sir gawain, the green knight, and other dreams of the dead

they were smiling at me, so close i thought i could reach out and touch them. their love emanating from their smiles in visible waves of air (a distortion of my psyche); i ached for it to be true, although i knew that it was only a dream and that they were long gone from my life and this reality. i like it when they come to visit, but i always wonder what they want when they do. what can it mean when they seem so alive, but i know that they are dead?

sir gawain and his pursuit of the green knight came to my consciousness without warning or prompting, they were just there last night at around 9:17 pm pst. it wasn’t an unpleasant visit, even though it has been more than 4_ years (yes, that is a 4 in front of that underscore, it is there because memory is like that) since i had met them. all things camelot were the rage, we were all reading t.h. white’s “the once and future king.” why i do not know. i liked gawain, his honor, his fears, his duplicity, and his redemption. its alliterative verse underscoring (in a john williams movie score kind-of-way) the valor and the grandeur of the court of arthur. did my thoughts of gawain prompt the visit this morning, just before waking, of my smiling, lovely friends? i do not know, but today i believe i will let them accompany me, their love my knight-in-shining-armor.

p.s. my interview at artist career training is up.

“x”mas marks the spot

at least the dining table looks like christmas even if the rest of the house does not; what with the cards we’ve received in a bowl (the ceramic sleigh we usually bring out for that purpose still stored away), gift wrap, tissue paper, ribbons, half-wrapped boxes, re-gifting as necessary (btw, got my christmas present early this year, $715.00 car repair, thank you swedish-asian auto service!), greeting cards in their boxes awaiting addressing and note-writing–you did notice that today’s date is the 23rd, didn’t you?  we are seriously behind on this whole “celebration/holiday/giving thanks/hosanna/lamb of god mewling in the manger-thing”.

and i’ve been particularly reluctant to get going on it.  now mind you, it’s not that i don’t love all of my friends and what family is left (and of course, i do have all of m.’s extended family that i absolutely adore–if they’re reading this, anyway), but that sense of wonder of the season has just not arrived with little reindeer hooves on the roof of my soul this year.  for a moment yesterday, when i was being driven from work to the auto service place-a-ma-bob and was chatting with  armando, their go-fer, about christmas and his little two-and-a-half-year old daughter who loves the lights and has figured out what presents are hers under the tree already–to hear his voice soften with love as he told me about her joy was, well, it was joyful.  for the moment.

but back at home later that evening, even with the loving attention of our billy and joey and the sweet baritone of m. that sense of malaise (could it be ennui–the guilt of the downwardly mobile?) seemed to settle over me like the cold that i just cannot shake (3 damn weeks, enough already!)

however today dawned, as they do, the days that is, you know the sun came up, and after a night of serious contemplation and a look back at some christmases past and a lovely note from a friend this morning, well, i thought i should get over myself and wish you a merry christmas, which i will attempt to do in less words than you can shake a stick at and perhaps along the way i’ll manage to mix metaphors or over-indulge in hyperbole and other grammatical legerdemain that, like it or not, are a part of who i am (crown me with a non-sequitur of holly berries and mistletoe, which of course is not your traditional non-sequitur, but what did you expect in 2011 anyway?)

consequently and without further ado or not too much ‘do’, but maybe a bit more, it is the holidays after all and a little excess may be de rigueur when celebrating the birth of a son of a god–even zeus would agree, although by now zeus may be a bit of a stretch for you traditionalists–but regardless of whose god you may celebrate, the holiday is about love and friendship and i am prepared, yea, verily, i am ready to distribute my love and extend my hand in friendship to all who cross my path today, who may have done the same yesterday, and to those who may come tomorrow.  i love you.  i really do.

untitled (study of the gray areas)

try as i might, i can not work up a head of steam over these photographs.  they have been a part of my memory life for many years and even though i’d asked, “can we go there?” and had been assured we could, we never did (perhaps to avoid a pleasant/bad memory of their own, i don’t know.)  and yet, i’ve hung onto them, shuffled them around, taken them out of their album with its black corners holding these small black and white photographs against a deep, velvet-y black paper–a paper so luxurious that it feels like animal skin when you take a corner to turn the page or slip a photograph back into its corners (sometimes in their original place and sometimes forced onto other pages and other memories, a dissonance as they rub against each other, shouldering their way to the front of the line, “i’m more important, these are my pages, this memory i hold is clearer and happier than yours,” until you relent and go back to where they belong–a delicate, faded white script describing the day, the place, the people–you try to remember which one went with what description, but realize it matters not.)

