Christmas version-Gratitude

For empty spaces and air,

bare branches
tracing the shapes of their lives
against the wide white sky.

The time between.

Something else is coming:

warmth waits within,
hearth fire and bread,
the ones we love.
Whittling down to the heart of the wood
when we lose
what we thought
we had to have.

Gratitude

For empty spaces and air

bare branches tracing the shapes of their lives
against November sky,

the time between.

Something else is coming,
warmth waits within,
wood stove and stew,
the ones we love.

Stripping down to the good stuff
when we lose
what we thought we had to have.

More Under the El

One of my readers (my daughter) had some suggestions about the first little scene in the description of my afternoon under the El. I told her in more detail what I actually saw:

It was a whole little drama, in a way: The young woman was skinny with a blond pony tail pulled back tightly from her sharp-boned face. Her hooked nose was strangely red and her mouth tense as she smoked. She sat with her legs tightly crossed, and her friend, a softer, rounder build and more relaxed, stood while they talked. I was too far away to hear much, because the smoke was killing me, but I heard "the welfare" and "she says to him" in an angry tone and such snippets. At one point a wiry, banty rooster of a guy wearing a cap turned backwards with the logo "Trojan" stopped to chat. I wondered if he used them. A blond little boy of two or so sat beside her in full smoke, drinking a soda. They were there at least ten minutes, and then a muscular, hostile man with a shaved head and many tattoos on his bare arms strode up the street. He glanced over at her with a slight nod of his head and kept walking. She jumped up quickly and caught up with him. He leaned in toward her, she leaned away from him, then they hurried away.

That's more what it really was like.

Under the El

On Monday I picked up a table and a box of registration forms at the Obama headquarters and met another volunteer who helped me set up at the foot of the stairway for the El at Front and Girard in Philadelphia. It was the last day to register to vote and I had a four hour slot asking passersby "Are you registered? Is your address up to date?" It was not, strictly speaking, a time to sway voters, and I don't have the temperament to "sell", but the table did have Obama literature and a few posters and stickers. The other volunteer, an enthusiastic suburbanite (she warned me to lock my car) moved to another corner and I began to watch the human scene.

It was one o'clock, a quiet time, a few locals going in and out of the corner convenience store, a transit employee sweeping up litter. I soon discovered that the concrete bench we had set up beside is a favorite place for a smoke, before or after the train. A tough looking girl with a sharply hooked red nose sat there with her little boy, having a long discussion with a hefty woman friend about "the welfare" and various failing relationships among their acquantances. When a tatooed skinhead man came up, she hurried away with him.

I had my first customer who needed to change his address, an older man with an Indian name which he spelled very clearly for me. He proudly declared himself a citizen. A few people who hadn't received a card yet came up to do another form, just to make sure. One old fellow with oily hands and very few teeth said this was his fourth try: "I don't want to miss this one. It's been a long time, but I want to be part of things."

Everyone took the process very seriously. One 18 year old said his grandma told him to sign up, another got a text message from her mother as she was filling out the form saying "Vote!" A couple of men, one Hispanic, stopped to register and firmly checked Republican beside the party affiliation. A few headscarved women and their husbands from the nearby Albanian neighborhood looked at us curiously. A young man from Ecuador stopped to chat about the electoral process. He had come to the US at the age of five, had a strongly American accent, but various complications in the citizenship process ( including being given a work visa at age seven to avoid deportation away from his family) have kept him in limbo. Most people had already registered; I began to know who would return my smile: the young arty folks who look like my daughters' friends, in thrift shop clothes, the African Americans with a look of pride and possesion.

Overhead the train roared by every ten minutes, a jackhammer was at work from time to time, trucks rumbled past on the street, the trolley clanked along Girard. People came home from work, nurses and aides, men in suits and in overalls, mothers with strollers, old people with shopping bags, white, black and tan. From three to four o'clock there were floods of students in uniforms, laughing and bumping along in small packs. It's your world now, I thought; we've messed it up pretty well, as usual, and, luckily, you have a lot of energy and might be able to save it again.

A middle aged black man in a transit iniform sat down, waiting for his shift, and we struck up a conversation. "Honestly," he said at one point, "I never thought I'd see the day an African American could run for President." He was a gentle man, talking carefully about the issues, finally hinting at the subject of racism. "I hate to say it, but there are some people,,,
I think about Martin Luther King and I worry about his security." I have felt since the primaries that this is a healing time for everyone, even if one disagrees with Obama's policies. The fact that he is running and very few people find that strange has made a permanent shift. I grew up in a town with very few black people, and in spite of our "tolerance", as we called it, there was little socializing. When I went to Oberlin, they asked my permission to give me an African American roommate. My daughters already grew up in a much more diverse community. Interracial marriage is commonplace. Obama is the face of the country- and of the world. World events have knocked down any possibility of isolationism- we are all interdependant.

