The Truth of the Matter

… an essay written 27 years ago..

Like the whale, whose two eyes must concentrate on two

different scenes at once, and attempt to merge them into one

intelligence, I am often in the position of trying to direct

the various portions of my life into a single stream.

Lately I think a lot about the fact that I have plunged

myself into a full-time writing program, at the age of 51,

when I could be earning money for my Winnebago years.

While I am planning to write a brilliant essay on Life

in one of its most obtuse aspects, I am filling the car up

with gas, buying groceries or a new plant for the garden,

and making a bank deposit.  At the same time I am usually

either justifying or attacking my smoking and eating habits.

Frequently the loftiness of my thoughts leads to coming

home without the onions, giving a daughter permission to do

something I never intended, and having a couple more

cigarettes.

 

The monologues I subject myself to in the car often

combine flashes of deep insight into whatever I am pursuing

at the moment, with questions of Truth and Life, and this

leads to more questions and more thoughts, and when I sit

down to write I am like Melville in his letter to Hawthorne:

“I began with a little criticism … and here I have landed

in Africa.”

 

So here I sit, wondering if all writers have these mad

thoughts on their way to the typewriter, and wondering why

any of us do this anyway.  What is our need to write it all

down?  And why, when the compulsion is so great, do we

complain incessantly about the difficulty of actually doing

it?  Most of all, to get right down to the bare bones of my

dilemma:  Why me? Why now in my life am I consumed by such

an overwhelming need for a community of writers that I have

saddled myself onto several years of school, galloping up

and down the New York State Thruway in my little Honda,

every free moment given over to reading and writing.

 

My mother always said to me: “There are thinkers and

doers in this world, and Nancy, you are not a doer.”

Managing to get maximum work accomplished in a minimum of

time was essential for my parents, who came to adolescence

during the Great Depression.  They were workers, savers.

Their early married years, dramatized by World War II,

confirmed the belief for an entire generation that hard work

and sacrifice, at home and on foreign battlefields, was the

means for saving the world. Since idle hands are the devil’s

workshop, doing was the key.

 

I was not a doer. That I may have been a thinker was

too unfortunate to be mentioned.  A thinker is a dreamer, a

questioning heart, a possible soul in limbo.  Thinking is

not necessary when you have faith in the structures that

arrange the order of your life.  For my large family those

organizations were the Roman Catholic Church, the

Democratic Party, and iThe US MArine Corps.

If we just followed those paths, and worked hard, there

would be time to have a little fun on the weekend.

What was there to think about?

 

Recently I read that Colette sat for half an hour

sometimes, pondering an adjective.  Thinking. Not doing

anything else.  It jolted me physically to know that others

felt the freedom to allow words to arise from the depths of

the thought process, from the innermost chasms of the body

at rest, from just thinking.  I’ve been well trained, as

have many of my generation, to be busy.  Even while writing,

which I’m not yet totally convinced is doing, pressure

invades my psyche about what there is to accomplish in the

day.  Aside from our jobs and family lives, many of us have

chosen a large part of the world’s problems and adopted them

like so many orphans.  After all we can’t rely on the

Catholic Church and the Democratic Party, much less the

United States Government to take care of the whole world any

more.

 

So, when an adjective escapes my net I leap up,

knocking over the director’s chair I sit in for writing, and

do something else while I think.  Household tasks can

successfully hide the fact that, under the layer of my busy,

busy hands, I am thinking.

 

All writing has a rhythm, a dance, a tempo.  Part of

that beat is silence, through which we hear words, those

precious tools of our craft.  How many ways are there for us

to hear the sounds of our accumulated visions and to pull

forth the thoughts that we spread across paper?  How many of

us allow ourselves the title of Thinker?  How can we accept

that thinking, and writing our thoughts, is a valuable form

of doing, one that does not need to be hidden behind a

screen of action?  Why is there so much self-doubt in a

writer’s life?

 

During my childhood I gradually became quieter and more

solemn.  I stuttered, and was asked to be even more silent.

Books were taken away because they were exciting my mind,

not to mention what all that reading was doing to my eyes.  Friends

were brought to the house to entice me outside, into the air, into the

social action.  Finally at college I found freedom to think

and read. And that was what I did.  I had my own curriculum,

and occasionally it coincided with my course work.  I

allowed my mind to drift through the college library at its

own speed, gathering straws of knowledge into a broom I

could ride through the night sky. And then I rode out and

landed on the ground of doing again.

