A week ago today this country suffered a loss so tragic, so utterly senseless, so universally painful, that it will NEVER be erased from our collective memory. The massacre of twenty children and seven adults on a bright December day in 2012 was as life altering for this country as any apocalypse might have been.
For a week now, we've seen the seemingly endless photographs of the children and teachers who lost their lives. Those twenty-six photographs stretch out impossibly to infinity in one's mind. We have listened to arguments for and against gun control, we have watched as sales of guns and, God save us, bullet proof back-packs soar. We have endured endless media personalities shoving microphones and cameras in tormented faces, just trying to get that one definitive sound bite or image. We have not been able to turn our eyes away from this trainwreck, not even for a moment.
It is time we stop looking back, and look forward as a country to what the real cause of this tragedy is and was and will be if we don't fix it. Like old Ebenezer, we need to be dragged kicking and screaming in our nightcaps into the past, present and future of this country's problem with acknowledging, accepting and treating mental illness and personality disorders.
The shooter at Sandy Hook had problems. He had deep seated issues that his mother had a difficult time discussing with friends and family and perhaps facing herself. And, please, this is not meant to place blame with her, it is just to point out that we have always, and are still, hiding our mentally ill like they are somehow shameful reflections on us as parents, and on a larger scale, our society.
My own family struggles with mental illness. Suicide has wrapped its ugly black grip around us, and every Christmas for the past several years we have all had to struggle through what the consequences of one person's act has done to us as a group.
Until we can come together as a society and throw back the curtain of shame we instinctively shroud our mentally ill citizens in, we will continue to be shocked and devastated by acts of desperate violence like those that took place last week.
It isn't guns, or gun laws...it is facing up to the fact that some of us need help and/or need to be institutionalized. That it isn't shameful...it is just a fact.
Friday, December 21, 2012
Saturday, September 3, 2011
The smell is the thing,
the kitchen looks like you just stepped away for a minute--
counter dusted with flour,
twin, thick, shiny, braids of eggbread
left to cool...now cold.
Dried herbs hang over cast iron stove,
and a bakers rack filled to overflowing with
muffin tins, bundt cake pans, recipe boxes,
and crumpled in the space between the flour and sugar canisters
is that old stained apron you always wore.
On a wide sun-drenched sill over the soapstone sink
are containers of spring bulbs you forced into life;
perky paperwhites,bright yellow and red tulips,and
heavy-headed grape hyacinth that nod on their slender green stalks like dopers.
The kitchen table, small and round,
is strewn with bills, two packs of parliaments,
one pack of nicorette gum,
and two opened and empty boxes of
dramamine lean against
the white ceramic of a potted red poinsietta.
Beyond the kitchen in the livingroom is
a small blue spruce you
cut down with your own hands in the woods behind the barn,
and then decorated with red and green plaid bows,
and white tipped pine cones,
and your last surviving glass ornaments from that other life and time.
The livingroom walls are a collage of family photographs
taken a lifetime ago when you were still you--before
the depression
before
the manic,
frantic,
frenzied flight from the faces in the pictures.
It is as if you love them more this way;
suspended,
seperated by glass,
unable to touch you.
You, who once could not let an hour go by without kissing your daughter's hair.
The bedroom door is open and a poster of Rosie the Riveter,
her denim clad bicep flexed above the slogan:
"WE CAN DO IT" hangs over your bed.
The night table closest to the door is littered with cigarette butts,
and ashes from an overturned glass ashtray.
A small tin pot with a half melted black plastic handle rests
among the debris.
On the opposite night stand is a copy of Jack Keruoac's
The Town and The City,
an empty fifth of vodka, and two amber plastic prescription bottles, their white caps
missing.
The bed has not been stripped.
The stain you left there is visible even from behind the yellow caution tape.
The smell is the thing.
Not the sick-room smell of someone who is clinging to life but dying anyway.
No, this smell is sweet, thick, strange.
It fills my nose and my mouth
and for days after that day
I will taste that smell in the back of my throat.
the kitchen looks like you just stepped away for a minute--
counter dusted with flour,
twin, thick, shiny, braids of eggbread
left to cool...now cold.
Dried herbs hang over cast iron stove,
and a bakers rack filled to overflowing with
muffin tins, bundt cake pans, recipe boxes,
and crumpled in the space between the flour and sugar canisters
is that old stained apron you always wore.
On a wide sun-drenched sill over the soapstone sink
are containers of spring bulbs you forced into life;
perky paperwhites,bright yellow and red tulips,and
heavy-headed grape hyacinth that nod on their slender green stalks like dopers.
The kitchen table, small and round,
is strewn with bills, two packs of parliaments,
one pack of nicorette gum,
and two opened and empty boxes of
dramamine lean against
the white ceramic of a potted red poinsietta.
Beyond the kitchen in the livingroom is
a small blue spruce you
cut down with your own hands in the woods behind the barn,
and then decorated with red and green plaid bows,
and white tipped pine cones,
and your last surviving glass ornaments from that other life and time.
The livingroom walls are a collage of family photographs
taken a lifetime ago when you were still you--before
the depression
before
the manic,
frantic,
frenzied flight from the faces in the pictures.
It is as if you love them more this way;
suspended,
seperated by glass,
unable to touch you.
You, who once could not let an hour go by without kissing your daughter's hair.
The bedroom door is open and a poster of Rosie the Riveter,
her denim clad bicep flexed above the slogan:
"WE CAN DO IT" hangs over your bed.
The night table closest to the door is littered with cigarette butts,
and ashes from an overturned glass ashtray.
A small tin pot with a half melted black plastic handle rests
among the debris.
On the opposite night stand is a copy of Jack Keruoac's
The Town and The City,
an empty fifth of vodka, and two amber plastic prescription bottles, their white caps
missing.
The bed has not been stripped.
The stain you left there is visible even from behind the yellow caution tape.
The smell is the thing.
Not the sick-room smell of someone who is clinging to life but dying anyway.
No, this smell is sweet, thick, strange.
It fills my nose and my mouth
and for days after that day
I will taste that smell in the back of my throat.
PTSD
Back then your purple heart pumped
boozy, coke-crazed blood
through your veins
into your hands
until they clenched into fists
that hit
that hurt me.
Back then you were a
machete swinging dick with
Nam infused fits
of fright and
sweat-soaked
nights of flashbacks.
Back then I ducked and dodged
and stayed sober
when you would not.
Your purple heart
left purple marks on me
forever.
Now here you are again
that by-passed heart
skipping beats when you see my face.
Every breath you take is exhaled
with honey,
baby,
sweetie.
Now your open hands reach
toward my face
to caress my crepe-paper cheek
and they beg forgiveness.
But even now
I have to fight the urge
to flinch.
Friday, July 1, 2011
Another work in progress... there may be something here
The fort was an architectural triumph for twelve year old boys. Suspended fifteen feet in the air between the V of a massive oak tree, it boasted not one, but two rooms, each with its own lookout window. The mismatched lumber used for its construction had been pilfered from various yards and barns. The nails, and hinges for the lookouts and trap door had been shop-lifted (practically a nail at a time) from Holden’s Tru-Value. Old man Holden would not notice the missing items until his year-end inventory, by then he’d have no way of knowing who the thief was.
