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Saturday Poetry: Friday He Retired

from "Turn Left at the Dead Dog":

Monday Frank wore his good luck plaid.

Tuesday he cried.

Wednesday the doctors said

Thursday they’d try.

Friday he retired.

Saturday she died.

Adventures in Negritude

I made it back In One Piece which is always a surprise to me.  Although I would rather have a root canal rather than go through US Customs in Miami.  (This, you will learn is a recurring theme -- preferring having teeth pulled than to be put upon by husbands, governments and small furry animals who throw up to register their displeasure with your company).  All major airports look the same -- sky malls -- where the only differences are the principal language that the security speaks, the currency and the amount of walking (with baggage) you'll have to do to catch a flight.  For some reason I like DeGaulle but not Miami (although there is a fantastic exhibit of Dina Knapp's work that I got to see 3 times coming and going).  In DeGaulle having made the mistake of wrapping my head I got addressed in French as if I was trying to sneak into that godforsaken country from Cote D'Ivoire or somethin'.  Why would I do that?  Those people, the French, cook with butter for chrissakes.  Anyway, Miami International is about as large as the continental United States (I kid you not) and you walk and escalate and climb and train and walk until your toes bleed and then come to the cattle chute that is US Customs to stand in line until you get asked some inane gotcha question like:  How's South Carolina these days?  (How would I know?  I haven't been there in years.)  or "Heading back to New York?"  (You read my ticket but not my mind?  Don't you know that I Don't Live in New York City Any More and That the Last Leg of This Seventeen Hour Journey [if you will let me catch my damn plane] Is Sweet Lil Old New Haven?  [eye roll]).

This fondness for brackets, parentheses and run-on sentences must have something to do with Calculus, but I digress, ....  I did, of course, make it back to New Haven which was thankfully not covered in 20 feet of snow, only to be rather gingerly asked, "Didya have a good time?"  Yeah, I growled, now leave me the fck alone ....

Got those re-entry blues:  I was in Nicaragua long enough for my blood to thin (when it wasn't boiling recalling what this country did to that country for decades) and my skin to get black.  Still unpacking what I saw and experienced.  To be continued. 

Joe. Paterno. Is. Dead.

His age.  His disgrace.  The certain knowledge that his honor could never be restored.  Nancy Nall says what needs to be said.  Word.

ps:  haven't fixed the comments blockage yet.  Post-travel ennui.

On Ron Paul

Lately I've been trying to explain to a friend trapped in Indiana what I think Ron Paul's appeal is and why it is the racism accusations are nettlesome but not a dealbreaker for many of his fervent supporters.  One of my favorite blogs and bloggers, Ta-Nehisi Coates, takes the issue on and has hit it out of the park again.  (How I wish he'd written this when Ralph Nader (and his acolytes) were inflicting mortal wounds to the Democratic party in 2004.)

I invite you to not only read his piece but also the commentary that follows. Bon appetit.

No Comment

Lately found out that some people can't post comments.  Believe me when I tell you I didn't mean for that to happen.  My dance card's full for now; I'm leaving for Nicaragua on Saturday.  (And yeah, I'll report when I return.)  I'll figure out if it's on my end or yours (since some people can add comments) and get back to you when I return.

And then we can have a conversation ...
 

A Hiatus of Sorts

Occasionally I have the good sense to leap off the merry-go-round that is my current life.  Having finished the semester, final and all, I decided to do as little as my Calvinist conscience will allow.  That, and eat every cookie, candy and cake that mysteriously landed on my plate.  I've succeeded spectacularly; at least by my terms.  In the meantime I whittled down a mound of paperwork (only to make room for more), sent out a few holiday cards, slept without an alarm, co-babysat Most Beloved Niece No. 1, and made progress in the Can-This-Marriage-Be-Saved? Sweepstakes.  While I don't do Top 10 lists I will take a few minutes for highlights (and their opposites):

1.  wrote a libretto, "The Diamond Necklace" (based of the Guy de Maupassant story) that became the full-length opera, "Thus the Whirligig of Time Brings in its Revenges"
2.  celebrated with Fred Ho who overcame late stage colon cancer and wrote the book about it, "Diary of a Cancer Warrior"
3.  worked my way to an A in Calculus I
4. worked with a great team to launch the Congo in Harlem III film festival
5.  attended Daughter No. 1's wedding
6.  paid off the mortgage and other outstanding debts
7.  had a not-to-be-missed vacation in Ireland with my family

I am more grateful than you know for all the above and more.  The glue to anything that I consider a success is the loving support of my best friends, and there are many, who not only endured cauliflower ear when I bitched, but cheered me on unceasingly when I doubted.