 

Through the sixties, seventies and eighties I did

career, marriage, children, housebuilding, quilts, garden,

politics, yoga, tai chi, acting, editing, reading, singing,

traveling, teaching, swimming, volunteering, dancing, hiking; all the

“ings” available to those living in this nuclear world.  But

I was still the whale, concentrating with each eye on a

separate section of my life.  I wrote essays while making

the bed, and dreamed poems about writing those essays. But

that is no longer enough to satisfy the draining pull of my

mind.

 

We write to share our lives, our thoughts, our

questions, our world in all its majesty and horror. We share

the sameness of our days, the unique smells of home, the

wondrous light of evening in a foreign land, the feel of a

coin between our fingers, our doings and our thoughts

together. We don’t even have to be right about anything but

ourselves and the honesty of our minds. And we can even lie,

and exaggerate, and make the large small, and turn the sky

green. Let the theologians and physicists come up with their

own versions of the cosmos.

 

Someone recently said to me that if we were meant to be

creatures only of action we would be called human doings

instead of human beings. So I will be. And for me, to be is

to write, is to think. If I don’t write, why then, I may not

know what I am thinking. As I write more and more often, I

find that I express thoughts I didn’t even know were lurking

in my mind. Where do these ideas come from?  What can I

possibly be thinking?

 

I no longer give power to the Church, the Democrats

and the Marines. Somewhere, at some time, perhaps while

counting the zucchini multiplying in the garden, writing to

my Senator or carpooling to dance classes, I came to believe

in what was once called my “daydreaming.”  I decided to be

in charge, even though I may not know what it is I am in

charge of. I’ll find out when I write it. It’s a pilgrimage

and I will end up worshiping at many shrines.

 

Like Queequeg in Moby Dick, who had a treatise on attaining all

knowledge of heaven and earth tattooed on his body, in a

language he had never been taught to read, I carry

everything I may want to know around with me. Writing is my

dictionary, my secret code book, my thinking and doing

together, my being. And I don’t stutter anymore.

 

The New Neighborhood

The large tree across the street draws my attention every morning and evening as the early and late sun throws a lovely glow on the buildings and on the maple’s foliage beginning to turn from its late summer green to rusty orange and yellow. Overhead the long silver oval silhouette of jets on the way to LaGuardia move silently across the clear blue autumn sky, just a few miles from their destination.

I can see, underneath the tree this morning, more than the usual neighborhood stroll of people on their way to work and children chattering to each other as they walk in clusters up the road to school. An enormous truck is parked in the center of the road with just enough room for a car to pass. A green ladder slants up to the open back and young men are trotting up that ladder, with no railing, with large plastic bins on their backs full of demolition debris.

They step into the enormous maw of the truck, dump their load, jump down and trot back into the building. There seem to be six of them: small, slim brown-skinned men. Some carry huge loads of boards piled on their bent backs. They look like burros. They run out of the building, down the stoop , through the path to the gate, across the sidewalk and then the road, and up the ladder, never stopping their pace, and disappearing from my view. They reappear, jumping down from the back of the truck, and run to the building. The garbage bins are in some cases more than half their height. I don’t know where in the building all this debris is coming from.

It is a four story building with no elevator. It is 10 o’clock and I need to get up from my table. There is a breeze rippling through the tree across the street and its large branches wave up and down. Their shadows cast flowing patterns across the edifice and make the windows sparkle. The men have been running with these loads for 2 hours non stop. I wonder how many hours some of these men may have run to get to the US, to have the freedom to work this hard without being targeted by gangs or drug lords. I wonder what it was like for my grandfather coming from Ireland with others fleeing the persecution of the English.

After a long voyage in steerage, finding his way to Pennsylvania as a young teenager, he worked in the darkness of coal mines in order to earn enough money to bring his siblings out of the destitution that was Ireland. They were reviled in the US at the turn of the century, denied most jobs, considered filthy and disease-ridden, hated and even feared for being Catholic. They were targets of the Klan. Even in 1960 the terrible fears and rumors about the Irish still circulated around the possible presidency of JFK.

I wish these men well, who are working so hard to help a landlord convert a modest apartment into a fancy high rent condo, and I wish them the love that my grandfather generated as he became successful, not because of education and wealth, but more for his doggedness, his hard work, his acts of generosity to everyone in his community, for his faith, and for his love of family. Lordy lordy the day is flying by while I write. The end!

