tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-40784100689579270882024-03-01T10:57:36.846-08:00AUTHENTIC WRITING STORIESA COLLECTION OF VERY RECENT WRITING FROM THE AUTHENTIC WRITING WORKSHOPS ~ www.AuthenticWriting.com ~
Each writer retains the copyright of her or his story.Marta Szabo, Curatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01369491214510063324noreply@blogger.comBlogger181125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4078410068957927088.post-14119559894436694132015-05-22T10:34:00.001-07:002015-05-22T10:34:27.760-07:00IN GRASS by Fred Poole<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">I did not think this was following a pattern, that it was like something else, something that was known to other people and that now I, like them, knew it too. That’s not the way I was thinking now or on any of the many times I went south from our yard, across the final part of the driveway loop, past the stream of clear water that came down from a hill and went into a pipe that took it under the road to whatever was on the other side, which was a Chinese-style garden full of pathways that ended at the river. Heading south after the stream of clear water what came next was the yard of a small house next door and then through an opening of one of the many stone walls that were everywhere around here, and from the stone wall into a field with no house in it. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">I knew how it would smell before I got there and laid down on my stomach and with my eyes open, breathing air that had dried grass and leaves and new grass and earth in it, looking right into the grass, and seeing what was there, as if looking at it this way was to see it magnified many times, an ant was walking by, a grass hopper skedaddling, and there was a lazy caterpillar, and some more ants, and sometimes a beetle. And around me the sounds of the field, soft sounds, birds mostly who would make their bird noises, and then there would be silence, and then the birds would be back. I did not see any snakes or squirrels or chipmunks but I knew they were close at hand.<br /><br />I did not wonder if anyone else had ever laid down in a summer field this way to enjoy what was in the grass. Grass and some pine needles that had made their way there from the hill, and also a leaf or two. I breathed deep. This situation where I knew and it did not occur to me to ask if anyone else knew. Though wondering about what other people saw and felt, wondering how you were supposed to experience the world, which came up over and over in my head. I would hear sentimental talk on the radio about what a boy’s life was supposed to be like. And I heard the same thing later in the Cub Scouts. But in this field there was nothing about what was supposed to be. And I did not think I would ever tell anyone about my going into the field. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">I remembered it from one summer to the next. When we went away for the summer, I would check on it quickly when we got back -- over there north of our yard and the stream, and the stone wall. My grandfather Gaga, who was a writer, talked about how things were supposed to be. So did my twin Peter, from the time we were 2 or 3 years old. And it was said he would be a writer too. But in good times -- like being belly down in the field and joining in the life that I saw there, it seemed either unimportant or liberating that I did not know what Gaga and Peter knew.</span>Marta Szabo, Curatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01369491214510063324noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4078410068957927088.post-23563937328873035142015-05-08T07:45:00.006-07:002015-05-08T07:45:47.104-07:00PROBABLY. MOSTLY. by Rica Rock<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The stories I was told were probably lies:<br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">My mother committed suicide.<br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">I was a <i>paskudnyak</i> (a parasite, like a tick or a lice) or I was a<i> choleryeh</i> (which is cholera, a basically incurable, fatal case of diarrhea).<br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">My mother was turning over in her grave to see my behavior.<br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">If I didn’t behave I’d be sent to live in an orphanage or a home for bad girls. There I’d see what it was like to have not enough to eat, and no shoes, and I’d be cold, with not enough blankets at night, and I couldn’t get out of there: there’d be bars on the windows and the doors would be locked.<br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Then I’d appreciate all I had.<br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">I would have to scrub floors and wash clothes and hang them outside, even in the freezing cold, and there would be no school, and no sleighriding in winter, and no swimming in summer.<br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">And then I’d realize how fortunate I was now.<br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">And my mother committed suicide because she was so unhappy.<br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">And it was all lies.<br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Mostly.<br /></span>Marta Szabo, Curatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01369491214510063324noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4078410068957927088.post-58044107831750542932015-04-20T09:48:00.005-07:002015-04-20T09:54:03.107-07:00I DID AND I DIDN'T by Mel Rosenthal<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">The summer between my
sophomore and junior years in college, which was also the summer after my mother died of cancer, I worked for Good Humor. Exactly
how this happened, I can’t be sure now. Someone must have suggested the idea,
since I doubt that I would have thought of it on my own. In any case, I applied
for and got a job as a tricycle salesman. Most of Good Humor’s business was
(and presumably still is) conducted from the familiar white trucks, but I
didn’t drive, and had to settle for a three-wheeled vehicle with the ice cream,
popsicles, and ices in a case behind me as I pedaled along. If I recall
correctly, drivers and tricyclists alike worked on commission -- your earnings
were a certain percentage of your sales.<br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">So it was that every
weekday that summer I took the short bus trip from my home in suburban Orange, New Jersey, to the company’s plant/distribution center
in Newark. After replenishing my supplies as necessary, I would set off in the
early afternoon on my route through the city’s sticky-hot streets. I often had
to traverse its hillier areas, which, what with the physical strain of
constantly moving upward, could seem endless. <br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif";">No matter the problems, my
sense is that overall I enjoyed my summer with Good Humor. Even so it would be my only summer in their employ, I never
went back. And what particularly lingers now in memory is a small incident from
my very first day on the job: I was standing by in the distribution
center when someone abruptly approached and said that my mother was there to
see me—my mother, then already more than two months gone. I was at once
disturbed and comforted; for a moment, just a moment, I was willing to believe
that it could be true. But I did not move, did not ask where. The logical
explanation, of course, was mistaken identity: someone else’s mother was there
to see her son. But I did and I didn’t wish to confirm this.</span><br />
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<![endif]-->Marta Szabo, Curatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01369491214510063324noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4078410068957927088.post-11725256997363647222015-03-22T08:47:00.002-07:002015-03-22T08:49:12.268-07:00DISCOURAGED by Debbie Smith<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It's 1:30 pm, 9th period on a Friday in May when dismissal time is at 2:13 pm. My classroom is filled with adolescent angst and sweat from gym class the period before. Terence and Melvin always sit next to each other, even though I've separated them about thirty times so far. Terence is whispering something to Melvin and looking at me at the same time while Melvin tries desperately to hold in his laughter. Actually they're both looking at me, trying to gauge the exact moment that I will snap and send one of them out of the room so the class can at least finish the chapter of the book we are reading where we are at least twenty pages behind all the other classes simply because it's 1:30 pm on a hot Friday in May and dismissal is at 2:13 pm. They will both pull back right before my breaking point. They both know me better than my husband ever will. Neither of them wants to be kicked out, Terence because he plays on the school basketball team and can't afford any more disciplinary actions on his record. Our principal, Mike, really DOES have it in for this kid because he's a small-time drug-dealer who probably won't graduate high school but who WILL probably graduate to be a big-time drug dealer, so right now, 8th grade, thirteen years old, king of the basketball court, right now is the absolute peak of success in Terence's existence and while he may not be the smartest kid in the room, even Terence is smart enough to know that fact.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>Melvin doesn't want to be kicked out because he's secretly in love with Terence and Melvin is the only person in the room who is unaware of that fact. Also, Melvin hates feeling like he's missing out on anything. Plus they both really do like me for some reason, even though all I ever do for 42 minutes every 9th period is yell which, of course, does no good but I'm at a loss every day as to what else to do.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>As I glare at them while Sasha is reading aloud from the book, Terence makes an attempt to move his seat a few inches farther away from Melvin as a peace offering to me. I've given the entire class a package of sticky notes because that's the latest educational trend we are enforcing this year. The students will mark the sticky note when they "connect" with the text in some way and stick it on the page so we can revisit the thought later as a class. I will just be glad to get the chapter finished.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>As I gently correct, Sasha's oral reading, I notice that Terence's sticky notes are nowhere to be seen and his hands are conspicuously absent from view. I'm suspicious but my attention is distracted by Jackie, my favorite tiny Puerto Rican, who is throwing his copy of the book we are reading at the window. I interrupt Sasha.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>"Jackie!"</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>"Sorry, Miss. There was a bee in the room."</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>All the girls scream simultaneously and try to run out of the room.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>When I've finally quieted the bedlam, I notice Terence and Melvin's desks are right back where they were. I ignore them and ask Malaysia to continue reading. Only the girls volunteer to read aloud and it's May and I've given up on asking anyone else. Plus they read better and faster and now we are only ten pages behind. I'm still wondering exactly what Terence is up to since I still can't see his hands but since it's now 2:03, I'm praying it's nothing major.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>We are interrupted a few more times with the office calling for students who have to leave early to make it to their track meet on time, announcements about baseball practice and numerous requests for bathroom passes. Finally, we are almost done, it's almost dismissal bell time and as we are finally on the last page, I realize what Terence has been doing this whole time. He throws about two million tiny pieces of sticky note paper over Melvin's head that he has been methodically ripping up under his desk for the last twenty-five minutes. Such attention to detail must be what makes him such a successful drug dealer.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>But I can't hold back my own smile to see Melvin covered head to toe in neon pink sticky notes. They both stay behind after the bell to help me clean it up and we end our day once again.</span></div>
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Marta Szabo, Curatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01369491214510063324noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4078410068957927088.post-56048118433119434742014-11-10T06:09:00.001-08:002014-11-10T06:09:57.602-08:00WHEN EVERYTHING CHANGED by Kathy Robinson<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">On the way to the writing session this morning, I listened to a double mix CD I made recently. It’s a compilation of songs that had deep emotional resonance for me throughout the years. Hearing them play one after the other was like listening to the soundtrack of my life, while zigzagging up the Thruway soaked in rain and autumn colors.<br /><br />Certain lyrics evoked flashes of what once was – the twelve-year-old kid arranging pillows and ashtrays on the couch, a makeshift drum kit, banging drumsticks along to Boston’s “More Than a Feeling” repeatedly before her mom got home from work. The twenty-something finding her way surfaced from a line from Michelle Shocked’s “Memories of East Texas” about those left behind not being able to make a place for a girl who’d seen the ocean. And a song from my 30s by Incubus that I listened to on my endless commutes into the city in the 1990s where the song’s character calls out a warning to never let life pass her by.<br /><br />What’s striking is the first CD is filled with images of chains and silencing and what it feels like to be stuffed in a pre-defined box so others can feel safe and orderly, so you make sense to them. Everything that was stifled while staying in those sterile boxes just burned. I’m thanksful the ember wasn’t extinguished.<br /><br />That’s due to the theme of the second CD, all about the searching, the journey, the knowledge that despite how everyone I knew lived their lives, there just might be another way. I read something recently that is the full-grown tree that pulls itself from the seed, birthing itself. Somewhere I was encouraging and nurturing those tender shoots into existence.<br /><br />Years ago when I moved into my home, I set up a music studio in the basement. As I daydreamed my corporate hours away during the workweek, I would imagine myself lying on my back on the floor of that little studio, late at night, in the dark except for a sole candle and the LED lights on the recording equipment. I would envision myself holding a microphone to my mouth, creating reel after feel of spoken word prose – eloquent, prolific, effortless. Endless stories and images captured on tape. But when I did go downstairs, I couldn’t even flip that machine on. And I never knew why. Something always stopped me from actually trying.