of all the photographs from this section of a life before mine, this is the only one that shows any life; that is blatantly untrue, it is that i have chosen to share with you only those that seem to be uninhabited, even this one, bereft of a human touch, a sign, a fence, the destruction we leave behind us as we move through our time.

this colony began almost two hundred years ago, a president lived here before he decided to move on and make something of himself.  it is here that he shared his life with another man–of course, this lifetimes before hate drove love of your fellow man (whether sexual or not) underground.   when it was not uncommon to touch another man on the shoulder, hold his hand, look into his eyes and smile, without fear of reprobation.  and that may be why these photos remain a blank for me; it is hard to imagine a time when love existed in a gray area of life, a smudge between black & white, as valid as either of those two opposites.

moon and palm (and goodbyes)

so.  do you find it hard to say goodbye?  is it easy for you to turn your back on a relationship — whether friend, lover, family and just walk away from it?  does “until the next time” fail to convince either party of your sincerity?  let’s call it ‘adieu syndrome’, shall we?  let’s not call it goodbye (too final, save that for death or a really nasty cold).  i have often wondered (just as an aside, can you believe it was jeremy brett, he of the sherlock holmes series from masterpiece theater, who sang that wonderful song in “my fair lady”—“i have often walked down this street before, but my feet…”, well can you?  such a handsome man in his youth), but where were we, yes, i have often wondered what goodbye really means in today’s world.  you can’t really get rid of anyone anymore what with all of the social/digital connections one makes—you’re connected in spite of your feeble attempt at saying goodbye. it seems so impermanent, more of a concept than a reality.

i said goodbye to someone i knew long ago the other day, someone who had wandered back into my life and we took up where we’d left off (if one can really do that — you know, pick up where you left off, oh say, 3_ years ago) and then you discover that you’ve been living within spitting distance of each other for several years and should you rue the time you could have had together (obviously not) and all that time had passed and then after a year of not seeing each other (it is l.a. after all and time has a tendency to collapse upon itself) and after that year goes by, they call to say “we’re leaving” and you do manage to make the effort to see each other one last time, and like any good relationship, there’s not even a bump in the road (that year behind you) and soon you find yourselves standing on a corner, shuffling your feet and it’s “oh, let’s not call it goodbye, let’s call it something else, say, farewell, we’ll see you soon (not true), until we meet again,” and a car honks at you because by then you’d stepped off the curb to get away from the goodbyes (and that tiny bit of sadness that goes with it) and they put out their hand to grab your arm and pull you back onto the sidewalk (hail mary, full of grace, even if you’re not catholic, but want to cover your bases regardless, because getting run over would have really been goodbye.)

p.s. that’s the moon tonight.  goodnight moon (but not goodbye.) J67DXMBYFD35

visitations (lives of the saints)

“o, the sisters of mercy they are not departed or gone.  they were waiting for me when i thought that i could not go on.  and they brought me their comfort, and later they brought me this song.  o, i hope you run into them, you who have been traveling so long.” –leonard cohen

part 1

they always drove into town in the pickup with the camper shell from their home in south dakota or missouri, making the journey seem like a vacation, taking their time, stopping (as we always did when i was young) at roadside attractions, deciding on the spur of the moment to take this two-lane road or that one instead of the interstate, just to say they had done it, “it looked interesting,” she would tell me later, going into the details of this farm or that small town they had ‘discovered’ on their way to somewhere else, her fourth husband a willing participant in her explorations and whims.

they would visit friends, a collection of people she gathered wherever she went, a true talent and one i cannot say i fully understood at the time, the making of friends wherever, whenever.  i try now to remember if that ability was because she was a good listener or if it was her simple, pleasant manner, maybe it was an undefinable trait, or maybe it was just her nature that led people to her.  however she managed it, she had friends scattered around the midwest;  columbine and lilac, peony and rose.  when did she find time to maintain such a flower garden?

when i was growing up i didn’t pay attention to the subtleties of my mother’s maturity, her adult abilities and worldly navigational devices and tools, but perhaps i have been most influenced by them or by the lack of them and have only come to realize what they were when i reached a certain cognizant age (somewhere between 2_ and death, or perhaps in the never world of my subconscious) and when i find myself employing a skill set i had no idea i possessed.  i wish i could spell out for you what those subtleties are (other than the obvious petty lying one engages to keep the social wheels greased), their details, their lattice work on which your friendships flourish.

