Thursday
Wednesday
Just in Case You Missed the Opportunity to Help
Your donations are most welcome and appreciated.
Reputable organizations providing appropriate relief for Japan:
Relief orgs:
• Cruz Roja Española
• Canpan Fields (a Japanese nonprofit organization)
• Save the Children
• Non-Believers Giving Aid
• NGO Jen
• International Medical Corps
• Association of Medical Doctors in Asia
• Canadian Red Cross
• American Red Cross
• Doctors without Borders
• The Salvation Army
• Oxfam
• Global Living
• Care
• ShelterBox
Someone I love has family and friends in Japan.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Photo taken by Katsumi
Tuesday
Dreams
Deep into that darkness peering,
long I stood there,
wondering, fearing, doubting,
dreaming dreams
no mortal ever dared to dream before.
~ Edgar Allan Poe
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Photo Art by Elizabeth Munroz
Sunday
Rowdy and Ruckus 1968
WKBW, our favorite radio station blared on full volume. We had to shout over it to hear one another. As Aretha Franklin belted out, R- E- S- P- E- C- T! FIND OUT WHAT IT MEANS TO ME!“, we accompanied her at the top of our lungs. There was something a little evil in our glee, knowing we must be bugging the heck out of our neighbors, especially Mrs. Steffan. We knew she was reporting my every movement to my ex-in-laws, and took special delight in giving her ammunition. They all seemed to think it would go in their favor for removing my kids from me.
Once the radio began replaying the re-plays of the re-plays as they did on Saturdays, we turned it off and kept on singing as we picked up the clothes off the bedroom floor and separated the dirty ones from the clean. Then we carefully refolded the one’s Mom had just piled on our beds a few days before. Funny how everything had landed on the floor, with everything else. Well, we couldn’t help it. We were teenage girls. Or, rather, my sister was the teenage girl. I was the newly divorced mother of two, who wished she were a teenager again. Being with my sister automatically made me recapture being a teenager. She was full of energy and enthusiasm that I had thought deserted me, until I was around her.
We got a good rendition of “Amen” going traipsing around the house, clapping our hands, and swinging our bodies as though we were in a hot revival meeting. (I had never been to one before, but now, I know that is how we were acting).
Sorting out all the papers and trash was the easiest part. Anything that looked like schoolwork got trashed by wadding it up and giving a quick overhand heave-ho into the wastebasket. It didn’t take long to have it overflowing. Using the same method for sorting the dirty clothes we giggled and laughed maniacally. We both would have been great on a girl’s basketball team!
In the midst of our enthusiasm, we got carried away by the Four Tops, as we hauled the dirty clothes into the laundry room to wash. Energized, and no longer isolated to our room, we decided to surprise Mom and clean up the whole house. So, we began cleaning the kitchen and bathroom. Then, singing louder over the vacuum with Diana Ross and the Supremes, we cleaned and straightened up the living room. Our voices getting hoarse, we changed to the Polish station that Mom’s friend, always Annie listened to. The rollicking polka music of the OOM-PAH-PAHed as we grabbed each other and polkaed around the house until we grew dizzy, and tripped over furniture. We landed on the floor, laughing gleefully aware of how rowdy we were being and how it must be really annoying the hell out of old Mrs. Steffan next door.
What would she put into her spy report this week?
~~~~~~~~~~
Note: The first picture is of my sister. The second one is of me.
Thursday
Verna's Lines
Spring cleaning has taken over my life. While going through old file boxes, I came across the following written to me by Verna, which I find as touching today as when I first read it.
It is easier
to believe in yourself.
To know that someone
will remember your star,
when everyone else has forgotten
it was ever shining at all,
keeps you looking to the sky.
It is good and strong
to be happy for yourself
and all that you do.
It's just that when someone like you
has faith in someone like me,
the happiness is easier to find.
Look to the light for it never burns out.
1990 B.J. Verna
Tuesday
Free Yale Education
Open Yale Courses provides free and open access to a selection of introductory courses taught by distinguished teachers and scholars at Yale University. You can take these free classes online from the comfort of your home. The aim of the project is to expand access to educational materials for all who wish to learn.