<br /><br />But it occurred to me today that what I really needed at that time was the dream itself. I needed the hope that someday I’d find a way to rip the self-affixed duct tape off my own mouth.<br /><br />So when did everything change? When I picked up a pen and began writing the truth.</span>Marta Szabo, Curatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01369491214510063324noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4078410068957927088.post-91691758903226823232014-09-09T06:48:00.001-07:002014-09-09T06:48:40.101-07:00LOST ALL PATIENCE by Wendi Beck<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">I snapped. There is nothing else to call it. Thirty minutes into running Mom on some errands. A record for me as one of our longest visits before we broke into an argument. I was tired of her snipes about her mother being "taken from her" and how Brianna and I have no idea what she is going through since we both still have our mothers with us. Nana had only been gone about 10 months at this point give or take a few days and I had done my best to be understanding and calm with Mom, but on that day... I simply purely and completely snapped. As I started talking it was like everything slowed.<br /><br />"Mom, I would seriously advise you to cut the bullshit. Just come out and tell me that you hate me for siding with your little sister that she is better capable of taking care of Nana that I am since I have Dad, Brianna, and you and a new marriage to deal with for starters. Next, you have no clue about my sense of loss over Nana. Nana took us in and helped raise me. Actually, she primarily raised me after your divorce from Dad. Had she and Papa not done that who knows where you and I would have ended up. So, yes. I have you here still, but yes, I lost a mother too in this. Lastly, it would be in your best interest not to assume how, when, why or if Brianna should feel loss over Nana moving to Florida. And by the way you ever tell Brianna that if we don't get to Florida she will never get to see Nana alive again and you will never see any of us again. I am done with this topic with you, period!"<br /><br />I had lost all patience, calm and sanity in that moment and luckily we were at a red light so that I could try to take a cleansing breath till I saw my Mom's face and her mouth opening to keep the fight going. Before she could get the words out I stared at her.<br /><br />"Think carefully, very carefully, before you respond, Mom. Got it?"<br /><br />She fell silent for a moment before choosing to keep it going.<br /><br />"Well, I am not talking about ancient history or the divorce. Dr. Rick said no one understands me and that just proves it. Take me home now."<br /><br />And yet she never did say that she did not hate me.</span><br /><br /><br />Marta Szabo, Curatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01369491214510063324noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4078410068957927088.post-57382694266669724682014-06-19T13:52:00.000-07:002014-06-19T13:52:29.568-07:00A MOTHER'S VOICE by Jessica Rosenthal<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">As the cold scissors slide up my blouse to cut it open I can hear my mother’s voice, “Always wear clean underwear, just in case.” My clean panties were in the trunk of my now mangled Honda Civic because I had picked up my laundry from the wash & fold the night before and didn’t bring it in the house. Today, it was a cold California morning in October and I was too comfortable to go outside in my pajamas to get the bag of clean laundry. So here I was, in the back of the ambulance, the EMTs trying to keep me conscious – and I was NOT wearing clean underwear. My mother would be so disappointed.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">My mom Lois, or Lotus Blossom as my father affectionately calls her, has a very definite idea of right & wrong and structure. This discipline contributed to her and my dad’s thriving even though they had very little money. They first lived in a small one bedroom on Colby Court in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. I don’t remember the first few years of my life there, although I can see certain images from the home movies we watched on holidays. I could imagine our time there from the narration that went along with the silent films. Nowadays, we rarely break out the projector but when we do, my parents play “dead – not dead” and my dad always winds up crying.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">I spent a lot of time with my dad in the early years of my life. By 1976, my parents had been married 4 years (though they began dating each other 9 years earlier) and they had moved to a two bedroom apartment in the Warbasse neighborhood of Brooklyn. They lived in the same building as my mom’s parents, and one of my grandmother’s brothers and his family. My dad, an electrician, was furloughed from work at this time, so my mother went to work at Coney Island hospital in the billing department while my dad stayed home and cared for me. I loved those times. For breakfast, he would add uBet® syrup to my Rice Krispies® so I would be sure to drink the milk at the bottom of the bowl. Our days were filled with fun excursions, like going to the park, or walking over to his mother’s house on Brighton 7th Street, where her sisters all had houses too. I would sit on the red stoop and listen to the grownups talk, or roller skate on the uneven payment, or perform for my great aunts and grandmother. I was the first of all the grandchildren, #1, and I garnered a lot of attention.<br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Occasionally, my dad and I would spend the afternoon in the apartment. I would stand on the wood galley table and dance to Bob Dylan as my dad held my hands and sung along to the record, “Everybody must get stoned…” Some afternoons, his friends would come over and they would smoke cigarettes that they rolled themselves from a wooden cigar box. In high school, before I knew what getting stoned meant, I pictured people throwing rocks at other people like they did in the Salem witch trials. I didn’t understand why my Dad liked that song so much. In my twenties I told my dad that I remembered these times, and he assured me that he NEVER rolled his own tobacco.<br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Music has been an extremely powerful influence in my life. At first, after my accident I couldn’t listen to music at all. Knowing my love of music, my dad would suggest turning on the radio from the remote control attached to the bed, but I was too afraid. What if something played that made me sad? I didn’t want to cry anymore. After many little surgeries, it was time for the big one. Using shards of bone, pieces of my shattered pelvis, titanium plates and bolts, the doctor planned to put my hip back together. I was sedated to the point of being out of my mind and body, but I was scared. While my dad stayed with me until they rolled me into surgery, my mom had gone back to the hotel to shower and get some rest after several days of sleeping in hospital chairs next to my bed. He kept me conscious by reciting the lyrics of as many Dylan songs as he could remember. And there were a lot. I sang along, “Ain’t it just like the night to play tricks when you’re trying to be so quiet…We sit stranded but we’re doing our best to deny it.” It kept me from thinking about the possibility that I wouldn’t make it out of surgery alive, or never be able to walk again. One after the other, we sang together until the attendant came to wheel me away. My dad followed close behind to make sure the orderly took great care in transporting me. Any abrupt movement was painful as my leg hung from a gurney and a pin temporarily kept it in place. As the nurses greeted me, my dad wished me luck and told me, “I’ll be right here when you wake up.”<br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">And he was. The surgery was a success and I was relieved to move to the next phase of recovery. I was still afraid to watch TV for fear of the Allstate commercial where they show a collision and you can hear and see it happening. I still didn’t want to listen to music. Slowly though, as the days turned into weeks, I was less and less afraid. I began with the doo wop station, upbeat and light hearted. A couple of songs here and there were enough to remind me of the healing power of music. <br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">I learned to lift myself out of the bed, onto a plank and into the wheelchair. Then from the wheelchair to the walker; Standing, shuffling a few feet while my dad pushed the wheelchair behind me in case I had to sit down midway down the hall. When I was able to get to the end of the hallway and back to my room using only the walker, I was ready for the music. I found myself singing the Grateful Dead, “…gotta get back to where you belong, little bit harder, just a little bit more, little bit further than you’ve gone before.” I emailed my friend Dave and asked him to send me some CDs. When they arrived, I listened to that song, The Wheel, over and over again. <br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Eventually two months from the fated day, I was able to climb a flight of stairs, albeit slowly and sometimes by using the rump bump tactic. I was released from the hospital rehab and allowed to go home. My mom had already flown back to New Jersey two weeks earlier, barely arriving in time for my sister to give birth to my twin nieces. I can’t believe I missed that special morning when my nieces were born. Regretful, but out of my hands, I was in California. My dad stayed with me for several weeks, until I could live again independently. On our way home, we went to Home Depot so my dad could buy materials to build a sturdy bannister that would help me up the 12 steps to the front porch. I wasn’t used to wheeling myself around. My arms were so sore the entire next day that all I did was sit and watch old concert footage, barely moving from my favorite armchair. By the third day, I was feeling better and the bannister was complete, wooden stain and all.<br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">It was an eye opening experience using a wheelchair. I knew I was lucky that this was only temporary. After months of physical therapy, I would be able to walk again and not be wheelchair bound. But I noticed things that had been unimportant before. The cuts in the curb on the sidewalk were often too bumpy for me to wheel over alone. Without my dad, I had to ask a stranger for a push. So many places in my small little town didn’t have a ramp or a handicap bathroom. It was a simple injustice, but it felt like a personal “You are not welcome here.” The most enlightening and sad thing I noticed was that people wouldn’t make eye contact with me. They would talk right over my head to my dad, as if I wasn’t there; Or that somehow the wheelchair left me unable to think or speak for myself. I think people were afraid to look, in fear of what they might see – what they imagined could be wrong with me. I wanted to tell them that I was okay, and that in a few months they wouldn’t even know that I had not been able to walk. But before I had a chance there eyes would dart away and they’d be gone. Now, I always make it a point to make eye contact with and smile at people in wheelchairs. Immobility does not define a person. Nobody likes or deserves to feel ignored. Everyone wants to be asked to dance. </span>Marta Szabo, Curatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01369491214510063324noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4078410068957927088.post-2367739924468011292014-06-02T12:46:00.000-07:002014-06-02T12:46:55.590-07:00FOG by Sonja Leobold<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">When Jacques and I were together, so many years ago, we hitched from Paris across Europe, ending up one night in Bavaria. We had no idea where we had been dropped off, only that we found ourselves in a dense fog.<br /><br />We walked blindly, not even knowing if we were still on a road. No cars passed us, and every once in a while, we could see through the mist, fields, and, once, at a distance, a barn, which gave us hope that we might be able to sleep somewhere for a while. Jacques crossed the field to see if we could get into it, but a dog began to bark ferociously and Jacques backed off.<br /><br />We walked most of the night, hardly able to see a foot in front of us. The fog enveloped us, but sometimes retreated, trees appearing from nowhere, sometimes a house or two, then disappearing. We kept losing sight of each other, too, only to rediscover one another just a few steps away. But we never saw another human being. It was as if we were between worlds—unknown places. Nothing seemed real.<br /><br />As the fog lifted and light drifted down from the sky, things around us began to stir. A farmer left his house and headed across a field towards his barn, a dog at his side. Once in a while, we saw a cow or two standing as if in a trance, slowly blinking. Morning was breaking.<br /><br />At some point, we heard a truck coming our way. It was a milk truck and the driver was kind enough to pick us up. He said he would take us into town. We had started out to try to find an old friend of mine who lived in Oberbayen, a small town in Bavaria, south of Munich. Amazingly, the driver told us we were practically there. Once he dropped us off in town, we were able to find the small inn where Robert, my friend, was staying.<br /><br />It was good to see Robert. Robert. Solid, kind, wise. He was 65 and I was 21. He had lived a complicated life. He was German and as a young man, had served in World War I, only to emerge from it, shell-shocked and with a horror of war. During World War II, he had worked in the underground, helping Jews escape. After the war, he had come to America, living there for many years, and doing many things, some of them simultaneously. He started an old-time one-room schoolhouse, worked as a therapist, treating people who were “lost causes,” was a water-color painter, and was in the midst of translating the verses of the I Ching. <br /><br />The quality in Robert I found most impressive was his ability to focus. When you were with him, he was totally attentive and fully present, so that even five minutes with him was completely satisfying and felt like five hours. And, perhaps because of that focus, he was acutely perceptive and sensitive. He learned so much about you without you having said a word. I think that’s why I had wanted to come to see him with Jacques. I felt so conflicted in my feelings for Jacques, and thought that perhaps things would clarify in Robert’s wise presence.