Watching a slice of it walk by, I felt pride in our democracy that accomodates so many different cultures and opinions. The last interchange of the day, as I was turning the table over to a high school girl and a twenty something man with an Irish accent, was a perfect example of the seriousness of people's attitudes and the diversity of ideas in this election. A young white man, thirty or so, came up to the three of us saying, "I have a real dilemma and I wonder if you can help me with it." He said he liked almost all of Obama's positions and wanted to vote for him, except for one big thing: Obama is pro-choice and the young man was "religiously and ethically against it." He was not combative; he seemed in genuine anguish. The male volunteer said he respected his dilemma, and could he see that no one would be forced to have an abortion, that everyone would have a choice, and Obama wants to do all he can to prevent the conditions that lead to unwanted pregnancies. The girl asked if he would allow for rape, but, after hesitating, he said, "No, life is life, from conception." I didn't say anything- it seemed futile- and I left it to the young people to politely try a few more arguments. The young man mentioned the likely Supreme Court appointments , and I thought: the very reason I am behind the Democrats. If "liberal" judges are replaced with "liberals", the balance will be the same as now. If the court is all Scalias, as McCain has promised, radical reinterpretation of the Constitution is at stake. But I can't argue with a man's heart-deep conviction, and the young volunteers wisely held back. He took a brochure and thanked them.

I maybe should have said, and do say now: Democracy is messy and complicated and full of compromises. That is its beauty. It is trying to do its best and must change all the time to fit the needs of different circumstances. No one will be entirely happy and it will feel uncomfortable and unpredictable. But at its best, it will balance. Like my family, some of us see things from another perspective, but we all want the same good for our country and the world.

The Last Cat

I lay on the couch late Sunday afternoon, curled on my side with room for Sabastian, but he's gone. After eighteen years of making a place for three cats, tripping over them, cleaning up their markings, talking to them in high voices and playing crazy games, seeing the world through their eyes and taking comfort in their closeness, now there are none.
Sebastian, "Seabass", was the gentle soul. At the NYCity ASPCA, I first saw him riding on the hip of a very large shelter worker. When I wondered if the tiny black kitten I'd already chosen would be intimidated by this larger tabby, the man said, "Oh no, he's a sweetheart." Seabass just wanted to get along. Satchmo tormented him and Keely claimed her dominance, but he never fought back: he just moved along. Coziness with people was his aim and he was a comfort to the girls during lonely evenings at home when I was out working.
There was his adventure: the Great Escape. He slipped out past Alison and her boyfriend when they were kissing in the doorway and was gone for two weeks. I sat behind the front screen door watching the bowl of food I had set out as bait, learning how many loose cats there were on our block in Brooklyn. Finally our posters brought a call from a woman on the block behind us who had seen him come up for food she set out for stray cats. He was huddled under a porch, cried out when he saw me, but was so frightened, I had to crawl in and get him. Once home, I put him in the tub with a little water- he smelled like a homeless person- and he purred as I washed him. Still, time and time again, he tried to get out. In Philadelphia, Bob would host him in the back area way. "Want to go outside?" would excite loud meows and standing up to the doorknob. He loved to watch the feral cats from the safety of the other side of the fence.
The years went by, the girls' college and young adulthood and what had been "their" cats became ours. We saw the vet more often, lost Satchmo, had a routine of medicating Sebastian. Bob had more rituals and conversations with Seabass, who talked to him in response. We had the trauma of putting Keely to sleep in January, then Seabass had the house to himself.
He became more demanding. He was an old guy with kidney trouble who wanted water from the sink, and had a hyperthyroid appetite for special treats. He looked at us like a dog or a person and asked and asked. He peed
everywhere, but we forgave him when he squeezed up beside us whenever we sat down. He seemed to enjoy our practicing in the living room. When he stopped eating, then barely focussed his eyes and staggered when he walked, we had to help him go.
Now we have the kitty ghosts, the shadow that slips past the corner of your eye, the little motion along the stair. The house is unnaturally spacious without multiple litter boxes and bowls of food and barriers we put out to discourage the old age accidents. We are not greeted when we come in the door, nothing lives in the house when we are not there, no house spirit patrols and fills the emptiness. Thanks, old guy, for staying so long and giving our home a heart.

Summer's End

Before I noticed
here's summer's end:
Cicadas whirring like frying grease
along the drought dry path,
suddenly the brown leaves twisting
and dropping in the crackling grass.

I welcome the soberness of autumn, the inwardness,
the bare stretch beyond.
In the richness of my life,
the knowing I will never die,
I face the autumn wind of mortality
I run across the bare field
embracing my aloneness and my death,
because I still don't believe I will ever die or be alone.