When you click on the link, a random class is featured. If you look at the column on the left you will see a list of subjects in which the free classes are available.
For example: When I click on English there are four classes being offered. At the moment, I am most interested in Modern Poetry taught by Professor Langdon Hammer. So when I click on the class title, the class description page is revealed. This also includes a bio of Professor Hammer. At the bottom of the description paragraph, it says: view class sessions
Be sure to check the column on the left of this page, too. There is a way to download the complete class in Zip file if you do not want to do it one by one.
I learned about this from a very talented young writer, Nath Jones. Thank you, Nath!
Saturday
The World Inside
WRITING AND KNOWING
8th Annual Poetry Workshop with
Ellen Bass, Dorianne Laux, and Joseph Millar
July 24-29, 2011
at Esalen, Big Sur, CA
Esalen housing sometimes fills up fast, especially the less expensive rooms, so register soon. Online registration is open now at esalen.org
Scroll down to the bottom for poems by Dorianne, Joe and Ellen
There is a world inside each of us that we know better than anything else, and a world outside of us that calls for our attention. Our subject matter is always right with us. The trick is to find out what we know, challenge what we know, own what we know, and then give it away in language.
We will write poems, share our writing, and hear what our work touches in others. We'll also read model poems by contemporary poets and discuss aspects of the craft. But mainly this will be a writing retreat-- time to explore and create in a supportive community. Though the focus is on poetry, prose writers who want to enrich their language will find it a fertile environment.
There is a vitality, a life-force, an energy…that is translated through you into action. And because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. If you block it, it will never exist… It is not your business to determine how good it is…It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. --Martha Graham
The focus of this workshop is on generating new poems. Dorianne, Joe and Ellen will each give a talk on craft to help us extend our skills.
Dorianne Laux will talk on: The Spare Poem
After I've put everything in, what should I take out? Big question. HUGE. We’ll look at a few poems by established poets such as James Wright, Jack Gilbert, Malena Morling, Jane Kenyon and Mark Doty to see what they might have left on the cutting room floor, how setting, implication and image can help us say it without saying it, how less can be more.
Joe Millar will talk on: The Fork In the Road
This year Joe will talk about various places where the poem in progress can change direction or mood and the delight that can arise from such turns and surprises. We'll look at a few poems which shift and change their way down the page and consider some strategies for incorporating these techniques of mutability into our own writing.
Ellen Bass will talk on: Embodiment
The body is a great resource in poetry. By paying attention to the body and using physical detail, we can move our poems along the continuum from telling to showing, from abstract to concrete, from reporting to enacting. You don’t want your reader to say, “Oh, this poet feels really strongly about this.” You want readers to actually have the experience of that strong feeling themselves. We’ll look at poems which achieve this visceral impact, study how they do it, and practice some of those gestures ourselves.
Please join us if:
*You've hit a plateau in your writing and want to break through to the next level.
*You're just beginning and want to get started with supportive teachers.
*You're an experienced writer and just want a chance to learn more from the best.
*You're in a dry spell, due to lack of inspiration or time.
*You love to write and want a gorgeous, inspiring retreat.
Although the emphasis is on poetry, this workshop is open to prose writers too. Rich, textured, evocative language is the province of all writers, so this workshop will be applicable to writers of fiction and memoir as well.
Lastly, there's Esalen itself. If you've been to Esalen before, you already know it's one of the most magnificent places on the planet. If you haven't, don't postpone it. It's breathtakingly beautiful and deeply nourishing. We'll be having our group meetings in the Big Yurt this year. We'll also be breaking into smaller groups for individual attention. Participants will have an opportunity to work with all three teachers.
ELLEN BASS's most recent book of poems, The Human Line, was published by Copper Canyon Press in June 2007. She co-edited (with Florence Howe) the groundbreaking No More Masks! An Anthology of Poems by Women (Doubleday, 1973), has published several volumes of poetry, including Mules of Love (BOA, 2002) which won the Lambda Literary Award. Her poems have appeared in many magazines, including The Atlantic Monthly, The Progressive, The American Poetry Review, The New Republic, The Kenyon Review, and The Sun. She was awarded the Elliston Book Award for Poetry from the University of Cincinnati, Nimrod/Hardman’s Pablo Neruda Prize, The Missouri Review’s Larry Levis Award, the Greensboro Poetry Prize, the New Letters Poetry Prize, the Chautauqua Poetry Prize, a Pushcart Prize, and a Fellowship from the California Arts Council. She is also co-author of Free Your Mind: The Book for Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Youth (HarperCollins 1996) and The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse (Harper Collins 1988, 1994), which has sold over a million copies and has been translated into ten languages. She teaches in many beautiful locations and at Pacific University's MFA Program in Oregon.
DORIANNE LAUX’s fifth collection of poetry, The Book of Men, was published by W.W. Norton in February, 2011. Her fourth book, Facts about the Moon, is the recipient of the Oregon Book Award and was short-listed for the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. Laux is also author of Awake, What We Carry, finalist for the National Book Critic’s Circle Award, and Smoke, as well as two fine small press editions, Superman: The Chapbook and Dark Charms, both from Red Dragonfly Press. Co-author of The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry, she’s the recipient of two Best American Poetry Prizes, a Pushcart Prize, two fellowships from The National Endowment for the Arts and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Widely anthologized, her work has appeared in the Best of APR, The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Poetry and The Best of the Net. In 2001, she was invited by late poet laureate Stanley Kunitz to read at the Library of Congress. She has been teaching poetry in private and public venues since 1990 and since 2004 at Pacific University’s Low Residency MFA Program. In the summers she teaches at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California and Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill. Her poems have been translated into French, Spanish, Italian, Korean, Romanian, Dutch, Afrikkans and Brazilian Portuguese and her selected works, In a Room with a Rag in my Hand, have been translated into Arabic by Camel/Kalima Press. Recent poems appear in Cimarron Review, Cerise Press, Margie, The Seattle Review, Tin House and The Valparaiso Review. She and her husband, poet Joseph Millar, moved to Raleigh in 2008 where she teaches poetry in the MFA program at North Carolina State University.
JOSEPH MILLAR is the author of Fortune, from Eastern Washington University Press. His first collection, Overtime (2001) was finalist for the Oregon Book Award and the Robert H. Winner Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America. Millar grew up in Pennsylvania, attended Johns Hopkins University and spent 25 years in the San Francisco Bay area, working at a variety of jobs, from telephone repairman to commercial fisherman. His poems have appeared in numerous magazines including The American Poetry Review, The Southern Review, TriQuarterly Review, Prairie Schooner, Shenandoah, DoubleTake, New Letters, Ploughshares, Manoa, and River Styx. His work has won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts in Poetry, Montalvo Center for the Arts, Oregon Literary Arts and a 2008 Pushcart Prize in Poetry. In 1997 he gave up his job as a telephone installation foreman to teach. He now lives in Raleigh, NC and teaches at Pacific University’s Low Residency MFA Program in Oregon and yearly at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, CA. and will be a featured teacher and reader at this year's Dodge Poetry Festival in Newark, NJ. Pulitzer Prize winner Yusef Komunyakaa has said, “There's a tenderness at the core of Fortune, where the commonplace becomes atypical and fantastical, and each poem possesses a voice that summons and reveals. Joseph Millar is a poet we can believe.” His third collection of poems, Blue Rust, will be published in fall of 2011 by Carnegie Mellon Press.
Esalen fees cover tuition, food and lodging and vary according to accommodations--ranging from $570 to $1105. The least expensive rate is for sleeping bag space which can be very comfortable, but it's limited, so you need to sign up for it early. Some work-scholarship assistance is available, as well as small prepayment discounts and senior discounts.
All arrangements and registration must be made directly with Esalen. If you have questions about the workshop itself, please email Ellen or call her at 831-426-8006.
Please register directly with Esalen
at 831-667-3005 or visit www.esalen.org
**
Enough Music
Sometimes, when we're on a long drive,
and we've talked enough and listened
to enough music and stopped twice,
one to eat, once to see the view,
we fall into this rhythm of silence.
It swings back and forth between us
like a rope over a lake.
Maybe it's what we don't say
that saves us.