<br /><br /> </span>Marta Szabo, Curatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01369491214510063324noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4078410068957927088.post-15392867567000578162014-04-17T12:47:00.003-07:002014-04-17T12:47:56.463-07:00THINGS I DIDN'T KNOW by Daniel Marshall<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">I felt comfortable sitting on a padded stool, the counter hard underneath my forearms when I leaned on it. With my eyes, I followed the marbled pattern on the stone, veins of white running through black, this way and that, webbed. The seat revolved, though not the yoke-shaped steel footrest. I twisted to left and right, stopping my swings with my feet, waiting for service.<br /><br />“What will you have?”<br /><br />“A vanilla malted.”<br /><br />My eyes swept over the store—the mirror facing me that I turned from, not wanting to see myself, the shiny painted and chromed paraphernalia on the sideboard, the wooden telephone booth with the glass windows at the end of the walkway, and a few empty booths. The store was empty, except for me.<br /><br />It was a choice of either a malted, a milkshake, or an egg cream, but I was hungry and wanted something thick and soothing, not runny with seltzer and lumpy with ice cream scoops. A memory flickered across my mind of an apple-cheeked young man and woman, she in a checked dress, sharing an ice cream soda with two straws in the Norman Rockwell painting. But I had no young woman soft on me to share a soda with, though I could have asked one if I’d had time.<br /><br />I thought of Beverly, how pretty and demure she was, with long blond hair, and of the day that I passed her house and heard her screaming at her younger brother. An image of Joanne Lanzarone came to me, but I hadn’t seen her since eighth grade and didn’t know where she lived. I thought that I’d intercepted some glances from her, and there was an engaging sweetness about her but Carol del Casino was more sultry and got higher marks, though not quite as high as mine. Why was I thinking of them; they were moving in a different direction from me, and I never saw them anymore, except once or twice a year when I went to the same Mass as Carol, and she was wearing attention-getting fashionable grown-up clothes now.<br /><br />The truth was that Regis kept me away from the neighborhood. I hardly even saw the pretty Wotman girls next door, though I still saw Marge in the kitchen when she visited my mom and they sat talking around the table. My mom liked to give advice and listen to people’s problems or just chat. I wondered what my classmates were doing. Tommy Keller liked to visit my mom, so once in a while I heard something about him. I liked to visit Ethel McDonald, Brigid’s mom, but Brigid still looked a lot like a girl and wasn’t sultry like Carol. Besides, the girls whom I went to school with seemed ordinary, and I wondered what sort of people were beyond Brooklyn.<br /><br />I thought of Joanne in a one-piece elastic bathing suit, like the one that Joanne Galuski used to wear when I met her in Oswego on the shores of Lake Ontario, behind the university buildings where my dad did research for a summer job, and the summer before that Mary Morrow at Lake Champlain, where Harry Holmes lent us a big summer house on an acre of land by the only main road. I couldn’t remember when I’d seen Joanne in such a bathing suit, but I could easily imagine her looking attractive in one. I must have seen her somewhere.<br /><br />Beverly was taller, and she could have had such a suit, too, but I couldn’t imagine her in one. Or Ginny Holst. I thought of Bev in crinoline and satin like the dress that she wore when I took her to the junior prom. My mom wanted me to date Mary Flaherty, but she was plain and chatty. My mom knew her mom. I thought of Ginny as very modest, in a plain flowered dress. She got the next highest marks after me and didn’t start school with us.<br /><br />Making a malted was liturgy and performance. I couldn’t often afford one, but I wanted one to cheer me up. I remembered being disappointed when Carol showed a liking for Dennis Card. The counter guy dropped a measured spoonful of a white powder with an expert toss and, pulling a handle or two downward toward the metal canister that served as mixer, he dispensed a couple of fluids into it, thick and white. He locked the canister into the mixer and flicked a switch. The machine turned with a soft, business-like little roar. It was pea-soup green and enameled; they always were. Maybe it was in my imagination that I imagined seeing the liquid swirling. Then with a flourish he set a tall glass in front of me, poured the contents of the canister into it, and plopped a straw and spoon in. It was thick enough that a little indentation formed around the straw. I sipped, thinking of Joanne Lanzarone, Mary Morrow, and Joanne Galuski in bathing suits and wishing that I had a girlfriend like one of them.</span>Marta Szabo, Curatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01369491214510063324noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4078410068957927088.post-54524389793740536032014-04-08T06:43:00.004-07:002014-04-08T06:44:18.962-07:00IT'S NOT OVER by DeAnn Louise Daigle<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">My art history class transported <br />me to Rome, the Netherlands, <br />Greece, France, Holland, Germany – <br /><br />But more than cities and countries <br />with boundaries and languages <br />were the paintings and sculptures themselves. <br />Like music, they transcended all borders and <br />destinations except what led to the human heart. <br />Art and the human heart.<br /><br />These few hours every week were precious and <br />inexplicably freeing for me. <br />When I was there in the evenings at the <br />university, I left behind W. T. Grant Company. <br />I was nineteen years old and totally in love with <br />the study of art and the worlds it opened for me. <br />I soared, I wept, I stayed awake nights writing <br />and reading about my experience of art <br />and the world of impeccable beauty and how it <br />nourished and sustained me <br />by feeding my imagination with an opening to <br />endless possibilities.<br /><br />It was this experience that gave me the wings of <br />courage to go outside, to work, to speak, to have <br />conversation, to try to live my life as if there were <br />someone I could speak with about all I felt <br />and dreamed and hoped for.<br /><br />I wrote about the whistler of the night<br />who walked in foggy footsteps I could hear <br />outside my window<br />in the middle of a summer’s quiet evening.<br />And I wrote, after seeing Edward Hopper’s <br /><i>Nighthawks</i>, about the same sky,<br />the same sun, the same moon, the same stars <br />from above my room to other rooms on the<br />other side of the globe, and how we shared these <br />together – human beings unknowing, quiet, <br />apart and yet together.</span>Marta Szabo, Curatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01369491214510063324noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4078410068957927088.post-37728836970005506442014-03-16T06:22:00.004-07:002014-03-16T06:22:46.940-07:00THE SEASON OF FEAR by Ruth Berg<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This past winter has been a bitch. I have vegetated in my house....scared of icy roads and sidewalks...terrified of falling...broken arm...leg...back. I carry the hiking stick which I can barely manage when walking the dog. Yes...Yes what I have experienced is fear...real fear..and I hate it. Long ago I swore that as I aged I’d be bold, take the risks, not let the years strap me in an unmovable chair, be who I was.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I was in my twenties. I was in New York City taking an acting class that met on a Sunday night at twelve midnight on Sixth Avenue and 24<sup>th</sup> Street. You climbed up three flights of rickety stairs to the studio. The class met at this witching hour because everyone in the class, except me, was in a Broadway show and they could make it down after their performances.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The class ran from midnight to 2:30 or 3:00 am. After class we’d trudge down the rickety stairs...some turned north on Sixth Ave....four of us turned south headed toward The Village. We didn’t wait for a bus but walked the blocks south to 8<sup>th</sup> Street, talking about the scenes that had been presented in class; the working actors gossiping about the evening performance. At 8<sup>th</sup> Street, two turned west and two of us turned east. At Cooper Union, I lost my companion. I continued on, alone, to St. Marks Place, past the darkened Jazz club, on to First Ave., south one block to 7<sup>th</sup> Street and home at last. Unlocked the apartment door and my dog, Hambone, greeted me. I’d put on his leash, back down the stairs to the street with Hambone desperately searching for the nearest pole to lift his leg. Then a quick run around the block, back up the stairs to the apartment, feed Hambone and the cat, General Beauregard, then into the shower and getting ready to make the trip uptown to get to work on time.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">What I remember of that time? The silence of the streets, hearing my shoe heel strike the pavement, the wild conversations as the four of us walked south, the lack of fear... Being alive in the moment. Being young. I want it back. I reach out.</span></div>
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Marta Szabo, Curatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01369491214510063324noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4078410068957927088.post-28417907078211107852013-11-11T08:27:00.003-08:002013-11-11T08:32:32.097-08:00CANYONLANDS by Pauline Tamari<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The white water rafting trip down the Colorado River from Moab was exhilarating. I couldn’t believe I was able to once more feel the thrill of being on the edge; taking a bite out of life, once again. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It seemed at some point fate dictated a decree of disease that would imprison me in a static state of health debilitation. Prematurely old, sick, alone; an invalid, one who is not valid; whose life is not validated, who has no validity. I could not continue my life work, the work that fed my soul, my passions unattended. I could hardly care for myself; not for others, in and out of the hospitals where the lack of care and compassion was firmly correlated with the overwhelming humiliation from which there was no escape. Each time in the last quarter of a century the ferocious dragon who I had thought I had slain would raise its immortal head I was sure it would be the end. I was sure this last time I was on the only road left, a lonely and painful trek to the grave. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But here I was back in life again, in the rage of this rushing water as we flow over rocks and ripples sprayed with a canopy of life-giving water, we wind our way down this magnificent alley sheltered on either side by the sand colored mountains. I feel my soul settle in serenity. When the whitewater hits we steady ourselves, crouch on our fear and scream and yell as unencumbered teenagers on a rollercoaster. When taunted if anyone would want to venture a solo run in the kayak that is trailing the raft there are only two of us who take the bait, a young teen age boy on the trip and myself, the two polar ends of a life course each having an appetite for the taste. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We would stop in late afternoon our raft pushed up on the side of the sandy, secluded river beach where we would camp for the night. There were no other beings, no other boats, and no other intrusive noises, nothing that grated the ears or distracted the eye, and caused sensory agony, nothing that did not belong there, except perhaps us. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I would often float in the warm, soft, red muddy waters and let it wash over me at the end of the day. Stretched out, I would float with my face to the sun and just be. For me to just be in this force of this fearsome beauty that surrounded me, my body at peace, at one with me and the world around me, was heaven. I would set up my small tent quickly so I could take a solitary walk, a short hike in search for my soul and my being to become one, one with this awesome mystery that encased me. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In actuality I was “one,” the other five on this rafting trip were a young couple and a father with two teenagers. When we met in Moab, Utah to begin this adventure, the others were a bit surprised that I, somewhat strange in age and even stranger to be a woman of my age who was doing this type of trip alone. I was quite used to both being strange and doing strange things alone. On this trip even our two river guides came as a pair. But for the most part I felt a comfortable ease with and a part of this rag tag group of river rafters. We had quickly learned to delight in each of our strangeness and our appetite and exuberance in this adventure. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">After an unusually superb dinner accomplished in some magical way over a fire by our river guides, with provisions so expertly concealed on our raft that the first day I began to think they forgot about bringing food, we would all sit around the fire, its light dancing shadows on the red rocks of the surrounding mountains. We talked, sang songs, heard old river stories and drank wine. I was surely back in life. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Later I would lie on the sand outside my tent. I would think of the starched, scratchy sheets and the needles plunged in my arm, with oxygen in my nose to face one more night of sleepless agony in an antiseptic unfeeling sterile world. I shiver. I then look up at the stars above me, twinkling me messages of delight, the soft glow of the moon and the warm sand beneath me and I feel at peace and alive in that very same moment as the silent song of serenity sings me to sleep.</span></div>
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Marta Szabo, Curatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01369491214510063324noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4078410068957927088.post-36207908620107628552013-10-09T07:37:00.000-07:002013-10-09T07:37:10.084-07:00BRINGING IT TOGETHER by DeAnn Louise Daigle<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">It
feels like nothing is ever resolved.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Just
when I thought that in knowing </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">My
past more clearly, as in Bud</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Actually
being my biological father,</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Something
would be completed.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Rumors
seem to have basis in fact – </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">At
least in some fact, if not all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Hearsay,
that rumor, that gossip </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Repeated
