My mother had a hard life....besides having me. She was born in NYC on the first day of the last century. I suppose my grandmother brought the shtetl with her and passed it along in mother’s milk. It didn’t help that my five uncles must have teased and tyrannized her because my mother lived most of her eighty-eight years in combat mode, armored with a mouth to scare the butcher and an eye to keep the grocer’s thumb off the scale.
It wasn’t until she was defenseless in her declining years that she grew into a mellow and fuller humanity. She came into her vulnerability and the little girl she never got to live.
In my childhood I knew my mother as a soldier in the trenches of the marketplace, as she saw it. I accompanied her to the butcher shop with its sawdust, flypaper and bloody red roses blooming on his apron. She was convinced he and the chicken plucker held the best cuts for her out of intimidation.
Aggravation was her longest word. It never stopped; the gevalts and the oy, yoy yoys. She didn’t carry packages; she schlept them. My, how she must have suffered. She would curse the superintendent, who should burn in hell, for holding back on the steam heat and damn the landlord, that gonif, for the rent. She even cursed God for God knows what.
I don’t think my mother ever met a cliché she didn’t mistake for wisdom. Believe me, she used to say, money doesn’t matter. You should only have your health. It was the preamble, Believe me, that gave weight to her sigh. After a while I got the message. If you’re near dead, give it up. Otherwise it’s all about money. The older you got to be, money and health ran a close one-two. I wouldn’t quibble about her ordering except that nothing else was short-listed.
To save my life I grew deaf to her words. The more you do for these kids the less they appreciate it. Believe me.
If she thought she was teaching me survival I never got around to telling her that there was no war in the streets. Cars were not assassins. The man in the fruit store was not out to cheat her. Maybe it was the daily skirmish that kept her blood moving.
When she complaind that she never got out, shooting from her recently fractured hip. I would take her for a drive and point out the pretty flowers or the homes in an upscale neighborhood. Just keep your eye on the road, she would warn me from the back seat where she did all her driving. Old habits cling to the bone.
From the rear view mirror I could see how she had reverted to a frightened child. So lost was she that she had to announce every intersection to know she was still there. The price of cottage cheese was no longer important to her. Nor was there any reason to fear the dreaded draft, that caused all manner of illness. Finally we entered a cul de sac in eloquent silence.
Monday, May 3, 2010
Friday, April 30, 2010
The Said And The Unsaid
If you have nothing to say the very least you can do is shut up. This is advice I've never learned to follow even though I might think that about someone else.
Some of us have a hard time being still in conversation. How much are we really receiving the other person and how much politely waiting our turn? Now there's something I don't want to talk or even think about.
I am now regarding my silence....there goes a dog across the street asserting himself in the only voice he has....and there's a motorcycle revving up its throat. The wind is strong and probably whirring to the dance of trees.
My best friends and I seem to have a lot to talk about yet we can also go for pregnant seconds at a time wordlessly. Many people get uncomfortable when the words stop as if its time to say goodbye. Yet what is music but the marriage of interval and instrument in a discernible pattern?
The genius of Jack Benny was his timing. He wasn't afraid to elongate that pause. Your money or your life, the thief said at gunpoint.............................I'm thinking, I'm thinking.
Silence is the dread in the room that chatter muffles. The Sidney Greenstreet character in The Maltese Falcon says to Bogie how he likes to talk to a man who likes to talk and then lets out his elephantine guffaw. He had plenty to hide and the body to hide it.
The vacuum created by silence is much like the visual space of this white page I'm smudging with words. We usually don't see the negative space in a painting but we are missing something as we fix only on the strokes. The subtext is what is not written or represented; the vivid unsaid or unseen.
Imagine a family gathering around the table. The unspoken agenda is the chair of the absent patriarch, upstairs in his final hour. An agreed upon hush.
How often do we divert ourselves with a meaningless image when the painter wants us to turn toward the vacated space? In our rush for something to chew on we can be like the watchdog munching on a piece of meat thrown by the burgler as he ransacks the house.
Imagine a family gathering around the table. The unspoken agenda is the chair of the absent friend. An agreed upon hush.
Look, I just filled up this page and haven't said much of anything. On the other hand never believe what I say when I say I have nothing to say.