On the other hand there seems to have been more than the usual amount of serious physical illness, depression and heartbreak, financial catastrophe and trouble with the law with far too many people I love and care about.  Were I Empress of the Known Universe I would wave my magic wand and banish that pain.  It comes as no surprise that I'm not, and that there isn't one, so I will do what a person can do which is to listen with hope, advise without expectation, and provide what help I can.

It's the end of the week.  It's the end of the year.  To our collective future in whatever form it appears.

I Was Gonna Write You a Letter But I Wanted To Be More Clever

Holidays and funerals.  That's when middle age hits me.  All the empty seats at the table.

If we're lucky each of us has a twin to get us through this one and only life.  Sometimes it is the great love of your life, your soulmate; sometimes it's someone who has known you as long as you've known yourself, a sibling.  Mine is my older brother, Nick, who among other things is a savant of American music.  What I know of John Lee Hooker, Yusuf Lateef, McCoy, DeeDee Bridgewater, Gary Bartz I first learned from him.  So when, on a beautiful springlike Friday, I had my office door open and I caught a whiff of a song I thought I knew, but if I didn't damn sure wish I did, I ran upstairs and borrowed my niece's keyboard and with what is left of my years of piano lessons plucked out the first few bars of the chorus and before my voice could get too flat (talk about not being able to carry a tune if someone put it in a bag for me) I called Nick and sang the notes to him.  In seconds he says:  Tevin Campbell.  Can We Talk?

Now, let me go, he says, you interrupted my Hawkeyes game. You owe me one. I do, indeed.

Hope your Thanksgiving was as wonderful as ours.  Cheers to the NY Misfits, Jing Ma and Li Xiaxi, Hill, Helene and Baby James.

Saturday Poetry: The Circumcision (excerpt)

Yes, it has been a while since I've written.  I've been carried away by the beauty of sentence such as the following:  f'(x) = the limit as h goes to 0 of f(x +h) minus f(x) all over h.  See what I mean?  Sheer poetry, eh?

If not.  Here is some:

  

At each day's end we convened

to pack our mouths with food.

Daily we came to be replenished.

Daily we came to wound.

Mother's anger subsumed our spite

as the language we hurled

made the food that was served,

bile.

My brother,

blessed with firstborn's love,

free as any boy who

comes in late

and knows he's safe,

he jumped the cat but missed the tread.

(The precious carpet fibers slicked.)

He fell.  She laughed.

He smacked the floor.

She laughed again.

He knocked her beer off the baluster

sullen, ready for war.

There's dinner, she said

you're late.

Who put that fuckin' thing there?

It's always in the way!

Who needs this fuckin' beer?

She looked at him.

He, at her.

I looked for shelter in my plate.

The baby chewed her corn.

There were no words for what

my father did not say.

She jerked the hose

and sucked her teeth.

Clean it up, she said.

My brother snorted when

Mother stepped down.

Clean it up.  Now.

Without Irony: Somebody Think of the Children

In our age of moral ambiguity (which age hasn't been an age of ambiguity?) we welcome an event, even a tragic one, that presents a bright, clear demarcation of Right vs. Wrong.  We can express our outrage without looking over our shoulder fearing that we've offended someone else's balkanized state of mind.  We can be sure; be right.

For a time the soul-searching aftermath of September 11th provided that moral relief.  Now it is the Penn State rape (not sex abuse, for chrissakes) scandal.  I cannot, and I'm not alone in this by any means, stop reading about it.  Sportswriters, clergy, common people young and old, mental health professionals, fathers and mothers, athletes pro and amateur, all speak to it.  I've read commentary from atheists who long, just for once, to believe in hell; and from the doubting faithful who are one step closer to letting go of God.

What I will add is that I am grateful that I am part of a culture that is still horrified by adults who have sex (whether by violent force or seductive coercion) with children.  I've been to or know of places where that is not so.

And, too:  I predict Joe Paterno will be dead within a year.

A supplementary commentary by Claire Potter, on her blog Tenured Radical.

And this, by ESPN.com's Howard Bryant, Penn State's failure of power.

 

Marriage Is Not for the Faint-Hearted

This will be brief:  No pretty pictures.  No videos.  No links.  No poetry.

I am in the throes of the derivatives of inverse functions and logarithms.  I liken it to my old brain being shoved through some space-time membrane into the future only to wind up in the 17th century.  Or, Where the Hell Am I Going and Haven't I Been Here Before?  It hurts.  It really hurts.  Brain cells are committing suicide.  Thoughts come to the door and don't ring the bell.