to me by my cousin when</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">We
were ten or eleven or nine years old </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Had
its basis in something, and something</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">In
me knew this, even if what he told me</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Was
not true.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet, why would he have</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Bothered
to tell me?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He wanted me to</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Know.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He felt compelled, on some level</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Of
his youthful humanity, for whatever</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Unfathomable
reason, that I should be</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Aware
of this information.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He believed </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">It.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And so I lived with his knowledge</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Unable
to do anything about it or with</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">It
for some four decades when – just </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Maybe
– I was ready to find out for sure – </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">And
for true – </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Bud
and I wept on the phone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was true.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">What
Carl had told me that day in the old</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Boarding
House, which held so many </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Memories,
so many stories of our roots and</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Acadian
history – so much of that big story</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Of
our ancestors – it was there on a warm</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Summer’s
day in one of the spare bedrooms,</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Where
who knows who had slept.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On that</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Day
he told me the rumor he had heard, so</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Convincingly,
and his cousin James was there</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">To
confirm it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes, it was true, it was
very </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">True.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I have
loved you all these years</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sonorous</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Regret
in his voice echoes still in my mind.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Bud
was my father – but he was not – nor</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-hansi-font-family: Palatino;">Would he ever be – my Dad.</span></span>Marta Szabo, Curatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01369491214510063324noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4078410068957927088.post-75723401735667687662013-09-26T12:42:00.002-07:002013-09-26T12:42:16.610-07:00I PETER 3:15? by Carol Welch<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Fall, 1978. <br /><br />I sat in the leadership meeting in Wisconsin. Rev. Alan Ell was running the meeting. Alan was 6th Way Corps, probably in his mid-to-late 20s.<br /><br />I was 19 years old, apprentice Way Corps, and serving as a WOW Ambassador. I would be entering in-residence into the 10th Way Corps at the end of my one year of service as a WOW. WOW was an acronym that stood for Word Over the World. Word Over the World meant that our goal was to move the rightly-divided Word of God so that it would be made available to every community on earth where a person was hungering and thirsting after righteousness. <br /><br />As an Ambassador for Christ I was to speak the Word in season and out of season; that is, whether I felt like it or not. I was a shining light for God, God's messenger. I had Christ in me and could perform the works of Jesus Christ and greater works. Christ's works were that of healing the sick, raising the dead, casting out devil spirits, manifesting God's power, speaking the truth in love. The greater works included getting the natural man born again of God's spirit and receiving eternal life. Jesus Christ could not do that greater work when he was on earth because he had not yet died and arisen and ascended; being born again, or more accurately "born from above," was only made available to mankind beginning at the Day of Pentecost.<br /><br />As a Word Over the World Ambassador I would spiritually grow ten years in one. That's what Doctor said, "If we really want to grow, then go." That is, go WOW now.<br /><br />I faithfully reviewed and recited my retemory cards, business-size cards with a King James scripture verse printed on each card. Over the decades, The Way had different packs of retemory cards: Foundational, Intermediate, Advanced, Dealing with the Adversary, Abundant Life, Word in Business, Way Corps, L.E.A.D., and more. Each pack focused on a certain Ministry class or aspect of the Word. Some cards were printed not with scripture verses, but rather with certain Ministry definitions or principles, such as the definition of "word of knowledge" or a Way Corps principle.<br /><br />I sat in the leadership meeting in a believer's home in a basement in Wisconsin. It seems there were about 20 to 30 believers at the gathering, all Way lay leadership. Rev. Ell was calling on different indiviuals at random to recite whatever retemory card he wanted us to recite. Each retemory card in a pack was numbered. <br /><br />Rev. Ell would say, "Number 10." We leaders were to know the card right away and state the scripture reference, recite the scripture word perfect, and give the scripture reference again. My Way Branch leader at the time, David Dubew, had admonished me to know those retemory cards in my sleep. This was eternal life and the accuracy of the Word at stake. The devil was always after the accuracy of the Word.<br /><br />Rev. Ell called on one of us to recite a card. The man he called on responded with silence; he could not bring to memory the retemory. <br /><br />Alan then asked the group, "Does anyone in here know the retemory?" <br /><br />A momentary hush fell on the room. <br /><br />I immediately jumped to my feet and bolted forth what I thought was the retemory that Rev. Ell sought.<br /><br />"I Peter 3:15. But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear. I Peter 3:15." *??*<br /><br />As I ended my retemory recitation, the pitch of my voice rose slightly like I was asking a question indicating my own self-doubt regarding my answer.<br /><br />Alan responded in military tone but with a hint of smile on his lips, "Is that a question or an answer Hamby?" <br /><br />I responded with a hint of a smile, "It's an answer."<br /><br />He nodded his approval, his smile a bit broader. <br /><br />I was Way Corps in training, an Ambassador for Christ. <br /><br />"It is Written" - that was the Way Corps motto.</span>Marta Szabo, Curatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01369491214510063324noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4078410068957927088.post-77702929410590854782013-09-06T04:01:00.003-07:002013-09-06T04:01:36.864-07:00THE RECLINER by Maurine Netchin<br />
<div style="font: 11.0px Calibri; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px 0.0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Oh my God! I bought a recliner. </span></div>
<div style="font: 11.0px Calibri; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px 0.0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Really.</span></div>
<div style="font: 11.0px Calibri; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px 0.0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Something I vowed would never see the light of day in my home.</span></div>
<div style="font: 11.0px Calibri; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px 0.0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">I am officially old. And straight.</span></div>
<div style="font: 11.0px Calibri; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px 0.0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">And I’m old and straight enough to really <span style="text-decoration: underline;">need</span> a recliner. Yes, need. </span></div>
<div style="font: 11.0px Calibri; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px 0.0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">I’ve toyed with this for a long time – years really. But recliners are not for one-bedroom Manhattan apartments. Recliners are not for people like me who fancy themselves as hip. To my 40-something niece who lives in Chicago – with the rest of my family -- I am the “cool” aunt from New York City -- cool aunts do not have recliners. Recliners are for people who watch TV, who sleep sitting up, or, as they say, reclining. They don’t ride the subway. They ride the bus, if need be. </span></div>
<div style="font: 11.0px Calibri; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px 0.0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">I’ve had a bad back since I was in my thirties – or even twenties, perhaps. My thousand-section, sectional couch, which I’ve owned for about 30 years, has no really comfortable section. That’s how I’ve managed to keep it in good shape and own it for so long – I never sit on it. Only guests sit on it. If they are uncomfortable, they are polite and don’t mention it. </span></div>
<div style="font: 11.0px Calibri; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px 0.0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">For years, I’ve watched TV sitting in a straight-backed dining chair with various forms of back rests inserted, or in bed, with lots of pillows propped behind me. And all the time, I did quite well without a recliner.</span></div>
<div style="font: 11.0px Calibri; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px 0.0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The only people I knew who had recliners were my relatives who would all be octogenarians, or older, or dead, by now. Those big, clunky, La-Z-Boy things that took up half the room. Always covered with some horrible fabric or fake leather that looked very uninviting. Oh yes, and my folks had a recliner too. Not the La-Z-Boy type. Some supposedly ergonomic, vinyl, sliding lounge chair that was almost like a bed. It slid back and forth on a central axis – and vibrated. If you reclined it all the way back you were looking straight up at the ceiling. It was useless for doing anything but sleeping or mulling. It was a putty color vinyl material that didn’t give at all. Ugh. My pubescent friends always sat in it because it had a vibrator. They’d lie back, stare at the ceiling, vibrate, and stab at the fruit in the fruit bowl that my mother always put out on the table next to the chair. She’d stick a nice fruit knife in the bowl so you could cut the fruit and was always perplexed that my teenage friends – especially the boys – stabbed the fruit instead of eating it. Eventually, she begged my father to get rid of the chair. It was an eyesore and it isolated you from everyone in the room, not to mention Mom’s role as the “fruit policewoman.” </span></div>
<div style="font: 11.0px Calibri; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 10.0px 0.0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Years later, when I visited my folks, they had replaced that thing with a gigantic, rocking, swiveling, white, faux fur covered easy chair. Not a recliner. But with a good, sturdy back for my dad. He planted it right in front of their huge console TV. A selection my Dad bought when he was getting on in years and wanted to watch football while drowning out everything else – and everybody else. It was like a cocoon: high backed, with curving wing chair sides, all covered in that same fluffy, white, synthetic fur; something even a place like Raymore and Flanagan would probably eschew. Belonged in Las Vegas. I was actually shocked when I saw it because it was the first really tacky-looking, Archie Bunker type furniture that I ever saw in my parents’ home. I chalked it up to my Dad’s waning years when his sense of color and taste left him. Once, he showed up at a family gathering wearing rust-colored, plaid slacks, a striped shirt, a powder blue sports jacket, and white patent leather loafers, and I knew that his Brooks Brothers and Florsheim shoe days were over. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">I never suspected that I might one day traverse a similar slope. I admit only to similar, not the same. Let’s call it Manhattan shabby chic, not Midwestern tacky. A recliner for a former hippie, left wing, baby boomer. A sort of pseudo-hippie. Not a weatherman type who blew things up; just a march-on-Washington, end-the-Vietnam war type. Mainstream for a 60’s pseudo-radical. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">So what happened? Flash forward. Here I am in Macy’s. With a tape measure in hand. Testing recliners. Why? Because my physical therapist says I still have time to reverse a burgeoning dowager’s hump if I get my act together. Straighten the back; pull back the shoulders; get my head properly positioned over my spine. And, of all things, sit up in a good, comfortable, supportive chair that reclines for reading, resting.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Alas, to help ward off a true sign of old age—dowager’s hump, mind you. I can tolerate a lot of stuff associated with aging. Wrinkles, jiggly thighs, saggy skin, impatience – although plastic surgery is not my thing. It’s just a slippery slope. Everything falls. And falls again. And, then again. Gravity will always get you. And surgery is not something I would ever do electively, anyhow. Spent too many years defending personal injury and medical malpractice cases.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">But a recliner to keep my spine straight and neutral: for this I can relent.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Three times, I went to Macy’s. And God knows where else. I did this last year, too, but wasn’t ready yet. Like wearing your hair naturally grey. This time, I sat in every “easy” chair they had there; rockers, gliders, swivelers, recliners, loungers, chaises. At least they had no faux fur fabric. Vinyl, yes. Burnt orange, avocado green -- yes. And who was in that department with me after 8:00 p.m. during the late holiday hours that kept the store open for us nut-jobs until midnight? A lot of over-fifty types. Who else? </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">I started small, got bigger, went back; knew that I had to limit my sights to something that could fit in my apartment. Finally, I gave in – bought an ivory/beige, leather – yes leather – “ergonomic,” recliner; demure and tasteful; but of course. And I went home to start rearranging all my living room furniture. What will I discard? Change? Shove in my storage space – you know, the one that everything goes into and nothing ever leaves. I spent hours rearranging; planning, mulling. Started on that journey to make room for the goddam recliner – or shall we say – I’m not ready to be called a dowager chair. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Next up, your guess is as good as mine. Perhaps an ottoman?</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Alas, I have finally become my father, sans football, console, and faux fur. </span></div>