My old cat is dying, the last of the three who spanned the growing up years of my daughters.
He's given up eating . He lies, a furry skeleton, waiting and sometimes asking me to do
something, he just doesn't know quite what.

There should be a lesson here,
the arc from beginning to end before my eyes.

Still, I refuse.
I think I have forever and keep
squandering
all the way to spring.

June Birthday

Written June 20th outside my motel in Cranberry Pa on the way to Mich.

I'm glad my birthday is the true beginning of summer. It's always a double celebration, and as a child, it meant freedom of spirit for the next three months. My gifts were always summer gifts: bicycle, pogo stick,stilts, roller skates.
The days were beautifully endless. I resented anything like structure: Vacation Bible School was an insult, a return to prison for a week, a useless fingerpainting, cheesy coloring projects in the moldy church basement week. A summer day should begin with the full rush of joy at the possibilities. A June day was still fresh and green, the smell of climbing roses and iris floating in the open window, the sunlight clear but not brutally hot. I'd stroll out into the yard barefoot, maybe swing up into the maple tree and think or not think as the mood struck. Often Kathy would call up, and we might go together across to the park. The Raisin River was too dirty to step into, but along its banks were roots and moss to make villages for fairy people, and sometimes a tree would fall across the water and make a deliciously dangerous bridge. The other side of the river was an unknown, slightly unsavory neighborhood where we weren't allowed to go, so the sense of risk was heightened. Big black willows were commodious to climb into or even walk along the broad limbs. One day a couple of tough girls with DA haircuts tried to challenge us to a fight. We hurried off home, deferring our mild tomboyishness to their hard core hostility. I saw their pictures in the paper years later as having joined the Army and I feel sorry for any women in their units.
Kathy and I had freedom unknown to today's children. I don't believe there were fewer perverts then, but I guess some atmosphere of restraint still prevailed. From the age of nine we took bike rides for miles outside of town, following the easy grid of the Midwest square miles, fearing only unchained farm dogs. We spent hours in the park, crawling around blackberry bushes on the hillsides and climbing high in the white pines. At night I would remember the limbs swaying in the wind and jump inside myself. We'd get on swings, going higher and higher, working ourselves into a trance. In my yard was a seesaw built by Dad, and we'd sing rounds as we bumped up and down, Kathy's end pulled longer for extra weight, she being skinny and I being stocky. At her house we tried to find where her old cat was buried, then tried to dig to China. Finally she began to be fascinated by clothes and boys and we drifted apart.
Meanwhile, I had the joy of my friend Mary, who lived in the country. Visits to her were not so
spontaneous, but once I was at her place, the possibilities were much greater. We could take off up the lane to the woods with a snack for lunch, maybe even hot dogs to cook over a fire at the shack, though in deep summer the nettles had usually grown so high that the little house was unreachable.But we had the creek. We had to cross it anyway, and once we were wading, it was only a matter of time before we "fell" in, and then we might as well slide down the muddy banks of the creek. if we could penetrate the woods, there was often a fallen tree, sometimes a big one that had landed at a 45 degree angle with branches to hold as we walked up into the air. We had no sense of time, only wandering back when we were thoroughly exhausted and filthy. After a good bath, which her mother usually had waiting, we might lie on our bellies in her room writing a story together or drawing pictures of castles and stables, naming all of our horses and children. We imagined husbands who would meet us as we raced on horseback across a great plain. We always planned to marry, but we knew these marriages would be between strong passionate people, more or less equal. We'd be wealthy enough to never worry about housework or mundane jobs. We might be great writers.
The haymow and barn was another playground. Bales could be moved to form tunnels and secret forts where we could take barn kittens. We could climb high to the roof on bales. When her dad had sheep we'd "adopt" a lamb, until they grew up to be indistinguishable from the rest of the flock. She had a horse, a disappointing experience after all my fantasies . When I was on Pal's back, she would either stop and crop grass, or when I was bareback, drop to her knees,lower her head and send me sliding right down her neck to the ground.
How can I regain that delight in an unplanned day? So often I feel anxiety in the emptiness, as if I have no worth if I don't have work and am lazy if I don't find a project. Travelling alone is a little in that spirit: other than my reservation at a motel halfway out to Michigan, I have no plan, no responsibilities. I stop when I want to, eat what I want, look out at the mountains, know no one. It's 8:30 and I'm outside on a bench, the sun only beginning to set.
In chidhood I'd be in bed. Not asleep: this was the unjoyful part of the day, lying awake, looking out the window , hearing less disciplined kids out playing ball. Earlier, I might have been playing hide and seek, but bedtime was enforced, so that the parents could have some alone time. I lay in the slowly darkening room, imagining my future or wondering about other universes. What if I was terribly ill, unconscious, and I'd be awakened to an entirely different life with strangers? What if someone reached through the screen and kidnapped me? If it was hot, I'd move from place to place on the sheet, trying to find a cool spot. I'd try to think of something sad because crying made me sleepy. Finally, the parents would check on us, I'd pretend to be asleep, then suddenly it was morning again. All the possibilities were before me- a trip to the library, reading the new book up in a tree, hours and hours of anything or nothing .

Walking Fish

Tonight is a realtime blog. I walked up to a new theatrical venue that has opened in the newly arty Fishtown neighborhood in hope of meeting some stimulating people and perhaps participate in the community . I walked past corner bars ( broken beer bottle, skinny toothless Fishtown guy pounding fruitlessly on a door), large pudding of a woman on her front stoop-to her son: " Go up and put your pajamas on ( pronounced "own") and you can come out side ( aowtsahd.)" Then, across from Father and Son Pizza, the Walking Fish Theatre Co. I missed the formal grand opening, but I met the husband and wife whose enterprise it is and shared Rowhouse Ale and conversation. They do lots of neighborhood educational things as well as new Fringe stuff. I got a tour of the rehabbed apartment above the theater space, then gradually the few remaining people began to kind of perform. I just watched as two conversations played in front of me: First, on the stage:
" So a duck walks into a bar and asks " Do you have any grapes?""
People in front of me: " So I paint a layer of silver, then i fill in with spackle then I paint a layer of primer."
On the stage: " Yes, I want to do a radio play here."
" Do you have a tech person?"
"No. Can you do a foley board?"
"Yes, I can do it all. "
" We did Wating for Godot as a radio play. Think about it!"
In front of me: "The fucking color was -"
Eventually on stage: "So the bartender says:"
In front of me:" No we don't have any grapes- get out of here!"
"So the duck leaves the bar. Then he comes back again and asks: Do you have any grapes? And the bartender says-"
"No!! Get the hell out of here or I'll nail your webbed feet to the floor. So the duck makes like he's leaving, but he comes back in and asks: Do you have any nails?"
"Bartender shouts:NO!"
"The duck says: So, do you have any grapes?"

The night devolved into inside alternative theater personality gossip, so I slipped away, walked back past the ice cream truck and people on stoops and open doors to TVs and reclining cats and kids sloping about on the corners.

Visiting Daughters

Last week I had the privilege of being part of my grownup daughters' lives. I drove through the fresh green of spring to Burlington VT where Alison lives in a community of young idealists. The neighborhood smelled like the early summer of my childhood , the light is northern, the houses frame with steep, snowshedding roofs. Everyone had been released from winter, was out biking or walking or sitting on porches. We hiked along the shores of Lake Champlain with her boyfriend Jonathan, finding new wildflowers and numbing our bare feet in the icy lake .
Lately I've been struggling with a feeling that my time is past. Playing the violin is more painful, the kind of dutiful obedience I've practiced for so long doesn't work for inspiration. My generation has thought of itself as ever youthful and creative, and all of a sudden technology and new ideas are racing ahead of us and our bodies are breaking down. The world seems like a hopeless mess as well.
But this kind of visit gives me great hope. It is as it should be that new generations believe they can save the world, and rather than give up, I feel that a new something is in me at this stage. I am more contemplative and able to enjoy quiet time with people and to sink into nature. My daughters and their friends are choosing to have fewer things and more time for doing what they love. I watched Alison teach Music Together, as I had watched Emily on another trip, and marveled at their creativity and infectious sense of fun. The children themselves, another generation younger, are another dose of hope, dancing wildly or watching wide eyed from the safety of their mothers' laps- everything is brand new. When I was with Emily I saw a show of the therapeutic riding program she teaches in. Children with varying disabilities find physical and emotional balance on horseback and the instructors give and receive a lot of love. Emily also showed me a video of the lively end of season Musicshare of her piano students. Even if my daughters never have children of their own, they are nurturing the next generation.
I am very lucky that these wise and creative young women were born to me 32 years ago. Now they host me, planning activities, cooking for me, telling me their thoughts. I sat in the serenity of Emily and Colleen's apartment thinking how peaceful it was, and how glad I am that my daughters have made their own lives in ways I could never have planned . I am learning from them how to live with integrity.

Now

How can I live in now
when past and future are so jittery
keep worming in and
chattering insinuating static
at the edges of
this clear warm perfect day

The sun an embrace
the softest, freshest little wind
lifts my hair,
breathes over my face

The past comes back:
some love
in a spring like this
did just these things the day is doing
now
as I sit on a rock
alone