Johnny McIntyre, the self-appointed leader of the “big kids”, had made it known around the neighborhood that the fort was off limits to all but his rag-tag group of friends. Johnny was the brains of the group. He designed the plans for the fort, and oversaw its construction. He was a rough boy with an incongruous grace and ease about him that the other boys found impossible to duplicate, and the girls found impossible to resist. His prowess on the ball fields, in games of War, on his bike, and especially with the ladies, was legendary. No one on Baker Hill had more cache than Johnny.
The muscle, Mark Williams, was a towering brawny boy with a hank of white- blond hair cropped close to his block-like head. He was an intellectual wasteland, but his loyalty to Johnny was boundless and as a result he became Johnny’s right- hand man. In matters that required physical conflict, or threat of the same, Mark’s value was immeasurable. Everyone was afraid of him.
A handful of boys from the other side of Baker Hill filled out the group and provided Johnny with enough disciples to be considered a leader. They fell in behind Johnny and Mark like little soldiers and nodded agreement with Johnny’s decrees without discussion or dissent.
The only oddball in this little gang was Bobby Davis. He was a tall gangly kid with glasses, buck teeth and bad skin. His family was relatively new to Baker Hill and the subject of much gossip by all the kids and their parents. There were four Davis children, and two Davis dogs. It was a close contest as to which of these six was the most vicious. The Davis parents won that title, however; they were rude, loud and cruel, and the Davis children transferred the abuse they received to the dogs and to others who were weaker than they were. The dogs responded by charging and biting anyone foolish enough to pass by the house when they were unleashed.
Bobby Davis was a sociopath, given to secretly torturing small animals and molesting his sister. He was included by Johnny as a way of controlling him. Bobby idolized Johnny. Johnny despised Bobby; for no other reason than the kid just seemed off to him. Johnny did not really want Bobby around, but he knew enough about friends and enemies to keep them both close.
The fort was the talk of the Hill. The older girls whispered about going there with Johnny or Mark. They hinted at bases being got to in one room, while Johnny’s minions kept watch for intruders from the other. Younger boys from Baker Hill, like Jim Blake, coveted the fort for the status it represented. At nine, he was too young to be part of Johnny’s gang, but Jim was the unspoken leader of his own small group of boys. Like Johnny, Jim had way about him that drew people to him naturally. Jim and Johnny were cut from the same mold, both good-looking boys with brains and charm. Jim had a handicap that Johnny did not, however; Jim had me.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Starting From Scratch...Again.
It has been just over a year since I have even thought about this blog. I was reminded of it a couple of days ago when my step-daughter's Facebook profile disappeared.
"Where did you go?" I texted her (because who talks nowadays?).
"Needed a break," she replied. "You can follow me on Flickr or Twitter."
"What the hell is Flickr?" I replied, my fingers flying. And who, by the way, did she think she was...Charlie Sheen?
"It is my blog." she answered.
"I have a blog," I typed.
But do I really have a blog? I mean bloggers blog don't they?
My screen saver on my laptop is a scrolling, rolling script that chastises me each and every day with "WRITER'S WRITE." It undulates and winks in and out of view like a letter tongue stuck out in the face my silent, painful, blocked voice.
If writer's write, then it would follow that bloggers must blog.
Since writing fiction seems to be beyond my ability at the moment, I will flex this unused muscle between my ears with blogging...a poor substitute for fiction but even the most strident work-out fanatic would have to agree that some exercise is better than a vegetative state.
"Where did you go?" I texted her (because who talks nowadays?).
"Needed a break," she replied. "You can follow me on Flickr or Twitter."
"What the hell is Flickr?" I replied, my fingers flying. And who, by the way, did she think she was...Charlie Sheen?
"It is my blog." she answered.
"I have a blog," I typed.
But do I really have a blog? I mean bloggers blog don't they?
My screen saver on my laptop is a scrolling, rolling script that chastises me each and every day with "WRITER'S WRITE." It undulates and winks in and out of view like a letter tongue stuck out in the face my silent, painful, blocked voice.
If writer's write, then it would follow that bloggers must blog.
Since writing fiction seems to be beyond my ability at the moment, I will flex this unused muscle between my ears with blogging...a poor substitute for fiction but even the most strident work-out fanatic would have to agree that some exercise is better than a vegetative state.
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
You shoulda been there
Of all the days that you will miss over the next 30 years you would have been alive, this is one that was not to be missed by a mother. What were you thinking? Sometimes my anger at what you did eclipses how much I miss you.
Saturday, May 8, 2010
It Must Be a Tumor
I have a guilty pleasure...I love ABC's Private Practice. Its a silly, sexy, soap opera with some hospital scenes thrown in. This week however, I came away from my little show shaking my head. A patient of the psychiatrist on the show, who had historically been unhappy and, well, mean, suddenly wakes up one morning full of love and kindness and happiness. She attributes her change of attitude to God. He touched her heart and changed her. She is filled with the Love of God and it shows. Of course, it turns out to be a brain tumor. Insulting, to say the least.
So...my tumor is progressing nicely...I won't be having any life-saving surgery or chemotherapy or radiation...I think my "brain tumor" may be the best thing that ever happened to me.
Monday, April 5, 2010
The Victorian
The house I grew up in, was right next door to an abandoned Victorian. We used to play in it when we were little. It burned to the ground when I was about nine or ten years old, I think. As we got older, we would party in its charred foundation with our friends. I wrote this next little piece, using my grandparent's names for the characters as they had known the owners who left the house to decay...enjoy
The huge Victorian next door to their small bungalow had been vacant for several years before Wilfred and Marion moved to Summit Avenue, a two- home street at the top of the town’s highest hill. As newlyweds, they had often lain awake at night, their heads side by side on the pillow, dreaming out loud about what it might be like to live in a house like that, its fancy cupola just visible through the worn lace curtain that hung on the window above their bed.
Wilfred said that he would throw big parties at which he and his bride would make their entrance from the second floor and descend in grand style down the sweeping staircase into the marbled foyer to greet their guests. And, he would say into Marion’s soft black hair, the guests would not be just the boys from the pier, either. No sir, he was going to invite the finest folks in the town, the Villechamps, the Isaacs, even, he said, the Giglio’s who were rumored to have ties to the mob. Of course, Wilfred would go on, the boys from the pier could come too, but they would have to clean up real good first.
Marion’s dreams were no less grand than her husband’s back then. She dreamed of the staff she would have to employ and oversee in order to maintain such a large home; a cook, a butler, maybe even a girl or two to clean and look after the sons she was going to give her new husband. Certainly, they would need a gardener to keep the lawn trimmed and the shrubs neat.