--Dorianne Laux (from What We Carry)
*******
NATIVITY
Long after daybreak they were still trying
to deliver me, the birth blood dropping
on the hospital tiles, glittering under the lights.
I saw my father’s corporal’s stripes,
his tan army shirt that smelled of tobacco,
I heard the cold wind no one remembers
pouring out of Canada.
My mother wrapped me up in her robe
fragrant with camphor and sweat,
hushing my desolate howls.
She loved me and she hated me
through those early months
when I wanted everything she had,
and all my father wanted
aside from her warm, pale body,
was to finish his hitch and get
the hell out of the army forever.
Each morning fine grains of salt
glinted like ice on the kitchen table
and like the insatiable mammal I was
I fastened onto her chafed, dark nipples.
They named me Rent Money
because I didn’t pay any,
they named me Popsicle, Little Tongue, Gasser.
In August the Japanese surrendered
and he mustered out in Wisconsin.
We headed east in a ‘38 Studebaker,
its big engine swallowing the miles
of America, wheat fields and highway,
Chicago and Cleveland,
and they named me So Long
It’s Been Good to Know You.
--Joseph Millar
******
The World Has Need of You
…everything here seems to need us…
--Rilke
I can hardly imagine it
as I walk to the lighthouse, feeling the ancient
prayer of my arms swinging
in counterpoint to my feet.
Here I am, suspended
between the sidewalk and twilight,
the sky dimming so fast it seems alive.
What if you felt the invisible
tug between you and everything?
A boy on a bicycle rides by,
his white shirt open, flaring
behind him like wings.
It's a hard time to be human. We know too much
and too little. Does the breeze need us?
The cliffs? The gulls?
If you've managed to do one good thing,
the ocean doesn't care.
But when Newton's apple fell toward the earth,
the earth, ever so slightly, fell
toward the apple as well.
--Ellen Bass
Thursday
Calls for Submissions
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: ECHOES, A POETRY JOURNAL
Deadline: March 31
Their featured poet is Todd Boss, author of Yellowrocket
(W.W.Norton Publishers).
Guidelines can be found on the website, EchoesPoetryJournal.com or emailing Echoes@earthlink.net.
****************************************
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: WRITER ADVICE ANNOUNCES ITS SIXTH ANNUAL FLASH PROSE CONTEST.
Deadline: April 15.
Prize: $150
Looking for short fiction or memoir up to 750 words. Fee: $10 for processing only or $20 for detailed evaluation. Visit www.writeradvice.com for complete guidelines. E-mail questions but not submissions to Lgood67334@comcast.net.
B. Lynn Goodwin
Writer Advice Managing Editor, www.writeradvice.com
*******************************
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: GAY AND GRAY, AN ANTHOLOGY OF MATURE GLBT WRITERS
Deadline: April, 30, 2011.
Seeking creative non-fiction, short stories, fiction or memoir, poetry, digital imagery, and photography. Fiction and non-fiction submissions should be a maximum of 5,000 words. Each writer may submit three pieces for consideration. Reprints are acceptable as long as the author retains the copyright.
Submissions should be sent as attachments to an email and not pasted into the body of the e-mail. Multiple submissions are welcome and should be sent in separate e-mails. Use 12-point Times New Roman, single-spaced. Authors should include a photo when possible. The photo may be taken from any point in the author’s life. Also please include a brief biography.
While there is no specific theme, content may focus on aging in the gay community, historical hindsight and/or perspective unique to the GBLTQ person 50 and older.
E-mail submissions to: submit2gayNgray@aol.com
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CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: SWAN SCYTHE PRESS POETRY MANUSCRIPT CONTEST
Deadline: June 1, 2011
Swan Scythe Press announces its 2011 Poetry Chapbook contest.
Winner will receive publication and 25 copies of a perfect-bound chapbook with full-color cover.
For Guidelines: http://www.swanscythe.com/contest.html
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CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: SNAIL MAIL REVIEW, A NEW AND UPCOMING LITERARY JOURNAL SEEKING SUBMISSIONS FOR SECOND ISSUE
Deadline: June 30, 2011
Please send 3-5 poems of no more than 35 lines and/or 1-7 pages of fiction to:
Snail Mail Review
c/o Kris Price, 3000 Coffee Rd, Chateau Apt #B6, Modesto, CA, 95355
Contact us if you have any further questions at snailmailreview@gmail.com
Also, you can find us on Facebook by searching Snail Mail Review
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CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: AN ANTHOLOGY OF GAY AND LESBIAN POETRY
Deadline: June 30, 2011
Edited by Shane Allison, to be published in Fall 2011
Open to performance poetry, academic and traditional forms as well as experimental. Themes: Coming out, sexuality, politics, growing up gay, civil rights, discrimination, love and relationships, same-sex marriages, erotica or serving in the military.
Submit unpublished work, or work that was published since 2000. 5 to 10 poems as long as queer content is relevant. They welcome queer voices from outside the US.
Submission guidelines: Title file with the initials of the anthology and author’s last name. Include your name, mailing address, email, and a bio. Submit work by email as an attachment in rtf format, to newqueerpoetry@gmail.com
If poems have previously been published please include in your document where and when and be sure you hold the rights to your work.
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THE INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S WRITING GUILD PRESENTS
THE ALCHEMY OF LANGUAGE
Theme: Turning Simple Words into Shimmering Works
Friday, March 18 to Sunday, March 20, 2011
Bosch Bahái School, 500 Comstock Lane, Santa Cruz, California.
The California Conference, in its 28th year, takes place at a 67-acre retreat center situated in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
Presenters: Rachel de Baere, Richelle McClain, Mary Reynolds Thompson
To register, please go to www.iwwg.org
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WRITERS’ RETREAT: THE LAMBDA LITERARY FOUNDATION ANNOUNCES THE 2011 RETREAT FOR EMERGING LGBT VOICES.
August 6-13, 2011
at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
Deadline: April 15, 2011 for applications and scholarship requests.
Begun in 2007, the Writers’ Retreat for Emerging LGBT Voices is the first program of its kind ever offered to LGBTQ writers: a one-week intensive workshop immersion in fiction, nonfiction, or poetry. Retreat is open to emerging LGBT writers of any age. This year’s faculty includes Carla Trujillo, Ellery Washington, Eloise Klein Healy, Claire McNab.
Space is limited to 9-12 students per workshop. Some publication history is desirable but not required. To download a PDF of the 2011 Retreat application, go tolambdaliterary.org.
Wednesday
Overcoming Setbacks
But I will refuse to accept defeat, for these setbacks are only temporary. I will fight back. I will never stop trying, for there's always another way, usually a better way.
I will always remember that many of the world's most renowned leaders throughout history overcame immense obstacles, rebounded from crushing defeat and refused to yield to seeming disaster.
~~~~
Found in my old scrapbook
Author unknown
Sunday
Down the Well of Darkness
I've been sliding through life in a gray zone for many months. It's a sticky kind of slide, though. It stops me in my tracks whenever I get some kind of momentum going in my thoughts or actions. Then I fizzle out and the numbness becomes the gray.
I asked for help from a professional who had connections. She pulled her strings and got me in to see a very important man who used the opportunity to have one of his students take her exam by having her do the interview. I accepted that. After all, his expertise and knowledge would be present observing both of us.
I guess I appear too normal when I'm gray. My flatness indicated to him that I was stable and didn't need any help. He didn't tell me that himself. I only learned later.
I've lived long enough to know what comes next, and here it is born upon me again. It starts with diffuse dreams of sadness that prevent a full night's sleep. I awaken so early that I ask myself, "What are you doing up?" Before the realization hits me, I feel it in my body. I don't need my rational mind to tell me. There it is, that unrelenting greif that has no reality.
When they speak of anguish, I think of some poor woman who's husband and child have tragically died. When she learns of it she feels her body turn inside out. That's what I feel, even though my loved ones are healthy and safe and all is well. Yet that inner twistedness wrings me out. It's a wet rag clotting my throat, squeezing out the moisture on the edge of my lashes with no release. If I don't guard my soul like a warrior, I would be on the floor curled, lifeless and dark.
I've learned to ride it out, just like the flat gray numbness. But, it's now flat. It sinks down. And so I hang on to the rope hung over the well of greatness about to swallow me up. Is it my grip on that rope giving me those sensations of ants crawling on my face? Or is it just my face reaching for the sunlight peeping lightly in the high distance?
I know where this leads. I've been on this journey before, too many times. I want out. But, the slimy walls are lumpy and hard, too straight up to give me impetus to climb. I cannot let go of the rope. I must hang on.
I seek an appointment with the new family doctor. Only one intake behind us, will she believe the desperation I cannot explain? She does, but hesitates. Blood tests must be done first. I must hold on a little longer.
I asked for help from a professional who had connections. She pulled her strings and got me in to see a very important man who used the opportunity to have one of his students take her exam by having her do the interview. I accepted that. After all, his expertise and knowledge would be present observing both of us.
I guess I appear too normal when I'm gray. My flatness indicated to him that I was stable and didn't need any help. He didn't tell me that himself. I only learned later.
When they speak of anguish, I think of some poor woman who's husband and child have tragically died. When she learns of it she feels her body turn inside out. That's what I feel, even though my loved ones are healthy and safe and all is well. Yet that inner twistedness wrings me out. It's a wet rag clotting my throat, squeezing out the moisture on the edge of my lashes with no release. If I don't guard my soul like a warrior, I would be on the floor curled, lifeless and dark.
I've learned to ride it out, just like the flat gray numbness. But, it's now flat. It sinks down. And so I hang on to the rope hung over the well of greatness about to swallow me up. Is it my grip on that rope giving me those sensations of ants crawling on my face? Or is it just my face reaching for the sunlight peeping lightly in the high distance?
I know where this leads. I've been on this journey before, too many times. I want out. But, the slimy walls are lumpy and hard, too straight up to give me impetus to climb. I cannot let go of the rope. I must hang on.
I seek an appointment with the new family doctor. Only one intake behind us, will she believe the desperation I cannot explain? She does, but hesitates. Blood tests must be done first. I must hold on a little longer.
Saturday
Reflections on Moodiness
It starts with a feeling of numbness. The world is flat and so am I, like in a cartoon. Flat and gray. Even my energy is flat. I cannot conjure up more than a smile when others laugh at something funny.
I ride along like that, sometimes weeks, sometimes months. But, I always know what comes next. I wait it out, hoping I can pick myself up, hoping it will go away, hoping the sun will break through the fog clouding my brain.
Occasionally it does clear up and I can feel okay. Sometimes my okay gets to be more than okay and I feel great. In fact I feel wonderful. I can do anything when I feel like that. Yes! The world is round, full and three dimensional. Though, I would most likely tell you at those times, there are more than seven dimensions. That's how my mania goes. It also goes a bit sour, too. I get agitated and irritable. I don't bite people's heads off, but I certainly have been known to go for the jugular. I hate myself then. It's a big let down after having been so inflated with my own self adoration and that of others. I've never been able to figure out how I become so popular during those times. I'm still the same person. How did the mania magnetize me?
I've been fortunate that my mania is the "hypo" kind, a low grade sort. Still, today I would trade my present mood for some of the happiness I feel when I'm in that riding high kind of mania I've experienced.
It's been a while since I've been there creating art, writing stories and poems, doing genealogy, sight seeing, using my camera to catch the nuances of light on color. I miss that part of me. She's so articulate and clever and fully enjoys life.
Monday
Oh My Darling
Sitting there reading I feel her eyes staring at me. Did she bore a hole into my brain the last ten minutes to impress my mind to think of her just then? Or, did she break her reverie the same moment I did? I smile. She winks. I wink back. She winks again. We play this game a lot. Closing both eyes, she stretches her lithe body, and yawns, giving the impression she is bored with me. At the last second she re-opens them to see if I’m still enchanted. Then, petulantly, she sticks her tongue out. I make a similar face. She gets up, comes over to me and sits contentedly in my lap. She’s so enticing! I caress her. I’m so privileged, she chose to spend her life with me.
Some may think she is ordinary, but to me, she’s beautiful. Yes, she is on the puny side, but, courageous, even tough. Her under-slung jaw gives an exotic pouty look, but can never hide her Mona Lisa smile. Some genetic quirk inherited from her mother, gives her a flat nose. No elegant proboscis, that! Yet, her sea-green eyes. Ah! They hypnotize! The quiver ‘neath my hand when I caress her, I know just where to touch to give her pleasure. What a gratifying responsive creature she is. I can’t keep my hands off her. Which may explain her temperamental behaviour. She’s so independent. She only permits me to touch her when she wants it. Doesn’t matter what I want. If she’s not in the mood, forget it! She’ll reach out and smack my hand. Some of my friends think she’s cruel and I should put her in her place.
I can’t complain though. When I really need her, when I’m sick, she never leaves my side. A devoted nurse; I swear, her very presence is healing! Sometimes I stop breathing momentarily. Apnea, they call it. She gives me a gentle nudge until I awaken, airless, gratefully gasping for breath. I hug her to me and thank her once again for being there to watch out for me. She doesn’t hog the bed or steal the covers from me. If I have a rough night, tossing and turning she’ll get up and go sleep somewhere else, so I can have the bed to myself.
She adores my singing voice and stops whatever she is doing to run to me. Especially if I whistle, her favorite song, “Oh, My Darling, Clementine”. Whenever I go out, she is content to stay at home and waits for me ‘til all hours without complaint. No matter what time it is, she’s right there at the door to warmly greet me. Now, That's devotion!
However, she sometimes does insist on going with me. At first, it was a little awkward, but now I’ve grown used to it. As I’m ready to go out the door, she sneaks up behind me and jumps on my shoulder. She maintains her balance while I lock up, proceed down the stairs and out the door, through the parking lot, to get into my car. Other times I just have to head her off before she makes the leap. She understands when I tell her. “Not this time, My Darling. Then, she’ll growl and grumble at me, but, she won’t really be angry.
This beguiling female is my cat.
Written 1991 about Keli Clementine
Saturday
Remembrance Quilt
The big black garbage bag, shiny and ominous sat in the middle of my living room floor. I looked at my best friend, despair emanating from eyes; a little moist and red, a little blank, a little begging for release. I was surprised at the immensity of the job before me. How had the simple offer of help turn into this big black lump of death's leftovers? I started toward the bag, and Shirley put her hand up. "No, not yet!"
I stood there on the brink of suspense, waiting for her next move. She walked into the kitchen, turned her back, and said, "Okay, now!"
As I opened the bag, I began pulling out the jumble of men's suits and ties, winter sweaters, and jackets. This was going to be challenging, and depressing to say the least. How could I make a sweet remembrance for my best friend out of all these dark colors, this heavy fabric that would suppress her to lie beneath?
Eventually, Shirley slowly entered the living room and sat down on the sofa, dragging the bag over to her. We folded the clothes in silence. As the bag emptied, I was so relieved to discover summer khakis, many different colored shorts, light weight hawaiian print shirts. I was so grateful I could have kissed Wayne's ghost. Then Shirley spoke, "I discovered these in the back of the armoir, hidden in shoe boxes. I didn't understand why he would go to such trouble to hide them away, until the police came to the door. They had found his suicide note. He killed himself because he was troubled about his feelings toward other men and long term knowledge that he was bi-sexual. I couldn't believe it. Wayne has never shown any signs. Marissa and he always seemed so compatible. But, he wrote that he couldn't pretend anymore to be a good Christian. They belonged to that strict church, you know. They never would have approved of these short sleeve shirts, these bright colors. He said he couldn't live with himself, had been planning this a long time."
I swallowed. I couldn't think of anything to say, nothing that would comfort her, nothing that would make any sense, nothing that would undo the damage on top of the pain she already suffered learning her son was dead, committing suicide in a most gruesome way, leaving his body unrecognizable. And now knowing how tortured he had been, not just depressed but living his own kind of private hell.
"If only I would have known. If only he would have told me. He knows I am open minded. Maybe I could have helped him. Maybe I could have... " But, I could see her shaking her head back and forth in realization that there was nothing she could do.
Thursday
Just for Laughs
The very talented Bobby McFerrin and the Wizard of OZ
The intro is a mild build up.
Have fun!
The intro is a mild build up.
Have fun!
Monday
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