the first time they came to chicago to visit me, was it 1975 or ’76?, i can’t recall, and there is no mention of it in my journal from the time; i do know it was summer and chicago was a-shimmer with heat and humidity, but somehow perfect while they were there (or maybe it was its awful hot, sticky self, the weather is unimportant to this story, i was just hoping i could set a mood for you in order that you might appreciate more of what i’m about to share with you.)

have i mentioned that my mother would cast her spell over my friends so that they would also become her friends?  o yes, months later after they had been introduced, this one or that one would casually say something to this effect (and to my horror), “i was speaking with evelyn the other day and we were talking about you.  o, don’t worry, it wasn’t anything negative, but you know how she is…”  and i, on the other end of this particular telephone conversation, blushing, my pulse racing.   i would try to figure out how and when they found the quiet moment of their, most likely, one and only meeting, to secretly exchange phone numbers, neither of them so much as breaking a sweat in their collusion.   this habit of acquiring my closest friends as hers was one she began when i left for college and kept until she died, not unlike her pack of marlboros on the telephone table next to her chair in the living room, taking one out and carefully lighting it with a decorative flame and then that exhalation; i can hear it now, they must have too.

part 2

so.  plans are made, destination and arrival time plotted and soon (too quickly) here they are, standing in the lobby of 2___ n. pine grove, pushing the buzzer for r. patrick, apt. 1114, suitcases in hand, a bit of american gothic done up in polyester (“it travels better”) and smelling of the road, my mother a bit wind-tossed and my step-father solicitous as always of her every need, although her independence might have put off a less secure man, he seemed not to pay any attention to it and i think that may have been part of his appeal to her, this final love of her life (after me.)

this is the summer that i was sporting a collection of straw borsalinos accompanied by fringed silk scarves tossed gaily, yes you read that right, tossed gaily (in case you thought your eyes were deceiving you the first time) over one or the other of my bony shoulders.   you might ask the author at this point how open he was about his sexuality with his mother and step-father and he would say, “it’s none of your business.”  that is how it was handled in our family.  (if you’ve been following any of these family history jaunts i’ve been indulging myself in this past days/weeks/months/years, you may have discovered that at one point in my life i had two mommies, that too was never discussed.)

they settled comfortably in my studio apartment, sleeping in the bedroom alcove with me on the little off-white curved boudoir sofa i’d rescued from a second-hand store in uptown (lawrence & clark-ish) where it was wilting from disuse, hiding in a corner.  i’d swathed it in watered georgette, patterned in blue and green hues from a sari shop in the same neighborhood, covering the blemishes it had been wearing for years before i came to own it.   at least i’d start out on it, but it was so small and kidney-shaped that i ended up sleeping on the floor instead (he shrugged).

we took the 151 bus down to the near north and walked over to arnie’s for lunch one day and ate spinach salad and steak tartare (“why would you eat spinach raw,” asked my stepfather, my mother delighting in the alfalfa sprouts crowning hers, possibly making a little mooing noise under her breath to my horror–and secret delight.)

that evening we dined with my dearest friend (bff before there was such a thing), jimmy, in his apartment in the same building.    he had a 100 candles lit, reflecting the shimmering lights of the city below, the warmth of the light magnified by one mirrored wall, his palm trees and exotic plants making it a tropical night in the middle of chicago.  jimmy was an adept.  adept as in magical-thinking, fantasy-producing, another world/universe-living, brilliant human consumed by the darkest undercurrent (the river styx) and for a few years my off- and on-again gay mentor and guide to the world.  under his tutelage my culture quotient shot way up, i shed some of the country ‘gosh’ ness and instead acquired a big city ‘fuck’ ness.  what i chose to take with me has stood me well these many years.

my mother was fascinated by him and he by her and they soon had their heads together on his living room couch while step-father and i fiddled and twirled our wine glasses and idly watched them.  she would parry and he would feint; he would joust and she would side-step as elegantly as a show horse, so subtle was their mutual admiration and interest in each other that, to the untrained eye, you would have thought they had known each other for years.  at some point in the evening they exchanged phone numbers (see paragraph 5 above.)