Concerto in January: Writing in space and time

“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”    Albert Einstein

 “I have been found guilty of the misdemeanor known as making light of Einstein”                  ee cummings

“The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions which have been hidden by answers.”                   James Baldwin

“Just because we don’t know about them
doesn’t mean that things don’t happen to the gods….”     Nancy Rullo

 

There are tulips in a glass vase on the table, two dozen red and yellow extravagant tulips, not quite open, leaning toward the large window that faces south onto the birch trees in the front yard. Snow is falling again, typical for the end of January. A CD of Jacqueline du Pre is spinning Haydn’s Cello Concerto in D. The temperature outside is about 7 degrees. The house is cool but bright in spite of, or because of, the snow this morning. On the table near where I write are several books I am currently reading. I am never happy unless I have a wide range of material to choose from: magazines, literary journals, novels, nonfiction, British mysteries, to delve into for any mood.

I read to understand the world. And then I write to understand my position in this fleeting and often tumultuous life we all lead, while I try to take right action, to understand the actions of others, to live with compassion, and to, most of all, be true to myself and my own fullness of creativity. I do not find this an easy task. I am not always successful, in my writing or in my life, but it is impossible for me not to struggle along, sometimes joyfully, but sometimes grumpily, searching for those moments when theory and practice meld.

The books I am reading, “Exuberance,” by Kay Redfield Jamison; “Art and Physics,” by Leonard Shlain; and “All-Night Party: The Women of Bohemian Greenwich Village and Harlem, 1913 – 1930,” by Andrea Barnett, I have noticed, as I sat down to write this essay, are all about those who have in some way broken a mold, for better or worse, lived in their own fullest way, and followed passion. Being snowbound in the interior Catskill Mountains can bring on a certain ennui, not necessarily depression, but a lack of ambition, a lack of interest in how well one can shovel snow or cook another stew. Will one’s clients be able to trek up the mountain for an appointment? Will there be any money in the bank in February? Will I be able to get out to visit a friend? These tiresome thoughts make me feel like I have a severe head cold, which I also do actually have. It is January of course. My books are my Sudafed, my Vicks and humidifier. But ideas start to trickle back in as I read.

The physics of cosmology has been the main impetus for my writing in the past few years. The most wonderful part of this obsession is that my mind seems to retain little of the information I study; only the awe remains, awe at the breadth of life and the minds that have imagined it, and recreated it for me in their writings. But while I read about the space/time continuum, and the purported edge of the universe, or the multiplicity of universes, I also remember Mary Poppins, telling Michael and Jane that nothing out of the ordinary has happened after they step into chalk drawings or float to the ceiling on laughter. The awe of life: imagination: expect the extraordinary. My simple days, teaching, reading. gardening, being a mother and wife have always seemed so ordinary, away from the world of ideas. I write to join the world of Bessie Smith, singing her way out of poverty, to greet Richard Feynman as he looks for the simple ways of understanding complexity, to grasp how my existence fits into this world of wonders I read about.

The joy and beauty of the Haydn is inside me and I cannot sit still. I orbit the little rooms of my house, past the dishes waiting to be cleaned and the gift that needs wrapping. I stop at the refrigerator, of course, and find a last piece of very dark chocolate, which I pop into my mouth although I have not had a decent breakfast. The Haydn crescendos and I stand next to the computer, not able to sit down yet, humming and watching what seem to be the last flakes of snow. Already I can see the opposite mountain, outlined by thinning clouds. The sweet adagio of the second movement begins. I’d like to dance, but I sit and think, imagine what it is to write this music, or to play the cello, wrapped around the curvature of sound. If the music inhabits me from a plastic recording, how must it pierce the soul of the cellist.

Imagination is the crux of all discovery, of invention, of creation. The awe I feel in reading about the theories of light is what I attempt to re-envision in my own life, when I imagine being outside at night while the silent hunter, the owl, plummets to its prey, or when I transform memory into a formal poem about marriage. I also write to transform my life. How much of this essay is true to my life this morning? How much from my imagination of how it could be, of how I desire to see myself, to have you see me? I reach out my left hand and rub the covers of the three books, each cool and with varying textures, as if rubbing talismans, as if I can pull myself to the surface of life and allow myself to soar to the ceiling with Michael and Jane, and write from what I see there, imagine that I can create one more scene, or make one idea burst into life for an audience of readers or listeners.

And now the first slow deep notes of Elgar’s opening to the Cello Concerto in E enter the room. Jacqueline recorded this extraordinary performance with the London Symphony Orchestra when she was twenty years old. How could she have known such depths, at such a young age? Only six years later her multiple sclerosis began to prevent her from continuing her art. An oboe punctuates the bars of the adagio.

Questions arise. Why? How? If the universe is still expanding, growing at speeds we cannot imagine, should we be noticing? Is there a reason for our lives? Are we simply bacteria or are we real creators as well as creations? Is there a prime hand that smacked our world into its first breath? Is there anything out “there,” for lack of a better description of the space beyond earth, that has emotion? Am I just getting old and cranky when I don’t know the answer to something? Is it too late to discover God? Why bother? I could just turn on the TV. Watch the Weather Channel.

The top of the birch tree closest to the window broke off during the last ice storm and its thin jagged trunk is now a perch for a squirrel who can’t see that I am busy. He would like to come in, bold fellow, but I don’t want to hear his chattering. It punctuates the slow cello, so slow now, as if the cellist were putting a child to sleep.

I hope I have not put you to sleep because I am finally going to tell you the real reason why I write. In writing this essay this morning I have invited you all here and, by bending space and time, you have arrived even through the snowstorm, and are sitting around my table, smiling at the tulips as I type away. Perhaps you want some different music. i don’t mind. I am glad to have this time with you. I don’t really understand how it happens but I love the surprise and the company that arrives when I write, especially in January. When the snow ends tonight we will be able to see the stars. Because it will be very cold they will seem incredibly bright and close. I don’t remember why, of course, but it will be awe-inspiring.

 

This essay was originally published in Tertulia, a Literary Journal from California about 15 years ago. I seem to have lost the original edition. I miss Tertulia, a compelling and thought-provoking journal that I felt privileged to appear in.

Love Where You Are

The city sky is uniformly gray this morning.   Across the street, the lack of sunlight makes the otherwise ornate buildings dull. There are few people in the city this week; sidewalks are empty, traffic is light. Since this is a dead end half-street, the only vehicles that enter belong here; parking spots are empty and the few pedestrians are dressed in dark colors, bundled up against the damp breeze. Browns, grays and blacks predominate the spectrum outside my window. Even the birds, primarily sparrows of every model, blend into the brown shrubbery this morning as I sit and read years of my Facebook memories of winter mornings on the mountain. I cannot overcome the nostalgia for the days when I sat in peace by the big window with my steaming tea cup by my side, a red candle burning, and the heat from the crackling fire in the stove beginning to reach the front room as I watched the sun move over the hill to my left and illuminate the mountains south and west with a golden light. I loved the intricate shades of color the sky passed through as the sun rose, and the bravery of the finches, jays, cardinals, doves, woodpeckers, and so many other birds as they arrived at the feeders in first light regardless of the below zero temperatures. The brilliance of snow-laden trees brightened my day.

But this morning I knew I could not go back, and was saddened by my prospects ahead, with the inevitable and lamentable aging process. I lingered on the couch reading about my past, or my past as I portrayed it on FB.  Then the phone rang.

It was my grandson Walker. Walker lives down the hall from me with his younger brother and his baby sister. He is thirteen now and this week we realized he is as tall as I am. Actually, probably a tiny bit taller. He was calling to see if I needed any help with chores before his family went out today. Did I want him to bring my garbage and recycling down? Well, actually, yes, I would like that!  A few minutes later, he strolled in, with his new haircut neatly combed, and wearing his favorite shirt that I have seen on him every day since Christmas. We talked a bit and he mentioned the 2 books he was taking away with him on a trip – he knows I like that stuff- and off he went, smiling, a big bag in each hand.

Suddenly my day had color, light. I noticed that a lot of people who live on this little block have red coats, and the boy across the street in the red jacket is walking his dog who wears a pink coat! When the boy walks out the door toward the street, the cats who seem connected to that building, the black one and tan one who were tussling, scattered at the sight of the pink pup. A couple of church ladies walk by. There are quite a few churches in the neighborhood, from large spired edifices to storefront chapels. The ladies always wear their church hats, regardless of the weather, their pumps with black stockings, and in the summer their dresses are lovely gardens, celebrating their joy on Sundays.

My daughter suddenly pops her head in to see if I need anything. No. Not today. I am busy looking out the window. Across the street the neon green porta-potty is a reminder of the work that has been suspended for the holiday week on the renovations. I am so curious about this project! To the right, a line of lovely limestone buildings, with high stoops and bow windows, appear to be single family four story homes. It seem that one of them uses its garden level as a B and B, since I often see different groups of people emerge, stand around apparently discussing where they are headed and what transportation they will be taking.  Sometimes, like this morning, they are just waiting for a straggling member of the group to jog out to the street pulling on hat and gloves as they all turn and begin the walk to the corner. A mother and her perhaps 2-year-old move by, excruciatingly slowly.  At first I am puzzled until I realize that the child is insisting on riding a very small scooter, and that she has no idea how to do it. Refusing her mom’s hand, and clearly not listening to a word of advice, the girl moves forward at about a foot a minute. Suddenly a man walks by with a dog that is about half her size and she leaps for her mom’s arms. Triumphant, mom strides away, child on her left hip and scooter dangling from her right hand.

The two sparrows who have a nest above my apartment windows fly up past me where I sit. Someone just brought two Christmas trees downstairs to the curb. TWO Christmas trees! Imagine. Perhaps it is from the house the has the pulsing lights in the window.  I go to my front room and plug in my Christmas lights throughout the apartment, getting ready for a friend’s visit. As I am rearranging the creche and the Hallmark figurines my mother collected for us almost 40 years ago, I notice a grown man trying and trying to learn a fancy move on his skateboard up and down the empty street. Love where you are. Love where you have been. Love where life will take you next. Happy New Year to everyone.

Hey Men, Where Do We Go From Here?

Very early 1970s. “All in the Family.” Gloria comes home in her friend’s clothing, acts ashamed, and won’t speak to her family. Finally she confides in Edith that a man pulled her behind a construction site and tried to rape her.

The family convinces Gloria to call police, but the detective who arrives tells her how awful a trial will be, especially because of the way Gloria looks, the way she wears her clothes. Why did she walk on that side of the street, she is not a virgin, she will be accused of lying. Did Gloria really know the rapist, could she positively identify him, was she having consensual sex. (Sound familiar?)

Edith secretly tells Gloria that all day she has been smelling Rockaway Beach, the place where she was assaulted in her youth, (probably in 1940s, lured by promise of a malted under the boardwalk. There was no malted) She was afraid then, and ashamed to report it, but she still worries about the other women who might not have gotten away from the guy, because she was frightened of what would happen to her if she came forward.

Gloria decides to press charges for the other possible victims, but Mike and Archie, trying to protect her, refuse to allow Gloria to file charges after the detective’s description of what would happen to her in court, and why fewer than 10% of rapists are convicted.

End of story.

I still remember Gloria’s face, traumatized, at the final scene. I have never forgotten that episode. 45 years ago on the most popular national TV show.

I’m 77 years old and it is exactly the same now as it was in my mother’s generation, and was in mine, and is now in my daughters’ generation, and there is no sign that it will be different for my granddaughters. Yet we continue to allow hideous, mostly white, men in power to shout down, blame, and berate any woman who dares to stand up and point a finger.

We need to find men who will stand beside us, to face that rage directed at our courage and, indeed, our belligerence, and our refusal to be cowed by their anger. We seem to have reached the very bottom of civility, but lately, whenever I think that, our country slides deeper into bellicose and inhuman and certainly unChristian values.  Women can’t carry this alone.  I beg for help.  This must end.  Run for office.  March with us. Vote with us.

 

The Ride Home

Mohammed peeked over his shoulder as he slid the car into the late night traffic on 5th Avenue in Brooklyn. He had a big smile. “Well, Mama, how was your night out at the bar?”  Before answering I adjusted the tubes to my oxygen tank; the hike out of the back room of Freddy’s Bar and Back Room, through the long crowded bar area, and down the ramp onto the dark humid street to look for my car, had made my talking a bit ragged.

I surmised he might be Pakistani.  Riding these cars and shopping in a variety of stores in Brooklyn, I am beginning to distinguish Indian from Pakistani, Bangladeshi from the others, and sometimes Nepali from Tibetan (much harder.)  When I tell the Tibetans I am from Woodstock, they are thrilled and want to talk about the Monastery to which they have all been on annual bus pilgrimages.. Hearing that my husband had been a member and was studying Tibetan language with one of the monks, and that we had been in the audience when the Dalai Lama came to Woodstock, makes me royalty on that ride to the hairdresser.

Trying to reconcile my evening with whatever Mohammed might be thinking, about my values, morality or judgement, I said that it must seem strange that an elderly woman was coming out of a bar alone late at night, but that I had been listening to beautiful young people singing opera, and I was surrounded by people from other parts of my whole life. He seemed curious.

Earlier, I had been tired and hesitating about going out but, since I knew people were waiting for me, I got ready and stepped out into the beautiful May evening.

Spring has held back its joy this year. Hyacinth, forsythia, daffodils and magnolias have come and gone under cool gray skies, but Thursday evening was pure spring.  The sweater I had brought to Freddy’s was unnecessary. People strolled hand in hand along the streets with no rush to escape a cold wind. It had rained a bit during the performance and the streets glistened, reflecting streetlights, headlights, traffic signals and neon signs in shop windows. As we drove through this brilliant world I explained to Mohammed why this old lady was out, defying what would be normal in his culture.

In the back room of Freddy’s Bar I was surrounded by love and various parts of my life .  There were about 20 people crowded into the room around tiny tables listening to young talented singers who had decided to include some operatic music from classical Broadway hits, with arias from Carmen and La Boheme. Occasionally we got to sing along.

When I arrived Gabe jumped up as usual to get me a drink and there were hugs all around.  A beautiful young woman, Deb, explained that I wouldn’t remember her from our meetings years before, but I assured her that I remembered her, her parents, siblings and cousins!  Ariel introduced me to her work colleague, and I explained that Ariel came to this venue because I had told her about it when she was in high school. When she ended up in Brooklyn years later she headed right to this little-known bi monthly event.

In the car I explained to Mohammed that Ariel’s dear friend Maddie was there also, another former student whom I had not seen for about a decade.  Maddie’s sister, the inimitable, irrepressible, artist, Rowan, had died in a tragic auto accident during the winter. The undercurrent to this evening was that on the upcoming weekend there would be a large memorial service celebrating her brief but adventure-filled life, and her many friendships.

Mohammed kept glancing over his shoulder.  We pulled up to my door and he said to me: “God bless you, mother, for you do beautiful work on a beautiful night and you are rewarded with beautiful friends.  I am happy to give you a safe ride home to your family.” As I stepped out of the car I saw that the path to my door was lit by catalpa blossoms, pale moons glowing from the raindrops that had brought them down.

Autumn Reverie

The sky is an amazing pale violet and blue and pink that cannot be captured with my camera phone. It’s dusk and I’m in the backyard having finished cutting back the roses for fall. The roses are in large planters that border the space between my patio and my landlord’s lovely garden, but the roses were looking poorly and so, even though the roses are technically the landlord’s property, I have been handed the responsibility to get them through the winter until next spring.

It’s evening and I’m alone in the house; the family is away. It’s warm fall nights like this when I miss my outdoor shower in Woodstock the most. A few decades ago Donald Van Praag jury-rigged this contraption for $75 and each year it needs to be fixed for leaks and broken pipes but the plumbers have risen to the cause and it lives on.  It has no walls,, just a rock to stand on and some hooks and shelves for clothes and towels and toiletries. and the forest and gardens beyond. Standing on the rock at sunset, overlooking the woods, and hearing the last birdsong of the season, with candles and lanterns lit all around me, the smell of the soap and the sound of the warm water splashing off the rock, and afterward drying off and relaxing in a sarong or light robe on a lounge chair until the last light has gone, is pretty much the epitome of peacefulness.Depending on the season the sounds are of crickets or tree frogs or peepers or an occasional night bird surprising in its late melody.

Tonight there’s a helicopter speeding toward LaGuardia airport, and some music that sounds like it is coming from the next block, but I have recently found out that much of the music I hear is from three or four blocks in the opposite direction and just being bounced off the building at the end of my backyard. I can hear Hamilton from somewhere nearby.

I went to the Met Opera in HD today at BAM to see Norma, which was originally subtitled “an infanticide” but I am happy to inform you that while two adorable young 5-year-old boys came very close to death, in this production they did not die, and received a rousing ovation at the curtain call. Norma is one of the most harrowing operas, in my opinion. and that’s saying a lot! It takes place in a dark Druidic forest in the year 50 BC, (so the costumes were quite primitive) but was not much different in theme from many operas: a threesome, despotic man, a powerful woman, another woman, treachery, jealousy, deceit, fury, vengeance, and more vengeance. Opposite this was some of the most beautiful, touching, and lyrical music I’ve ever heard. The first act was one and a half hours long, and I had planned to take a break to stand or walk around during it, but suddenly it was over and I was stunned that so much time had passed. My heart is swelling tonight with the beautiful music by Bellini, and the voices that worked together in such outstanding unison, and sweetness.the reconciliation of terrible tragedy with music that is romantic and lyrical is masterful.

It is dark outside now, and I am riveted by the large full-moon-like white paper Chinese lantern in the building opposite mine. Often a little girl sits at her table underneath that lamp and has a tea party with her dolls. I have watched her for a few years now and a neighbor’s tree is about to obscure my view.  She is going to grow out of that table soon, but I will not get to know the next phase .

Now a jet passes overhead, its lights blinking, on its way to land at LaGuardia, and a siren is approaching. Though I can tell it’s not on my block, it is somewhere very close. In Woodstock, people I know are dying and others are mourning those who recently died, while I sit in my garden tonight, alone with my glass of wine, separate from a community I love.

There are so many ways to experience life, especially toward its end. Welcome to New York.

How Young Everyone Was

1964 Tony was working at the NYC Parks Department on Lexington Avenue as a “parkie,” playing basketball and other stuff with the kids from the tenements. He was also studying for his master’s in Art History, being mentored by Ad Rinehart. And he was working at Cafe La Mama with other playwrights and directors on the play he began in college in Mexico City.

We frequently went to the theater there, hanging out with the other members. It felt like a commune to me. Everyone was expected to work on everyone else’s plays: stage hands, costumes, sets, etc. Ellen ran a tight ship that way. So in the beginning there were no *stars* that I could see. I met Sam Shephard a couple of times, casually, and now I realize that he was even younger than I was, which was very young in ’64, ’65. Everyone was incredibly young and talented, and excited about new ideas in theater and the arts. There was Caffe Cino, La Mama and soon the Negro Ensemble Company and they were all doing theater much different from the shows we saw on Broadway.

I don’t remember how we became involved with Negro Ensemble Company but we went to the St. Marks Playhouse for plays and enjoyed the small parties after opening nights with Robert Hooks, Douglas Turner Ward and Hattie Winston. Tony liked Hattie and Hattie liked Tony, and I nearly died with jealousy when Hattie asked Tony to be her date to the Grand Opening gala of the new Lincoln Center Metropolitan Opera. 1966 I think. I actually took the photo of Tony in his tux and Hattie in our railroad flat as they set off for “Antony and Cleopatra.”

Anyway, one night Tony wanted to go to see a particular classical oud player in a cafe downtown and he didn’t show up at La Mama to help out. In no uncertain terms he was out… totally and without recourse. Ellen ran a pretty tight ship with those mostly young renegade creative boys, but as a result of her insistence on devotion to the craft,  many of them made the big time. So sad about Sam to have been taken by this cruel cruel disease. Such a loss. So many years of devotion to his craft. Words never seemed to fail him but they fail me now.

Running the Iditarod

Today I read that, while running the Iditarod to Nome this week, a sled driver fell asleep and rolled off his sled, head first into a pile of snow.  His dog team raced on to the next checkpoint, arriving there an hour ahead of him.  It reminded me of this entry  I wrote  on March 12, 2009, on CaringBridge, exactly two weeks before Tony died. We had been to Kingston for his usual radiation and, inexplicably, the nurse told him to come back in 2 months.  On the way home he was relatively clear-minded and exclaimed that he couldn’t believe what she said. “I didn’t think I would live to see spring!” I, who couldn’t believe that I would not always be caring for him, said, “Tony!  Spring is just a few days away!” That night we had what turned out to be our final dinner together: steamed clams, rice and asparagus. We watched a Margaret Cho video and, much to my surprise, he actually got the jokes.  I wrote this after he fell asleep. Before dawn he had a seizure and thus began his final days.

3/12
The Iditarod race has begun, 67 teams lined up in Alaska, dogsledding more than one thousand miles to Nome.  I now know, and have actually known for about 10 years, that I will never run the Iditarod.  I do not know why I ever thought I would or could do such a terrific feat.  In fact, I am not too crazy about dogs!  Living with, training and even, God forbid, sleeping outdoors curled up with a bunch of dogs with caribou breath is horrifying to me.  But somehow, we all seem to have these fantasies about the future.  For me, racing across tundra and through stunted forests, across frozen rivers, alone and dependent on my own wiles had seemed, for many years, an exciting prospect.  When Susan Butcher won three years in a row,  I was in my 40’s.  Life still held many options.  I appreciated the awareness and attention to every detail of the trail that was needed during every moment of the race to achieve this enormous task of battling the very environment one is moving through.  There could be no missteps, no loss of focus, no daydreaming.

