Diamond Studs

For me it was Diamond Studs that changed everything, although in retrospect it was The Merry Wives of Windsor that started the ball rolling. (And of course there was A Midsummer Night's Dream before that, and so forth ...)

But it was Diamond Studs that introduced dancing on the tables, throwing money (albeit fake) and glitter; drinking champagne like it was coca cola; outrageous fun and screamingly insane celebration busting loose like nothing less than an explosion of bliss. Nevertheless, that was just the beginning. That was still in Chapel Hill. Then the whole thing went to New York ... and that is where things really changed. There were dancing girls and lingerie, producers and choreographers, commercial artists and gay bartenders, studio apartments and cast parties, saunas and indoor pools for skinny dipping, and gin and tonics and wild abandon. There was Manhattan itself, with Times Square, Broadway, all kinds of restaurants that never closed, there was walking to and from the subway on 42Nd street past all those XXX rated theaters and shows ... and of course, there was my age and my innocence and some adults who thought I was a kid when I was 14 or 15 and some who thought or probably didn't think about how I was becoming a young woman.

And there was the apartment where I my brother and I slept on couch cushions on the living room floor.

And there was MS. Magazine, which published my letter about how I used to go to work with my mother. Was it 1976? My mother was gone, since the car accident in 1972. I had written the letter in the spring or fall of 1975. I had forgotten about it. And then I got the news that MS. Magazine would publish it.

I walked by myself up 43rd street to a newsstand on Broadway where I bought a copy of the magazine. I wore a red T-Shirt that read "DIAMOND STUDS" across the front, and as I walked past a construction site safely barricaded off by a chain link fence, someone yelled "Hey Diamond!" I studiously ignored the comment, looking down at the barren street and did the closest thing to praying that I dared to do.

Being on the Fringe of the Fringe

I want to write about being on the fringe of the fringe when my dad was in an off brodaway play in New York. It was a lot of fun. On one hand, I was exposed, at 14 through 18, to things that children are not to be exposed to in this day and age. On the other hand, I had experiences that most people do not have in their youth. Going on tour with the band, living in New York City for awhile as an actor's child, visiting London & France, not to mention a few underpants. I am almost 50 years old now, and perhaps I can see the innocence and humor in my youthful confusions and adventures. Of course, I shall sometimes have to change the names to protect the innocent and worse, to protect the guilty. The thing about it all was that my young life was quite an adventure.

The main thing seems to be: I remember finding out that girls weren't attractive to boys if they had had a lot of adventures. I remember finding out that my family secrets were not the kinds of things one shared with middle class people because they would judge one harshly. At a certain point I started to keep a lot of interesting stories to myself. Now that I am almost 50 and have been married to one person for 14 years, I don't really have to gaurd against revealing too much. What have I got to lose? My reputation?

Most people who meet me today think I am some kind of really strict religious freak. I am not. I am just someone who has learned through experience and been lucky; someone with some good stories and a few secrets.

Heaven

Heaven is camping in June in all the National Parks put together and being in good enough shape to climb all the mountains and descend into all of the canyons & swim in all the lakes. Heaven is getting up with the sunrise, making friends with turtles and starting every morning in an earth hut with a cedar smudge ceremony and a few of one's best friends.

Hindsight

An artist looks back
on her work
and says
I was there,
thank God I'm not
there now.
Moves on
on to the next thing
so she can
look back again
grateful for moving on
again
Sisyphus.

Living Will

My father suffered with Dementia for 8 years. He had a living will.

He was too young for Medicare, so he had to go on Medicaid.

In a nursing home he became aggressive, and had to be sent to a state hospital.

He lost the swallowing reflex. He got pneumonia.

The doctors would not support me to activate his living will at the hospital.

I could not afford to take him home.

They put a feeding tube in him.

He lived for another year before he got pneumonia again.

I insisted on activating his living will.

They cured his pneumonia in a nice palliative care unit

In a hospital in Wilson and then sent him

To a nursing home where he was to go on

Hospice. It took three days for Hospice to begin,

Because it was a holiday.

This whole experience left me wondering if I

Was a murderer and a torturer.

But it was his disease

That was the murder and the torturer.

Duke Park Idea

Soon, I need to write something here about Duke Park.

This is because I played and swam at Duke Park in 1968. In fact, I learned to swim in the Duke Park Pool. And I remember using the Bath House, with it's wire baskets and its safety-pin-keys that you would pin to your suit so it wouldn't get lost.

I remember how the lifeguards would call people out, and you had to sit on the side of the pool -- on the ampetheater seat -- for 5 or 10 minutes. I was afraid of those life guards and tried never to be seen by them. Interestingly, our parents trusted us and them with our lives -- once we learned to swim -- we got to go to the pool all by ourselves.

I remember the swings, the see saws, the merri-go-round ... and the moss on the ground at the base of some trees. Duke Park was a marvel and a marvelous place to go and play.

Walking this morning

This morning I went walking at the wall. I looked at the old brick tobacco warehouses across the tracks. They were as beautiful as ever, with the decorative brick designs built by brick masons like Mr. R. Kelly Bryant's grandfather, Mr. Robert Lee Poole. I looked at the old Coke building with its cement Coke advertisement in relief. It used to be the Goodwill store. I looked at the rusty iron bolts that hold the stadium lights into their pedestals. I looked at the iron loop embedded in the stone wall around Duke's east campus. I thought, it does not matter if I am a lousy proofreader.

the gift: for someone special

You came back from a place
where you'd gone
I'd not known
You were so far away
for so long
I forgot that I missed
what went with you

Times thought of you
a mythical creature
who I've seen in my dreams
I said you were real
had fine wings like a bat
the fire of a dragon
and you'd flown off to heaven
and were not of this world

But I knew that was wrong
and I thought
Where'd you go?
And what did I give you
And how would I know
And as I thought
my thoughts drifted like a
mist on a lake

been so long
I'd forgotten
or not really forgot,
I had forced it upon you
It wasn't for your sake
And not something you wanted
A burden to take

But you came back
and returned me my treasure
well aged
And the years you were gone
I found out you had raged
all over the country
burning holes
in your own flesh

I cried for your pain
and I laughed for my joy
And I thanked God for your life
that He spared
And I promised myself
that as long as you remained here
I would never ask more
than you gave.

Worry

Merriam Webster defines worry as:"mental distress or agitation resulting from concern usually for something impending or anticipated: ANXIETY ..."

I worry a lot these days about my home economy, and the economy in general. I worry so much that is exhausts me, and I have very little energy left for fighting to survive in this economy.

Which gets me thinking about worry. It is said that worry, if you are doing all you can to ward off the impending distaster, is a waste of time and energy. So why do I worry? Will worry prevent the disaster? There must be some little part of me that thinks it will, because I not only worry, but I am afraid that if I give up worrying I will quit fighting for survival.

Hmm.

I am writing this piece to try and figure out the whole psychological dynamic of worrying. It seems to me that if I understand it, I will be able to put it in some perspective, and let it go.

I think the whole financial crisis that continues to plague us is about worry -- or to put it another way, it is about a lack of trust. Investors feel a lack of trust, thanks to credit default swaps and Bernie Madoff, in companies. They do not trust that the companies will be able to deliver. So they do not invest. And since they do not invest, companies must cut everything to the bone or actually go bankrupt. Therefore, the companies are cutting jobs, and the fear of joblessness creates more worry, while actual joblessness creates more fear.

And as we know, fear leads to all sorts of evil.

So the trick is to engender love and not fear. The only problem with that is that it has to come from the bottom up, because those with a lot to lose are way more worried than those with little.

Juan Williams

Smart smart smart. I love to see him smiling with a look on his face like he just knows better than you, me, us. He does I do believe.

Humus

If I had time. I'd write a study on humus. But I am drawing today. with colored pencils! What fun!

Today I reaped another 5 cucumbers from my garden. One yellow squash is ready. The Okra is getting ready, the corn, tomatoes and zuccinis too. It's all thanks to our yard being ancient farmland, and the humus (our compost.) One more thing to note: We haven't got enough garbage for the early pick up this week, in part because of our recycling and composting. Hurray! We do not have to spend as much money on vegetables, and we are able to give away vegetables to our neighbors. Yay! Fertilzing with compost has worked for me. Next Summer, the garden will double in size!! Yay!!

Onward ... towards greater progress ... hee hee..

6-30-09

Giving Up A Dream

They have always said "never give up your dreams." But what if your dreams are incompatible with your needs?

Sometimes you have to give up dreams to get your life. When you have that problem, you should have a cheering section that tells you it's okay to cry, and when you're done crying, look around yourself and start making gratitude lists. That's what I say to myself today.

White Privilege & Privilege in General

Not going to discuss whether it exists or not. I know it did as I was growing up because I saw it everyday of my life.

Not going to discuss where it came from. I know that racism was a crazy idea that took hold because some powerful, wealthy whites in the 17th century recognized a method of maintaining a subjugated labor-force, and it got a stranglehold on America because because poor whites wanted to think they were better than somebody.

Bottom line for me: If you have privilege, quite often you do not know you have it. How do you find out you have it? You have to examine your life and see how it has worked. If you have any kind of privilege, use it to help somebody else. Just don't take it for granted.

Wow.

Wow. Did you hear R. Kelly Bryant Jr. speak with Frank Stasio on WUNC tonight? Wowie Zowie. I love listening to Mr. Bryant. He's a genius.

Pastor Benjamin at ATUMC

Pastor Benjamin at Asbury Temple United Methodist Church in Northeast Central Durham counseled me with a few words in passing recently. He said "You are a contemplative." That was great to hear. He knew that I wanted an identitiy. He gave me one. A contemplative. I like the word because it is both a noun and an adjective depending on the way it is used, and it vaguely connotes nuns. I can see myself this way.

Update

Thanking People?

Don't know why I am thanking anyone. For what? Did I win an academy award? Ha ha ha ha ha. I take myself too seriously.

I'm most likely the most frequent reader of my blog. That makes me the audience. That is laugh.

My dad once wrote a song called "Face in the Mirror". I have a hunch it was about me. "There's nobody dearer than the face in the mirror. You'll never let yourself be blue."

I am laughing at myself with a weird half smile on my face.

There Are Two Someone Elses

There are two someones in my family that I have failed to thank. Two someones who modeled certain behaviors that stick in my memory and have become a part of me. My step-mothers.

I have always, and will always miss my real mother so much that no one will ever take her place. To me, her loss is the biggest tragedy of my life, and I will never get over it. There is a certain huge amount of rejection one faces from ones' step mothers just because they are not ones own mother.

Once, when I was about nine years old, when my real mother was still alive, something happened that let me know how much my mother loved me. It was a rainy day. I had moccasins or sandals on my feet. I rode the bus from school to the Chapel Hill bus station to meet my father after school. It was a Wednesday, his day to see me.

Dad and I walked the mile to the Campus of UNC, and then walked all over the campus. We walked from Franklin Street to the Student Union and back at least, before we met my mother for dinner. My feet got wet, and the temperature outside was none too warm.

When we then walked over to the municipal parking lot to meet my mother, she became furious at my father.

"You didn't take Jesse (that's how we spelled my nick-name then) walking all over campus in the rain! Look how wet her feet are! Do you want her to catch pneumonia??!!"

I was stunned. My father had gone away and left her for weeks without any certain return date. I had seen my mother cry over my father, but I had never seen speak angrily to him for anything.

Since then, I've been corrected and "yelled at", but for memories of unconditional love in my childhood, I hold onto that memory of my mother caring about how wet and cold my feet were.

Now, a step-mother can never love you that way. She can correct you and try to steer you, and even model for you, but her first loyalty is to her own children and your father, not you.

Nevertheless, and sad as that makes me, I still owe thanks to my step mothers. One of them modeled dedication to research and writing for me. the other modeled self care.

So there it is, as hard as it is to say it, these memories too have become a part of me. Maybe I will be able to write more about that at a later date. Just as long as my mother in heaven knows that she is my first love, and that I am loyal to her.

Altruism

A selfish disregard for the welfare of others sounds bad doesn’t it? That is the opposite of “Altruism”. Altruism is a word referring to the selfless regard for the welfare of others. Altruism is a positive quality desirable in our world today. If we had more altruism, we would have more peace and fewer wars, for one cannot persist in killing another being for which he she has a selfless regard.

How is altruism to be attained? You first must accept that different people have differing points of view. For example, if you are a Latino woman in the U.S. who attended college thanks to affirmative action and a minority scholarship, you are very likely to have a different perspective on the value of education than someone for whom a college education was paid for by parents and taken for granted.

You must also possess the imagination to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. For example supposing you are a married white female with a family. In order for you to understand the point of view of an unmarried gay man with a family, you have to use your imagination. Imagine that your step daughter has been hospitalized with a head injury after a terrible car accident. Will your insurance cover her? Will you be allowed to sit beside her and hold her hand as she struggles toward recovery in the hospital? If you do not have the capability to imagine yourself in these circumstances, then you cannot claim to have a selfless regard for the welfare of others.

Finally, in order to be truly altruistic, you must be able to get past simplistic assumptions about other people’s lives. Everyone’s universe is filled with complexity, and nothing is simple.

Let’s imagine that Joe is a boss who has written a policy designed to avoid gossip in the workplace. His policy says that “No one says anything to others that one cannot say to your face.” To Joe, this policy takes care of the problem. However, Joe does not understand his position of power. When laborers subordinate to Joe have a conflicting opinion, there is not procedure other than confronting Joe. No one wants to do that for fear of being fired or discounted by Joe. By failing to understand and take into account the complexities of Joe’s relationship to the laborers, Joe has failed to demonstrate altruism towards his workers.

In conclusion, we would have more peace and fewer wars in the world if more people truly grasped altruism’s prerequisite concepts: point of view, imagination, and consideration of individual circumstances. More of an unselfish regard for the welfare of others would behoove all people on earth.

Novel Outline

Having drafted a 100 word outline of her 1st novel, she prepares to write query letters to university presses by cleaning house, and reorganizing the furniture.

Quintessence Memory Books