This morning (not for the first time) I realized that I am my mother.  And that I have often treated Husband No. 1 like my mother treated me.  I owe him and this marriage an apology.

And with no further commercial interruption we return to our regularly scheduled farce, "Taking Calculus I at 57 Years of Age:  An Effing Disaster."

Ciao, bella.

Home and Hearth, Kith and Kin

This is where my husband's family lives.  Around this oven -- an Aga cooker.  My beloved mother-in-law bakes scones and soda bread in it.  Everyone makes tea.  The rashers, black pudding and eggs are kept warm there.  The family gathers around it and they talk and eat and eat and talk.  Alongside the Aga is a television where Husband No. 1's father watches the occasional rugby game.  His mother now boots up her laptop in this room after a breakfast or a lunch or a tea or a dinner, and offers it to us to check our e-mail or she herself updates her Facebook status or confirms the flight to Tenerife.  The children run in an out like kids do when the outdoors is as safe as the indoors.  And when they fight or fall; they come to this room dominated by the cooker to get hugs, sweets and adjudication.

This is where we are much of the time when we go home.  Everybody talks what with a table of 7 or 8 adults with decades of life, several marriages, 2 continents and a small busful of children between them.  Mostly I listen.  Because when you are dialectially outnumbered (forgive me that awful pun) you can't keep up.  I'm lucky if I can understand every fifth word.  Doesn't matter, it leaves me time to read bodies and to imagine what it is to be Irish.

Or, in particular, to be this Irish family which has owned land and a farmstead in County Longford for hundreds of years.  Being Catholic they have also been deprived of some of that land and if you drive a few minutes up the road my brother-in-law can tell you how the Protestants were deeded this acreage or that as reward for preserving English dominion.  Oh, how I got it, how easy it is to understand the legacy of reflexive animus that remains even though Ireland became wildly prosperous on its own terms, and despite the financial debacle, will never be either as poor or as oppressed as it had been before the early 1970's.

In our country, the stranglehold of inequitable land distribution and therefore the inability to prosper en masse, forced the greatest internal migration this nation's ever seen, African-Americans heading to the industrialized, urban north.  The Irish didn't have that as an out; it took the Famine to drive them here.

And what do you get when you have two disenfranchised peoples -- African-Americans and the American Irish -- competing for power and place?    The Draft Riots of the 1860's, Boston's social convulsions over busing in the 1970's, the affirmative action battles in urban fire and police departments and the building trades, and the slow and interrupted increase of dynastic African-American mayors in Northern cities.


In other words, fraternal enemies.

Saturday Poetry: Beverly and Omar

from Turn Left at the Dead Dog:

On the checkerboard of their desire

Beverly and Omar watched their steps

They have loved one another one day more than forever.

Omar, Jamaican

came to the shipyard and found work as a welder.

He is black, burned by the years of kindred propane

and a bitter wife.

Beverly is the American Venus.

She washes her hands, even between meals.

The moment she hears Omar coming upstairs,

the phone call’s over.

He walks by the boss’s office

where Beverly rules.

He won’t even look at her

while she keeps her fingers poised over the keyboard.

For a moment forgetting

what the invoice says.

Dinner at the Mouth of the Ratty

Husband No. 1 on his never-ending quest for enlightenment came across a phrase "pedigree collapse" that will be our Word-O'-the-Day until Niece No. 1 wakes up and starts with the calvacade of butt jokes that she's so partial to (for now).  At first I thought it had something to do with the modern Republican Party, the meanest bunch of antediluvian, opportunistic Know Nothings I've ever seen in this country and believe me, growing up in Iowa, I've seen plenty.  (And godknows there are stupider groups in this country, but for sheer cake-taking for being as mean as you are unctuous, the modern GOP and its trademarked subsidiary, the Tea Party, takes the win.)  But, I digress.

It turns out that "pedigree collapse" doesn't mean the above, nor does it mean that there's been so much inbreeding that your line is rendered sterile (or am I being redundant?) it simply means that if one goes back far enough genealogically, you will find a relation.  Yeah, yeah we are all descendants of Eve.  Or, closer to home, there is the distinct possibility that I am related to a Beirne from County Kerry and don't know it.