wisely, jimmy continued to pour wine into their glasses, so that when it came time to lead them back to my apartment after dinner there was no objection to his and my heading out to the bars for a little late night revelry.

part 3

i’ve always been partial to the hindu concept of life:  a spiraling thread of history through which your life dissects, your past may be someone else’s future, their now your long ago.    but it is that spiraling (do you always think of the word ‘spiraling’ as a downward movement?  i think most of us do, but i often like to contemplate it laying on its side or moving up instead of down.   it is the same with its shape, a funnel your first thought with its wide top and narrow bottom, but i see it as particularly regular in shape, as wide at the top as it is at the bottom–or equal from side to side), that will now come into play.  we have moved from that idyllic summer of ’7_ and it is now close to the end of a decade and i have called out to them.

j.w. had a country girl’s charm with a big city woman’s body, all legs, ass and breasts cooing sweet nothings to men twice her age ’til they’d be wiping the drool off their chins with a paper cocktail napkin already wet with their sloppy beer.   she and i worked together at arnie’s, she in the bar, me on the floor, and we had an immediate connection.  as with most of us there, the restaurant job was ‘temporary’ until our real job came along.  she a potter, me a _________ (the blank is intentional, i had no idea what i wanted to be.  all i knew is that i did not want to be working in a restaurant another day.)  she lived in the pilsen east artist community at 18th street and halsted and after my first visit to her loft i was ready to move down there and lead la vie bohème, she mimi, me rodolphe (beats his chest).

instead of this [imagined] love affair (whether it was with her or not) it fast became a downward spiral of drugs, drink and wantonness (not because of her, or maybe it was) and when i finally pulled myself up out of the <insert your favorite word here to describe the depths of despair i was feeling at the time> i made up my mind to make something happen (even if it did not come true, as it didn’t, and as is often the case with the irresolute–you know who you are–there were more hard days ahead), i set out to change my life.

there was a party.   a going-away party where everything in the house was for sale. we (i had a roommate, more on that at another time, it is too hard to write about the living right now.  i’ve started to address this time in some written form or the other over the last several months and have failed each time –failed as far as i am the judge of what works and what doesn’t when speaking of the living–we shall see if i am able to move past that in the future as it is an important part, a key actually, to this story, both before this tale and afterward, and yet it does not matter now as i relate to you these visitations), sold everything including the refrigerator that belonged to the landlord (we replaced it) during this night of manic revelry; hundreds of people came through and by morning, the place was stripped bare (bare-ish, i ended up staying on by myself for several months afterward, not everyone took with them what they bought and never mentioned that they hadn’t gotten what they paid for.  it still makes me giggle with elfin delight that the party was so good that paying for something was like the fee for enjoying yourself, whether you took home your purchase or not.  there was never an ounce of recrimination from any attendee.  another “oh, well,” he sighed.)

part 4

and finally.  it’s not the final ‘final’ just so you know.  i don’t want to get your hopes up that this will be the end of it, you’re just going to have to soldier on here for a bit more as i dredge this pond bottom for all of the memory that’s been laying there gathering algae and scum (and the occasional dead frog).   focus, rp, focus.  i called them and said, “i’ve got a job lined up in phoenix and i’m going to move in few weeks, don’t want to take a lot with me, will you come and get the important stuff?” and she, “why, honey, of course, we will.”  and being the deus ex machina that they were, days later the pick-up with the camper shell (why were they always silver-y blue?) is parked in front of 7__ w. 18th st.

it is summer again in chicago and this time i’m not living on the lake.  instead i’m down in a neighborhood that has seen many better days, the streets are dusty, two doors down from me live a pair of hookers (as sweet as pie, btw) and the neighborhood abuts little mexico city, so named, well, you figure it out.   the artist inhabitants are a motley crew, a little wild-eyed, gypsy fortune-telling, handsome and beautiful, exotic birds really and i loved each of them, but that’s definitely an aside.  it’s not that my mother didn’t know where i was living, i shared as much as i thought necessary and i’d been down to see them several times over the intervening years–the important thing is that they had seen me, they had to know that it was not good, but they looked past it, not wanting to bring up something that they had no control over.  is that the mark of a good parent of an adult child or the telling point of one who was not?  i only ask the question now as i am writing this as it did not cross my mind that they were there with anything but love in their caring hearts.

“does this make me look like an artist or a kook?” she asked me as she sported the lamp shade on her head, standing on the sidewalk just down from my space (it’s the tan one in the light with the two big windows) and so the photo above, the one that i had been searching so desperately for so many weeks and it turned up on the shelf in the closet in the 2nd bedroom in an album, “yeah, didn’t you know that’s where it was?” said m. with the nonchalance of an olympic slalom skier or a secret agent.

the night before the photo, i’d taken them on the halsted bus up to greek town for a night out.  we ate at roditys where i was a regular and the staff poured on the charm and the wine and by the time we left a couple of hours later, she and my step-dad were as lit as i was.  we  stopped at the belly dancing place a few doors down for a night cap and somewhere between there and here (the tinkling of the silver jewelry adorning the dancer and the buzz of the crowd) i realized that my mother could pretty much handle anything that life threw at her.    no matter where she was she fit in.  instead of kilroy was here, it was evelyn was here, and don’t forget it; but do remember to call me, okay?  you’ve got the number.

let’s walk & talk

“let’s walk & talk,” were the words i loved to hear from m. (not my m., another m. that i’ve known forever, you know that m. was the most popular name for boys for several decades after ww2, consequently i have more m.’s in my life than any other name.)

anyway, this m., the walk & talk m., was (and is to a lesser degree now) a dear friend (i still think of him fondly but time & distance have taken its toll on our closeness.)

but these walks we would take, on broadway, or clark, halsted, downtown, lakeview, in the afternoon, early evening, late at night, were always about working out some problem in our lives.  big or small, personal, professional, each listening to the other, sharing.

m. was the best listener i had as a friend & although our bond perhaps was more porous than that of other close friends, i always felt that i received so much from him, because he listened so well.

today, today when i walked i listened closely to what i what i was seeing.  can you tell?  it was a macro kind of day, but because i listened i was able to see the resolution, or if not the resolution, at least the path that i must traverse.

& as m. & i would often discover, the answer to our problems was within ourselves.  just as it was today.

tsouris (language & friendship)

the nature of friendship has been much on my mind lately (probably always) because it has been, as long as i can remember, something that i’ve not been very good at it (building friendships.)  i root around for answers, reasons, thoughts (any damned ‘aha’ moment would do) but rarely find the truffle (a hunting pig i am not.)

today i will not belabor the point, as i’ve covered it here & here & here & in other posts as well.  (should you want someone else’s opinion on friendship in the internet age, i’d recommend this post by author matthew gallaway.)

but the issue remains, & becomes particularly acute as one ages (oh, yes, the march of time; it would be so much easier if, like bees, we had only one purpose in this life, or could decide on only one purpose among all the choices we are given, but that will probably not change any time soon) & if, like myself, you are family-less & child-less, the lack of deep & abiding IRL (internet language delights & frustrates me) friendships weighs heavily.

so, instead of worrying that string of beads (clack, clack, clack), i will put it in my pocket (keeping it close) & will spend a brief moment extolling the virtues of language(s).

‘tsouris’ seems an odd choice of title for me, but, a brief history may help explain:  at some point in my sophomore year of high school, i read “darkness at noon” by arthur koestler, which led me to books by elie weisel & bernard malamud.  then i began to read historical accounts of the holocaust (my fascination with the subject may be due to my german roots) which eventually led me to leo rosten’s “dictionary of yiddish” which absolutely delighted me & i liked to spice up my speech with a well-placed yiddish word (because it confounded strangers, friends  & family.)

at my elementary school, we started learning french in 4th grade (required through 6th grade) & at least one year of a foreign language was required in high school (french, german, spanish were the choices, & i, like the good student i was, took all three.)  but it did not end there for me (i eventually got my minor in french.)

without the foreign language study, i believe i would not be who i am today (or who i hope that i am.)   words would not have the same meanings (in spite of merriam-webster), sentences would not be as much fun to construct (or de-construct or have no structure at all.)  the playfulness of language & the ability to nail a feeling with just the right choice of word, turn of phrase,  all of that would be somehow less compelling for me.

so, back to ‘tsouris’ (distress, trouble); it was the word that came to me when i loaded these photographs into this post yesterday (before the words came out this morning).  it captured how i felt at that moment better than the word ‘distress’.   i have some tsouris about friendship at the end of the first decade of the 21st century & i am in even more tsouris about the deterioration of language & how many (most?) people don’t seem to care.  languages are dying (is it evolution or laziness?)  consider this one man’s stand against the inevitable.

