Neighborhood Watch

                                     The weekly meeting with my neighbors, the Corvids.

Thursday is trash day and it's also talk-to-the-crows day. The good ol' gaggle of American crows. Not to be confused with their fancy faced and larger breed the raven, although the Americans are pretty big and like to show their power. 

This morning I took out the trash and heard various song birds sounding alarm bells. I looked up and saw my usual murder of crows on scaffolded sections of the stand of conifers a couple houses away. 

When I crossed the street, a pair of crows swooped into the old oak above me. I put the bags at the base of it's trunk on the curb. While I was tying the town stickers onto the bags, they started their weekly conversation. I politely ask that they not break open the bags on the street and offered to give them some crumbs instead. Usually, they'd calm down and fly around to the back of the house for a treat. But today, they kept looking at me, and their conversation was growing louder and more varied than usual. 

I stopped talking to them after securing the first sticker. I took inventory of the canopy of the Oak. And then I saw it, and understood the fuss. A Peregrine Falcon was in the upper branches. The crows were acting as sentinels for me. They had spaced themselves on opposite sides of the tree at the same height between me and the falcon. The song birds were fearful that it would find their nests in the various bushes and trees in the neighborhood.  Or worse, eat them. I had wondered why the feeder was empty when I was making tea.

                               ( This picture was taken of a documented event, when a murder of crows                                    mobbed a peregrine falcon to make it leave.                                                                              https://besgroup.org/2009/03/27/peregrine-falcon-mobbed-by-a-c )                                           (  https://www.uml.edu/falcons/about.aspx  More on peregrine falcons)

 I slowly tied the second sicker to the second bag. Then I tried staring down the falcon. The falcon was significantly smaller than the crows - it was roughly 10", while they were closer to 20". Peregrines are roughly the size of the Western Jay pictured in the top image. The Falcon had a sweet face and it kept abashedly turning away from me. The only concession it made was to fly to a branch on opposite side of the tree, remaining above me and the crows. 

The crows began to clap their beaks and look at me. I felt they were asking me to do something. What would scare a peregrine falcon, the fastest bird on earth? 

Standing in my pajamas and slippers, with my glasses pushed up to the top of my head, I began to make the sounds of a Great Horned Owl. I constricted my throat and inhaled air through it for the first part of the call. I had to adjust for pitch, as my first attempt sounded more like a parrot (prey) than a large owl (predator). Lowered the pitch and then followed it with some deep soft, yet firm series of "hooos".  I then repeated the sequence. That caught the falcon's full attention. The crows grew quiet while I did this, too. They hadn't heard me speak Raptor before, only Corvid and ugly Human.

The peregrine gave me one last glance, looked over it's shoulder and flew away at its singular speed: 240 mph! That is how it can escape it's two known predators: a Golden Eagle (200mph max) or an acrobatic Great Horned Owl! Peregrines are fast, but not acrobatic like many Owls or Ravens. 

Being a good neighbor means being good to all your neighbors wild and domestic (this includes inanimate beings like trees, flowers, even stones, but that's another story). And in kind they will be good and watch over you.

Update: Let Triton, my tripawd, out. I think the falcon has moved down towards the river, at least that is where the murder of crows has gone. The song birds are still on alert. Triton will have the whole yard to himself until the crows chase away the intruder.

No Them, Only US

This morning, I started to watch the hearing on Biden's document case and stopped. I realize it's not good for my health (more "drama obscuring reality").

(Walt Kelly’s funny animal comic strip Pogo provided a surprising, but effective, setting for his incisive political satire. During the War of 1812, the United States Navy defeated the British Navy in the Battle of Lake Erie. Master Commandant Oliver Perry wrote to Major General William Henry Harrison, “We have met the enemy and they are ours.” Kelly’s parody of this famous battle report perfectly summarizes mankind’s tendency to create our own problems. In this case, we have only ourselves to blame for the pollution and destruction of our environment.
Kelly coined the phrase for an anti-pollution Earth Day poster in 1970 and used it again in a special comic strip created for Earth Day 1971. The saying caught the collective imagination of the public and is still used today.)