Look, I just filled up this page and haven't said much of anything. On the other hand never believe what I say when I say I have nothing to say.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
May 2, 1921
Peggy says it's her 89th birthday on Sunday. Anyone who has met her knows otherwise. My theory is that we may be the same age our whole lives; or at least get stuck at one or two places and live our lives "as if."
I was probably 37 during my teen years; too earnest, too politicized, too inner for my own good. I skipped puberty and went straight into early onset senility where I am now.Peggy, on the other hand, stopped in her late thirties and never left. So this will be her 50th year at 39.
If she likes announcing her age to friends it's because she can't quite get over it herself. She gives the finger to the calendar. There must be another way to measure the spirit of a person, the vivacity, creative impulse and embrace of the wonderment. Or maybe such a life force is beyond measure.
The disparity in our ages is in her youth that runs me ragged. The best I can do is get out of her way as her imaginative energy pokes and prowls across a broad terrain. Peggy possesses a remarkable enthusiasm for life. Let me stop at that word, enthusiasm....... originally, a rapturous inspiration by the gods. Inspiration literally means, the breath of. She breathes a rarefied air.
Even as the body takes its winter insults her creative reach remains in its ripe summer juice. Her poetry, now, is at the height of its astonishing power.
There is nothing weary in the way she receives people. Even strangers are fully met. I watch in awe as she connects with the soup-maker at the Soup Plantation. He barely speaks English but Peggy writes a poem for him and has it translated into Spanish.
She struck a similar relationship with a checker at the market. When the woman suddenly died Peggy was the only white person at her memorial service.
As witness to all this.... an elongation of youth, an ageless presence, a life fully lived, irrepressible, I look ahead to many more May 2nds at her side, amazed.
I was probably 37 during my teen years; too earnest, too politicized, too inner for my own good. I skipped puberty and went straight into early onset senility where I am now.Peggy, on the other hand, stopped in her late thirties and never left. So this will be her 50th year at 39.
If she likes announcing her age to friends it's because she can't quite get over it herself. She gives the finger to the calendar. There must be another way to measure the spirit of a person, the vivacity, creative impulse and embrace of the wonderment. Or maybe such a life force is beyond measure.
The disparity in our ages is in her youth that runs me ragged. The best I can do is get out of her way as her imaginative energy pokes and prowls across a broad terrain. Peggy possesses a remarkable enthusiasm for life. Let me stop at that word, enthusiasm....... originally, a rapturous inspiration by the gods. Inspiration literally means, the breath of. She breathes a rarefied air.
Even as the body takes its winter insults her creative reach remains in its ripe summer juice. Her poetry, now, is at the height of its astonishing power.
There is nothing weary in the way she receives people. Even strangers are fully met. I watch in awe as she connects with the soup-maker at the Soup Plantation. He barely speaks English but Peggy writes a poem for him and has it translated into Spanish.
She struck a similar relationship with a checker at the market. When the woman suddenly died Peggy was the only white person at her memorial service.
As witness to all this.... an elongation of youth, an ageless presence, a life fully lived, irrepressible, I look ahead to many more May 2nds at her side, amazed.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
The 4,000 Year Old Lie
Cancel my calendar. Tear up the contract. Don't buy that toaster oven. Send no email. Someone stole the remote. It's happening again. Mercury is in retrograde.
Or so they say. Actually it's an optical illusion and it occurs about three times a year for a few weeks. Mercury appears to be moving backwards from Earth's perspective. But planets don't really back up any more than a slow train, observed from a faster parallel train, is going in the opposite direction. Furthermore , if you see it at all you're one of the fortunate few. It never really escapes the red glow of the sun.
As far as I'm concerned Mercury could spend the rest of its orbital life in retrograde as long as the moon is in the House Of Pancakes. It's not likely to budge even if Busby Berkeley were around to choreograph the cosmos anew.
Astrology is, plain and simple, bad science; bad astronomy in particular. Excusable in 2000 B.C but only an amusement today. At worse it panders to the gullible, at best it's a parlor game...a way of meeting people at a single's bar.
It's also an industry that shows no sign of slowing down. This is the social phenomenon that interests me. Readers of horoscopes are not the drop-outs of the world. They are of both political persuasions. They read, they write and are otherwise thinking people.