Any excuse will do to find myself in Ireland one day in August at a Bunratty Castle, a 13th century fortress that's now a tourist attraction instead of a Viking or a Norman target.  (I can hear some of my American brethren:  "Doris, is it safe to go inside?  How do we know there aren't terrorists there?)  We, my in-laws, my husband and I bought tickets not only for a tour but also for that evening's meal compleat with mead ( a honey alcohol brew), the ubiquitous brown bread, soup and slabs of ribs.  It's all in fun, what I imagine they do in places like Disneyland or on a cruise.  You're packed in a banquet hall pretending that the young girl dressed in a low-cut, empire-waisted dress serving you is really a lady-in-waiting instead of the tight jeaned, bespectacled working girl smoking a filterless cigarette texting whoever as she passed you hours earlier on her way to work.  The singers sing.  The dancers dance.  The master of ceremony cajoles us and invites us in on the game.  (I am not one for sales pitches or organized groups.  The minute I sense that a live being is trying to manipulate my feelings in service to The Cause my arms cross my chest either literally or metaphorically.  A corollary:  I hate the social convention of "give yourself a hand".  Why should I clap?  I didn't do nothin' but pay for the ticket and keep my eyes open for a performance. )  Once he's deduced that we are his, and not until then because he wants you to want to play, he appoints a King and Queen.  With the typical Irish feck ya twist that night's anointed couple were English.  And not top-drawer English either.

So we're eating.  The only utensil you're given is a knife to spear the meat; everything else you eat with your hands.  You can have as much mead poured in your chalice as you want.  Puts you in the mood for the evening's business which is to catch a transgressor and have the royalty decide his fate.  That night's sacrificial schlub was a newlywed.  I don't know if being newly married mattered, but it certainly helps to have an inmate who's already poised for humiliation.  I don't even remember what the jacked up offense was; what I do remember was his growing doubt about the wisdom of having consented to role playing, not knowing what was coming.  Finally, the MC asks us, the lords and ladies of Bunratty to advise the King and Queen as to his fate -- the dungeon or death?  Torture or mercy?

And without hesitation the crowd roars for his death.  Husband No. 1 and I looked at each other with one raised eyebrow each as if to say:  Didja see that?

You Foodies Get on my Last Nerve

Anybody who's known me for more than a minute knows that 1) I don't like to cook and 2) I can't cook.  (I wrote last year about what happens in my family when I just suggest that I might want to make dinner.)  I won't go into my every-dysfunctional-family-is-dysfunctional-in-its-own-way creation myth.  After all these years, I'm not sure it's relevant and I'm always one for giving friends and family the unsolicited advice that they can overcome this and overcome that.  Obviously, cooking will forever be in the "why bother?" column for me and it's high time I admit it.

Yet, I can't quite get over the knawing (to use a masticatory word) feeling that not wanting to or liking to cook is a moral failing.  And like any culinary doubter, I go back and forth about the existence of a benevolent Home Chef.  Godknows I've had bursts of energy where I think I'm finally going to have 2 skillets going at 6 o'clock 5 days a week.  But then I go back to watching potatoes sprout, fresh basil go to seed, and ground turkey turn green.

So, when I tell you that Husband No. 1 who, as you may remember, loves to cook, does it extraordinarily well and never finishes a meal without saying to no one in particular, "Damn, that's good!" to which he gets a chorus of amens and splayed mashed potatoes, when I tell you that he went out and bought 4 fish from the fish market and cooked 3 -- what would Jesus do? -- and there was one fish left in the refrigerator and my better angels got to me and told me to do something with it before the whole house caved in from the smell, you know this will be a story without a happy ending.

Some context:  I am back in school a mere 30 years since I got my one and only degree.  I am taking Calculus.  As with too many momentous decisions in my life I did not think this through.  This summer when I was digging flower beds, sharpening knives, quaffing Jameson's and bitching about my legs turning into tree trunks, I should have been reviewing pre-Calculus and trig and throw in some algebra while yer at it.  For the one class that I'm taking now is truly and unremittingly kicking my ass.  I mean, I had to purchase a graphing calculator that's got a 400 page manual fer chrissakes.  Mercy.


Ye Olde Student is now always in a panicked hurry.  The other day I was home alone, and for those who enjoy that kind of thing, you know that you get into The Zone.  Floating through your own space multi-tasking, focussed, efficient.  I decided to cook the last fish thinking, I'll surprise everyone!  They'll get home today and instead of seeing empty potato chip bags strewn all over the kitchen they'll see demurely crossed cutlery and a plate cleaned of everything but fish tail sitting on the kitchen table, the remnants of a Healthy Home-Cooked Meal.  Oh my, they'll say, that woman can do anything!  So, I glide through the kitchen, pre-heat the oven, spray the pyrex, salt the dish, chop some onions, add a dollop of oil and juice while opening my mail and starting a fresh pot of decaf -- Oh Julia, I said to myself, you are too much!