We are humans. Humans have always had an "Us vs Them" mentality. Last century it was World Wars followed by the Cold War. At the end of the 80's into the early 90's the enemy (the Them), when the Cold War was ending, it started to become "US". In order to have a "them" it became a national enemy vs an alien one.

Then 9/11 came and gave the gift of an alien enemy, including the propaganda of the Cold War as it shifted to the propaganda against Iraq/Muslims. Many of us knew that was a false claim. History proved us correct. It lead to our longest war involving American soldiers, EVER. As administrations changed, the rhetoric changed and we tried to deescalate and exit. But the love of an enemy and the capitalistic realities of war made that difficult. Plus, we'd made promises to our allies in the invaded middle east nations. With the election of Obama, I saw the rise in overt racism slowly tick UP. I saw people refer to Democrats as Socialists (not quite Soviets or dictatorships, but a charged rhyme or echo). The call for a viable third party had been ringing for sometime, and so far hasn't been answered. Government started to break down. The Republicans denied hearing Obama's Supreme Court Judge nominations?!!

In 2016 with the election of tRump we saw more propaganda rise in effective ways and glimmers of authoritarian rhetoric began. Any one who had ever lived (lives) in NYC knew that tRump as a con artist, narcissist, and racist/antisemitic/mysogynist. We foolishly thought his run was a joke, and believed he did too, he was in it for the money and celebrity. But he won. Part of the reason he won the immigrant vote was because he used the words "elite" and "socialists". New citizens fleeing authoritarian regimes didn't want any leadership that skewed toward "authoritarian". Afterwards, the US vs Them became Democrats vs Republicans. tRump stacked three republican and god-fearing (tRump) judges in the Supreme Court. Chaos reigned and dysfunction crippled our government. His rhetoric became authoritarian and he befriend autocrats and dictators. He vilified and lied about those who went against him. He tyrannically demanded his party do so in kind.

Then to top it all off, he LOST in 2020 and wouldn't concede. He directed an extreme and indoctrinated element of the Republican party to storm the Capitol and try to stop the peaceful transition of power with the violent extremists with an insurrection.

In office, Biden ended the longest war in American History (it took him 20 years , as Senator, VP and finally President). tRump had already created a propaganda press and media the follows him and doesn't question a word of what he or his minions say. He had created a following, or some say cult ~ because they swallow his soundbites whole ~ that will do his bidden, not because they respect him, rather they fear him. The Supreme Court over turned Roe v Wade, a campaign promise of tRumps in 2016! This sounds like an authoritarian ruler. He has now undone our checks and balances, but using the privileged means of delaying and appealing trials. Even the Supreme court is bowing down to him, so that he may be elected before he is tried. His is now the presumptive Republican nominee.

Democrats are scrambling to win over Hailey's voters, plus Independents and Republicans who see that this is no longer their party or dare I say country. The Great American Experiment is teetering towards failing.

On a week-in-review program over the weekend, I heard someone say, "You can't change beliefs with fact." This was a rebuttal to the idea of comparing and contrasting the fact of who Biden and tRump are as leaders and men. False news = Propaganda. How to combat it? And if tRump is elected news organizations, press, schools, thinkers with authority or power will be punished or worse by tRump. He will become the "Tyrant" the Declaration of Independence worried ascending in politics.

tRump was won the war of media, technology and a fragmented society (some could argue world~ as ever nation will be effected by the Climate Crisis, borders, human migration and scarcity of resources [never evenly distributed, but hey, I don't want to sound like a social democrat -ha]). Biden must step up his communication skills and changing the narrative. To find a belief that we hold true (self-evident, undeniable) and we will all agree to as AMERICANS, the US citizenry. There should be no "Them", only US!

Incase you haven't read it in a while, click here!

https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript

The Karen

        When I was a girl in the 1960's the world was large and only knowable through books, stories from  adult's travel, dusty globes that spun with different countries, dependent on the year they were printed (before or after a war, usually), National Geographic, and the occasional circus. When the Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey Circus came to Boston during it's 100th Anniversary in 1970, I was a few months shy of 8. I was mesmerized by the exotic African and Indian animals, gravity defying human acts, and the music driving the action in the three rings.  However, with all the images still swirling in my brain, and the circus program in my lap the entire hour ride back to our rural home, I'd yet to discover the above mind blowing poster in the program. 

