Tag Archives: happiness

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Last Year, This Year and What Else Can I Say?

I am so good at pushing the wrong button and the wrong time!  And I am so good at procrastination.

2011 ended and 2012, started with a trip to my favorite poetry workshop in San Miguel de Allende. Took a car, then a plane, then a bus, then another bus and then a taxi much of which I had to do in my get-along Spanish. Nine hours of travel and I’m finally in the old-school style hotel, signing things. My friend Jennifer Clement, who created this wonderful week of poetry, walks in the lobby, “I have wormsalt!”

“Wormsalt, Jennifer?” I have not been in the lobby more than five minutes. She is in black velvet with candlelight hair, pulled softly to the back, with curls. I have not seen her in a years time.

“Yes! Wormsalt for the mescal!”  I took one of the plastic Dixie cups from her hand, touched my finger in what looked like damp sand, licked my finger and knocked back the liquor. My whole body smiled.

“Wow! You tossed that back!”

Nodding: “Well I’ve been traveling about ten hours at this point.” I tried the wormsalt again. . .it reminded me of swimming in the Atlantic and licking my lips when I came out of the water. “How’d you know I was here?” I asked Jennifer.

“Oh, I told them I wanted to know the second you arrived. We’re up on the patio, come get another drink! Then we’ll go to dinner and then fireworks at the Jardin!” Off she went to rejoin the small party and I went to my room. Changed into something more festive with salt and smokey mescal still on my tongue.  One year started and the new one began as I made my way back to the hotel, smiling at strangers, fireworks over head.

Nice, sweet, delicious memory. Woven into this week are moments of absolute confusion, chronic pain and old buttons. Woven into this week are threads like silk that shine and lay soft in my heart. New friends, skulking about the former home to the nuns. . . a midnight cloister walk. . . poems and readings and good food. I went home exhausted. A cluttered brain and somewhat defeated.

I had spent 2o11 ‘working’ on myself. I worked hard at work. I wanted so much to have 2012 be new. But I was stuck. . . and felt entirely alone with my confusion of who I am. Who am I now?

And the year brought me to Boston and my husband got to know our grandson. And then I helped the ‘kids’ pack up and move to a place near Boulder.  I drove with my son from Austin to Boulder and it was sweet. . . he was loving every inch of the thousand mile drive.  A drive, and week or so there, I was done. All done. Done in. It was sad and huge awareness that I don’t have the physical reserves that I had BC.  This came at 52, when I had always thought I’d have that awareness at 62.

The summer I had my sister here, my home, for six weeks. She was lost and needed quiet to figure out what’s best for her. As sisters we squabbled a little but mostly we drank red wine and laughed and poked around thrift stores.  Then after my adventure in moving, my other sister (by marriage) came for five days. She and I rearrange furniture and danced at night with my husband’s band.

This year, I found a choir. I found singing, my first and forever love, and oh god it was hard. Like Mexico hard, confusion and in articulation.  Wanting to belong and scared to death of belonging then to be rejected. . . but I went. I went and showed up. Every Wednesday night, choir then dancing at my favorite bar in Austin, Donn’s Depot.  I would leave choir mentally exhausted. . .just as I had been in my workshops in Mexico.

And then it got better.  This feeling of belonging filled me without the fear.  I could belong somewhere on Wednesday nights and that was great. And the pastor of this church wore clogs and quoted poetry in sermons. I can listen. I could follow.

Before 2012 ended, somewhere around Thanksgiving I realized I was happy in my own skin for the first time in what seems years. I am not the person I was before . . .I could not return to the past but in letting go, fully, I found a me.

In this finding are friends, steadfast and true. Some new, some old dear friends. In the kitchen my husband holding me saying: “I miss your laugh” early in the year and then “You’re the best friend I’ve ever had” later in the year.   A year when I felt like a family again with my son and daughter-in-law and grandson.

And, here I am, mid-way through the first month of 2013, focused on what I am and what fills my life with work and work with life. Cliche, perhaps. I still have a high-maintenance body I deal with every day. I get muddled and stuck. . . but I no longer judge myself for this and won’t hang with those who do.  But the best part is , I have a sense of potential in my life, sense of wonder. And how I have missed this. How I have longed to feel like this.

What else can I say?

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Confessions of a Transplant: Rape, My Story.

I am a feminist. I am not a victim of anyone’s politics. I am a mother, daughter, sister, grandmother and friend. I will stand up and not be shut up. I am a human being, a citizen of the United States, and a damn fine cook. I take great pleasure in voting. I believe in a higher power and the Constitution. I think these entities are separate: one governs my spiritual life, the other my corporeal rights.

Rape is an act of violence and against all laws proscribed by human beings. I was ‘date-raped’ at 23 and for years I thought I did something wrong. I ran in my head a litany of shoulds and coulds. I blamed myself and internally I thought I was ugly and ‘used’.

It happened at a huge house party in a small city in Massachusetts. I did not report it because I took me years to call it rape. When I left the party I told a girlfriend, she said to me: “Isn’t that what you wanted?” For years I had no women friends. I let no one in. I told no one. I spent the next five years in a relationship with a man where everything looked fine on the outside.

When he slapped me around. I ended it. My mother didn’t understand why I could leave someone with a good job and nice care. I got therapy and started going to 12 step meetings. This redeemed my life. Gave me a guide back to myself. Taught me what it is to be loved and how to love. It taught me how to trust.

Every time I hear the word RAPE used on television like it’s nothing I get sick to my stomach. Every time I see the word on FB or social networking as a meme. I get angry. I fear the ignorance spewed on progressive and conservative news outlets. I applaud the doctors willing to take of all of women’s medical needs.

Carrying a fetus to term from an act of violence is not a choice. . . it is morally reprehensible. I know what choice is. I chose to be a mother, single, at 20. And I thank God everyday that I am a Mom.

I am your sister. I am your mother. I am your cousin. I am your wife. I am your friend. I am any one. I am everyone. And I scare people with my resilience.

 

Note to those who know me. . .you probably don’t know this about me.  I am sorry that you hear this story from this post. But I have grown more weary and more angry these past few weeks. I hope you understand. . .  enough is enough. I can no longer be so silent.

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Confessions of a Transplant: True Cop Story

This whole story begins because I made a promise to myself to get more exercise even though it’s still hot but I needed a destination. A drive-by encounter with a friend who is running her snow-cone stand gave me this motivation.

So Friday I walked distance long enough and hot enough. In her ‘box’ she and I visited and caught up on grandchildren between customers. Background note for my northern readers: these snow cones are not crunched up ice it is ice shaved so fine it’s like perfect snowball snow but if you had to shovel this kind of snow, it would just suck.

Now, back to 95 degrees and I’m sipping something my friend handed me, wasn’t sure what it was but it was kind of like ice-tea over snow. A young couple came up, you know those people who are attractive and self-possessed, with social graces. They made a point of telling my friend this was their favorite snow-cone trailer and they go out of their way to get there.

I was feeling chatty I made a comment, she asked a question and then I found out they spent their honeymoon in Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia. . . apparently Thailand is over-rated, Angkor Wat was all they really saw of Cambodia but Viet Nam was amazing. Another question and then conversation ensued about the use of dash vs a parenthetical expression or when can one actually use a dash.

The well toned good looking new husband turns out went to Wesleyan University in Connecticut. . . BA in Arts and Letters. “Wait, you have a degree from Wesleyan and you’re asking this question? What do you do?”

“I’m a cop.”

“Really, Austin Police? You’re kidding.” And his wife say, yup, he’s a cop who has a degree in arts and letters. Now here I was thinking: this feels almost like a joke. So we’re sipping snow, she had cream on her pina colada flavored and I am thinking I need to try that.

The young husband says: “So have you read much French or Russian literature?” I am at a corner of busy and high traffic, the trailer on the far corner of a large parking lot for a Tex-Mex restaurant, rush hour has more and more cars on the boulevard, and he says: “Have you actually read ‘Proust” and finished it?” He slurps a spoon of red snow and all I can do is laugh our loud.

Proust. “In all honesty, no, I haven’t,” I finally reply, “Great sentences though and I love madelines”. He admitted to the fact he keeps trying. We both have read Victor Hugo and talked about how bawdy the Medieval writers could be. (My mind going: you’re an Austin cop!) And then we talked about Dostoyevsky, Gogol and Tolstoy. I told him about the newer translations by a married couple.

He said he was going to try “War & Peace” to which I told him I refuse to read that but I am giving “Ulysses” a try. And then they were done with the snow in the Texas heat and took off in their modest dusty vehicle.

I did not ask the questions I wanted to: Why a cop? Why Texas? I grew up not many miles from where they attended university as did my husband. But these two are my son’s age and could have followed a more traditional path, what used to be a path to upper-middle class homes in towns with good public schools. A path of a year in Europe immersed in a language and culture, or law school.

I wanted to but I have many younger friends who took that path and are in serious debt. I didn’t ask his wife what she did, maybe they live here because she’s a doctoral student. But I didn’t ask because when I blurted in my oh so graceful way: “Wait. You’re a cop asking me about parenthetical expressions?” and his wife looked at him and said, “Yup! Degree in Arts and Letters and he’s a cop,” her expression both amused and proud.

After they left, I tried another new food. . .snow cone with peach syrup topped with cream. Oh yum. Austin at it’s best.

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Organized thoughts of my Unorthodox Faith (1)

My sister was here for a good long visit this summer. Part of the visit was to give her space to sort through some serious life-stuff and part of the visit was to be with me. And it could be said that our relationship is life-stuff but we’re on the up-side of stuff.

My sister identifies herself as born-again Christian, socially conservative, hippy-Mom and former physical therapist. While she was here she showed me a book that she was re-reading, Christy by Catharine Marshall. I remembered the book around the house when we were much younger but I didn’t know that it was a book that gave shape and words to her own faith.

The following poem is the price of writing that helped shape my own faith. It is not one of the world’s great poems but to an eleven year old who was in love with the obvious music of older poems, it had a great impact for it was an echo from the little Catholic church we were raised in: “do unto others”. . .”faith without works”. . .”love thy neighbor”.

Abou Ben Adhem

Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw, within the moonlight in his room,
Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,
An angel writing in a book of gold:—
Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,
And to the Presence in the room he said
“What writest thou?” —The vision raised its head,
And with a look made of all sweet accord,
Answered “The names of those who love the Lord.”
“And is mine one?” said Abou. “Nay, not so,”
Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low,
But cheerily still, and said “I pray thee, then,
Write me as one that loves his fellow men.”

The angel wrote, and vanished. The next night
It came again with a great wakening light,
And showed the names whom love of God had blessed,
And lo! Ben Adhem’s name led all the rest.

I know now this Abou is probably Arabic, and/or Muslim.  I rather like that in fact. Years after that poem was just a part of my mind, I worked for a couple of years in a Jewish deli where I came to know the holidays and customs of that faith. (I also picked up a bit of Yiddish.)  Time in anonymous meetings lifted me out of dogma and into a self-defined faith.

What we have together as sisters is a faith in each other and a deep understanding of who we once were, and where we are going. Perhaps this is a by-product of being in our 50′s but I know it’s more for we have had very hard times. We’ve gone long time without speaking and when we did it was difficult.  Today, we laugh and dance and sip wine watching food shows. ;lkio

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Confessions of a Transplant: Seduction

It is my last morning in Boston, for the time being. And Mother Nature has washed the city during the night. The breeze is gentle and the humidity has dropped. The broad leaves on old tall trees are the kind of green that satisfies something deep within me.

This is the morning when I am a girl again exploring the woods around my childhood home in Connecticut. There was young tree that I could shake the rain off the leaves, pretending it was shower. I would take my Barbies under the mountain laurels, sit on thick moss and play house.

A part of seduction must be memory that is held in our skin. The touch of air that conjures a sweet ache. It’s too bad that the word in contemporary usage has a sexual connotation. Pragmatic and romantic, I sense seduction as a dance, a right of way, a process. Yes it can lead into temptation but I’m thinking of a two-step, face to face, a turn, a little girl spinning and spinning and falling into soft grass.

And Boston and I have been dancing for decade. Boston for the last nine years has been seducing me into returning. Mornings like this it is easy to forget snow. Makes it easy to forget the humidity just two days ago as I helped my son pack up his house, as I keep a busy toddler out of harms way from big trucks and moving men. Two days ago, waiting Park Street Station’s foul, stale air. Park Street where 19th century technology and 21st intersect underground. (Never liked Park Street, even when I lived here.)

I will not see this kind of weather for weeks and weeks when I return to my home in Austin. Geographical seduction will call to me as I long for deep shade that calls for a chair and reading.

This parting from this city this time is to let go and dance with tiger.

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Considering the Notion of Displacement

Maybe we’re all just ice cubes.

And when we travel we have our shapes which get, by some invention of work or pleasure or obligation, dropped into various solutions. The destination is the solution, not that travel leads us to existential solutions but this is a strong possibility.

We are ice cubes, crunchy ice, tubes, hunks, wee slivers. I’m a great fan of road trips. Big fan, in fact, because when you travel at your own pace, stopping here and there, sleeping at cheap motel chains that have numbers in the name, you experience a variety of solutions yet maintain your shape for your car is your container. It’s almost like being an ice cube that gets to try on different cocktails, ice teas, sodas or waters.

This is different if you travel by air. You are an ice cube picked up by the great machines and ministrations of air travel, slip into your seat, just like those old fashion aluminum ice trays. And you are popped out unceremoniously into a solution where you now visit or stay.  In a cosmic plastic forty-eight ounce cup, the world is shaken not stirred. And yes you may be excited as a (insert favorite metaphor here) but still you are a cube.

This cube flew from Austin to Boston yesterday and for me, displacement is the feeling of melting back into the season, the air, the movement of a city I know well. Yes, it’s changed but the soft air coming off the harbor in a light breeze was a lovely greeting. The breeze did not scorch. The scene was Logan, waiting for the bus that would take me to the subway, the taxis, the buses the people, nothing pretty but so familiar.

And then I got on the bus with my nine years of Austin cubism. It’s packed, a man is blocking the entry and he doesn’t move, nor does he help schlep my bag on to the bus. No one moves, others are trying to get on.  I wrangle my bag past other cubes but they refuse displacement even to look up and just acknowledge a fellow cube. Back of the bus, this cube realized a number of my expectations for public behavior have shifted. There I am crammed in the back with suitcase and travel bag, heavier at the end of the day, purse over my shoulder, taking up three seats, not by choice, when an older man, sees even more people crunch their way into the bus, starts looking around for a solution.

“There’s not enough seats.” ” Where will they fit?” and he turns his head in my direction. His look bewildered and yet not.  So I say, “I’d be glad to open up these seats if you will help me move my suitcase.” I smiled my nine years of Texas.  He swiveled his head away so fast and didn’t move.

In my mind the Bostonian in me said, “There’s room. It’s a city bus. We just fit or wait for the next one.” Knowing I would gladly move if I had help. Knowing in Austin, in Texas, some person, male or female would have aided my entrance to the bus in the first place.

As this ice cube sat on the bus, got her Boston game face one and dragged herself to the bottom of the cup, cube and solution. Austin into Boston. . .love that dirty water.

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Space Scape: A Certain Frontier.

My first video. Created for a friend who said: “I want to see your creative space!”

Maybe next time, it will be much more interesting. Who know? Right now, I know I got unstuck because the desk no longer faces the neighbor’s new house, I no longer ‘stuck’ with the what-to-dos, and I’m dibbling in the digital video genre.

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Confessions of a Transplant: If there is water, I am home.

Home is where you know it is.

 

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I will listen until the trills fade and the light is old.