The main problem with astrology is not so much in a misreading of the movement of constellations but the attributes it assigns to them. We don’t need Shakespeare to remind us that the fault lies in ourselves, dear Brutus, not in our stars.
What is the impulse that drives people to connect dots that aren't there? As a pharmacist I spent many hours talking patients out of vitamins or other nostrums for their sniffles or doldrums etc... Folks like to think they've hit upon a quick panacea or explanation for events that are random or unknown, as if every question mark has a corresponding exclamation point.
Maybe the larger issue is whether we have free will or if our fate is pre-determined. Certainly our beliefs are shaped, more or less, by accident of birth, geography, religious heritage, gender and DNA........but not entirely. We also have choices and can sometimes reject, transform or transcend the givens of our lives.
By looking to the stars we are abdicating responsibility for our own acts as autonomous and sentient individuals. My Taurus wife is no more or less stubborn than my Sagittarius daughter.
Or so they say. Actually it's an optical illusion and it occurs about three times a year for a few weeks. Mercury appears to be moving backwards from Earth's perspective. But planets don't really back up any more than a slow train, observed from a faster parallel train, is going in the opposite direction. Furthermore , if you see it at all you're one of the fortunate few. It never really escapes the red glow of the sun.
As far as I'm concerned Mercury could spend the rest of its orbital life in retrograde as long as the moon is in the House Of Pancakes. It's not likely to budge even if Busby Berkeley were around to choreograph the cosmos anew.
Astrology is, plain and simple, bad science; bad astronomy in particular. Excusable in 2000 B.C but only an amusement today. At worse it panders to the gullible, at best it's a parlor game...a way of meeting people at a single's bar.
It's also an industry that shows no sign of slowing down. This is the social phenomenon that interests me. Readers of horoscopes are not the drop-outs of the world. They are of both political persuasions. They read, they write and are otherwise thinking people.
The main problem with astrology is not so much in a misreading of the movement of constellations but the attributes it assigns to them. We don’t need Shakespeare to remind us that the fault lies in ourselves, dear Brutus, not in our stars.
What is the impulse that drives people to connect dots that aren't there? As a pharmacist I spent many hours talking patients out of vitamins or other nostrums for their sniffles or doldrums etc... Folks like to think they've hit upon a quick panacea or explanation for events that are random or unknown, as if every question mark has a corresponding exclamation point.
Maybe the larger issue is whether we have free will or if our fate is pre-determined. Certainly our beliefs are shaped, more or less, by accident of birth, geography, religious heritage, gender and DNA........but not entirely. We also have choices and can sometimes reject, transform or transcend the givens of our lives.
By looking to the stars we are abdicating responsibility for our own acts as autonomous and sentient individuals. My Taurus wife is no more or less stubborn than my Sagittarius daughter.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
A Matter Of Attribution
Sometimes life seems so opaque, absurd and random one can feel adrift. Thank God(s) we have inspirational leaders in our midst to un-riddle it.
How else, but with an evangelical preacher here and an Ayatollah there, to explain the true meaning of volcanic eruptions, tsunamis and other cataclysmic burps. Only they know to whom we can attribute these signals from beyond. These are the holy men who, in their infinite wisdom, can teach us about blame and punishment, which country to invade and whom to hate.
Leviticus lives! Isn't it obvious we have offended that early God who never learned how to control his tantrums. God forbid he should go to a temper management program or get on a mood stabilizer.
The ash cloud over Europe is clearly Allah's way of dispensing his displeasure over an excess of female flesh revealed, so says Ahmadinejad and his spiritual guides.Who can argue with that?;certainly not Pat Robertson or the late great Jerry Falwell. It's all about flesh and fornicators. Particularly Gay fornicators who were responsible for Katrina or was it 9/11?
I propose that their Ayatollahs and ours meet on some infidel island where their joint messianic urges can be satisfied. An agenda might be agreed upon for future acts of God. They can be introduced to their counterparts and join together in mutual scorn for the godless world. I suggest a chorus of rage against science, a shared vehemence toward “deviant” behavior and finally a pact for punitive measures. We know what devilish deeds we’ve done. A global scolding is now called for. The fundamentalist things of life, as time goes by.
