"There is no one between you and me." Czeslaw Milosz

"There is no one between you and me” Czeslaw Milosz

When I started this blog in 2006, I instinctively titled it Augustine’s Confessions—no other name for this even brushed by. So, I’ll confess. I turned 65 today. Who woulda thunk? I’m proud and grateful. I had one open-heart surgery at 51, and another one eight years later, and the year after that a surgeon put a VERY IMPORTANT stent in my left main artery. For a couple of years my cardiologist checked to see if it was still open, via heart catheterization every six months and it was always fine, so we decided not to go through that for awhile. Oh, and I have a messy neurological disease called Myasthenia gravis (it’s always done that way, with a capital M and a small g ) Six and a half decades! I’ll tell you about them:

1-10: small New Jersey town, neighborhood full of kids, St. Paul’s Elementary, learned to read (!!!) ballet classes & Miss Lynn, 3 remarkable, funny, handsome, teasing, brothers, Mommy and Daddy, Ditty and Bob.

10-20: All of the above and first kiss (Dickie Young in the back of a bus) many more ballet classes, NYC and Juilliard, Antony Tudor, hard, hard, hard work, fell in love 2x, (one painter, one actor) sex, learned about theater, museums, drugs, music, living poor, marched against the war, Bob Dylan, dance, dance, dance, dance.

20-30: Went to Italy for a summer to perform at Spoleto, graduated from said Juilliard, fell in love with a piano player, moved to Albuquerque, taught at the University of New Mexico, started a modern dance company with the piano player and another Juilliard student, lost the guy, choreographed, performed on tour, did costumes, became a drinker, moved back to NYC.

30-40: Tore my Achilles tendon in performance, stopped dancing, kept drinking, sobered up, (32 years, now) went back to school, became a teacher in Florida (emotionally disturbed Kindergartners), almost got married twice, wanted a baby.

40-50: Got pregnant, got married, lost my baby, (the worst thing) spent a year living in England, (maybe the best year) moved to Maryland, dogs, cats, and gardens, taught older special needs kids, felt pretty damn middle class, went to a lot of doctors because I had weird things going on like double vision all the time and it felt like I was climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro when I went up a slope, (a slope!) went back to Europe a couple of times, started to look a lot more like Mom.

50-60: Divorce, moved back to Florida to take care of Mom, then Dad, Mom died, my youngest brother, Ric, died, Dad died, (I know) got answers to my health mysteries, began writing poems and a bad novel.

60-65: Peaceful. One of my brothers, (Drago’s his blog name) and I live in a comfortable house with a dog and 3 cats. There are also outside cats who were born in our back garden and who have stayed around. Two of them beg to get their bellies rubbed whenever I go out to see them. My book of poems, “One Day Tells its Tale to Another” got published by The Linnet’s Wings, and I go off on road trips at least once a year to a poetry festival. My brother/housemate and I get along ridiculously well and so do the cats and our dog…and the other cats. My other brother lives in Philadelphia, but maybe he'll join us one day.   

Some time ago I developed the habit of posting something on my Facebook page about a writer (usually) whose birthday was on that day. I wake up, feed the outside cats (and the inside animals if I’m up first) and start reading biographies. I’ve become pleasurably compulsive about this and today I had SO MANY birthday greetings from people who know me through FB.   

I haven’t been writing this summer, but I’m going to. I’m going to write a book of poems about the ancestry research I went from dabbling in to doing intensively. It turns out my family comes from the first kings and queens of Scotland, conquistadors, Alsatian farmers, French pioneers, factory girls, and Irish refugees from the potato famine. During the 19th century my great-grandparents made it to Staten Island, New York and hooked up. And here I am. 65. I still dance, alone in the Florida room when Drago’s out teaching yoga, I still listen to Bob Dylan, (I’m more a Leftie than ever) and I still,  as ever, love to read a good book.

Foolish Dancer

Late November, New York City, 1967.

An 18 year old dance student, let's call her Susan, woke up in a rebellious mood. She'd been craving a day to herself in the city, but never had the time. Every weekday she was at Juilliard from 9 to 9, and when she had a rare rehearsal-free weekend, her parents expected her to take the bus out to New Jersey to visit them. So Susan got up her nerve and called the dance department secretary and told her big lie-that she was sick and wouldn't be able to make her classes that day. She'd never have thought of doing this on a day when she was expected to rehearse, but on this particular Wednesday she wasn't needed by any of the choreographers who had cast her in their pieces. Susan's roommate had already left for her day of music classes and piano practice, so there were no witnesses to her tiny revolt.

The day was cold and sunny, and Susan had it all to herself. She didn't have much, in fact hardly any, cash, however. But the Metropolitan Museum was free and she could walk across Central Park from W.91st St. It would be a long walk, but Susan was young and strong and feeling adventurous.

This was a day of firsts for Susan: she'd played hooky, walked the width of the chilly park alone, and enjoyed hours of roaming the Metropolitan with only herself to please. She felt sophisticated, artistic, and, because she'd chosen her favorite outfit that morning,  stylish.

The thunderstorm started a little after three. Susan was wandering around the Rodin sculptures, in love with them, but getting tired and a little worried about how she'd get back to her apartment before dark and with the storm. (She didn't know bus routes very well yet, and certainly couldn't afford a taxi.) A man in dark gray suit made a comment to her about the Rodin bronze of Balzac. The tall dark stranger was good-looking, older-at least in his thirties-and wanted to talk to her about art! Susan, flattered by his interest in her, did not have a moment of wariness about this guy. When, after a very pleasant conversation, he, let's call him Dick, mentioned that he lived across from the museum, had a car, and that he could give her a lift home if she'd like, Susan only thought, "he's lives in one of NY's best neighborhoods, he loves art, seems very nice, okay-fine-it'll be fine!"

Susan and Dick hurried across 5th Ave. to his car, a black Corvette (!) but he said his keys were in his apartment and would she come up for a drink while he got them. She wasn't quite sure she liked this, but it was windy and pouring, and it would be fine. Fine! But it wasn't.

Dick took her coat, poured her a glass of wine, and attacked. Within minutes of entering the apartment, Susan was on her back on the couch, fighting off a bastard who was trying to fuck her. But he gave up, because Susan, a dance major at Juilliard, had strong enough legs to push him off of her enough times to convince him he wasn't going to get off that way. So he masturbated. She wasn't a virgin, had gone all the way on her 18th birthday and then once with the young artist she'd started dating, but she didn't know about masturbation, had yet to even look at an erect penis properly, and was wholly, completely horrified by Dick, his cock and what he was doing to it and saying to her, being alone with him, and most of all, by what she thought of as her own stupidity. He insisted she watch him but she cried and refused until he started yelling and cursing. Dick finally finished, tidied himself up, gave Susan her coat, and actually drove her home! She didn't want to get in his car, but was too fragile to argue. And, little as she knew at the time about predatory men, she sensed he was spent and she'd be safe.

She saw Dick again a few months later in the Museum of Modern Art. She had to pass him on the staircase, and he glanced at her without a flicker of recognition. Susan left without seeing the Picasso sculpture exhibit. She did see it before it closed, but she went with her older brother.

She hated Dick, and what he'd done, but she kept it all a secret, because she thought she'd been so stupid, you see. So very foolish. She blamed herself. She went up to his apartment, didn't she? The whole sorry story remained her shameful secret  until well into her twenties when she told a friend, let's call her Linda, after a few glasses of wine. As she told the story, Susan finally unraveled her confused thoughts about that wet November afternoon, and she finally assigned all the blame for Dick's abuse to him. I've known about Susan and that guy, that dick, for ages, but it seems to me that right now is a good time to tell the story to you, because Susan and I are angry again-legitimately angry.

Seriously

When I was a junior in high school I ran for Secretary of my senior class.  I’d been elected to the student council each year and I thought I could do a good job taking minutes and all. I’m pretty sure I got on the student council, my entry into politics, my freshman year because I had two well-known, well-liked, handsome older brothers. They paved the way. Even though my personal ambitions were of the ballerina-kind, I was a good kid and listened to all the adult voices that claimed beefing up my list of extra-curricular activities was the way to go if I wanted to get in to a good college. I didn’t know then that Juilliard, the only college I wanted to attend, would not be impressed by my being elected Secretary of my senior class. I campaigned, (hung posters around the school) wrote a speech, and was, to my amazement, elected! No one knew what courage this whole business demanded. I was shy, did not have an approved wardrobe bought in the favored store in nearby Ridgewood, New Jersey, and, a very tricky bit for me, had a bilateral lisp. I dreaded giving my speech to the entire student body (about 400 kids.) But I did it and that was my political career. I have no idea why I won-possibly because I had fewer enemies than the other candidates; my trudge through high school hadn’t included much drama, if any. There was plenty of drama in my dance life, but I didn’t think that counted very heavily outside of various studios.

I’ve always been bowled over by national politicians. They are of another species.  They want to make decisions for other people. Lots of other people. They want to lead public lives and know that they will make enemies and that people will say mean things about them. How about that? Even when they are successful and their side wins an argument, they just wake up to a day filled with new battles.  It must be tremendously difficult to be in the public eye and yet stay out of trouble and easy as pie to slide into a quagmire of one kind or another. Yet these men and women run for office thoughout their lives, ever trying to keep their names on more and more lips, their pictures on more posters, and their speeches heard by bigger crowds. Holy cannoli! Not a life for me.

I’ve been a serious voter though. I do my best. Talk, read, listen; try to figure things out so that I can make educated choices. Not so easy.  I’ve been bamboozled a few times-and I’ve certainly gone with the losing side and had to live with people who I had no faith in being the boss of me, at least for a term or two.  But, you know, Obama is someone I trust. I think I have from the get-go. I like that he’s tall and has a great smile; I like his wife and kids; I like his background and think it’s cool that he’s of mixed race, and I trust him. I believe that he does his best, and I find that I’ve never had reason to question his choices as our President. So, with this, with the killing of an unarmed monster named Osama bin Laden, I’m not going to wrestle with something that until now I’ve not had to deal with. A murderer was murdered in my name and that’s all right with me. I didn’t dance in the streets about it, but I’m not surprised that many people did. If bin Laden had been shooting at the SEALS, I wouldn’t have had to re-organize, accommodate, think about this news at all. It’s just that I grew up believing it was wrong to shoot an un-armed man, and now I need to believe that in this case, in Osama bin Laden’s case, it was an okay thing to do.  And I’m going with that. I’ve stretched a little and that’s fine. I’m on board.

The Linnet's Wings

My favorite online magazine (I'm the poetry editor) is live with its spring issue. We are going to have it available in print as well, and details about that are posted in the zine. This issue has a story I wrote about my Juilliard days. We haven't used our editors' work since the early issues of The Linnet's Wings, but this spring we decided, "what the hey?" I hope some of you read it. No, I hope all of you read it. 8-}


I listened to an NPR broadcast earlier this afternoon. Tiffany Christianson discussed her book, "Sick Girl Speaks," and I found her to be inspiring, indeed. She has lived with cystic fibrosis since she was a baby, and she has worked hard at living life with a disease. She said that she is not her disease, and discussed how she has learned to separate her symptoms from her spirit.

I want to read her book-because I don't do this. When I have angina, and I do, often, I succumb in spirit to the way I feel. It's as if I'm under the influence of something shameful. The constriction of my arteries becomes a constriction of my spirit and depresses me, but this woman who has had two lung transplants and lives with a daunting list of things that have gone wrong, recognizes them as problems with her body, only.

This is good stuff for anyone with chronic physical dysfunction. We may be people who allow our diseases to diminish us deeply, in our souls, if you will. Why do I, and some of you, do this? My coronary arteries are damaged; my "heart" need not be. Worth thinking about, eh?

My best day at Ramsey High School

It was April of my senior year, second period, French IV. The intercom interrupted Mrs. Plevin reading Moliere. There was nothing unusual about the annoying blare from the Principal's office, but they called my name, which had never happened before. I was told to call home immediately. I got my pass and raced down to the phone booth on the ground floor. By the time Mom answered my call, I had scared myself silly, but she said right away that she had good news and couldn't wait until I got home to tell me. I'd gotten my acceptance letter from the dance department at Juilliard! I was going to New York City! Oh,God, New Jersey,good-by! Finally!!!

Ahem...sorry for all the exclamation points. Later, after I got suburbia out of my system, and could think rationally about my high school years, I realized they could have been a lot worse. I just needed to get some perspective, you know?

SURAL NERVE BIOPSY

If you don't happen to know where a sural nerve is, or what it does, don't feel alone. None of the swarm of friendly, kind, people in our good hospital's outpatient surgery staff knew about it either. I could hear them discussing it. Didn't bother them-they just kept asking each other until someone knew. I had to laugh at how determined the staff was to get the correct ankle biopsied. Even though the surgeon came in to write a big yes (in permanent marker) on my left leg, they kept checking with me anyway. The whole business went fine and I was home be 1 o'clock, ate a big piece of apple pie with vanilla ice cream, and slept the sleep of the heavily drugged all afternoon. I'm fine. I have needed my cane to remain upright, but I was so afraid my heart would act up and they'd keep me overnight, but I was a good patient and got to go home.

Now my little piece of nerve is in Atlanta to be muttered over and tested. I see a new family physician tomorrow and hopefully she'll be the kind of doctor who will read her reports from other doctor's and have some means of knowing which patient is which (or at least good at pretending she knows.)

My brother Peter took me and picked me up. He was talking to the nurse about my "unsteadiness" and he said, "Oh, she's always like that now. But she used to be a ballerina and went to Juilliard." I swear the nurse had tears in her eyes.
You know, it was a moment. xxoononnie