     "Beginning with the 100th Anniversary Program in 1970, some of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey programs had poster reproductions inserted in the program book. These varied in size but were about 16 inches by 20 inches. It’s easy to identify them because they were folded in quarters and have staple holes where they were inserted into the program. They continued this for several years.

        In 1970 the 100th Edition of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey souvenir program advertised a set of four posters measuring 26 inches x 17 inches for $3.98 per set.

        Those posters were:

Barnum & Bailey – Tiger Head – Blue Background

Barnum & Bailey – 1000 Skits by 50 Original Clowns

Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey – Giraffe Neck Women from Burma

Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey – Dainty Miss Leitzel" (https://www.worthpoint.com/articles/collectibles/circus-posters-authentic-or-reproduction)

       

        I tacked the poster of the Burmese women on my bedroom wall for the next 2.5 years. I made up stories about the women and nursed occasional fears. The women's necks, the long heavy earrings, their smiling lips, but stern eyes confused my young mind. The gold rings on their arms and legs with their bare feet below (except for one who wore what looked like leather boots), made me feel sorry for the women. It was hot where they lived, I was told, and my child mind could feel the weight and heat of these bangles as burdens, not items of beauty or status. Their image has informed the lens in which I, from a young age, question cultural values and identities. This was aided by my Aunt Ama, who is Ghanaian, and what she taught me about her culture and it's values. Children's stories, for example, weren't about rugged individuals or quests, they were more inline with how each persons choice affects the whole family or village. I figured that these rings must be apart of narrative I hadn't yet learned about and would later in school or by traveling. 

        I would later learn that the original Giraffe-Neck Woman poster was from the 1930's or between the World Wars, during the end of the Colonization of Burma by the British. Last month, I read Theroux's novel set at the end of the 116 year rule of Britain in Burma. The novel's is mostly set in Burma between 1922-27. Burma Sahib is a fictional account of Eric Blair's life as a probationary police officer, as when he sets sail for Burma upon graduation from Eton at 19. Upon arrival he experiences trials and tribulations in  seven different Burmese police districts, he heads back for England just before his 24th Birthday. By then, the reader witnesses how he's begun to manifest his "secret self," the contrarian, and this self will later emerge as George Orwell when he begins to write his political novels. The young Eric, is uncomfortable being a "sahib" or a colonizer who enforces non-native laws. If you love Theroux's travel writing and story telling, this historical novel will keep you reading, and learning, page after page. It's like reading Conrad's Secret Sharer, only not as dark, yet with a modern cynicism. Both protagonists have a transformational and defining journey that starts and ends on boats in their young lives. Much like I did on a boat between the ages of 17-20.

Similar to the sensational Apocalypse Now, during the cultural revolution and end of the Vietnam War of the 1970's hit a nerve, the setting was inspired by using another Conrad  story, The Heart of Darkness, and Col. David Hackworth's dossier (I worked with Hack on his seminal book,  About Face, in which he details how the military failed in Vietnam, and while being the most decorated living soldier at the same time). Only instead of it being a disillusionment with "unwinnable wars", in Theroux's fictional account of the budding George Orwell, it's the disillusionment of "failing as a foreign enforcer in a colonized country." 

        In both Apocalypse Now and Burma Sahib, the role of the native women and men are explored by the protagonists. In both stories "going native" is frowned upon or a reason for treason or demotion. In Burma Sahib, the roles of women,  of varying classes, is examined in granular and insightful detail. There is even a brief moment where the young Eric, just starting to writing poetry, describes the "ring-necked women" he sees and wonders at them, while realizing they are from a sub-group of the Karen religion (Kayan, of Red Karen's, a Tibeto-Burman ethnic minority). I'd learned about Jainism from many Indian friends, but this was my introduction to "Karen's" and the fact that the Burmese Giraffe-Neck Woman were from region. 

        Karen. My name. A meme. A slur. An entitled middle class white woman. The Karen. The Karen are an internally diverse group of ethnic minorities who live primarily in southern and southeastern Burma. They are the second-largest non-Burman ethnic group in Myanmar comprising some 6% of the population, and are mostly Christian. During WWII, roughly 28% of Karen served in the Burmese army, which by British policy deliberately excluded ethnic Burmans. During the war, the Karen continued to support the British even as Burmans, led by Aung San, sided with the Japanese.

        Representatives for the Karen attended the 1947 Panglong Conference (two years after the end of WWII) as observers but did not formally participate in the negotiations. Beginning in 1949, a rebellion broke out among the Karen people and was quickly followed by the wholesale defection of Karen units in the newly-formed Burmese army. The Karen National Union (KNU) has been at war with the central Burmese government since this time, making this rebellion the longest in contemporary world history. They seek greater autonomy, political rights (including the right to bear arms), and social autonomy in the realms of religion, culture, education and language. (For more on the Karen people and their plight look here: https://kcssf.org.au/about-us/the-karen-people/)

        Needless to say, the fact that I learned, in my 62nd year, that these women were from an ethnic group, The Karen, after reading a novel by Paul Theroux about the foundational period in George Orwell's life, was thrilling. I last month I discovered my bizare & beloved poster in file folder with my name on it while going through my mother's papers. The file was titled "Karen's Favorites." I guess Mom took it down when we moved to Lincoln, when I turned 10, and it never was seen again, until now.

Transitions: Observe. Hold. Release.

         The common chorus is "you're going through so many things at once." You could say that chorus has been playing most of my life, and many times the things have been of my own making or environmental. Growing up in the houses I did, drama often obscured reality. It took me until my 30's to begin to train myself not to find drama familiar and comfortable. The new boundaries required great deal of work, especially since my biological clock was ticking and it resulted in  making a family of my own during that decade, before all my boundaries had set.

        Thirty years later, I'm still refining my tolerance for drama and requiring more peace at every turn. Boundaries are still a work in progress (as my cycles of life change so do my perimeters).  So out of the five (5) biggest stressors in human life ~ 1) Death/Birth of a loved one, 2) Divorce/Marriage, 3) Moving,  4) Major illness or injury, 5) Job loss/Retirement ~ I guess you could argue that I'm experiencing four of them (although it will be 12 years in June,  I might even argue and add Divorce (5th), as it's still a loss that holds space in my being, as there has been no replacement relationship).

        Driving through my original hometown this morning, Bolton, MA, I had an epiphany. All the Buddhist training, Psychological tools, and Meditation modes have lead me back to being the girl running through the woods and looking closely at all the beings that lived there. I used to get very still and just let myself "be" in the woods. This is where I first practiced Being. I learned where various critters lived. How the seasons changed the course of the brooks. The trees had sticky and less sticky seasons. Where the wild asparagus grew. Which crab apples were worth a bite and which would be too bitter. The difference between salamander and frog eggs.  Where the rabbits felt safe. Where bones of wild critters would be easy to find. How the sun and moon lived in different places in the sky in different seasons. To taste rain or snow in the wind before it arrived. And so much more. I was just left to be and observe. That gave me a certain confidence. I'd come home with questions or finds and gradually my mother bought me little Golden Guide books for Insects, Trees, Flowers, Fishes, Sea Shells, Fishing, and Yosemite (copyright 1970, because my first trip ever on an airplane -alone- was to California in '72 at age 10 to visit my best friend who had moved away, so naturally, I had to know about CA critters).

        I now have numerous other guide books to the Natural World in different places on the globe. In Nature I've always felt the ability to let go and Be. As I grew older, in my teens, I often sought drama in the form of adrenaline activating outdoor sports: Skiing (both kinds), running, barrel racing, biking long distances in all weather, playing on the boys soccer team, kayaking in strong currents, hiking, swimming in every kind of natural body of water, diving and salvage diving, snorkeling, free diving, sailing through hurricanes and more. These kinds of outdoor sports forced me to be in the moment, but also to accept the present, to observe it and float through it to the best of your ability.  These were my first experiences in the Practice of Accepting the Present.  What came before or after didn't really matter, doing your best in the moment did. Just Be your best, long before Nike's Just Do It promotion. I also learned a different kind of confidence. Instead of only observing, I was participating, a physical self confidence, and learning the social skills to support a team, too. 

        From the ages seventeen (graduating high school) until I turned twenty (enrolling in college), I lived the in the school of life. Geographically speaking, I lived in Maine, on an island and moved onto a sailboat, which then sailed to St. Croix, where I lived in Christiansted Harbor for nearly a year. Financially speaking, I worked odd jobs associated with the sea/fishing/boats and bartered, while I learned the trade of cabinetmaking and made money at that in Maine, and in St. Croix I briefly made leather sandals and then landed a job building furniture for a new hospital. Emotionally speaking, I first moved away from family and then moved away from friends, other than the man I lived with on the boat. Coming from and belonging to a large, constantly in contact, over-sharing family having no postal address nor telephone for that last year was both liberating and lonely. It forced me Practice Challenging the Stories I told Myself. Especially being out of New England, the only white woman on the job sight, and much younger than the black and hispanic men I was directing on the job. Also I learned to question other peoples stories. The guy dressed as a beach bum at the bar might be a millionaire, while the guy dressed like a millionaire could be broke. The island was full of transient folks: tourists, travelers, expats from various nations, islanders moving up and down up and down the chain for work, and, always, sailors. Even my octopus friend moved, after a frightful encounter with a New Yorker. One of the major currencies of reinvention is the story you tell others. 

        For the next four decades I kept reinventing myself. College Reporter. School Senator. Waitress. House painter. Pre-Nursing student. English Major. Radcliffe Publishing Course attendee. Assistant Publisher for a Magazine. Assistant Literary Agent. Junior Literary Agent.  

President of a Literary Agency (while funding the first three years as a model, bookstore clerk and night manager of a B&B). Wife. Mother. Naturalist for Mass Audubon. Triathlete. Runner. Obstacle Course Racer. ELL/Sped teacher. English teacher. Marathon/Ice Swimmer. Retired, although I plan to work part-time, write, volunteer and travel. Not sure which of those Me's will become a new title of sorts. I Accepted the Life-Long Challenge of Change.

         I can now just Be. The woman who observers. The woman who is a team player. The woman who loves to be in nature alone and to share it with other at times. The woman who loves her kids. The woman who wants to keep learning. The woman who wants to keep challenging the story she tells herself and to make it full of a grit with grace that flows and sings. That is how I want to face my current and future transitions, knowing that nothing is permanent except change and our choices in each moment. Observe, Hold, Release. That is all we can ever really Do. And that is the way of Being I chose now.

Cubist Self

        

                                                                    Parade, 1917 – music by Satie, décor by Picasso

       My self keeps shedding and shifting. My roles in life, like life itself, are transitory. I'm in the middle of several transitions and the uncertainty of where I will land and what role I will play there picks at my brain. I feel like "Nude Descending a Staircase" or the figure above dressed by Picasso! In my late 20's I started my own business, in my 30's I became a wife & mother, in my 40's I became a teacher, in my 50's I became a single mother, and now in my 60's, I'm retired, single, and nearly an empty-nester. 

        I'm trying to just be here now. Sounds easy. Except, I'm a planner and goal setter. I'm coming to realize that I need to put myself first. Spirit, Body, Mind, and the health of all three, must come first. I've retired earlier than I planned, by four and a half years. On the scales of finances vs freedom,  there was no contest. I had to set myself free. The world of education and trying to do your best professionally 24/7, and I don't know a teacher who isn't always managing work in their mind in some fashion, became untenable. Ask any teacher you know and they will have their own stressful horror stories to share. I could write all day on what is wrong with our system of education, but I don't want to relive it right now. 

        On the horizon, I must prepare another family house to sell. This one will be more painful than the last. I only lived in Lincoln for 6 years. I summered at Dingley for over 50 years and lived on it year round for a few years in a rental house. A lot of history, good and bad, lives on that island. I can show you the tree that lightening struck half way down the path to the dock. Mom and Zee had been having one of their marathon fights and it only ended because lightening struck the pine tree between them. I can show you the fisher cat's lair where I find beautifully cleaned bones and feathers.  I've swum around it so many times (perfect 5K) that I now all the nooks and crannies. I've circumnavigated Dingley in kayaks, sailboats, canoes,  while my children built a raft out of a pallet that made it very far , and back, out in the causeway cove. I could write a book about the Island, and maybe someday I will. 

        Planning short term and easily achievable goals seems the way to go now. Become well. I've had this dreaded head/chest cold since the night before David died, which was, yup, Valentine's. This is my second day without a fever, at last. Being sick always brings me down because how I take care of myself has much to do with mobility and being outside. When I'm sick I can't swim, hike, or even stay outside too long. So once I'm restored, I need to develop a routine beyond my daily dog walks. A regular rotation of yoga, swimming, kayaking, biking, hiking, mediation and weight lifting are the goals. Last year I went from healthy, to parasitic, to weak, to a popped rib, to school stress and hospice consuming any energy I'd regained. This year I vow to put my health (mental & physical) first and all other business second. Just trying to get my feet under me seems to be a challenge.

        I'm also not very patient. I feel like Fate is putting the breaks on my planning so that I may get into a slower pace of life for the stage I'm in now. When my son asked me how I was going to spend my retirement, I replied, "Work part-time, write, volunteer and be in Maine. Except during Mud Season, I'll take a vacation simewhere far away then each year." Sounds simple. But I have so much work to do to get there. Sell the Maine house, followed by selling the house I live in, and then finding house in ME.  I know, these are problems of the privilege.  I'm grateful and feel the weight of doing the right things. It just all consumes a great deal of time and energy to accomplish. Dingley is only half mine. My current house is all mine. The third house is a phantom or a jewel that I hope will present itself when the time comes. Again, I feel like Fate is telling me to just be steady as I go and the universe will take care of the rest when it's time. 

        I'm working on manifesting the selling of an old family home, finding a new home and new healthy habits/routines to carry my into this next stage of life with grace and grit. My gut says this transition will last at least the next 18 months or so. However, the biggest thing that makes me worry or feel impatient or a need to rush to action is the coming Presidential election.  

        If I were still a literary agent, it would be impossible to know what will sell 18 months to 4 years from now. Will we be living in a democracy, autocracy, or a dictatorship? What sells is fear and desire. As a teacher I tried to give my students tools to learn how to talk to each other. They can text all day, but have trouble, as many adults do, keeping a conversation going when they have a difference of opinion. I feel we all better become really facile with expressing our values, goals and concerns as a populace. If we all just duck and wish for the best, we won't get it. I'm sure I'll be pounding on doors in New Hampshire this fall for Biden. If I don't and Trump wins, it would haunt me. 

        For some reason Erik Satie's piano music has always calmed me. I'd bring it to my room and listen to it over and over while I wrote letters or in my journal for hours as a tween and young adult. It's both melancholy and bright. He and Debussy egged each other further than either would go alone, much like Picasso and Braque or Mozart and Salieri. Today as I wrote this I listened to the below album and I was transported to my girlhood bedroom, a studio in SF and to my former in-laws in Holland. At every stop I was who I am and I wasn't anymore. I feel like we spend the first half of our lives acquiring things and affects and the second half of our lives stripping down to only beautiful objects and our essential selves. Or at least I hope so!

3 Fever Dreams

 

 

        Fever dreams provide unconscious access to vulnerabilities.  They are the narratives that are motivated by fear and longing combined, with a no win or resolvable plot. In my waking mind, I try to stay powered by desire and belonging. But this last week, the fever dreams have crept in to my mind even when I'm awake. All except #3. Number Three was a fear and vulnerability dream that was prescient and it took places 6 years after all of New York Publishing rejected a book I represented , with an Intro by the former CIA Director, William Casey, and written by a Newsweek reporter and NPR  journalist on exactly how this could happen and way to circumvent it from happening.

        Dream1 : At a house party on the North Shore, I can smell the sea and see the bonfire on the beach. Most of the party is taking place in a brilliantly colored victorian in to which my mind can see, even though I'm on the rocks between the beach and house. Suddenly I'm in the house introducing an indistinct family member to Steve. Steve hasn't changed in the nearly four decades since I last saw him. We're crowded in a narrow hallway along the stairs and people are trying to get his attention. But he's as stunned to see me as I am him. 

        He looks sheepish. A good word as his wavy still chestnut hair bouncing while he twist and shouts over the raucous partiers. I fear he'll spill my inner most weakness, the ones I had at 25, as a green behind the ears girl in NYC. I fear he'll ask me to sing on the stage set up on the porch. I haven't sung regularly or in front of strangers in eons. In my dream he's still a blues signing and actor. I think of the times I got on stage at Wonderland, the Lone Star and China Club, at his urging, during my go-go 80's NYC time with him. Now I can't summon that younger self. She's trapped in a woman who hasn't written or sung or created work of significance, besides her two children.  Biology not fine tuned craft. Unless you count the made up lullabies and blues tunes she sang them as babies. My daughter now lives in NY and is age I was when I dated Steve. I felt so much older then, than she is  now.

        I'm in the kitchen - out on the beach - then back in the hallway. Steve hovers like a phantom at the edge of each shifting setting. As I go towards him, I hear him say he married the next woman, named Karen, he dated (true). That he moved to LA and he was in a Soap Opera for many years (true). He now lives on the North Shore of MA (true). That his singing is now a passion and no longer a dream (maybe).  He now teachers acting and does little showcases (true). Those last two admissions make me uncomfortable and sweaty, probably coughing in my sleep as my son says I've been doing all week. 

       Why? He has lived a good and happy life. Why should that make me uncomfortable? I only now notice my dream version of has Steve looking much like the stepfather I hated, Zee.  Does he? Did he? Creepy! Is it because it's a shared life with the other Karen and so much of my life has been and remains singular? Is that I'm still longing to allow myself to write, while he has spent these same four decades acting and singing? Is that I try to connect t and belong wherever go, and yet when asked where is home, there is no easy answer, other than New England? Is that I'm still partnerless after all these years?

        Steve wants to introduce me to Karen, but she keeps being held up by interested others. I want to leave and can't seem to make my way out of the house. I'm telescoping in time between my 25 year old self and my 61 year old self. Too many boyfriends and a husband spinning like kaleidoscope pieces in a funhouse chamber. I feel even more fearful and sick. I wake up. 

        Dream 2: The same fever dream I've had since I was a girl in Bolton, MA. I think they started after my parents separated (4-6). This dream always begins with me on a rooftop in Tunis. I'm running, and jumping over and between rooftops. I'm being chased by men in white robes. I can't seem to hide. I have no money. Don't know the language. Usually an animal ~ dog, camel, sheep~ tries to help me, but I have to get down to the street level to receive their help and I only made it close to the ground once or twice in over half a century. 

        The light is fading and casts long shadows. I feel that I'm in danger, but I don't know what caused this. I run, run, run. And jump. Nights that I'm getting over my fevers, like last night, I can also fly by jumping down stair cases. I've always wanted to go to Africa. My aunt is Ghanaian. Perhaps the gifts of skin drums and little gold weights that looks like demons, that my uncle sent to us when I was a little girl, infused my sleep. When I wake up after this dream I know my fever will be over 100. Every time!

        This is the my most persistent fever dream. I only learned it was Tunis as a teenager when I saw photographs and paintings like this. My mother hung one in the house at Dingley and I was glad it wasn't in the room where I slept. It was hung in our eldest sister/guest room.  I would look at in in the morning light and try to  imagine walking on the streets. How would it smell, sound, feel to actually walk those streets. 

Dream 3: I had the same feverish dream for the 5 nights leading up to 9/11/2001 *.