Our men of God can interpret the floods and fires and they can have the quakes. Why not prepare an advanced list so they won't be caught speechless for future calamities? I can hardly wait for the next meteorological act of God, assassination or pandemic and why not power failure or Sig Alert....so we can feel secure in our alignment the Almighty(s).
It's such a comfort for us, the congregation of the lost, to be shepherded through these times of upheaval by men with a direct line to the great puppeteers in the sky.
How else, but with an evangelical preacher here and an Ayatollah there, to explain the true meaning of volcanic eruptions, tsunamis and other cataclysmic burps. Only they know to whom we can attribute these signals from beyond. These are the holy men who, in their infinite wisdom, can teach us about blame and punishment, which country to invade and whom to hate.
Leviticus lives! Isn't it obvious we have offended that early God who never learned how to control his tantrums. God forbid he should go to a temper management program or get on a mood stabilizer.
The ash cloud over Europe is clearly Allah's way of dispensing his displeasure over an excess of female flesh revealed, so says Ahmadinejad and his spiritual guides.Who can argue with that?;certainly not Pat Robertson or the late great Jerry Falwell. It's all about flesh and fornicators. Particularly Gay fornicators who were responsible for Katrina or was it 9/11?
I propose that their Ayatollahs and ours meet on some infidel island where their joint messianic urges can be satisfied. An agenda might be agreed upon for future acts of God. They can be introduced to their counterparts and join together in mutual scorn for the godless world. I suggest a chorus of rage against science, a shared vehemence toward “deviant” behavior and finally a pact for punitive measures. We know what devilish deeds we’ve done. A global scolding is now called for. The fundamentalist things of life, as time goes by.
Our men of God can interpret the floods and fires and they can have the quakes. Why not prepare an advanced list so they won't be caught speechless for future calamities? I can hardly wait for the next meteorological act of God, assassination or pandemic and why not power failure or Sig Alert....so we can feel secure in our alignment the Almighty(s).
It's such a comfort for us, the congregation of the lost, to be shepherded through these times of upheaval by men with a direct line to the great puppeteers in the sky.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Red Afterthoughts
After every blog I post, a few add-ons pop into my head the same way I often think of something I wish I'd said (or didn't say) on my way home after being with friends.
One such afterthought on red.... I picture a scene and even hear it, in which the Lone Ranger is galloping off to William Tell with his Hi Ho Silver, townfolks are scratching their collective heads wondering who that masked man was.........and there is Tonto in the corner of my vision with his red bandana.
All of which led me to wonder about this guy behind the mask who never hung around to strut and swagger after setting the world right. His humble heroics belonged to the same class as Superman and Batman with their hidden identities; a model which seems to have vanished in our times.
And then there was Tonto, of the side-kick school, a mystery of another sort. He was to the Lone Ranger as Robin was to Batman or Kato to the Green Hornet. The essential second fiddle.
Tonto...the name alone sounds suspiciously like the Yiddish word for Aunt. Could he be of that famous lost tribe of Israelites who had no sense of direction ?
And what are we to make of Kim-O-Sabe, aka Kimosahbe? Scholars have pondered this for decades. PhDs have been written....... or should be. Some say it was simply the name of a boys' camp in Michigan in the family of the radio show's director. Other archivists trace it back to the Ojibwa Indian word kee moh sah be meaning he who peeks as in scout. My favorite is an unknown tribe's term for stupid white man.
More important is the relationship between our two heroes. Just as Charlie Chan's Number One Son routinely came up with the clue that nailed the evildoer so too, did Tonto do the deed that undid the usually mustachioed villain. And he did it without even a hi-ho-silver. My kind of guy.
It occurs to me that the name, Lone Ranger, is itself a put-down to Tonto. What was he, chopped liver?
One witty moment which has stuck in my head since I heard it 40 years ago is the quip from Paul Lind on Hollywood Squares. The question posed was, Is sex better when wearing a mask? Lind's answer, Absolutely, that's why Tonto was always sweating. There's that red bandana again.
There's another story going around which illustrates their relationship (or does it?)
The Lone Ranger and Tonto are camping out in the desert having set up their tent for the night. After a few hours he wakes Tonto and says, Look, up at the sky and tell me what you see.Tonto replies, Me see millions of stars, Kimosabe.
What does that tell you?, asks the Lone Ranger.
Tonto ponders for a minute. Astrologically, speaking it tells me that Saturn is in Leo. Astronomically, it tells me that there are millions of galaxies. Chronologically, it appears to be approximately a quarter past three. Theologically, it's evident that the Lord is all powerful and we are insignificant. Meteorologically, it seems we will have a beautiful day tomorrow. What does it ell you Kimosabe?
The Lone Ranger is silent a moment, then says, Tonto, you dumb ass, someone has stolen our tent.
I doubt the masked man could find his way out of a corral without his buddy with the red bandana.
One such afterthought on red.... I picture a scene and even hear it, in which the Lone Ranger is galloping off to William Tell with his Hi Ho Silver, townfolks are scratching their collective heads wondering who that masked man was.........and there is Tonto in the corner of my vision with his red bandana.
All of which led me to wonder about this guy behind the mask who never hung around to strut and swagger after setting the world right. His humble heroics belonged to the same class as Superman and Batman with their hidden identities; a model which seems to have vanished in our times.
And then there was Tonto, of the side-kick school, a mystery of another sort. He was to the Lone Ranger as Robin was to Batman or Kato to the Green Hornet. The essential second fiddle.
Tonto...the name alone sounds suspiciously like the Yiddish word for Aunt. Could he be of that famous lost tribe of Israelites who had no sense of direction ?
And what are we to make of Kim-O-Sabe, aka Kimosahbe? Scholars have pondered this for decades. PhDs have been written....... or should be. Some say it was simply the name of a boys' camp in Michigan in the family of the radio show's director. Other archivists trace it back to the Ojibwa Indian word kee moh sah be meaning he who peeks as in scout. My favorite is an unknown tribe's term for stupid white man.
More important is the relationship between our two heroes. Just as Charlie Chan's Number One Son routinely came up with the clue that nailed the evildoer so too, did Tonto do the deed that undid the usually mustachioed villain. And he did it without even a hi-ho-silver. My kind of guy.
It occurs to me that the name, Lone Ranger, is itself a put-down to Tonto. What was he, chopped liver?
One witty moment which has stuck in my head since I heard it 40 years ago is the quip from Paul Lind on Hollywood Squares. The question posed was, Is sex better when wearing a mask? Lind's answer, Absolutely, that's why Tonto was always sweating. There's that red bandana again.
There's another story going around which illustrates their relationship (or does it?)
The Lone Ranger and Tonto are camping out in the desert having set up their tent for the night. After a few hours he wakes Tonto and says, Look, up at the sky and tell me what you see.Tonto replies, Me see millions of stars, Kimosabe.
What does that tell you?, asks the Lone Ranger.
Tonto ponders for a minute. Astrologically, speaking it tells me that Saturn is in Leo. Astronomically, it tells me that there are millions of galaxies. Chronologically, it appears to be approximately a quarter past three. Theologically, it's evident that the Lord is all powerful and we are insignificant. Meteorologically, it seems we will have a beautiful day tomorrow. What does it ell you Kimosabe?
The Lone Ranger is silent a moment, then says, Tonto, you dumb ass, someone has stolen our tent.
I doubt the masked man could find his way out of a corral without his buddy with the red bandana.
Saturday, April 17, 2010
On Seeing Red
Staring out the window into increments of green there is a red interruption from across the street in bristles of bottle brush plant. In the foreground outside my patio a hummingbird feeder matches the coral tree blooming red lanterns and I am suddenly aware how red splatters the width of my canvas as accessories to the fact.
Above the couch where I am sitting, an abstract construction of blues and white resin under cut glass is punctuated by a corner drunk with red. It’s a voluptuous touch like a smear of lipstick …. or blood.
A hemorrhagic sun splashes into the Pacific exhausted from the day’s smog. Blood rare, my friend tells the waitress and he sends the burger back. What accounts for that uncontrollable blush? There’s a freeway system of arteries inside me with overpasses and cloverleafs. No Sig alerts, I hope.
Larry King’s suspenders meet Sarah Palin’s jacket. The Mao Tse Tung T-shirt brought back from China ran all over the whites in the washing machine like some sort of revolutionary army.
I hear before I see the fire engine barreling down Lincoln Blvd. Peggy imagines angels following the truck. The red light on my dashboard gets my attention and the stop sign I sometimes obey. If I make this light I’ll have the next five….and then what?
Red is with us from Christmas through Valentine’s Day then drowns in red ink but returns in a summery way, hot and ripe and busting out all over. Firecracker red and freckles, Van Gogh’s beard and Jelly Roll Morton’s Red Hot Peppers.
When I hear Red Diaper baby I get no image but I’m one of them. Headline: Red army meets G.I.s at the Elbe and then there was the Red Army Chorus which could hold its own against the Mormon Tabernacle Choir except they probably didn’t know Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer. Did Donner and Blitzen have noses of a different hue?
What are you rambling on about? Wake me up when you’re finished.
I will if I don’t have a clot.
It could be worse. You could start listing baseball players.
I would never abuse the page that way..
But who could forget Red Ryder, Red Skelton and Red Barber off on those red sails in the sunset? When Spencer Tracy had red hair all his movies were in black and white. Jefferson was not our only redheaded president; some say Washington was, under his wig and Grover Cleveland. And don’t forget Napoleon, Queen Elizabeth, Churchill, Woody Allen and Vivaldi. Was there anyone who wasn’t?
The cardinal we saw in Washington DC was ho-hum for our hosts but I never forgot it nor will I forget the buds on the ocotillo or Roger’s red sweater he wore till, I suppose, it unraveled back to yarn. There’s something about red. Expected in Chinese restaurants; unexpected on a grey day with marine air rolling in like some bearded prophet, an offering in his hand of a long stem sweaty rose.
About forty years ago I suggested to my daughter she might like to travel inside a watermelon. Part of her has been there ever since and sometimes I join her sailing this ruddy-luscious sea, black pits and all.
Above the couch where I am sitting, an abstract construction of blues and white resin under cut glass is punctuated by a corner drunk with red. It’s a voluptuous touch like a smear of lipstick …. or blood.
A hemorrhagic sun splashes into the Pacific exhausted from the day’s smog. Blood rare, my friend tells the waitress and he sends the burger back. What accounts for that uncontrollable blush? There’s a freeway system of arteries inside me with overpasses and cloverleafs. No Sig alerts, I hope.
Larry King’s suspenders meet Sarah Palin’s jacket. The Mao Tse Tung T-shirt brought back from China ran all over the whites in the washing machine like some sort of revolutionary army.
I hear before I see the fire engine barreling down Lincoln Blvd. Peggy imagines angels following the truck. The red light on my dashboard gets my attention and the stop sign I sometimes obey. If I make this light I’ll have the next five….and then what?
Red is with us from Christmas through Valentine’s Day then drowns in red ink but returns in a summery way, hot and ripe and busting out all over. Firecracker red and freckles, Van Gogh’s beard and Jelly Roll Morton’s Red Hot Peppers.
When I hear Red Diaper baby I get no image but I’m one of them. Headline: Red army meets G.I.s at the Elbe and then there was the Red Army Chorus which could hold its own against the Mormon Tabernacle Choir except they probably didn’t know Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer. Did Donner and Blitzen have noses of a different hue?
What are you rambling on about? Wake me up when you’re finished.
I will if I don’t have a clot.
It could be worse. You could start listing baseball players.
I would never abuse the page that way..
But who could forget Red Ryder, Red Skelton and Red Barber off on those red sails in the sunset? When Spencer Tracy had red hair all his movies were in black and white. Jefferson was not our only redheaded president; some say Washington was, under his wig and Grover Cleveland. And don’t forget Napoleon, Queen Elizabeth, Churchill, Woody Allen and Vivaldi. Was there anyone who wasn’t?
The cardinal we saw in Washington DC was ho-hum for our hosts but I never forgot it nor will I forget the buds on the ocotillo or Roger’s red sweater he wore till, I suppose, it unraveled back to yarn. There’s something about red. Expected in Chinese restaurants; unexpected on a grey day with marine air rolling in like some bearded prophet, an offering in his hand of a long stem sweaty rose.
About forty years ago I suggested to my daughter she might like to travel inside a watermelon. Part of her has been there ever since and sometimes I join her sailing this ruddy-luscious sea, black pits and all.
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