But why would I want a more difficult life?  What is it that we all have that makes us fantasize the great heroic deed, the triumph and the accolades, the flush of victory?  Is it simply seeking praise, or is there a need to create a life in which we must be “present” at all times in order to achieve a worthwhile goal.

Right now my life is tiring and scary and sad and I hate “living in the moment,”  “one day at a time,”  “one foot in front of the other,” and all those clichés for living a conscious and meaningful life.  I have been saying that those are my guiding principles and have even written in this journal about how I live in the present each day. Like Susan Butcher, I believed I could triumph by virtue of my focus, strength and concentration.  I was proud of my Buddha-like mind.  How wonderful and pious I am!

I get a lot of praise for spouting these clichés.  Folks say, “Good for you, Nancy; that is the best way; that is the only way.”

Balderdash!  It’s a bunch of crap! Baloney!  A load of fustian bombast!  I hate living in the moment all the time.  There is no time for daydreaming. I want to control my life.  I want change and attitude and control.  In the Iditarod I would probably go off course and wander up to Denali, or take my time along the Yukon to observe the many colors of ice.  For sure I would stop in a few villages to check out the local hospitality.  I am not so great at staying on the path. I would not win, or even finish the race.

Tony laughs at me and says, “You are quite a rebel, expressing these thoughts. It’s not acceptable talk these days in our little culture.”

I say, “Isn’t that why you married me?  To always be the devil’s advocate, the eccentric?  You wouldn’t have wanted me to be a prosaic, ordinary partner, blabbing the same stuff everyone else is saying.”

So, sorry folks.  I lied.  I don’t want to live in the moment. I did want your approval and I knew how it “should” be.  But I am a phony.  To live that way a person must not be attached to the end result, to the past or the future.  I would need to be detached to “be here now,” and I won’t be detached.  I am passionately attached to Tony, to my children.  I am attached to my books and my bed, my garden and my old splintery-handled pitchfork, to my black and white plastic eyeglasses and to my BFF.  I am passionate about the peanut butter shakes I make for Tony and the late nights when he dictates his Caringbridge missives to me and I type, hunting for his punctuation and feeling the ideas flowing through me as if they are partly mine. I am attached to my past and to my dreams for a future, even though they will not include a dogsled ride to Nome.

The New Year

1/1
Sitting in my bedroom in the dark, looking out my window onto the dark street, what I can see are the Christmas lights winding down from the steps to the brownstone, with those big old fashioned colored bubs. There is no traffic so close to midnight. No one is walking by. Most people are either in the Park, or near the river, or on a rooftop, waiting for the fireworks. Looking up through the window, to the right, I see the streetlamp that gets me home safely at night, and straight across the street, the bright lamp that illuminates the open parlor floor of the building across the street. Turning my head to the left I see my neighbor Barbara’s home across the street. On the top floor her lamp is lit, and she is waiting to watch the fireworks in the park from her bedroom, and she has already cut up the fruit for our “Friends Brunch” tomorrow in my apartment. But I can also see, in the window, the reflection of my Christmas tree in the room behind me, a lovely isosceles triangle of brilliance, the eternal symbol of the return of light. My home is briefly at once indoors and outdoors. Tomorrow its doors will open and the light of friendship will enter. As well as some football. Happy New Year one and all.

New Year Notes:

1. Since yesterday morning I have gotten two emails and one in-person questioning about my absence from FB.  Am I ok?  What’s going on?  Have I been sick? I guess a few things have been getting me down, in the world and in my life and every once in a while my optimistic nature stumbles around in the dark, trying to find a footing. So yeah, I am just fine.  And every morning I see the increase in the light and am buoyed!  The lack of ice is also very helpful. and seeing and hearing from friends and family is always the best thing that happens in any day!
2. Twitter means to “babble,” or “gabble”, or talk in an idle or trivial way.
To Tweet means to make a high pitched chirping noise. Whoever decided on those words for that app clearly did not have anything of significance in mind, much less the delivery of important government and foreign policy decisions.
“All the little birdies on Jaybird Street
Love to hear the robin go “tweet tweet tweet.”
Soon the Rockin’ Robin will be showing up again in your yards!
3. Working very hard toward getting back to writing, drawing , collage and paint.  Very small works in process.  Except in writing of course where I tend to “babble” on and on until my inner editor takes the reins.
4. Happy New Year everyone.  Look for the light everywhere you go.  Spread the light.  Be kind, and be generous … more generous than ever. It will make a difference.