She would have to order gowns from New York and Paris to wear at the parties Wilfred wanted to throw. The dressmakers here were not qualified, and certainly nothing off the rack at the mercantile would do. Marion wanted the finest fabrics and would insist that each dress have a long train that would follow her dramatically as she walked down the grand staircase on Wilfred’s arm. Sometimes, as she stood on the hard packed dirt of their front yard, scattering feed for the chickens, she would sweep her hand out in front of her and bow as if to some dignitary, the seed spraying out from her fingers as she did.
Two years and two miscarriages into their marriage, Marion delivered a healthy baby girl into the world. Wilfred tried hard to hide his disappointment that he did not yet have a son, but Marion saw it in his eyes and as soon as it was reasonable, she allowed Wilfred back into her bed and nine months later she gave birth to a still born boy. One year after that, a second daughter was born.
As their young family grew, Wilfred and Marion’s dreams seemed to shrink. The extravagant home next door no longer seemed like the perfect place to hold high-society soirees and their grandiose pillow talk was replaced with earnest discussions over the dinner dishes about how good it would be for the girls to have their own rooms and a real yard for playing. Wouldn’t it be lovely, Marion thought, to see them running barefoot on the lush green lawn she knew was hiding under the wild overgrowth of weeds and grass. Wilfred agreed that a house like the Victorian would do the girls a lot of good. Not just now, he had pointed out, but in the future. The girls would be well served if their suitors had to knock on that door when they came calling. Of course, Wilfred would always add, the house will need a bit of work; after all it had been vacant for over a decade.
Marion liked to listen to Wilfred talk about the work he would do to the house. She could picture him, his sleeves rolled up to reveal his muscular forearms, his broad back straining with effort, his friends from the pier would help out on weekends. She would cook huge hotdog and bean casseroles and serve cold beer and warm black bread with dinner. The girls would giggle and show off for everyone. Marion would smile when Wilfred showed her his handiwork: a new light fixture in the foyer, new shelves for the pantry, she could just see the pride in his eyes as his workmates admired his home and family.
Occasionally, when Wilfred was doing chores around their own house, working on the chicken coop repairing a run of nesting boxes that had succumbed to termites, reinstalling the clothesline pole that would not stay planted, or patching the roof over the girls room where the rain always seemed to find a way in, he would stop his work and look over at the house next door. He would listen to the sounds of his family inside the little bungalow and a feeling of longing would nearly overwhelm him. He burned for something and he believed with everything he was that the Victorian was the salve. That house, he told himself, that house would make everything different.
When Wilfred and Marion were anticipating their tenth wedding anniversary, something happened that neither of them had ever considered. One warm April day a shiny black Ford Victoria pulled up in front of the Victorian. A man got out of the car and reached into the back seat and pulled out a large placard. After several unsuccessful attempts to affix the placard to the house, the man walked down the street to the bungalow.
“Hello, the house!” he called loudly. Marion was down at the market with the girls selling the day’s crop of fresh eggs. Wilfred, having been let go from the pier along with most of his friends, was home and in the chicken coop mending the wire mesh on one of the doors.
“Hello…is anyone home?” The man called out, removing his fedora and using it to brush the dust off his trousers. Wilfred emerged from the coop, shielding his eyes from the sun.
“Oh…Hey,” the man said as he waved his hat at Wilfred. “I’m John Danforth, with Isaac and Isaac. I was trying to get this darn sign up next door, but I seemed to have left the office without my hammer and nails.”
Wilfred nodded his hello and walked over to the man with his hand outstretched. They shook and Wilfred noted that the man’s hand did not feel like it could ever have wielded a hammer.
“Could you lend me a hand, Mister?” Danforth asked. Wilfred nodded again and ducked into the coop for a moment before returning with a hammer and four nails.
Walking back with Danforth to the Victorian, Wilfred realized that this would be the first time he had ever actually been on the property. All those years he and Marion had been dreaming of owning and living in the house, they had never presumed to trespass. He felt anticipation swelling up in his belly as they mounted the wide steps that led to the front door. His excitement turned to dismay, however, as Danforth flipped the placard around and held it against the side of the house, just next to the sidelight of the ornate, carved oak door. FOR SALE, printed in big red letters. Wilfred was not breathing.
Later, Marion stood in stunned silence as Wilfred recounted his conversation with the man from Isaac and Isaac. At first, she had been on the verge of tears when Wilfred broke the news about their house being up for sale. Then, when her husband told her that Danforth had offered him wages in exchange for tidying up the property, Marion cried tears of relief. Wilfred had been out of work for a few weeks, and the egg money only went so far.
Wilfred began work on the Victorian that very afternoon, swinging his scythe until after dark; he cleared the rear of the property of half its overgrowth. The next morning, Marion gathered her eggs and rushed down to the market and back, barely able to contain her excitement about the house. The man from Isaac’s had given Wilfred a key. They were going to get to go into the house.
Wilfred and Marion had sat across from each other the night before until close to midnight, the key on the table between them. Wilfred had fingered the key several times, and listened to his wife talk about how nice it would be to have neighbors. Maybe they would have children who could play with the girls. Wouldn’t that be nice? Marion had said, touching his hand on the key. Wilfred agreed it might be nice to have neighbors. They could be friends and he and Marion could visit them at the house. He could lend the man a hand with projects, and Marion could help the lady decorate. In the evenings, maybe he and the man could sit on the front steps together and smoke cigars and drink good whiskey from crystal snifters.
When Marion returned from the market, Wilfred was waiting for her on the steps of the Victorian with the key in his hand. Marion sent the girls home to put the egg money in the jar and stood next to Wilfred on the steps, smoothing her skirt and tucking strands of hair back into her net. Wilfred slipped the key into the lock and turned it. The door creaked, but swung open with ease and he and Marion stepped together across the threshold.
As the light from the bright spring day flooded the foyer, Wilfred and Marion saw for the first time that this part of the house was just as they had imagined it. A great double bridal staircase rose dramatically from the floor two full stories, leading to a wide hall that over looked the entrance. A crystal chandelier hung high above the foyer and the sunlight striking the prisms cast rainbows on the ceiling and walls and made the dust in the air sparkle like diamonds.
Wilfred reached for Marion’s hand when he heard her breath catch. She squeezed his back in return and closed her eyes. When she opened them, it was still there, just as she had always dreamed it would be. Swallowing hard and fighting back tears she didn’t understand, Marion walked through the foyer and up the grand staircase with Wilfred close by her side.
Wilfred and Marion were at the house every day after that first visit. She cleaned and he repaired things. Considering how long the house had been deserted, it was in need of very little. Some pipes had burst in the basement, a few floor joists had termite damage, but not beyond saving. The entire house was covered in dust and a grimy film, and Marion came to look forward to cleaning it to reveal the beauty of what was hidden beneath the dirt.
Each week, Danforth would drive up in his fancy car to inspect the progress and hand Wilfred an envelope with sixteen dollars and seventy-five cents in it, a windfall for a family who had never had an extra dollar to spend on anything. At night, he and Marion would return to their own home and sit silent in the parlor, each one lost in their own thoughts, each one becoming more and more consumed with the house next door. Neither Wilfred nor Marion could bring themselves to talk about the inevitability of the house being sold. Occasionally, Wilfred would get up and walk out of the bungalow to go stand in the front room of the Victorian and look out the big window at the twinkling lights of the town spread out below. It was the same view he had from his own parlor, but it was somehow different here.
One day in late June when Wilfred was trimming the hedges and Marion was serving the girls a picnic lunch of egg salad and cucumber sandwiches on a blanket spread out on the lawn in the shade of the huge lilac bush, Danforth’s car pulled up in front of the house. Danforth jumped out of the driver’s side and rushed around to open the rear door on the passenger side. He extended his hand and helped out a pretty woman who looked to be about the same age as Marion. A moment later, a well dressed man emerged from the front passenger seat. He took the woman’s arm and they followed Danforth up the steps.
Wilfred inclined his head to Danforth as he passed with the two strangers. With a raised eyebrow in the direction of the girls and their picnic, he stood in silence as Marion cleared the picnic and sent the girls back to the bungalow. Marion walked over to Wilfred and smiled as Danforth introduced them as the caretakers of the property.
Wilfred held his wife’s hand as the pretty woman commented that the house was small. Her husband replied curtly that that was the point. The woman murmured something Wilfred and Marion could not make out as the three of them moved into the foyer. Danforth was talking about the staircase having been crafted by a father son team from Milford, and the quality of the turning, and so on. Wilfred and Marion each cocked an ear toward the door to hear the sales pitch.
Both Wilfred and Marion jumped when the woman appeared suddenly on the front steps just above where they had been eavesdropping. She was trembling and trying to light a cigarette with shaking fingers. She did not notice them. As she exhaled, letting the smoke escape through her pretty nostrils, her husband stepped out to join her on the landing. He took the cigarette out of her mouth and dragged deeply on it before replacing it gently between her rouged lips.
“Listen, darling,” he said, “I know this place isn’t what we are used to, its small, its old, but do you know what it isn’t?”
The woman, who had been studying her polished nails, raised her eyes to meet her husband’s. She raised one hand to her mouth a picked a bit of tobacco of the tip of her pink tongue, then said, “what isn’t it, Charles…livable?”
"Splendid, darling…Let’s get nasty shall we?” Charles took a deep breath and continued speaking as if he were dealing with a child. “No, what it isn’t Gloria, is out of our price range.”
“But Charles,” Gloria pleaded, “The money isn’t gone for good is it?” I mean you will make more of it, won’t you? The market can’t stay like this forever, can it?” She dropped her cigarette on the landing and ground it into the flagstone with the toe of her cream and white colored spectator pump.
Danforth came out of the house then and clapped Charles on the back as if they were old friends. “So?” he asked.
Charles turned and took Danforth’s hand and shook it firmly once. “You’ve made your sale, old boy. Let’s go back to your office and handle the details. How much for the caretakers?” he asked waving a finger in Wilfred and Marion’s direction.
“Pardon?” Danforth appeared taken aback.
“Gloria will need help running the place, I can’t expect her to give up everything. How much will it cost to keep them on?” Charles asked.
"Oh, yeah sure…um, let me think. The office handles this, but I am almost positive they get twenty-five dollars a week.” Winking, Danforth poked a gold-banded cigar into Wilfred’s shirt pocket and patted it with the palm of his hand.
“Done.” Charles said as he headed for the car where Gloria was already waiting, crying in the backseat of the Ford.
Later as Wilfred leaned on the railing, watching Marion scrub the soot mark off the flagstone landing on her hands and knees, he thought about what the extra money would do for his family. His oldest daughter would need new shoes this year, and both girls could do with a new coat. He could buy a few more laying hens and a rooster if he went up country for them.
Wilfred looked at his wife’s back; her dress was threadbare and stretched taut across her back as she scoured off the offending mark. He thought about the woman, Gloria, with her red lips and pink tongue and whiney voice. He did not think he could live with a woman like that.
That night, in bed, Wilfred and Marion talked about the house for the first time in a long time. For weeks, they had been so immersed in the daily care and renewal of the house that they no longer wondered out loud about what it would be like to live there. As the summer breeze shifted the lace curtain, and the cupola blinked in and out of view, Wilfred and Marion dreamed one final dream about the house next door to their own home.
A few nights later, when the warm breezes of June had given way to the sweltering stillness of July, Wilfred and Marion went over to the Victorian. Marion had put on her best dress, the blue bias-cut rayon with satin trim around the sleeves and hem. It did not have a long sweeping train, but Marion felt like a movie star when she wore it. Wilfred had dusted off his wedding coat and derby hat. The trousers no longer fit, but the jacket dressed up his work pants just fine.
As the couple entered the house, Marion’s eyes began to water. The smell was stronger than she’d thought it would be. They would not stay too long, just enough time to walk together down the grand staircase as if they had a foyer full of guests waiting to be greeted. Impulsively, Wilfred grabbed Marion by the waist and waltzed her across the marble floor toward the front room. They stood together there for a few moments watching the display of Fourth of July fireworks illuminate the sky over the town.
As the fireworks built to the inevitable grand finale, Wilfred and Marion went out onto the front steps to watch. Wilfred pulled the cigar Danforth had given him out of his jacket pocket and carefully removed the band. Biting off one end, he bent to strike a match against the flagstone at his feet. Marion’s pretty face was briefly illuminated in the flare of the match head.
When, at last, the fireworks reached their crescendo, and the sky was nearly as bright as day, Wilfred puffed at the cigar, turning it slowly under the flame until the head glowed red. Turning back toward the house, he tossed the lit match into the foyer. Immediately, the two trails of kerosene he had carefully applied earlier that day ignited and sent twin flaming snakes winding across the floor to wrap themselves around the perfectly turned banisters of the stairs.
Wilfred and Marion stood together on the stairs for a few more moments, until the heat became insufferable. Then they turned and walked slowly home together, hand in hand, back to their little bungalow next door to the big Victorian.
She would have to order gowns from New York and Paris to wear at the parties Wilfred wanted to throw. The dressmakers here were not qualified, and certainly nothing off the rack at the mercantile would do. Marion wanted the finest fabrics and would insist that each dress have a long train that would follow her dramatically as she walked down the grand staircase on Wilfred’s arm. Sometimes, as she stood on the hard packed dirt of their front yard, scattering feed for the chickens, she would sweep her hand out in front of her and bow as if to some dignitary, the seed spraying out from her fingers as she did.
Two years and two miscarriages into their marriage, Marion delivered a healthy baby girl into the world. Wilfred tried hard to hide his disappointment that he did not yet have a son, but Marion saw it in his eyes and as soon as it was reasonable, she allowed Wilfred back into her bed and nine months later she gave birth to a still born boy. One year after that, a second daughter was born.
As their young family grew, Wilfred and Marion’s dreams seemed to shrink. The extravagant home next door no longer seemed like the perfect place to hold high-society soirees and their grandiose pillow talk was replaced with earnest discussions over the dinner dishes about how good it would be for the girls to have their own rooms and a real yard for playing. Wouldn’t it be lovely, Marion thought, to see them running barefoot on the lush green lawn she knew was hiding under the wild overgrowth of weeds and grass. Wilfred agreed that a house like the Victorian would do the girls a lot of good. Not just now, he had pointed out, but in the future. The girls would be well served if their suitors had to knock on that door when they came calling. Of course, Wilfred would always add, the house will need a bit of work; after all it had been vacant for over a decade.
Marion liked to listen to Wilfred talk about the work he would do to the house. She could picture him, his sleeves rolled up to reveal his muscular forearms, his broad back straining with effort, his friends from the pier would help out on weekends. She would cook huge hotdog and bean casseroles and serve cold beer and warm black bread with dinner. The girls would giggle and show off for everyone. Marion would smile when Wilfred showed her his handiwork: a new light fixture in the foyer, new shelves for the pantry, she could just see the pride in his eyes as his workmates admired his home and family.
Occasionally, when Wilfred was doing chores around their own house, working on the chicken coop repairing a run of nesting boxes that had succumbed to termites, reinstalling the clothesline pole that would not stay planted, or patching the roof over the girls room where the rain always seemed to find a way in, he would stop his work and look over at the house next door. He would listen to the sounds of his family inside the little bungalow and a feeling of longing would nearly overwhelm him. He burned for something and he believed with everything he was that the Victorian was the salve. That house, he told himself, that house would make everything different.
When Wilfred and Marion were anticipating their tenth wedding anniversary, something happened that neither of them had ever considered. One warm April day a shiny black Ford Victoria pulled up in front of the Victorian. A man got out of the car and reached into the back seat and pulled out a large placard. After several unsuccessful attempts to affix the placard to the house, the man walked down the street to the bungalow.
“Hello, the house!” he called loudly. Marion was down at the market with the girls selling the day’s crop of fresh eggs. Wilfred, having been let go from the pier along with most of his friends, was home and in the chicken coop mending the wire mesh on one of the doors.
“Hello…is anyone home?” The man called out, removing his fedora and using it to brush the dust off his trousers. Wilfred emerged from the coop, shielding his eyes from the sun.
“Oh…Hey,” the man said as he waved his hat at Wilfred. “I’m John Danforth, with Isaac and Isaac. I was trying to get this darn sign up next door, but I seemed to have left the office without my hammer and nails.”
Wilfred nodded his hello and walked over to the man with his hand outstretched. They shook and Wilfred noted that the man’s hand did not feel like it could ever have wielded a hammer.
“Could you lend me a hand, Mister?” Danforth asked. Wilfred nodded again and ducked into the coop for a moment before returning with a hammer and four nails.
Walking back with Danforth to the Victorian, Wilfred realized that this would be the first time he had ever actually been on the property. All those years he and Marion had been dreaming of owning and living in the house, they had never presumed to trespass. He felt anticipation swelling up in his belly as they mounted the wide steps that led to the front door. His excitement turned to dismay, however, as Danforth flipped the placard around and held it against the side of the house, just next to the sidelight of the ornate, carved oak door. FOR SALE, printed in big red letters. Wilfred was not breathing.
Later, Marion stood in stunned silence as Wilfred recounted his conversation with the man from Isaac and Isaac. At first, she had been on the verge of tears when Wilfred broke the news about their house being up for sale. Then, when her husband told her that Danforth had offered him wages in exchange for tidying up the property, Marion cried tears of relief. Wilfred had been out of work for a few weeks, and the egg money only went so far.
Wilfred began work on the Victorian that very afternoon, swinging his scythe until after dark; he cleared the rear of the property of half its overgrowth. The next morning, Marion gathered her eggs and rushed down to the market and back, barely able to contain her excitement about the house. The man from Isaac’s had given Wilfred a key. They were going to get to go into the house.
Wilfred and Marion had sat across from each other the night before until close to midnight, the key on the table between them. Wilfred had fingered the key several times, and listened to his wife talk about how nice it would be to have neighbors. Maybe they would have children who could play with the girls. Wouldn’t that be nice? Marion had said, touching his hand on the key. Wilfred agreed it might be nice to have neighbors. They could be friends and he and Marion could visit them at the house. He could lend the man a hand with projects, and Marion could help the lady decorate. In the evenings, maybe he and the man could sit on the front steps together and smoke cigars and drink good whiskey from crystal snifters.
When Marion returned from the market, Wilfred was waiting for her on the steps of the Victorian with the key in his hand. Marion sent the girls home to put the egg money in the jar and stood next to Wilfred on the steps, smoothing her skirt and tucking strands of hair back into her net. Wilfred slipped the key into the lock and turned it. The door creaked, but swung open with ease and he and Marion stepped together across the threshold.
As the light from the bright spring day flooded the foyer, Wilfred and Marion saw for the first time that this part of the house was just as they had imagined it. A great double bridal staircase rose dramatically from the floor two full stories, leading to a wide hall that over looked the entrance. A crystal chandelier hung high above the foyer and the sunlight striking the prisms cast rainbows on the ceiling and walls and made the dust in the air sparkle like diamonds.
Wilfred reached for Marion’s hand when he heard her breath catch. She squeezed his back in return and closed her eyes. When she opened them, it was still there, just as she had always dreamed it would be. Swallowing hard and fighting back tears she didn’t understand, Marion walked through the foyer and up the grand staircase with Wilfred close by her side.
Wilfred and Marion were at the house every day after that first visit. She cleaned and he repaired things. Considering how long the house had been deserted, it was in need of very little. Some pipes had burst in the basement, a few floor joists had termite damage, but not beyond saving. The entire house was covered in dust and a grimy film, and Marion came to look forward to cleaning it to reveal the beauty of what was hidden beneath the dirt.
Each week, Danforth would drive up in his fancy car to inspect the progress and hand Wilfred an envelope with sixteen dollars and seventy-five cents in it, a windfall for a family who had never had an extra dollar to spend on anything. At night, he and Marion would return to their own home and sit silent in the parlor, each one lost in their own thoughts, each one becoming more and more consumed with the house next door. Neither Wilfred nor Marion could bring themselves to talk about the inevitability of the house being sold. Occasionally, Wilfred would get up and walk out of the bungalow to go stand in the front room of the Victorian and look out the big window at the twinkling lights of the town spread out below. It was the same view he had from his own parlor, but it was somehow different here.
One day in late June when Wilfred was trimming the hedges and Marion was serving the girls a picnic lunch of egg salad and cucumber sandwiches on a blanket spread out on the lawn in the shade of the huge lilac bush, Danforth’s car pulled up in front of the house. Danforth jumped out of the driver’s side and rushed around to open the rear door on the passenger side. He extended his hand and helped out a pretty woman who looked to be about the same age as Marion. A moment later, a well dressed man emerged from the front passenger seat. He took the woman’s arm and they followed Danforth up the steps.
Wilfred inclined his head to Danforth as he passed with the two strangers. With a raised eyebrow in the direction of the girls and their picnic, he stood in silence as Marion cleared the picnic and sent the girls back to the bungalow. Marion walked over to Wilfred and smiled as Danforth introduced them as the caretakers of the property.
Wilfred held his wife’s hand as the pretty woman commented that the house was small. Her husband replied curtly that that was the point. The woman murmured something Wilfred and Marion could not make out as the three of them moved into the foyer. Danforth was talking about the staircase having been crafted by a father son team from Milford, and the quality of the turning, and so on. Wilfred and Marion each cocked an ear toward the door to hear the sales pitch.
Both Wilfred and Marion jumped when the woman appeared suddenly on the front steps just above where they had been eavesdropping. She was trembling and trying to light a cigarette with shaking fingers. She did not notice them. As she exhaled, letting the smoke escape through her pretty nostrils, her husband stepped out to join her on the landing. He took the cigarette out of her mouth and dragged deeply on it before replacing it gently between her rouged lips.
“Listen, darling,” he said, “I know this place isn’t what we are used to, its small, its old, but do you know what it isn’t?”
The woman, who had been studying her polished nails, raised her eyes to meet her husband’s. She raised one hand to her mouth a picked a bit of tobacco of the tip of her pink tongue, then said, “what isn’t it, Charles…livable?”
"Splendid, darling…Let’s get nasty shall we?” Charles took a deep breath and continued speaking as if he were dealing with a child. “No, what it isn’t Gloria, is out of our price range.”
“But Charles,” Gloria pleaded, “The money isn’t gone for good is it?” I mean you will make more of it, won’t you? The market can’t stay like this forever, can it?” She dropped her cigarette on the landing and ground it into the flagstone with the toe of her cream and white colored spectator pump.
Danforth came out of the house then and clapped Charles on the back as if they were old friends. “So?” he asked.
Charles turned and took Danforth’s hand and shook it firmly once. “You’ve made your sale, old boy. Let’s go back to your office and handle the details. How much for the caretakers?” he asked waving a finger in Wilfred and Marion’s direction.
“Pardon?” Danforth appeared taken aback.
“Gloria will need help running the place, I can’t expect her to give up everything. How much will it cost to keep them on?” Charles asked.
"Oh, yeah sure…um, let me think. The office handles this, but I am almost positive they get twenty-five dollars a week.” Winking, Danforth poked a gold-banded cigar into Wilfred’s shirt pocket and patted it with the palm of his hand.
“Done.” Charles said as he headed for the car where Gloria was already waiting, crying in the backseat of the Ford.
Later as Wilfred leaned on the railing, watching Marion scrub the soot mark off the flagstone landing on her hands and knees, he thought about what the extra money would do for his family. His oldest daughter would need new shoes this year, and both girls could do with a new coat. He could buy a few more laying hens and a rooster if he went up country for them.
Wilfred looked at his wife’s back; her dress was threadbare and stretched taut across her back as she scoured off the offending mark. He thought about the woman, Gloria, with her red lips and pink tongue and whiney voice. He did not think he could live with a woman like that.
That night, in bed, Wilfred and Marion talked about the house for the first time in a long time. For weeks, they had been so immersed in the daily care and renewal of the house that they no longer wondered out loud about what it would be like to live there. As the summer breeze shifted the lace curtain, and the cupola blinked in and out of view, Wilfred and Marion dreamed one final dream about the house next door to their own home.
A few nights later, when the warm breezes of June had given way to the sweltering stillness of July, Wilfred and Marion went over to the Victorian. Marion had put on her best dress, the blue bias-cut rayon with satin trim around the sleeves and hem. It did not have a long sweeping train, but Marion felt like a movie star when she wore it. Wilfred had dusted off his wedding coat and derby hat. The trousers no longer fit, but the jacket dressed up his work pants just fine.
As the couple entered the house, Marion’s eyes began to water. The smell was stronger than she’d thought it would be. They would not stay too long, just enough time to walk together down the grand staircase as if they had a foyer full of guests waiting to be greeted. Impulsively, Wilfred grabbed Marion by the waist and waltzed her across the marble floor toward the front room. They stood together there for a few moments watching the display of Fourth of July fireworks illuminate the sky over the town.
As the fireworks built to the inevitable grand finale, Wilfred and Marion went out onto the front steps to watch. Wilfred pulled the cigar Danforth had given him out of his jacket pocket and carefully removed the band. Biting off one end, he bent to strike a match against the flagstone at his feet. Marion’s pretty face was briefly illuminated in the flare of the match head.
When, at last, the fireworks reached their crescendo, and the sky was nearly as bright as day, Wilfred puffed at the cigar, turning it slowly under the flame until the head glowed red. Turning back toward the house, he tossed the lit match into the foyer. Immediately, the two trails of kerosene he had carefully applied earlier that day ignited and sent twin flaming snakes winding across the floor to wrap themselves around the perfectly turned banisters of the stairs.
Wilfred and Marion stood together on the stairs for a few more moments, until the heat became insufferable. Then they turned and walked slowly home together, hand in hand, back to their little bungalow next door to the big Victorian.
Friday, January 29, 2010
Day 28 (lost 26 and 27 to the flu)
Sage: "Nonny what happen to your eye?"
Nonny: "...My eye?"
Sage: "Bof of em...what happened?"
Nonny: " I don't know what's wrong with them, baby. What is it?"
Sage: "They're all...wrinkly..."
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Days 21 and 22
There is something about being sick on the couch for two days that makes me feel helpless. I have been through some hard luck these past few years...and I kept on keeping on...but somehow a simple head cold that first turned me into a mouth-breathing slug and then migrated south to my chest so that I sound like I could be one of those seals that mysteriously disappeared off Pier 39 in San Francisco, has got me crying "uncle" and calling out of work.
There is nothing more depressing for the person who is sick or the person who has to live with the person who is sick than the slack-jawed, sniffle-muffled, whining induced by a cold. OK, of course there are many things more depressing... I am exaggerating because having a cold also mutes any empathy button the coldee may possess. Somehow, all common sense runs for cover when the common cold comes a knocking. I spent the entire day on friday supine on my sofa, with my laptop, kleenex and remote within arms reach...I coughed and sneezed and whined, all while watching the TV where updates on the situation in Haiti were common...am I insane? I have a cold...seriously...
There is nothing more depressing for the person who is sick or the person who has to live with the person who is sick than the slack-jawed, sniffle-muffled, whining induced by a cold. OK, of course there are many things more depressing... I am exaggerating because having a cold also mutes any empathy button the coldee may possess. Somehow, all common sense runs for cover when the common cold comes a knocking. I spent the entire day on friday supine on my sofa, with my laptop, kleenex and remote within arms reach...I coughed and sneezed and whined, all while watching the TV where updates on the situation in Haiti were common...am I insane? I have a cold...seriously...
Friday, January 22, 2010
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
DAY 19 review...
This blog entry was supposed to be about the special election and all the excitement and beauty of the democratic process at its finest...but enough has been said about this subject by me elsewhere...today my beautiful 23 year old daughter trusted me enough to come to me with a problem. A big problem: one that could have devastating implications for her if she did not do the right thing...I think I did okay. She talked, I listened. I gave my opinion, but did not judge...I supported her in a choice I don't agree with, because it is her life, after all, and she must live it and learn lessons (sometimes the hard way...but I hope not)on her own.
What struck me about this encounter with my daughter was her honest appraisal of herself, the situation, and the possible consequences of her choice...when did she grow into such a... well... grown-up? I hope her groundedness serves her well in this choice she's made...if not, she knows that she has a place to turn...forever.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Sunday, January 17, 2010
DAY 17..."no, I am not depressed....just stupid."
Tonight as I was home alone sitting on my comfy couch with a glass of Il Bastardo watching a movie, I was suddenly aware of a tingling in my fingers and lips...like I was hyperventilating. I was not. I started to pay more attention to my body and noticed a dizzy sensation...then I smelled it...something like rubber burning I thought. It wasn't. What it was, was my car running in my garage ( my attached closed garage) for over 4 and a half hours. I opened all the windows and the garage door, then I called my daughter and then my mom...both said I should call the fire department...I did. First the cruiser showed up and the nice policeman wanted to know what had been bothering me today...ummm nothing. Then the EMT's asked if I wanted to tell them anything about what I'd done...ummm, I left my car on in the garage. The firemen ran the meter in my home a deemed it safe, and said over the radio, that "things looked normal" in there.
"Are you depressed miss?" "No, seriously...I'm just stupid."
The thing that saved me from a trip to the ER for a psych evaluation, was my still full glass of wine sitting on the coffee table in front of my paused movie...yeah maybe she is just stupid...they left me and my 6 parts per million to finish my wine.
Friday, January 15, 2010
Day 14 review...a bit late
Watched Inglourious Basterds today...cannot say enough about how good this film was. Tarantino is just unbelievable...Pitt's character is so over the top and played with such restraint by Pitt...and Cristoph Waltz as Colonel Hans Landa is a revelation. So good on so many levels...a must see in my book...very graphic, so its not for the faint of heart...Loved this movie! 3 thumbs way way up!
Day 15...writing excellence
As I have mentioned here before, this blog is for writing...and sometimes I will put another writer's words in here if I feel they are strung together in a particularly artful way, or, as is the case with today's entry, they do what great writing is supposed to do...move the reader, make them feel something...read on...copied and pasted from a Yahoo article this morning...
By JONATHAN M. KATZ, Associated Press Writer Jonathan M. Katz, Associated Press Writer – Thu Jan 14, 5:10 pm ET
EDITOR'S NOTE — Jonathan M. Katz is The Associated Press' correspondent in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. He filed this first-person account of the moments after Tuesday's earthquake, which has redefined tragedy for a nation that knows it all too well.
___
PETIONVILLE, Haiti (AP) — I was sitting on my bed surfing the Internet when I noticed silence, followed by a weird groaning sound. I figured it was a passing water truck. But funny, I thought — sounds more like an earthquake.
The house started shaking. Then it really started shaking. I walked out of my room and kneeled slowly to the undulating floor, laptop in hand, as windows, two years' worth of Haitian art and a picture of my grandfather smashed around me.
I was not hurt. Not only that, the staircase in the house where I live and work, while completely invisible behind a choking white cloud of drywall and dust, was still standing. I yelled out for Evens, the AP's all-in-one driver/translator/bodyguard here.
To my shock and delight he answered: "Let's go."
I went. Barefoot, over rocks, past a crack running the height of the house, out to the street in my underwear, first to look for a telephone to call in what had happened, then brave any aftershocks and return to the house for a chance at shoes and pants.
It's been nearly impossible to get an Internet or phone signal since then. So consider it my pure but well-founded speculation that many reports of the destruction of Port-au-Prince include a phrase like, "Haiti is no stranger to suffering."
In the wake of Tuesday's magnitude-7 earthquake, which leveled much of the Haitian capital and left perhaps tens of thousands dead, it is both an understatement and an overstatement.
Sure, Haiti is no stranger to suffering: For most people here, tragedy is more common than lunch. And yet this nation has never faced anything on such a cataclysmic scale.
Less than two years ago, the country's fourth-largest city, Gonaives, was left underwater by a limping tropical storm that would have barely disrupted traffic in Miami.
As our photographer and I came in on a raft with Brazilian soldiers, we passed bodies floating in the street. It was the third of four named storms to hit the country in the space of a month.
Barely two months later, a school fell down in the slum-and-mansion suburb of Petionville, and about 100 people died. The first sign was a noise that sounded like sirens coming from over the hill. They were the voices of screaming parents.
Here, passing a dead body in the streets after yet another storm or political coup merits little more than a passing comment about how properly the face has been covered.
Now we have to try to understand what it means that such a long history of pain pales next to the devastation wrought by 15 to 20 seconds of shaking one January afternoon.
Behind the now-bisected AP house is the same slum where that ill-fated school entered our nightmares two years ago. This time, every flimsy building had caved. The white cloud scratching my lungs hung across the horizon. And the screams were a screeching thunder.
The city is a ruin. Fuel, food and water are running in short supply. Mothers have lost their children. Children have lost their families. Entire neighborhoods are sleeping in the streets. People walk miles up and down mountains, carrying everything they own, with no real place to go.
But here is what is new: You have perhaps seen the pictures of the national palace smashed into a lurching heap over the grassy Champs de Mars. Or of the collapsed twin spires of the Notre Dame d'Haiti cathedral complex, which claimed the life of the archbishop. Or of the collapsed parliament where the senate president remained trapped Wednesday.
Imagine if nearly all the institutions in your life — flawed, but still the only ones — disappeared, all at once.
In a life where the next meal is uncertain, where the next rain may claim your home, where the next election may happen or not — where that is the normal. Think of having those institutions smashed all around you.
At the very moment when you have lost someone, perhaps many people, you loved.
The AP house, a footnote in the devastation, is an uninhabitable mess on the verge of collapse. An entire city is screaming for help. I've finally logged onto the Internet long enough to see that some of those calls will be answered, at least in some way.
But what will happen after that help, like so much here, has vanished? Will there be an after?
By JONATHAN M. KATZ, Associated Press Writer Jonathan M. Katz, Associated Press Writer – Thu Jan 14, 5:10 pm ET
EDITOR'S NOTE — Jonathan M. Katz is The Associated Press' correspondent in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. He filed this first-person account of the moments after Tuesday's earthquake, which has redefined tragedy for a nation that knows it all too well.
___
PETIONVILLE, Haiti (AP) — I was sitting on my bed surfing the Internet when I noticed silence, followed by a weird groaning sound. I figured it was a passing water truck. But funny, I thought — sounds more like an earthquake.
The house started shaking. Then it really started shaking. I walked out of my room and kneeled slowly to the undulating floor, laptop in hand, as windows, two years' worth of Haitian art and a picture of my grandfather smashed around me.
I was not hurt. Not only that, the staircase in the house where I live and work, while completely invisible behind a choking white cloud of drywall and dust, was still standing. I yelled out for Evens, the AP's all-in-one driver/translator/bodyguard here.
To my shock and delight he answered: "Let's go."
I went. Barefoot, over rocks, past a crack running the height of the house, out to the street in my underwear, first to look for a telephone to call in what had happened, then brave any aftershocks and return to the house for a chance at shoes and pants.
It's been nearly impossible to get an Internet or phone signal since then. So consider it my pure but well-founded speculation that many reports of the destruction of Port-au-Prince include a phrase like, "Haiti is no stranger to suffering."
In the wake of Tuesday's magnitude-7 earthquake, which leveled much of the Haitian capital and left perhaps tens of thousands dead, it is both an understatement and an overstatement.
Sure, Haiti is no stranger to suffering: For most people here, tragedy is more common than lunch. And yet this nation has never faced anything on such a cataclysmic scale.
Less than two years ago, the country's fourth-largest city, Gonaives, was left underwater by a limping tropical storm that would have barely disrupted traffic in Miami.
As our photographer and I came in on a raft with Brazilian soldiers, we passed bodies floating in the street. It was the third of four named storms to hit the country in the space of a month.
Barely two months later, a school fell down in the slum-and-mansion suburb of Petionville, and about 100 people died. The first sign was a noise that sounded like sirens coming from over the hill. They were the voices of screaming parents.
Here, passing a dead body in the streets after yet another storm or political coup merits little more than a passing comment about how properly the face has been covered.
Now we have to try to understand what it means that such a long history of pain pales next to the devastation wrought by 15 to 20 seconds of shaking one January afternoon.
Behind the now-bisected AP house is the same slum where that ill-fated school entered our nightmares two years ago. This time, every flimsy building had caved. The white cloud scratching my lungs hung across the horizon. And the screams were a screeching thunder.
The city is a ruin. Fuel, food and water are running in short supply. Mothers have lost their children. Children have lost their families. Entire neighborhoods are sleeping in the streets. People walk miles up and down mountains, carrying everything they own, with no real place to go.
But here is what is new: You have perhaps seen the pictures of the national palace smashed into a lurching heap over the grassy Champs de Mars. Or of the collapsed twin spires of the Notre Dame d'Haiti cathedral complex, which claimed the life of the archbishop. Or of the collapsed parliament where the senate president remained trapped Wednesday.
Imagine if nearly all the institutions in your life — flawed, but still the only ones — disappeared, all at once.
In a life where the next meal is uncertain, where the next rain may claim your home, where the next election may happen or not — where that is the normal. Think of having those institutions smashed all around you.
At the very moment when you have lost someone, perhaps many people, you loved.
The AP house, a footnote in the devastation, is an uninhabitable mess on the verge of collapse. An entire city is screaming for help. I've finally logged onto the Internet long enough to see that some of those calls will be answered, at least in some way.
But what will happen after that help, like so much here, has vanished? Will there be an after?
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Day 13...addition
I just read the first page of a book given to me by someone who is turning out to be one of the best people in my life...she gave me the book without knowing the contents, only having seen the author on TV and thinking she might speak to my situation...boy...she could not have been more right. I have been through a pretty rough couple of years, the worst part of which has been the breakup of my marriage.
Were we the happiest couple on earth? No. Did I love the man? Yes, absolutely.
The Wisdom of a Broken Heart has captured me in the first few paragraphs...if you have ever had a broken heart, read on and see if you can't recognize yourself in these words.
"This book is about how to deal with the trauma of a broken heart, the kind you experience when a romantic relationship ends. There is no other experience like this one. For many people, the devastating, obsessive nature of a broken heart is a complete surprise. You have a sense of being completely shattered, right in the middle of your chest. Discomfort takes over your body, making it feel heavy and dull or oddly light, like something that has been burned to a crisp and now floats in the air like ash. Most noticeably, heartbreak puts your own mind out of your control. You fixate on certain thoughts or events, torment yourself with unanswerable questions such as "what if?" and "how come?" and are susceptible to shocking waves of grief that flood you without any warning whatsoever, even while asleep. You can no longer count on yourself making it through a business meeting or the check out line at the supermarket without having to stifle tears.
Everyone and everything you encounter becomes a part of your heartbreak by reminding you of your loss, sadness, and shame. A colleague's casual morning greeting feels like a snooty taunt; missing the bus is testimony to your having been born under a bad sign, and every single couple in every single song, movie, and television show points out either the impossible beauty of love(if they are happy) or the inevitability of it blowing up in your face(if they're not). The whole planet mirrors your sorrow, and there is nowhere to hide. You once thought of daily events as sometimes as having to do with you, sometimes not, but now that the wall between your inner life and outer world has come down, everything becomes extremely personal and intimate. It feels like the world has turned upside down. It has.
As it turns out, you will see that this is excellent news."
Susan Piver
Were we the happiest couple on earth? No. Did I love the man? Yes, absolutely.
The Wisdom of a Broken Heart has captured me in the first few paragraphs...if you have ever had a broken heart, read on and see if you can't recognize yourself in these words.
"This book is about how to deal with the trauma of a broken heart, the kind you experience when a romantic relationship ends. There is no other experience like this one. For many people, the devastating, obsessive nature of a broken heart is a complete surprise. You have a sense of being completely shattered, right in the middle of your chest. Discomfort takes over your body, making it feel heavy and dull or oddly light, like something that has been burned to a crisp and now floats in the air like ash. Most noticeably, heartbreak puts your own mind out of your control. You fixate on certain thoughts or events, torment yourself with unanswerable questions such as "what if?" and "how come?" and are susceptible to shocking waves of grief that flood you without any warning whatsoever, even while asleep. You can no longer count on yourself making it through a business meeting or the check out line at the supermarket without having to stifle tears.
Everyone and everything you encounter becomes a part of your heartbreak by reminding you of your loss, sadness, and shame. A colleague's casual morning greeting feels like a snooty taunt; missing the bus is testimony to your having been born under a bad sign, and every single couple in every single song, movie, and television show points out either the impossible beauty of love(if they are happy) or the inevitability of it blowing up in your face(if they're not). The whole planet mirrors your sorrow, and there is nowhere to hide. You once thought of daily events as sometimes as having to do with you, sometimes not, but now that the wall between your inner life and outer world has come down, everything becomes extremely personal and intimate. It feels like the world has turned upside down. It has.
As it turns out, you will see that this is excellent news."
Susan Piver
Day 13
This is just low...how many times are we going to allow them to twist this to their advantage? They changed the law to prevent Mitt Romneyfrom appointing a senator when Kerry was running for President, then, they changed the law back so Deval Patrick could appoint a senator when Ted Kennedy passed away...now ...they will delay certifying a legitimate win by Brown until after the Health Care bill is voted on?....this is too low...and not even remotely on the up and up...
Vote Brown...send them a message
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Vote Brown...send them a message
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