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<span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Epilogue</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The Macy’s recliner didn’t work. Gave me back and neck strain. Returned it, minus a restocking fee and the shipping fee. Certainly cheaper than medical treatment. Undaunted, I kept looking. After many hours of sitting in chairs, tilting, sprawling, lounging, lolling, and taking countless recommendations, I ended up with something called a “stressless” recliner. Cost a small fortune. Imported from Norway. Who would believe that? When did Norwegians get into the recliner act? But it’s comfy, cushy, and wonderful. And it has an ottoman. Need I say more? </span></div>
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Marta Szabo, Curatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01369491214510063324noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4078410068957927088.post-69578750305706259262013-08-26T10:28:00.001-07:002013-08-26T10:31:49.195-07:00WHAT IS LOVE... by Michael Joseph<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
We left the perch that overlooked the amazing vista. More like we were chased off by the turkey vultures with their eight-foot wing span and clawed feet. In anger and silence my wife walking marriage distance from me. </div>
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You see, there are distances I measure by relationships. First date distance is an uncomfortable closeness, unsure of each other. Six month relationship where the couple locks arms around their backs, leaving no room for separation. A year, where you hold hands together. And marriage distance where couples walk seeing each other, but plenty of space between them. So we were in marriage distance plus room for our anger. Her anger at me and my anger that she is angry at me.</div>
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We continued to hike through the trees knowing that conversation was not an option. Although looking back, her Brooklyn strut was adorable. My pouting did not allow me to enjoy this, because I was committed to being more upset than she.</div>
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We hiked. When you hike there are hills. If hills are what made her mad, well I’ll show her and be more mad.</div>
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Breaking our bond of silent aggressive warfare was a rustling of leaves and sticks in the not so distant trees. The sound was of a beast running. We stopped. My son was on my back in a carrying pack. We stopped and the sound got louder and faster, faster and louder and louder. Then we saw it. One of God’s creatures. A majestic stag. It was old and looked wise with large horns, six or more points on each side. A rack that took a lifetime to grow.</div>
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When he reached five to ten feet from us, he stopped. He stared. It was a curious stare. His look was a mirror of our puzzlement and curiosity. The stare lasted twenty or so seconds, but a long twenty. One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, four Mississippi, five Mississippi, six Mississippi, seven Mississippi, eight Mississippi. You get the idea. </div>
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I reached for my camera that was on my belt in a case closed by a strip of velcro. The sound of the velcro echoed in the woods. He vanished, vanished like water down the drain. Returning to his mystical existence.<br />
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My wife broke our silence with a question, “Who is he running from? What was chasing him?”</div>
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I dismissed her question with a roll of my eyes, saying to her with my face, an attitude of that’s as stupid as asking to go on a hike that has no hills, but she was right. We both knew animals don’t run unless they are being chased or chasing something. But before fear and strategy to protect my family came in, I celebrated. Celebrated my little victory. She broke our silence first. I could stay mad longer, thus maybe she would apologize for ruining our Sabbath hike.</div>
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Those were her last words for awhile.</div>
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My heart was pumping and my head on a swivel because she was right. There could be danger beyond the trees. Looking and on the alert for the largest beast that lives in these woods. A black bear.<br />
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After two miles of trekking, we came across a lean-to. We stop to share some water and have our last smoke together. Posted on the walls and throughout the camp grounds were signs warning of bears in the area. We both knew this, but did not acknowledge it. I said, “Ok, let’s go.” Hoping she would not process the dozen or so signs.</div>
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My son, who was now walking, stopped at every watering hole. There were many. Fascinated by the tadpoles and frogs, his enthusiasm and curiosity was annoying and slowing our pace to a crank.<br />
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Our silence, marriage distance, utter despair for each other had grown to where we’re not even looking at each other now.</div>
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I placed my kid in the pack and started to forward march back towards our house. There was only about ten minutes of woods left before we would be back at the end of our block. That is when she saw it and said, “Is that a bear?”</div>
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Somehow she used her grandfather’s shaman powers and quickly placed herself behind me, using me as a human shield. Then I saw it. Softly I said, “Yes, it’s a bear.”</div>
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It was about a 100 feet from us, moving left to right across the trail, which was turning to the left. I quickly calculated if I needed to, could I fight it. It wasn’t big really. And growing up I got into some fights, enough of them to know I didn’t like to fight. It really hurts to get punched in your face or punch someone. Your hand stings for days. But I knew I had a shot.</div>
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The bear continued on its path and went across the trail into the woods. About five seconds later -- one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, four Mississippi, five Mississippi -- there she was. Mama Bear. She looked 500lbs of beast. </div>
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I started clapping and shouting, because that is what the book says when you see a bear. Make noise. My three-year old son was having a blast, clapping with me, yelling and laughing away. The bear turned her head and looked right down the trail at me. She looked pissed. I picked up a nearby stick and tried to make myself look bigger and more threatening. My legs were shaking.</div>
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Then she took off on the trail, directly towards us. Her hind legs pushing and her forward legs reaching, stretching, pulling, the middle of her body acting as some sort of leverage, gear. The front of her body twisted one way, while the back of her body twisted the other. With each thrust and turn she increased velocity until when she was just ten-fifteen feet in front of me, my wife and child, she stopped. </div>
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She stopped short and kicked up the loose dirt and rocks, making a cloud of dirt. Then she disappeared into the trees, into the mystical world of existence.</div>
Marta Szabo, Curatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01369491214510063324noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4078410068957927088.post-88944270000749882922013-08-04T14:03:00.002-07:002013-08-04T14:03:33.514-07:00ANSWER by Cheryl Corson<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">On Christmas Eve, the Capitol Hill pot luck group I’ve been part of for twelve years had Secret Santa after dinner. The wrapped gifts were as usual, gender neutral, food-related, and cost no more than twenty dollars. We all picked numbers from a basket and did the gifts with dessert.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This year, you could take someone else’s opened gift from them instead of opening a wrapped one. But a popular gift could only be stolen three times. I think the limit came about after a pair of triple bladed herb scissors kept getting stolen the year before.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This year, Laurie Siegel and I swapped the gifts we got. Mine was a copy of a political humor book that was recycled from the previous year’s Secret Santa. I recognized it as being the one my husband had contributed at the time. Laurie had a gift bag from South Carolina that included a stainless steel wine opener, a set of round cork coasters with black line drawings of old fashioned bicycles on them, and a jar of pineapple and hot pepper jelly made in South Carolina. Laurie said her husband Alan would like the book, and I thought my husband would like the corkscrew. So we traded and no one stole our stuff during the rest of the game.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I do like the corkscrew and the jelly is still half-full in the fridge. The coasters might be okay for the Maine house. But answer this: how can the jelly still be in the refrigerator but Laurie is dead? How can you not outlive your edible Secret Santa gift?</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Surely there’s some mistake, like that jelly is ten years, not seven months old, or Death will wait politely, sitting with legs crossed in the hallway, hat in hand, maybe flipping through a back issue of People Magazine while his intended visitor goes about finishing all that is left undone.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">All the yarn in the cabinet that has not already been eaten by moths is woven into scarves and rugs and knitted into sweaters. All the handwritten notebook pages are digitized and patched into one or more complete memoirs. The tear in the green flannel sheet is neatly stitched back together. Old family photographs are labeled. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The brother and sister finally talk about what it was like growing up with that mother and that father, and how it came to be that their paths diverged while still bearing the indelible thumbprint of their street address and apartment number. The husband and wife let go of their hurt feelings and weep for each other’s early and great pain. Then kiss. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Death starts tapping his foot on the hallway floor.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The wife sends out one last Facebook post to 250 people near and far: I loved being in the sixth grade with you; in high school with you; in bed with you; in business with you. I loved the sound of your voice. I loved laughing until our stomachs hurt.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Death stands, impatient, “Leave the fucking jelly, it’s time to go,” he says.</span></div>
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Marta Szabo, Curatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01369491214510063324noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4078410068957927088.post-65606174647605647102013-07-29T11:44:00.001-07:002013-07-29T11:46:16.235-07:00BACK TO BALTIMORE by Victoria Hall<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
I arrived at the B&B on East West Street in the heart of Federal Hill, weary from the 12- hour drive up from Atlanta, filled with trepidation. I thought how apropos that even the bi-directional name of the street accurately proclaimed the state of my bi-polar, biochemically confused, bi-directional life. <br />
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I knocked on the door of the red brick 14' wide Baltimore row house, on the narrow cobble-stoned street wide enough for passing horse drawn carriages and not so much for my white stallion of a SUV. The proprietor opened the door. Her heavily creased, sun-worn skin, the sound of her whiskey-soaked, cigarette-raspy voice was so comforting. That and her "Baltimorese" was, well, just perfect. I was at once home.<br />
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She took me on a tour of the 3 crowded stories – not the top floor, that was her private quarters. The thick dark red carpet, a cacophony of Tiffany chandeliers, floor lamps along with the many pieces of Victorian chairs, chaises and love seats, immediately claustrophobic, gave the feel of an antique store. The only things missing were the price tags.<br />
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The proud owner stopped for a moment in front of what was clearly her "piece-de-resistance,” a walled glass encasement of her very own collection of Martini glasses. Some chipped, some, I swear, with a hint of hot pink lipstick still on the rims. "They are from all over the world," she announced with such astonishment, as if they had somehow magically appeared one-by-one over the years without any participation on her part. By the look of her face, there probably weren't many short- or long-term memory cells left in her brain and the glasses were the result of one too many brown- or black-outs, from one too many Martinis.<br />
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A book about the various types of Martinis one could concoct, on the table of the second floor landing that I would be using, seemed to accurately describe my hostess's life, "Stirred Not Shaken.”<br />
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The tour continued, with great detail about how to prepare the coffee, what setting to leave the air-conditioning on, how to run the dishwasher. It just so happened that she was leaving to spend the entire month "down de-Oshean," on the Eastern Shore of Ocean City where I'd spent every summer as a child with my family. If you were from New York or Jersey you went "to da shore," or if from DC "to the beach," but if you were from "Balamer, Murlin" Hon, you went "down de-Oshean.”<br />
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And so trustingly she gave me the entire B&B to myself and seemed to be puzzled by why a girl who lived in Atlanta would what to spend the most miserable month of the year, when everyone was vacationing, escaping, as far away as they could, in Baltimore.<br />
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There had been books written about her's, that very South Baltimore twangy dialect that actors would try to imitate unsuccessfully in films. A sort of half-Irish and British Cockney, lower Bowery, with many long "O's.” I loved listening to her masterful command of it. "How bout them O's!" she proclaimed as if she was reading my mind. </div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Linguists and scholars have tried without success to determine the derivation of "Baltimorese.” "You like baseball?” she asked. “Yeh know, the "Oryuls" Stadium is right down the street, yeh can even walk to it!" she said, and then paused as if she'd just calculated that she should have charged me more than the $1200 for the month due to this incredibly close proximity. Then shook her head and continued my tour.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">She also seemed to be in a sort of time warp, forgetting that the by-gone Memorial Stadium had been replaced for the past decade with the Wrigley Field-like - covered in brick and ivy - Camden Yards. Still, I loved the Orioles and thought this was a nice bonus.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">I had not inherited the language of my home town, but instead sounded like my mom who had been raised in the horse country of Western Maryland with a more gentle, softer "Proper English" dialect according to my British friends, now with a hint of Southern, as my Yankee friends duly noted. My dad and brothers, however, had it down pat.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">She continued, "Here's yur baffroom and make sure yea don't put anything down the "zink,” it'll ghet stopped up end be jest "harble" to clean out.” </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">What I didn't tell her was that I actually had returned home for the first time in many years. It was August of 1999. I felt like a sort of Rip Van Winkle who had awakened from a 17-year slumber and that I was kind of having a "harble" time of it myself. And that Federal Hill on the Inner Harbor was where I was hoping to reboot my life, where my hiatus would begin. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The new Millennium was approaching at mock speed, with forecasts of Apocalyptic, Armageddon, Y-2 K mayhem and end of times madness loomed. I was plagued with an all-consuming, couldn't quiet the voices, desire, longing, visceral need to come home!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Home to the place that I had left so many years ago, home even if it was for just one solitary month, home to do what I knew I was supposed to be doing, something I did in my head every day, something that was so compelling, something that left me feeling empty, tortured because I wasn't doing it, home to write. </span><br />
<br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" />Marta Szabo, Curatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01369491214510063324noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4078410068957927088.post-90084924922926205462013-07-26T06:52:00.001-07:002013-07-26T06:52:07.058-07:00SECRETS by Debra F. <span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">It was early summer of 1960 and I would be 12 in September. Still a tomboy who loved to ride my bike, sit up in the tree fort I built myself with some saltine crackers, carrot sticks and my current book, probably Nancy Drew, or the Black Stallion, or one by Albert Payson Terhune, about dogs. </span><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">It was the summer that one day after my father came home from work as an office manager in a salt and chemical business he had a gift for me. A real transistor radio! Left behind in the desk drawer of a young man who had been working there. A young man who fled to Canada rather than go into the Army. My parents were both Army veterans and couldn’t quite understand his actions. For most of my childhood we didn’t have a TV, so I didn’t know about the war our country would soon be involved in, or much else of the world, unless it was in the Weekly Reader.</span><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">But, the radio! I felt so lucky to have my own radio. Every night I lay in bed, finally in my own room, just that year, a small, sloped part of the attic that my father had insulated, put up wallboard and painted. My own room, although the first moments in that room were those of anger. My sister, Jennifer, had hidden under the bed and when I fell to my knees and full of emotion, said out loud something like: “Thank you, thank you, finally I have a room of my own,” she started to giggle. I was furious and drug her out and screamed at her never to come in my room again. And, she didn’t.</span><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Every night I listened to my radio, crying along with the tragic love songs like Teen Angel and Running Bear or dreaming of boys who might someday love me and who I might someday love. The Everly Brothers, Elvis Presley, the Drifters, Dion. I was full of yearning and deep passions, all of course, that I kept secret, even from my brother, who was my best friend.</span><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">My family was Mormon. My father, the hold-out and the parent I loved most, had recently gotten baptized. I felt it a sort of betrayal, because I did not like this church and I was “with him” in not embracing it. My mother however, was immersed in her beliefs and very serious about them. Even with 4 children, no dryer or dishwasher, a very small house with long red curtains made from Nazi flags, minus the swastikas, she did service for the Missionaries. </span><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The Missionaries were young men around the ages of 19 to 21 who came in pairs, usually from Utah to convince other people to be Mormons. They were often invited to Sunday dinner and my mother washed and ironed the white dress shirts that they had to wear while out trolling for new Mormons. Many times, about the only thing in our refrigerator was a huge bundle of damp shirts rolled up in a cloth and waiting for ironing. I did learn to iron properly, watching her and listening to her instructions about collar first, then the shoulder area, front panels, or was it sleeves next and how to do the cuffs on both sides, and then the back.</span><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">On this particular Sunday, we had a TV. Someone in church must have bought a new one and gave our parents their old set. The missionaries were there for dinner. One of them was Elder Andrus and I liked him. He was handsome and friendly and I felt drawn to be around him. There was a movie on that the entire family was going to watch with the missionaries. Probably a Biblical story. </span><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">I felt very lucky to get to sit in the dark on the floor, leaning against the sofa, because Elder Andrus sat right next to me. Before long, I was amazed and happy to feel Elder Andrus touch my arm in a very soft and thrilling way. For the entire movie, he touched me, very gently, moving up and down my right arm to my shoulder, to a bit under the sleeve area of my sleeveless top. And also he stroked my upper right leg and a bit under the rim of my shorts. It felt wonderful. Better than when we kids would get our father to tickle our backs!</span><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">I couldn’t believe this was happening but I was not thinking so much as feeling and probably is why I have no idea what movie was on. I felt euphoric, like I was floating. The movie ended and the lights went on. Elder Andrus moved away at the same time. But, I was still happy and feeling full of all the attention and connection I had just received.</span><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Everyone was soon dispersing. Elder Andrus moved in close to whisper something to me. Shy and excited I leaned in to hear what he would say to me. “Nice girls do not let men touch them like that. “</span><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Shame, shock and disbelief roll over me. I tell no one. The best I can do is every time I see Elder Andrus is to look at him with the purest hate I can muster. And it is huge. I can tell he feels it and I hope it will kill him. Even after he leaves to go find new Mormons in another area or go home to Utah, my mother speaks of how much she misses him, how inspirational he was. And I know she would not believe me and I know not to tell. Thirty-some years later I notice she still gets Christmas cards from this pervert, who is married and probably a grandfather by now, or considering Utah, a great-grandfather. I fantasize about sending my own Christmas card. I mention the incident to my mother when noticing one of these cards. She tells me I must have been mistaken. I drop the subject. To this day there is no arguing with my mother’s reality, which has no room for anyone else’s, especially mine. The black sheep. The One who left the church.</span><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" />Marta Szabo, Curatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01369491214510063324noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4078410068957927088.post-73682139194340668262013-07-22T06:54:00.002-07:002013-07-22T06:54:59.443-07:00SECRETS by Merryman Cassels<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">“How are you like a tree? Do you have arms to reach out and grab something yummy, like the tree has branches to reach out to the sun?”</span><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">“Do you have feet that keep you firmly planted on the ground, like a tree has roots that keep it firmly planted?”</span><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Does blood flow throughout your body carrying nutrients as the sap travels through the tree? You are very much like a tree!”</span><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Tiny, second grade eyes sat criss-cross applesauce and always stared up with awe at Miss Twiggy the Talking Tree as she shared how we couldn’t live without trees! Even photosynthesis, when Miss Twiggy explained it, made good sense. Recycling, too!</span><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Miss Twiggy’s costume was the most elegant tree suit you could imagine, a burqua of soft stretchy brown velvet with green felt leaves, roots that dragged behind as she walked, and pockets filled with every imaginable animal that might live in or food that could come from a tree. Miss Twiggy, like any proper hardwood, never left the house without a bird’s nest perched atop her head.</span><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Close to the end of the program, when Miss Twiggy would ask her future young environmentalists if they would like to reach into one of her pockets, they would line up reverently and dart a hand into Miss Twiggy’s pocket to retrieve their jackpot of nature. Each year at the Christmas Parade, Miss Twiggy would march down Franklin Avenue, only a few feet in front of Santa himself. “Miss Twiggy, Miss Twiggy! Remember me,” the children would call out.</span><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">For eight years, I was Miss Twiggy the Talking Tree and educated every second grader in Gaston County about trees. At first, I would go to the classrooms with my baby Foard in his carseat, never doubting for one second that he would sit quietly and be every bit as mesmerized as every other child. But, as the years passed, sometimes, Miss Twiggy would have a little headache...at first only occasionally, then pretty regularly.</span><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Drinking a bottle of wine a night will do that to a tree. At first, it was just fun, friends gathering with their kids to swim and for dinner, but Brett didn’t like people in his house and didn’t want to spend his money entertaining them. He was a doctor, and I needed to respect that. So as nights with friends began to dwindle, I still enjoyed some of that fun with a bottle. </span><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Brett would always angrily demand I go to bed exactly when he did and perform my wifely duty every night. Wine helped me turn it into a game, “O.K. Big fellow, what’s it going to be tonight? A, B, or C - Handjob, blowjob, or sex.” After the ABC’s, Brett would begin snoring, and I would sneak back downstairs, drink more wine, and create ornate birthday party invitations or valentines for my children to give.</span><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">As the children got older, I got stronger. I didn’t want Bess or Foard to see me so marginalized. Brett would say he’d be home and want supper at seven, then he’d show up at eight. If the children had already been fed, he’d be furious. When we’d all wait and sit down together, he’d throw down his fork in disgust. “Pigslop!” A glass or two of wine while cooking dinner, created a lovely haze to laugh off silly daddy and usher the wizening not so little ones off to bed.</span><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Mornings became unbearable, as well. Brett would get up at 5:45, turn on every light, bang around the room, slam into the shower, and then scream for a fresh towel. I started running the golf course at 5:30 am, and would return 45 minutes later, peaking from behind the holly hedge, to be sure he was leaving so I could slip inside as he pulled out of the driveway. </span><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">As the years progressed, I managed to drink well and live well. Most would be surprised to even know I had a problem. But, when I went to my husband the spring before I discovered his affair and asked for help, he looked at me in disgust and said, “You are so self-centered. It’s all about you isn’t it? Everyone enjoys a glass of wine.” Then he surprised me with a case of wine the next night. </span><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">When I discovered Brett’s affair, and the verbal and sometimes physical abuse set in good, five o’clock couldn’t come soon enough. The night I truly began to plan my escape, was a night I cooked a nice supper while sipping wine. Brett was late, and when we sat down, I was stunned to discover, I couldn’t speak. But, I could slur very well. Brett barked at my children, “Look at your mother. She is a pathetic drunk. This is why I had to have an affair.”</span><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Recovery has been a rocky but fertile path. I have been gifted with so many truths and visions along the way. On a recent meditative journey, an oak leaf landed in my hand. I asked the little leaf, why did you come to me? She said, “Because you are like an oak tree. When there is too much wine, you have shallow roots and are easily toppled.” I remembered the 150 year old oak that had fallen during heavy rains the summer before. It landed perfectly between my neighbor’s house and my own. The the leaf told me, “When you are strong and your life is balanced, you have deep roots and cannot be toppled.” I saw myself as a prayerful light rising up through the tree and shooting out of my branches to the sun, and I saw my roots growing deep into the earth. “Thank you wise, little oak leaf.”</span><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">I am a tree.</span><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" />Marta Szabo, Curatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01369491214510063324noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4078410068957927088.post-65494026863641432832013-07-21T04:31:00.001-07:002013-07-21T04:32:42.543-07:00Excerpt from MY SAILOR by Susan Micari<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">I had come to London in 1972, with the thought of losing my virginity at 19, a long wait I’d had of it too. My comrades gay or otherwise engaged, and nothing ever seemed to come of my come and get it attitude. Now I was in Italy, Genova, to be exact, waiting for the ocean liner I was supposed to take to NY but which was in dry dock, busted. I’d taken a train to the center of town and wanted a place to stay.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">I looked around for a bar where I could have an espresso and think. Of course there was one on the corner, open, gleaming with marble and I began to ask in halting Italian if there was a hostel for girls anywhere around. The waitress behind the counter said, “Si, un hospitale per le raggazze. Santa Maria Stella di Mare.” And she drew me a map. Meglio e meglio!</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">I hobbled across the piazza dragging my pink suitcase over the cobblestones, and found the place, guarded by stern nuns. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The nuns showed me to a cot in a room full of Italian girls who were in their underwear, playing records and lounging around in curlers, talking about home or about boys. They were all virgins too, I hoped, and their parents had them here while they worked as secretaries, and sent money home. There was time to explore the city that day, but the girls warned me that the nuns locked the doors at ten. I decided <span style="color: black; font: 12.0px Cambria;">to explore the town a little bit, and went out walking, climbing high in the hills to see the top of the ancient city. Walls so old and colored, such I thought as didn’t exist in America, set there before my country existed, before my ancestors were born in Sicily. A city as old as time, it seemed.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">What I noticed <i>very quickly</i> was a tall, blond, handsome, muscular man with a charming mustache who smiled at me when I looked at him. "Who are you?" he asked, and I told him about my year in London, my longed for acting career. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">"Come," he said, "I will show you the city and you will be my mascot. See here? This is the picture of my girlfriend in South Africa. No don't look at that picture, see this one." He quickly hid a photo of a girl with naked breasts and showed one of the girl and him hugging. "She loved me, I was there a long time. Now I work again. I am first mate on a big ship. I have five languages. I am a big man, from Yugoslavia!" He smiled again. "I will entertain you!" </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">And he walked with me all over town, fed me, met up with other sailors he knew. "Look at this girl. She is an American. She wants to be in movies. My mascot. We look after her." And they all drank coffee together, and the men bought me sambucca and anisette and many rounds of drinks. I trusted the sailor: he was built just like my grandfather in all his old boxing pictures. I didn’t think he would harm me. I had no strength left to fight if he did.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">I didn't touch any of it. "I don't drink," I said, and the men were amused. They tried to get me to take the liquor in my coffee but I made such a face that they all laughed again and drank my rounds for me. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">"I walk you to the nuns, and you rest. Tonight, I will take you to see the town." He wrapped his arms around me. "I am on leave now," he whispered, and the rough blond stubble on his face tickled me and made me instantly wet. He studied my face, "I see you. You have very pretty lips, pretty girl. Nice to kiss you now, I think." His kiss was so soft, and it tickled, and I loved the way his face was so angular and weathered, yet his kiss was so tender. "How old you are?" he asked. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">"Nineteen, twenty soon, really soon."</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">"Ah, I am 29. I am long time a man." </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">That night he called for me at the hostel, took me to the waterfront, to the New York Bar. It was under the ruined walls of the ancient fort that faced the bay of Genova. Leaning against the sides of the wall were women, fantastic women in kilts, in gowns, in bathing suits. All leaning languorously against the ancient stonework. "Who are they?" I asked. The handsome sailor laughed but didn't answer. Inside the bar was dark and there was a dance floor already filled with people. He ordered champagne. A woman came forward in a low cut gown with the bottle and poured us two glasses. The sailor tasted it and spit it out. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">"Watered!" he growled. "Bring better." He stood up menacingly and the woman retreated. Better wine appeared. I was watching the dancers. They were strangely tall, muscular, feminine, made up...</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">"Look," I said, pulling on the sailor's arm, "What's wrong with them?" The sailor looked up. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">"Transvestites, Jesus Christ," he said sternly. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">"Oh, like Lindsay Kemp?" I offered the name of a famous drag actor in London I’d seen.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">"Who? Never mind, let's go." And the sailor threw bills on the table and took me on to the next place. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">"This one is very classy," he said. It was a private lounge somewhere in the hills, up a private elevator. Everything was white and sleek, and there were many people, in elegant clothing, draped over sofas and sipping cocktails. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">"Have something," he urged. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">"I don't drink." </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">“You must try anisette, then.”<span style="font: 13.0px 'Lucida Grande';"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">"All right." The sailor looked lost for a moment as I made a face at the coffee beans floating in my drink. “This is disgusting,” I said. “What is there to do here?” </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">His face softened, and he smiled, shaking his head. "I will take you to the nuns for the night." He took me back to the convent in a taxi that went directly to the gate, no funny business, but the door was locked. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">"It's eleven! Oh, I'm locked out," I tried swearing. The sailor looked aghast.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">"It's ok. You stay with me. You will be safe." </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">So the sailor took me to his hotel, and gave me his toothbrush and a big shirt to sleep in. I reached inside my bag when he was in the bathroom, and rummaged around for my condoms, moving them on top of all the junk in my bag so I could reach for them if, when, if...</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">"Hey," the sailor shouted, returning to the room as he wiped shaving cream off his face, "I saw you. What did you put in your bag? You stole my money, you little puttana?" </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">"What? No! Those are my, my..these!" I reached into the bag and pulled out the box of condoms. And then I was frightened, "Aiuta mi!" I cried loudly, "Aiuta mi!" The sailor fell on his bed, laughing until he had tears in his eyes. "What's so funny, you big ape!" I stared at him. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">"You said, 'Vieni qui, vieni qui!' Ha, ha, haaa! You said, 'Come here!" The sailor wiped his eyes. "I can do it to you, you know," he leaned toward me.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">"I know you can do it you big ape, but you better not because I’ll hit you right in the nuts, BECAUSE I want to go home!" </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">"No," he said, "I said I canna do it, I cannot hurt you." </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">"Oh," I said, "Well I still want to go home." </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">"Please stay," he said. "I just got out of jail..I..I am afraid of the dark." I looked at him in wonder. "I am afraid of the dark. Could you, just stay, hold my hand?" And I did. I sat fully clothed on the floor, holding the big sailor's hand. Something hurt badly, and so I cried. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">“What is it, cara?” he said. “You are afraid of me?”</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">‘Yes,’ I thought, ‘but, see, I’m a virgin, and.. and…when I was 16, a man I worked with, he scared me..he hurt me…in his car. I try to be brave all the time, and I want to make love someday, but I just can’t. Nothing is going to be all right, is it? It will always be a big mess like this.’ I thought again, ‘I’m tired. I’m tired. I can’t be brave any more…I quit the church and I hate all the boys at school, and I can’t understand what everyone is talking about anyway. Sex with boys looks just awful to me…I loved only a girl.’</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">What I said was, “I hate my mother!” Who hadn’t protected me, who had blamed my beauty and sensuality for the attack. Who wanted me to think she was ungainly, unredeemable, who hated me.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">“All right, baby, no one will hurt you while I am here. I will hate your mama, too.” And he went to sleep holding my hand. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">I watched him sleep, so handsome, so handsome... He cried out once in his sleep, so I stroked his forehead, and whispered, “Shhh.” At dawn I got up, and he watched me sadly as I stretched and got ready to go back to the nuns. "Goodbye," I said. He stared at me from big blue deep haunted eyes. I was still a virgin. I was exhausted.</span></div>
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Marta Szabo, Curatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01369491214510063324noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4078410068957927088.post-12064362931790015772013-07-19T10:00:00.000-07:002013-07-19T10:00:12.476-07:00WHAT IS NOT THERE? by Hans B. Hallundbaek<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">My childhood is what is not there.</span><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">I had a childhood of course, we all did. But I have spent most of my life running away from it, faster and faster the older I got; like seeking the pot of gold at the end of the ever escaping rainbow. </span><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">If twenty years ago you had asked me about my childhood, I would have tried to convince you that it was great, just like I had succeeded convincing myself.</span><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">But one day in a silent retreat at Mohonk Mountain House mediating and reminiscing I finally realized in a flash that I had a lousy childhood.</span><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">I was born in the height of the depression of the thirties on the flat, poor, windswept west coast of far away Denmark. A typical weather forecast would say: Tomorrow rain all day, possibly interrupted by heavy showers. I do not recall that we had umbrellas in those days, so I guess we just got wet.</span><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">But of course the weather was only a small part of the issue. We were occupied for five years by the Nazis, who had decided to build the largest military airport five miles east of our house. That was not a problem until the allied forces three years into the war got their act together and with much determination bombed the airport with scheduled regularity, first by the cover of night and later in day time raids.</span><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">They would come in from the west over our house on the way to the airfield. Brigades of flying fortresses B-19 or was it B-23’s, cruising in tight formation at 15.000 feet on their way to the target. Five minutes later these flying bird-machines would lay their strings of eggs over the airfield. They would drop from the opened bomb bay and they would whine demonically as they hurled towards their targets. There in rapid succession they would explode with large thumps. The vibrations shook the ground for miles and reached all the way to our house where we huddled in the basement. I was five and I was scared. My parents prayed and tried to comfort me as I struggled to be brave.</span><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">In retrospect the bombing raids, were not the worst part of my childhood, for I was told the Americans were there to liberate us. </span><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The worst part was that I was convinced I was a mistake. Technically I was, for I was born the youngest of four children, and 9 years after my next sibling, when my parents were in their forties.</span><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">This meant that they must have had sex at that ripe old age of forty, which was not well thought of in a old fashioned Lutheran church community where each Sunday morning the priest assured ignorant poor farmers and children alike that they were born sinners heading straight to hell unless we were washed in the blood of Christ. </span><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">I do not know how the others took that idea, but for me it was a disgusting thought and the supposed light of Christ’s love never illuminated my childhood darkness.</span><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" />Marta Szabo, Curatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01369491214510063324noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4078410068957927088.post-3102976632853851452013-07-16T13:44:00.000-07:002013-07-16T13:44:29.519-07:00THE SCENE BEHIND THE SCENE by Vera Kaplan<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">"Massah Kaplan! You gots to learn to take what you can git when you can git it!" the nurse told the swaddled newborn as she carted him back to the baby ward in his bassinette, unfed. My son, even then, seemed disappointed in his mother, gazing off into the distance, refusing eye-contact, wailing through his diaper change, and lastly refusing my proffered breast. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">That is the scene I see behind yesterday's, when our son turned thirty-one. Happy Birthday, Abram, my shining, July 4th sparkster! </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">My husband had gone to the train station to pick him up, when I noticed the long awaited download of Abram's first song album had arrived via email. I wanted to hear the new songs during this brief alone time. As the song list appeared on the screen, I felt I was witnessing a birth, three years in gestation. We'd paid thousands of dollars in "doctors' bills" - the engineers' fees, the audio time, the producer, the album cover and the mastering. Now I was pushing a button to access my new grandchild - this long-promised ten song album, untitled, but with "Izaac" on the cover, after our son's middle name.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Song after song, Abram's breathy Tom Waitz/Captain Beefheart-meets-Regina-Spector voice sent rays of recognition and pain radiating through me - cut #3 - "Bourbon and Cocaine" describes blow by blow (excuse the pun) how to process cocaine on a mirrored surface and snort it off a sex partner's intimate parts. Cut #1 - "Grown-ass Little Boy" points the finger at his father for not having taught him how to be a man. Cut #10 is the cruelest cut of all: "Lampshade Blues" equates being sent away to a program for drug-abusing teens with our ancestors having been deported to death camps in WW II Europe. He might as well have titled the album: How to kill your parents in ten easy pieces.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">The dog barked, announcing Abram's arrival, and I quickly shut down the computer. He couldn't help noticing the look on my face as I got up to hug him and wish him a Happy Birthday. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">"Mom! I'm an artist and a writer, and all I was trying to do was craft a good song. Don't take it as autobiography - It's not about me!"</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">"My dad wasn't there, but he taught me to hustle"</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">"My mom was so sensitive she sent me away, but she taught me to feel, to feel, to feel...." These snatches of</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">syncopated, sock-it-to-me sorrowful irony swelled and reverberated like sloshing water on my brain.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">"Oh, Mom! Were you listening to it on the computer? You should get Dad to play it for you on the good stereo speakers." </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">"Oh, I will!" I promise. "Congratulations, Abram. I hope you get a lot of great feedback. Your voice is unique.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">I've never heard anything like it!" I say what is true, in bright tones that I hope mask the tough time I am having.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">At dinner that evening I order lollipop lamb chops, medium rare. The family converses. Later, I look at my plate and at the prone carcasses spooning against one another there. Bits of pink flesh are still attached to the bones. I can't remember picking them up, tearing at the flesh with my teeth or the satisfaction of chewing and swallowing the meat. I only know I'm still hungry, aching for a sweet desert.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">"To feel, to feel, to feel.... She taught me to..."</span></div>
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Marta Szabo, Curatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01369491214510063324noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4078410068957927088.post-70425883624063694582013-07-11T13:47:00.001-07:002013-07-11T13:47:54.644-07:00SECRETS by Dan Martin<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
Everything about Lisa had to be a secret, where we met (at a yoga retreat in Costa Rica) and that at the end of the week we exchanged email addresses, and that she even gave me her home address so I could send her my book, which I addressed formally to “Mrs. Lisa Velarde,” and wrote: “Dear Mrs. Valarde” and a few inane lines like “It was a pleasure meeting you…and I hope you like my little book” above my signature on the inside cover, in case her husband opened the package.</div>
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And that she had recommended a book to me, <i>The Glass Castle</i> by Jeanette Walls, an amazing memoir detailing the author’s harrowing childhood, which seemed to mirror Lisa’s own life, abandoned at an early age by a borderline psychotic mother who was in and out of mental hospitals and finally died when she was 10, and a more or less sane but inappropriate and narcissistic father who once hit on one of her friends in high school.</div>
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And that after that we exchanged phone numbers and began texting each other, first once in a while and then nearly very day, and that we then we started calling each other, first just to say hi, and then the calls began to stretch out to 10, 20, 30 minutes, sometimes an hour, before the phone would suddenly go dead, which meant that her always suspicious husband Lou had come home. </div>
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And that I started to live for those calls and texts and emails. And that maybe she did too.<br />
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Everything had to be a secret because there was something about her and me and the two of us together, even though we were 3000 miles apart, she in LA, and me on the east coast, sitting in a bar one night telling her things I’d never told anyone, about my son who was struggling again in life like he had growing up, unable to fit in in high school, how I’d come home from work hoping he wouldn’t be there, cause that would mean he had finally been invited to a party and wouldn’t have to spend another sad, lonely Friday night with me.</div>
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And she understood, maybe because of her own 10 year old son who had a rare bone disease and was in and out of the hospital. But to me it was cosmic, synchronistic, my own private late-in-life miracle: “Where have you been all my life?” I said into my cell phone, really meaning it, and then I said it again cause she hadn’t responded. Whether she hadn’t heard me or was just speechless at the trite absurdity of my words, I didn’t know. But I repeated them anyway. And then she did respond, with what sounded like an embarrassed laugh, but I didn’t care cause she’d been saying things like that to me too, about our special connection and how we’d always be part of each other’s lives no matter what. And I had believed her.<br />
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But it turned out that Lou had been monitoring her texts and phone calls and emails from the beginning, even had seen the video she’d made the night we all went out together in Costa Rica, and I was in it. And even though there was nothing intimate going on between me and Lisa on the video, just my presence had sent him over the edge. </div>
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She called me on a Saturday night, and left a message to call her the next day, and when I did Lou answered the phone and I knew all at once that my job was to convince him that it had all been innocent , that we were just friends, sharing books and family stories, and I thought I was doing a pretty good job, talking about our kids and our families, and telling him that I was going through a divorce and that he was a lucky man to have such a beautiful woman like Lisa who loved him so much.</div>
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That last part was a mistake, I knew it as the words came out of my mouth , knew that he would take it the wrong, or the right, way, knew that he would see that it hadn’t all been so innocent, and not just what had gone on on the beach on the last night in Costa Rica, but more important all that had happened since, that I was attached to his wife in a way I shouldn’t have been, but couldn’t help being.</div>
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She texted me later that day, a cryptic message, that had always been her style, “I’m in for 72 hour observation,” was all it said. Turned out that after I had hung up the phone with Lou they’d had a big fight which got physical, and he had tried to throw her out of the house and she had run up to her room and locked herself in. And he had called the police, told them she was suicidal and had locked herself in her room with dozens of bottles of pills, powerful narcotics she was taking for depression and anxiety. So she had been dragged out of the house by the police and involuntarily committed.</div>
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A few days later she sent me a text saying that she and Lou and her therapist had all agreed that she should cut off all contact with me. Didn’t even say goodbye cause I guess Lou was monitoring her messages. That was pretty much the end though we did secretly text and email each other once in a while over the next several months, until I got an angry email from her saying to never ever contact her again.</div>
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Way back in the beginning Lisa had sent me a birthday present, a “lovely,” that was her favorite word, that she said in her lazy California accent that got to me each time I heard her speak. It was a soft tan leather bound journal, that she’d found in a catalog in England and had sent to me at home cause I told her that my wife never ever got the mail.</div>
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I had just got out of Court. I hate going to Court, hate wearing suits, and I always try to settle all my cases in part I think, though it sounds stupid, so I don’t have to go to Court. But this time I’d had to go, it was an unsettleable family Court Matter, about custody and visitation for my sweet but dim client. We did well in Court and I was wanting to share my triumph with someone, so I called home, and my wife answered the phone and I said, like I always did: “What are you doing?”</div>
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And she said, “I’m opening a present from your girlfriend Lisa.” Said it just like that, with no emotion, the way she was about everything, so I didn’t know then, and don’t know now, though we discussed it several times afterwards, whether she was mad or sad or indifferent about the fact that Lisa had sent me a present, with a little card inside that said, “I love you….Lisa”, didn’t know what my wife really thought cause we had been living apart emotionally for a long time.</div>
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And buried under the tissue paper inside the box was a bigger greeting card size card, that explained and expressed Lisa’s love in ways no one had ever done before, told me things about myself, wonderful things no one had ever said to me, things I had always hoped were true, thought might be true, but didn’t really think were true, cause no one had ever said them to me before.</div>
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I don’t know if my wife found or read what Lisa wrote on the bigger card.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">That was the real secret. </span><br />
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<br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" />Marta Szabo, Curatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01369491214510063324noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4078410068957927088.post-39355128832238950292013-07-10T07:16:00.001-07:002013-07-10T07:16:15.392-07:00OUR TIME IS SHORT by Ernie Welch<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
"Et in Arcadia Ego." - Guercino, c. 1620<br /> </div>
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Not all roads lead to the cemetery. Some folks are lost at sea, others consumed in fires, or they just walk out the door one morning never to be seen again. Some though have their feet planted definitively on the graveyard path. As obvious and natural as this journey may seem, it may be veiled with fear, ignorance and secrecy. <br /> </div>
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I like the specter of death. By that I mean the classic image of a hooded skeleton with scythe and hourglass shadowing our every move. We all cast a shadow. Here is one that requires no sunlight. One need only to establish an intimate love and it will shadow that love. And like a dress-up doll it comes with a variety of costumes. For example, it can look like two doctors come with bad news. "The cancer and fungal infection will run their course soon. There is no more treatment, we've come to tell him we're sending him home."<br /> </div>
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Now I've never been one smart enough to shirk responsibility. It was my place to deliver the news. I told the doctors I would speak to him. "Time to go home, buddy. We're done here at the hospital." When he spiked a fever a few days before he died, his mother wanted him back in. The script on this was written and rehearsed. He would die at home.<br /> </div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The closing act was a waiting game for his mom and me. That week OJ's Bronco went rolling by on the screen. I was going to work, while Hospice sat with him during the day. I was, and am, so trapped by my job, for reasons different then from now. I couldn't tell anyone at work my partner was home dying of AIDS. I had to teach classes and act as if all was fine. He drew his last breath with his mother at his side. I was a few feet away marking finals. Grades were due shortly, they had to be done.</span><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><br style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> It will forever be surreal to me that last week. Marking papers, proctoring finals, night runs to the pharmacy for morphine, catheters and chucks, waiting for the final act to be played out, his father's ten minute visit to kneel and pray and my closing his eyes one last time.</span><br />Marta Szabo, Curatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01369491214510063324noreply@blogger.com0