untitled #57

this post is untitled, much like a minimalist or abstract expressionist artist might leave their work untitled so as not to influence the viewers visceral experience of the work.  but this post does have a subject & perhaps through the words (colors) & the grammar (forms) & the ebb & flow of ideas (composition) you may be able to discern its meaning as intended by the author (artist, do i dare?)

this subject has been touched on several times throughout this blog (it even has its own category) but lately its import has taken on added weight.  it could be said that for many years it was a given; that it came naturally, without thought or anxiety, it just was.  until this last decade, maybe even less, its decline seemed momentary (hope springs eternal); but now i wonder when it took on its patina of cynicism & how i may now look at it with some derision, as if it had drug in something dead from out-of-doors & left it as an offering at my feet.

this shift in tone has altered its identity & turned it into something that does not seem quite real.   for so much of my life i have walked hand-in-hand with it (perhaps in less demanding ways than others may approach it, but nonetheless) & to now try to remember when it loosened its grip & slipped its fingers from my warm grasp seems quite impossible.  i may have hastened its departure by taking so little notice of it all these years past.

when you look at it closely, put your nose right up to it, it is a remarkable subject; one that has fascinated man for millennia.  a subject of painters & poets, the cause of wars & unions, it is but one of the results of being human.   i imagine there are those who may be able to live without it (ascetics,  hermits; the dead, perhaps,) but rarely are we (those of us who wake up at 5 a.m. & go to bed at 9 p.m. , at least) able to live without it.

of course, as i try to come to terms with it, a new understanding of it (the digital age has changed so much) i must hold the mirror up to the past, a brief look back (not unlike lot’s wife, without the pillar of salt thing though) as i flee toward the future & its new meaning.  a meaning that i’m not sure i’m ready to accept.

it has a looser structure than it did.  the letters seem further apart & come to you, either very quickly or so slowly that you may find yourself wandering away from it, looking for anything to occupy your time, as it winds its way toward you (stopping to smell this blade of grass, & that one.) it seems to have lost its religiosity, its godhead & taken on a more secular, perhaps a more egalitarian mode of address (& dress.)

but i am struggling with this change, ruing the past & what appears to have been my lack of commitment; this loosening, this undoing of the necktie, (quite frankly, it is the exposure, the nudity of its loss that shocks me.)  i want to be resilient & make my creaky bones dance again & i believe they will (i am, after all, the eternal optimist & that is perhaps why i suffer so from this inconsistent friend — friendship itself — so eager to be a friend, & yet quite unable to take that first step.  for now.)

(paintings by mark rothko, but you knew that.)

ain’t that a shame

last night our next door neighbors tom & bill (not their real names.  all the names in this post have been changed.) threw a going-away party for our neighbors, mary & joe (one house over) who have lost their home to foreclosure.    shit happens & this post is not about the whys or wherefores of mary & joe’s financial management capabilities.   all we know (or care about) is that they’ve been wonderful neighbors over a decade of living in our community.

the evening started out on the patio accompanied the tinkling music of the fountain & the setting sun.  as the beer & wine began to ease conversation, the 9 of us gathered around the table & shared stories about our day/week/month/job/or lack thereof/the crazy neighbors/the noisy neighbors/the messy neighbors & how we’re suddenly the ‘old’ people in the community as many of those who came before us have either died or moved into ‘assisted living’ facilities (which was also a topic of conversation.)

as usual with summer in southern california there was a mash-up of patterns (plaid & stripes & florals, both hawaiian & mainland) without much to-do (it’s been my experience that they invariably sort themselves out.)

3 out of 6 men sported moustaches (including the author.)  do you think it’s a grooming trend or is it just a reflection of the times we came of age in?  (that would be the ’70s for the uninitiated.)

another stat:  4 out of 7 men in attendance are bald/balding (including the author,) but not in denial about it & are rather celebratory about their lack of hair.

the table was beautifully set, sparkling & shimmering with candlelight & silver & shiny ceramics & the scent of roses & decanted wine filled the air.  the pitcher of lemon water sweated sweetly on its trivet as we juggled & giggled our way into our chairs.

there was no need to talk about the elephant in the room (not the republican elephant, although we did discuss politics — surprisingly not everyone is a bleeding heart liberal in our group, but everyone was respectful of the opinions of others & if we didn’t completely convert those on the right, we at least all agreed that government should help those who need it most; the indigent, the poor, & those whose disabilities inhibit their independence.)

bill, one of our hosts, hails from the eastern seaboard & illustrates his conversation with a bevy of gesturing that not only emphasizing the point he is makng, but also is extremely entertaining.  if you comment on it, he’ll just say, “what?”

it was good to spend time with all of our neighbors & celebrate new opportunities & reminisce about much of what is past & salute our departing friends with a hug & a smile.

the iris (or how i learned to be popular)

Escort of the souls of women to Elysia, the goddess Iris first started appearing in frescos & murals both in Greece and Egypt about 4,000 years ago.  Irises and their cultivation were a major source of trade and business around the Mediterranean (its roots or rhizomes — orris root — used in perfume and as a medicinal restorative) since then, less so now with the advent of synthetic scents (we do lose out, don’t we?)  It became the device of the French kings most likely in the 400s A.D. but definitely during the ill-fated crusade of Louis VII in 1147.

when you see photos of me from my childhood, i am usually posed alone, rarely with additional children (i am after all, an only child) perhaps the occasional cousin, and even less often with a childhood friend.  my alone-ness (not loneliness, because it was never that) stands out to me now — it was partly physical and partly emotional (i preferred the company of adults–it seemed safer & smarter, whether it was or not, i leave for others to decide.)

The fleur-de-lys of the French court of Louis XIV came to symbolize its excesses & its beauty & immense wealth.  Woven into cloth, carved into stone, wood, chased with silver & gold, ornamental, revered not only for its beauty but also for its scent; its ascendancy as the king of flowers assured, l’état, c’est moi.

as i grew older, & my character (my own, not someone’s idea of what my character should be) started to emerge, it must have been plain to see (but perhaps not to acknowledge) that my path was divergent from what was expected.  it put me in a spot, a niche, on a stage, if you will, of being slightly less than ‘normal’.  i think it may have been very brave of other children to befriend me — & when they did, my loyalty was unwavering & why not? — if they were willing to be part of my world, my way of looking at the world (but now of course, it is easier to look back at those times with a bit of wonderment that i survived at all–considering time, place, circumstances.)

During the reign of terror in France in the late 18th century,  the fleur-de-lys and all it stood for, its symbolic power, was totally obliterated; chipped off cornices and ornamental stonework, fabrics destroyed, my god, even men were guillotined for wearing cloth, jewelry, any ornament that resembled the symbol of the hated monarchy.   In spite of that, the iris (and its fleur-de-lys pattern) remain a cherished ornamental, both in the garden and as a decorative device adorning all sorts of what-not.

i suffered a ‘reign of terror.’  can you guess when?  let me help you:  it is the cruelest time for young people, your body is in turmoil, and your emotions are thrown and tossed about, a tiny ship on the ocean in a raging storm (at least for me–it was like being trampled to death, every idiosyncratic movement a source of shame (and of pride); the crush of wanting to be ‘normal’ & the inability to be that; wanting to be like everyone else & repulsed by the cruelty of others.  fitting in- – but only at the edges.  what you do learn at this age, if you’re lucky, and finally, is who you are, and perhaps you find that your path gives you something, maybe not ‘bmoc’ something or even ‘class president’ something, but this undefinable, this inscrutable essence that is your character somehow sets you apart (frilly & silly, ornamental, yes;  unusual & smart, stand-out-in-a-crowd proud, yes; shy & retiring, demurring recognition, not hardly (or at least smart enough to turn that on or off as needed.)

i learned then (and not too late to enjoy it for a couple of years in the safety of my mid-to-late teens, & before throwing myself headlong into what passed as early adulthood) to marshall my resources, to let go of what was expected, to not care that i didn’t fit the mold of others’ presumed expectations & somehow that was okay with the adults who mattered in my life & with the small group of friends who surrounded me.  i found acceptance for my differences through outlets that brought respect & admiration, although no more friendships, from more, rather than less people.

[author's note:  The animation film pioneer, Chuck Jones, once received a letter from his daughter (and only child,) Linda, bemoaning the fact that she would never be as clever, smart, artistic, admired as he.  His reply, according to Linda, was one of the only times he ever showed her any anger, he wrote in part, "Get off my mountain.  Go climb your own."  I dedicate this post to the idea that we each must first find and then climb our own mountain.]