Then I marched out to my office to do battle with some polynomials.  For one whole hour.


When I smugly waltzed back into the kitchen it stank like a trawler.  And when I opened the oven and took It out It was black.  (I see a red door and I want it painted black ...)  The onion had turned into something that resembled a bouillon cube and what was supposed to be baked fish looked like a cheap shoe left out in the rain.  Why bother to open all the windows, I reasoned, just fess up when they get home.

I did.  (My lame excuse was that I bake chicken for about an hour.)  And then I had to sit there while Younger Sister and Husband No. 1 popped their eyes back into their respective heads and lectured me about the difference between a few minutes and one hour.  (Will this be on the test?)  Now, of course, I will never hear the end of it and come Thanksgiving right after the obligatory, "Damn, that's good!" there will be, "Did I ever tell you the time She (thumbs jerked in my direction while I keep my head down and shovel brussels sprouts in my mouth) tried to cook fish?"


It's official:  I give up.  Just FedEx me home-cooked meals.

To Which I Say AMEN!!!!

I'm getting to the stage that in the world of social networking it's time to "sell all my possessions and move to a smaller place".  See my friend Taylor Ho Bynum's manifesto about our contemporary chains.
 

Saturday Poetry: A High School Education

Comes fall and with it

cool weather and a

pubescent flock wafting by.

The thing itself, school

We know they'll learn,

it fails them.

Today they don't care why.

They just come.

I wonder about

the boys who masquerade their eyes with Kangols

or nylon do-rags adorned with kited tails.

Except for those who wear the veil

all the girls are uniformed in

too tight jeans.

I see how they swivel

in their denim corsets

eyeballing the demi-men

through lacquered bangs.

Before the guards hustle the chicks inside

they signal to each other.

There is much to tell

in the corners where they hide.

We Ourselves

Will you believe me when I say that I've been meaning to "drop by"?  That ever since we returned from Husband No. 1's motherland on August 30th (via Boston, no less) that I've meant to "get over there" and "share my slides"?  So, may I be excused as I pick up twigs, branches and the rest of the post-Irene flotsam, detox from a steady diet of pork and potatoes, open my mail and cuss copiously because I forgot to pay the one bill that racks up a 19% interest rate not to mention a finance charge.  Well, my friend BS didn't and she called me on my BS the other day and said, "you told us you were going and now you have to tell us what happened."

What I Did on My Summer Vacation

I had a good time.  The end.

There.  Checked off The List.  It's Saturday.  At minimum I owe you a poem.  (I've got an inexhaustible supply, trust me.)  I'll post a poem next.  But, I swear I will share Eyelerland (Neice No. 1's pronounciation) stories.

I Will Soon Be on Holiday in the Emerald Isle

Some time last year Husband No. 1 and I had the bright idea to take Niece No. 1 to Ireland.  She calls her female cousins (some who have visited us in the States) her "sisters" and it was time to return the gesture.  The pricing structure of airline travel and the fact that we only see Husband No. 1's family every few years led us to book a 10 day visit, which for grown-ups who love nothing better than sitting around drinking Jameson's and telling lies is just fine.  For a 5 year old separated from the mother with whom she is joined at the hip?  Not so much.  I had my misgivings when we booked the dates; and as departure approaches I have flashes of a whining, petulant, forlorn, anxious princessa who will insist that she Wants To Go Home!!!

Now I, who has for better or worse 2 kids under my belt, can be the Tom DeLay of Mothers and am quite prepared to whine, petulate (if such a verb exists), and holler back until she accepts that she might as well go outside and milk some cows because we are not driving to Dublin just yet.  Husband No. 1 will be upset.  First he will accuse me of child abuse.  (Picture me snorting.)  Then he will try to set up Skype so that Niece No. 1 can talk to her mother any time she wants, and we will be treated to the spectacle of her bleary-eyed mother (since there's a 5 hour time difference) alternately weeping and trying to crawl back to bed.  When that doesn't work, La Princessa whose other name is She Who Will Not Be Denied will convince Husband No. 1 to book a flight for himself and her and fly her home on Friday and return to Ireland on Sunday so that we can fly out of Dublin on Tuesday.


As you can tell, in my spare time, I'm always thinking up doomsday scenarios.  Despite myself, I go to the places we are specifically instructed not to go to which is one of the reasons that even after more than 25 years writing poetry and fiction making the work is its own kind of torture for me.  I actually have notes on an opera about Richard Speck, for chrissakes.  Don't think I'll be working on that piece any time soon.

The Interrupters

This documentary will be showing July 29 through August 7 at IFC and Maysles Cinema in NYC: