation. The shock was terrible to all the people who knew her. She was only forty-five. At her Memorial, people asked me about the "Book". When I told them it had a copyright on it already, they lost interest at once. Her ex-husband reminded me that her oldest son had inherited her "Intellectual Property". I said I'd be glad to return it...The other major 'subject' in the "Book", the Navaho Elder who was her best friend and contact for almost twenty years, died within a month of her death. So, that was that.
Over the next, well, almost a decade, I tried and tried to have her son come and pick up all of her materials...all in a huge basket in my sister's attic...As I had promised her, I tried to interest people who could carry her project to fruition, dozens of contacts...all failed. It has been as if her Story and her "Book" never existed...I have been in an odd position about this, for a long, long time! With no real end in sight. Her son finally came for her materials...still: no 'Book' or documentary: No Anything At All....
And, with that, my attempts at becoming a Non-Fiction Writer Of Note - or even Not-Of-Note! - ended...of course, the Poetry of course, went on and on and on and on...all personal. some of it, good-enough. some of it, pretty fine!....
So, the 2000s...the last ten years have been very dry indeed. Struggles with severe health problems for me and for my third marriage have been over-whelming! Journal Entries and Poems have revealed nothing but Pathos, Disaster, and Endless Effort to transcend all that and live a happy life anyway! Deaths. Births. Work. Sickness. Injury. Surgeries. Moves. Money Losses. Not great Writing Fodder, really...keeping happy enough in the faces of many, many, many storms became my Life's Work. Caretaking and Working. Pain. Caretaking. working. pain...not much to write about, all and all...poems, of course...the life blood goes on.....
Then came a Muse... A person never knows when everything will change. One day a person has nothing to write. the next, she is writing every thing, down into her very sinews, bringing out all the life there is inside... my Muse is a Child from my own Child-time...we are an older man and an older woman now, but the Children in us both are whispering to me, writing all these stories...by the dozens, and more to come!
I am Loving Writing again! The gift this Man has opened for me is HUGE. The Writing is Opening my Life and Holding my Life all at once! So far, most is all Memoir. but it is working the sinews of my very soul and the words are spilling, and running, and swinging, and dancing across each page! There are short stories with characters I am amazed to be meeting!
Then there are the Lyrics...dozens and dozens of Lyrics! Over twenty of them have been crafted into Song by skilled Song Writers/Performers in the Bay Area...most of them are being sung!...they are, of course, still Poems...I am always writing Poems!....
Who knows where all this writing will lead....it is a beginning of some Path for which I have no maps, no compass. no direction known...I am even 'working' part-time now: all to WRITE.
Words Hold Life.
Writing is the Sinews that moves the Life.
It is, for me, another rich Kind of Loving...
I will Write now
all my days....
AS FULL FOR YOU is a poem about moon, june, spoon and so on...shine on, harvest...you catch the drift!....
AS FULL FOR YOU
Dear Child of my own Childhood
Dear One of my night
This Moon shines as much on me
as full for me
as for you
You are silver from Moon
and cannot sleep
You wait in wonder
for kisses that cannot come
Oceans could not separate us
Land does
Old Love does
The moon waits for us
to feel the rhythm of
the tides
it is pulling tugging
at our very hearts
Do not deny the moon
be aware that you have not
the soul the moon has
has had
for thousands of years
more than you will
ever have
what can you know
that the moon has not known
what can you illuminate
that the moon has not
shone upon without
shame without
guile
Give me your hand
I have the moon
I will give it to you
to have and to hold
from this night forward
all its crescents
all its round and smooth
all its reflection
of the gold
of a thousand
suns
do not be afraid
of all this heat
this space
we twirl in
people like us two
beloved children
of this Moon
Dear Child of my own Childhood
Dear One of my night
This Moon shines as much on me
as full for me
as for you
You are silver from Moon
and cannot sleep
You wait in wonder
for kisses that cannot come
Oceans could not separate us
Land does
Old Love does
The moon waits for us
to feel the rhythm of
the tides
it is pulling tugging
at our very hearts
Do not deny the moon
be aware that you have not
the soul the moon has
has had
for thousands of years
more than you will
ever have
what can you know
that the moon has not known
what can you illuminate
that the moon has not
shone upon without
shame without
guile
Give me your hand
I have the moon
I will give it to you
to have and to hold
from this night forward
all its crescents
all its round and smooth
all its reflection
of the gold
of a thousand
suns
do not be afraid
of all this heat
this space
we twirl in
people like us two
beloved children
of this Moon
THE JOKE ON THE BRIDGE is about being young and having fun at any age and being old at the other end...still funny, after all these years....
THE JOKE ON THE BRIDGE
when we were very young people, in our teens, you would clown around. people loved you for that. the other kids in your high school and in mine found you delightful and funny. charming, really....
you would charm us with your funny faces and with your slapstick and your surprises - your twists of fate that would break us all into pieces of laughter. your excess of fun. it went with your music. you were full of music. it was what you did from morning to night. you made fun. you made music. I would thrill with your music. I would laugh with your jokes. you would laugh first. you found your self very funny..."I crack myself up". you have always said that. it's true. you crack my self up too. you are full of joy and full of music. you were also full of love. you have always been full of love. so love. music. joy. this is who you are. you're one of a kind. a person so complete with sense of self. you can survive deprivations of music. somehow. not well. but somehow. you can survive deprivations of love. very poorly. but somehow. but you cannot live without the fun. the spirit of joy in you. when you put all three together: the joy. the music. the love: you have you: total.
I would not - I could never put you down in any way. not for the music. not for the love. not for the joy. you are all a man should be - for me. from you strengths come your weaknesses of course. you have so much music within you. it is hard for you to accept mediocrity in music in any way. intolerant of the imperfect in music. there can be so much mediocre in music... and, you have turned at times to sex just for entertainment. because sex with love was so rare in your life...
but you cannot live without the fun - and you haven't. you've looked for it in everything around you. you have found the either/or of the politics of life. find it hard to find the machinations of people in power funny at all. if you ever did. it is harder for you to see your powerlessness in the face of these dividing powerful people and not take sides. I have been hurt less by them. I am not able to take sides so easily. I have to respect you though. for your stubborn positions in the face of division. your passion for what you believe is right. but even more: I respect your humor in the face of your pessimism about how this world is 'going' now... the fun twists of your mind that invent and are delighted and are dismayed and are struck in wonder at the amazing ways this world goes on. you continue to crack yourself up. you continue to crack me up.
there is a photograph of us. age eighteen or so. vignette of who were were. who we are. you are telling me a joke. or have just finished the joke... we have love in our eyes. it comes right through. strong. very happy. you are laughing at your joke of course. laughing as you crack yourself up. I have the rueful laugh of a woman who is always delighted with jokes that are exactly like the one you told. that only you can tell. that only you can bring out of her: that laugh. the one that is wound around your heart like an embrace. I have the look of a woman who must love you for your whole life. no matter what happens. must follow your music. is charmed by your music. must laugh at your jokes. because only you make me laugh like that. only you have always made me laugh like that. hear music like that. love like that. because you touch me and make me love like that...
you may tell your jokes on every bridge of every river we cross and paddle and travel upon. I will always laugh in delight. you are delightful for me. to me. I delight in you. and always will. you know that in your bones. I know that in my bones...the picture of the joke on the bridge tells the truth. takes our childish laughter by surprise. we are there again. young. vulnerable. invulnerable in our love...
we are there again. no one can take all that music. all that love. all that joy away.
not ever again.
when we were very young people, in our teens, you would clown around. people loved you for that. the other kids in your high school and in mine found you delightful and funny. charming, really....
you would charm us with your funny faces and with your slapstick and your surprises - your twists of fate that would break us all into pieces of laughter. your excess of fun. it went with your music. you were full of music. it was what you did from morning to night. you made fun. you made music. I would thrill with your music. I would laugh with your jokes. you would laugh first. you found your self very funny..."I crack myself up". you have always said that. it's true. you crack my self up too. you are full of joy and full of music. you were also full of love. you have always been full of love. so love. music. joy. this is who you are. you're one of a kind. a person so complete with sense of self. you can survive deprivations of music. somehow. not well. but somehow. you can survive deprivations of love. very poorly. but somehow. but you cannot live without the fun. the spirit of joy in you. when you put all three together: the joy. the music. the love: you have you: total.
I would not - I could never put you down in any way. not for the music. not for the love. not for the joy. you are all a man should be - for me. from you strengths come your weaknesses of course. you have so much music within you. it is hard for you to accept mediocrity in music in any way. intolerant of the imperfect in music. there can be so much mediocre in music... and, you have turned at times to sex just for entertainment. because sex with love was so rare in your life...
but you cannot live without the fun - and you haven't. you've looked for it in everything around you. you have found the either/or of the politics of life. find it hard to find the machinations of people in power funny at all. if you ever did. it is harder for you to see your powerlessness in the face of these dividing powerful people and not take sides. I have been hurt less by them. I am not able to take sides so easily. I have to respect you though. for your stubborn positions in the face of division. your passion for what you believe is right. but even more: I respect your humor in the face of your pessimism about how this world is 'going' now... the fun twists of your mind that invent and are delighted and are dismayed and are struck in wonder at the amazing ways this world goes on. you continue to crack yourself up. you continue to crack me up.
there is a photograph of us. age eighteen or so. vignette of who were were. who we are. you are telling me a joke. or have just finished the joke... we have love in our eyes. it comes right through. strong. very happy. you are laughing at your joke of course. laughing as you crack yourself up. I have the rueful laugh of a woman who is always delighted with jokes that are exactly like the one you told. that only you can tell. that only you can bring out of her: that laugh. the one that is wound around your heart like an embrace. I have the look of a woman who must love you for your whole life. no matter what happens. must follow your music. is charmed by your music. must laugh at your jokes. because only you make me laugh like that. only you have always made me laugh like that. hear music like that. love like that. because you touch me and make me love like that...
you may tell your jokes on every bridge of every river we cross and paddle and travel upon. I will always laugh in delight. you are delightful for me. to me. I delight in you. and always will. you know that in your bones. I know that in my bones...the picture of the joke on the bridge tells the truth. takes our childish laughter by surprise. we are there again. young. vulnerable. invulnerable in our love...
we are there again. no one can take all that music. all that love. all that joy away.
not ever again.
NO WAY NO TIME NO WAY is lyrics all about escaping far away...leavin' past behind...on some train - any train will do...
NO WAY NO TIME NO WAY
Been waitin' for so long a'time
Waitin' by this station
Tellin' my poor self that I'm
Goin' to cross this nation
On this train
Yeah on this train
An' I won't be comin' back
No way no time no way
I've been tellin' stories
Bout where I have been
Alls that I've been doin'
Don't matter a pin
On that train
Yeah on that train
I won't have to 'splain nothin'
No way no time no way
You can't tell me any damn thing
You can't hold my hand
I've got all my bags packed
Alls I've got to do is stand
On this train
Yeah on this train
Cuz I ain't got a ticket to sit down
No way no time no way
Maybe goin' to cities
May be goin' down
Where ever I be goin'
I ain't like to frown
On this train
Yeah on this train
Hope only good times rollin' by
My way my time my way
O no way no time no way
o yeah, no way no time no way
Been waitin' for so long a'time
Waitin' by this station
Tellin' my poor self that I'm
Goin' to cross this nation
On this train
Yeah on this train
An' I won't be comin' back
No way no time no way
I've been tellin' stories
Bout where I have been
Alls that I've been doin'
Don't matter a pin
On that train
Yeah on that train
I won't have to 'splain nothin'
No way no time no way
You can't tell me any damn thing
You can't hold my hand
I've got all my bags packed
Alls I've got to do is stand
On this train
Yeah on this train
Cuz I ain't got a ticket to sit down
No way no time no way
Maybe goin' to cities
May be goin' down
Where ever I be goin'
I ain't like to frown
On this train
Yeah on this train
Hope only good times rollin' by
My way my time my way
O no way no time no way
o yeah, no way no time no way
EVERY LESSON LEARNED is a reflection on the process of education...with a small 'e'...and the Lessons I really learned....I wonder at the Terrible Importance of both sets of Lessons...hope I've been a teacher and learner of the 'set' I wrote of, here....
EVERY LESSON LEARNED
some how
thrown away
the ones I thought
were not
important
Were
the lessons
the lessons
were told which ones were
important
believed them true
all the way
were told what we needed
all of us
to learn
tried those lessons
quite a bit
learned some
some, not
those were the ones
that would have
pruned me
nicely
to be
nice
those were not
the lessons
I remember now
not at all
I remember
all the lessons
I wasn't supposed
to learn
I recall these so well
they are part
of me
like my own skin
I would not trade
these lessons
for love
or money
they are in me
like my heart is
part of
my very soul
I would learn them all
again and again
how to love
how to accept love
how to hate
how to take hate
how to wage war
how to wage peace
how to sin
how to forgive
how to give
how to take
how to make sex
how to feel sex
how to feel fully
how to take away
pain
how to stand
pain
how to be very kind
how to be very stern
how to lose
how to take loss
how to be happy
how to show sad
how to be compasssion
how to live compassion
how to
live fully
how to
die fully
how to face death
in self
in our others
how to keep learning
facing the young
without lies
how to fear truly
how to be brave
truly
how to be honest
how to see rightly
how to greet success
how to be in failure
how to fail again
how to behave human
how to face inhumanity
how to cry deeply
how to laugh and laugh
and laugh
and laugh
how to howl mad
at every deadly moon
every lesson learned
every lesson learned
every lesson
of this sort
I have relished
again and again
I have
learned
some how
thrown away
the ones I thought
were not
important
Were
the lessons
the lessons
were told which ones were
important
believed them true
all the way
were told what we needed
all of us
to learn
tried those lessons
quite a bit
learned some
some, not
those were the ones
that would have
pruned me
nicely
to be
nice
those were not
the lessons
I remember now
not at all
I remember
all the lessons
I wasn't supposed
to learn
I recall these so well
they are part
of me
like my own skin
I would not trade
these lessons
for love
or money
they are in me
like my heart is
part of
my very soul
I would learn them all
again and again
how to love
how to accept love
how to hate
how to take hate
how to wage war
how to wage peace
how to sin
how to forgive
how to give
how to take
how to make sex
how to feel sex
how to feel fully
how to take away
pain
how to stand
pain
how to be very kind
how to be very stern
how to lose
how to take loss
how to be happy
how to show sad
how to be compasssion
how to live compassion
how to
live fully
how to
die fully
how to face death
in self
in our others
how to keep learning
facing the young
without lies
how to fear truly
how to be brave
truly
how to be honest
how to see rightly
how to greet success
how to be in failure
how to fail again
how to behave human
how to face inhumanity
how to cry deeply
how to laugh and laugh
and laugh
and laugh
how to howl mad
at every deadly moon
every lesson learned
every lesson learned
every lesson
of this sort
I have relished
again and again
I have
learned
ANTHONY'S ADRICATIC SEA is a simple vignette of a generous and warm adventure in northern Italy in 2006...long age...yet, easily recalled...in every shade of blue....
ANTHONY'S ADRIATIC SEA
Of all the surprises of Italy, (and the wonderful homey-ness of Italy was full of such surprises...) the most unexpected and poignant was the experience of Trieste, Italy. There, our landlord in California had an apartment high above and two blocks from the Adriatic Sea. He had extended an invitation for us to spend a day or two with him there. Having only met him once, to sign our lease, we were thrilled at the chance...but a bit wary....he was our landlord, after all, not a friend...
Little did we know that we would spend almost a week in Trieste as his guest! And, that our time there would be such a pleasure!
Our apartment in the Bay Area in California was high above the East Bay, with a 185 degree view of the the San Francisco Bay....a wondrous little apartment with big windows and a huge heating bill, since it faced the Golden Gate and all the storms and winds blew straight at us. It was like living in an eagles' nest!
Anthony's apartment in Trieste had just as beautiful a view... This man was obviously all about Views, with the capital 'V'!
Anthony had flowers, a fruit basket, a guide book about Trieste, and a full refrigerator ready for us as his guests, in his modern and way-extravagant apartment. He gave us his bedroom, with the deck to the Adriatic...he was going to sleep upstairs in his 'maid quarters'! His generosity was overwhelming!
The very next day, he was knocking at our/his door...would we like to see his Trieste with him? yes, of course! all day we wandered about the beautiful old city, learning its history, its beauty. its culture...telling jokes. news of the US and the Bay Area. talking about his life. our lives. would we like to go to dinner?...well, sure....
off on the bus we went...to his old friends Angela's and Gino's Pizzeria! o my....their food was so good! they were so sweet! Anthony's translations of their Italian were so wry, so funny! They had known each other since childhood. they were so kind and close...and we were included in their warmth....
Next day, he offered to go with us again...this time to Maximilian's Summer Castle on the Adriatic. and to meet his "housekeeper" and her son for dinner...time to have a little talk...after all, we didn't know him well...we didn't want himf to feel obliged, or for us to be obliged to him!...
with a big, boyish smile, he actually said, "You paid your rent three months in advance to be sure your rent would be in on time while you were in Europe. You take care of me. I am going to take care of you, too!" we were not to discuss it again. we were to be his guests for the next few days...his treat!
That day, we went along the Adriatic to Maximilian's Castle. and walked the so elegant shorelines...then, that night, we met his "housekeeper" Maria, who was pretty obviously his lover, from Russia! and, her worldly and charming young son, who actually was a delight...
then, we went to lunch at Gino's and Angela's again. this time, we met three other friends from Anthony'a childhood... we had a very good time with them all....
the Five Star Hotel Dinner we went to that night was a once-in-a-life-time experience for sure! Course after course was served, and hardly eaten, except by me... I could not waste food - especially not this food, which was exquisite!
I expected, as was my usual habit, to take home all the extra food and use it in sensible and well-prepared meals using these wonderful 'left-overs'! It turned out that the waiters thought that was the most unsophisticated, off-the-wall request they had ever heard...they sent for the Chief Cook, who tried to explain to me, through Anthony, that this was not done! Still, I insisted. finally, they came out after the dinner with one small bag, with the fish filet in it... they handed it to me with great pomp and ceremony. I didn't have the heart to protest! That meal had cost Anthony hundreds of dollars!
The next morning, Anthony sent us to the North of Trieste near the Slovanian border, where the 'Big Caves' were..in his 'private' cab!
The "Gigantica" cave we 'caved' that day was three hundred feet deep and wider yet. It had all the wonders caves have, that I love to see, but in truly gigantic proportions! It was exhausting and so much fun!
Finally, Anthony allowed us to "take him out to dinner" at Gino's and Angela's again....this time, she cooked us a home-made Italian meal....and Gino baked us a small personal pizza, shaped like a heart....
Then, it was time to leave...we had much of Italy to still see and explore....
we said our final goodbyes, and promised Anthony many good meals and visits when he would come back to California to take care of his properties. We were so happy to have made a friend, again...this time, our landlord! We felt that would not ever be a problem....
We were wrong...looking back on it...Anthony and my husband were not destined to get along....they were different in many, many ways...my husband kept thinking they were friends...Anthony wanted him to work for him at reduced rates. my husband kept thinking he could joke Anthony out of obvious resentments he had over little things he did...Anthony became only more angry at my husband's ways...especially about his unwillingness to change his storage of his Painting supplies in Anthony's garage...
no matter what I said or did, Anthony kept refusing even a cup of tea or coffee...I kept waiting for the other shoe to fall...it did....
That spring, we got a registered letter as our lease came due...Anthony was going to sell the house...sometime in the next year...he gave us sixty days to find a new home....
There are new friendships that are so spontaneous and sparkeley and bright, that they actually burn out. almost as if that was inevitable...especially when they are that different in life-styles...in expectations....
this was such a friendship...
Above the Adriatic, the same stars that light the dark sky, shine down on me in my little apartment, with its views of green, kind trees....
I can still see those stars over the water, on the San Francisco Bay....over the Adriatic...
if I close my eyes....
Of all the surprises of Italy, (and the wonderful homey-ness of Italy was full of such surprises...) the most unexpected and poignant was the experience of Trieste, Italy. There, our landlord in California had an apartment high above and two blocks from the Adriatic Sea. He had extended an invitation for us to spend a day or two with him there. Having only met him once, to sign our lease, we were thrilled at the chance...but a bit wary....he was our landlord, after all, not a friend...
Little did we know that we would spend almost a week in Trieste as his guest! And, that our time there would be such a pleasure!
Our apartment in the Bay Area in California was high above the East Bay, with a 185 degree view of the the San Francisco Bay....a wondrous little apartment with big windows and a huge heating bill, since it faced the Golden Gate and all the storms and winds blew straight at us. It was like living in an eagles' nest!
Anthony's apartment in Trieste had just as beautiful a view... This man was obviously all about Views, with the capital 'V'!
Anthony had flowers, a fruit basket, a guide book about Trieste, and a full refrigerator ready for us as his guests, in his modern and way-extravagant apartment. He gave us his bedroom, with the deck to the Adriatic...he was going to sleep upstairs in his 'maid quarters'! His generosity was overwhelming!
The very next day, he was knocking at our/his door...would we like to see his Trieste with him? yes, of course! all day we wandered about the beautiful old city, learning its history, its beauty. its culture...telling jokes. news of the US and the Bay Area. talking about his life. our lives. would we like to go to dinner?...well, sure....
off on the bus we went...to his old friends Angela's and Gino's Pizzeria! o my....their food was so good! they were so sweet! Anthony's translations of their Italian were so wry, so funny! They had known each other since childhood. they were so kind and close...and we were included in their warmth....
Next day, he offered to go with us again...this time to Maximilian's Summer Castle on the Adriatic. and to meet his "housekeeper" and her son for dinner...time to have a little talk...after all, we didn't know him well...we didn't want himf to feel obliged, or for us to be obliged to him!...
with a big, boyish smile, he actually said, "You paid your rent three months in advance to be sure your rent would be in on time while you were in Europe. You take care of me. I am going to take care of you, too!" we were not to discuss it again. we were to be his guests for the next few days...his treat!
That day, we went along the Adriatic to Maximilian's Castle. and walked the so elegant shorelines...then, that night, we met his "housekeeper" Maria, who was pretty obviously his lover, from Russia! and, her worldly and charming young son, who actually was a delight...
then, we went to lunch at Gino's and Angela's again. this time, we met three other friends from Anthony'a childhood... we had a very good time with them all....
the Five Star Hotel Dinner we went to that night was a once-in-a-life-time experience for sure! Course after course was served, and hardly eaten, except by me... I could not waste food - especially not this food, which was exquisite!
I expected, as was my usual habit, to take home all the extra food and use it in sensible and well-prepared meals using these wonderful 'left-overs'! It turned out that the waiters thought that was the most unsophisticated, off-the-wall request they had ever heard...they sent for the Chief Cook, who tried to explain to me, through Anthony, that this was not done! Still, I insisted. finally, they came out after the dinner with one small bag, with the fish filet in it... they handed it to me with great pomp and ceremony. I didn't have the heart to protest! That meal had cost Anthony hundreds of dollars!
The next morning, Anthony sent us to the North of Trieste near the Slovanian border, where the 'Big Caves' were..in his 'private' cab!
The "Gigantica" cave we 'caved' that day was three hundred feet deep and wider yet. It had all the wonders caves have, that I love to see, but in truly gigantic proportions! It was exhausting and so much fun!
Finally, Anthony allowed us to "take him out to dinner" at Gino's and Angela's again....this time, she cooked us a home-made Italian meal....and Gino baked us a small personal pizza, shaped like a heart....
Then, it was time to leave...we had much of Italy to still see and explore....
we said our final goodbyes, and promised Anthony many good meals and visits when he would come back to California to take care of his properties. We were so happy to have made a friend, again...this time, our landlord! We felt that would not ever be a problem....
We were wrong...looking back on it...Anthony and my husband were not destined to get along....they were different in many, many ways...my husband kept thinking they were friends...Anthony wanted him to work for him at reduced rates. my husband kept thinking he could joke Anthony out of obvious resentments he had over little things he did...Anthony became only more angry at my husband's ways...especially about his unwillingness to change his storage of his Painting supplies in Anthony's garage...
no matter what I said or did, Anthony kept refusing even a cup of tea or coffee...I kept waiting for the other shoe to fall...it did....
That spring, we got a registered letter as our lease came due...Anthony was going to sell the house...sometime in the next year...he gave us sixty days to find a new home....
There are new friendships that are so spontaneous and sparkeley and bright, that they actually burn out. almost as if that was inevitable...especially when they are that different in life-styles...in expectations....
this was such a friendship...
Above the Adriatic, the same stars that light the dark sky, shine down on me in my little apartment, with its views of green, kind trees....
I can still see those stars over the water, on the San Francisco Bay....over the Adriatic...
if I close my eyes....
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