        I was on an elevated train, most likely in Brooklyn. I'm looking around and think something is off and then I realize there is no color. Usually my dreams are vivid in every way, right down to the colors. Additionally, I keep looking at the skyline of Manhattan that should be close and knowable. Only something is missing and my brain is upset because it can't figure out what it is. My stop finally comes, the door opens and I step onto the platform. No sooner do I do that than I notice it's snowing, only I know it's fall in my mind. So I bend at the waist, drag my right pointer finger through the "snow" only to realize that its warm and soft. I wake up in a cold sweat. 

        On the 5th morning I can't take it anymore. It's early, SF time, but I go down to make some coffee, as the kids are still asleep and Peter is in Europe on business. Maybe I can get some agency work done. No sooner do my feet hit the first floor, than my chosen brother, John Marsh, calls me on the land line.

        John, "Baa, turn on the tv. I know you have friends and family in NY. I love you. I can't talk more now. Call me later, if you can." 

        Friends and family in NY? Call if I can? I love you ~ what is this???

        I turn on the tv and see the replay of the first plane hitting the tower. As I watch, it become apparent that there are more planes "off course" and this isn't an accident. There is a clear blue, lovely sky over Manhattan. I watch this tragedy unfold while my children sleep upstairs and my husband is a continent away. 

        Then I see it. The wind has started to gently blow as the sun rises in the sky. After the second tower is hit, the wind is carrying the ash over the East River and into Brooklyn. The clear blue sky is now a blizzard of ash and horror as it slowly lifts and lands. 

        As the day progresses the sun is eclipsed by the ash. Color and lives have been stripped away. I watched those towers be built since I was a girl of 12. You could see them growing from the stoop of my godmother's apartment on Cornelia Street. I worried about her. All my publishing friends. My brother in Brooklyn, was he on tour? 

        John was right. It was impossible to get a hold of anyone via phone or the internet for quiet sometime. 

        That dream never came again, but it haunts me.

{* I've had premonition dreams - waking and sleeping- since I was a girl. This was just the worst one, it generated it's on fever during the dream and cooled when I awoke}

Day 2 of writing exercises

         In a second story flat on Frederick Street beside the railroad tracks and a stones throw from a Denny's in Portland, this album played in the kitchen while I wrote papers for college courses on my typewriter. It would be a year before I'd own my first Mac. Taking a break, I'd eat pinches of popcorn covered with brewer's yeast and tamari sauce. I'd drink copious cups of cheap caffeinated brews.

        During these popcorn and caffeine breaks, I'd turn from away from the table, and typewriter, and look out the leaky window that faced west. During the day you could watch planes land and launch from Portland's International Jet Port and occasional flying raccoons (seagulls) scavenging food from dumpster at Denny's and eat their finds on the neighbors roof. At night when I turned, it was usually when the street lights came on or when a train stormed by rattling the windows. Listening to this album, which might be classified now as Trance or Psychedelic or World or IndiPop (#12 on British Charts in '83), I thought it as meditation music. Muse music, if you will. 

        Yet whenever a train rambled by at night and I happened to have this album on, the trains would suddenly become a source of an internal game I played during my breaks. Basically as it rolled by I'd see if any of the train cars had their doors left open. If it did, I'd imagine that was an invitation to go traveling. Where was the train going? Where would I get off? How far could I take myself across country by simply playing this game from one rail yard to the next? Perhaps, I'd find a place I liked and stop and work there awhile, like I'd done with Ron on Pinion in sailing from Maine to St. Croix. This would be my solo odyssey across the US. Maybe I could write my own version of Travel's with Charlie and find a travel happy pet? In St. Croix I'd found a kitten in the rainforest. He earned his keep on the boat by eating cockroaches that snuck aboard in groceries no matter how many times we check the bags at the docks.

        Sheila Chandra is the vocalist for this album and many of the instruments used are native to India not England. This was the one and only album Monsoon made as a band*. Chandra had a solo career and later did vocals for the soundtrack for one of the Lord of the Rings films. Her otherworldly phrasing, tone and choices lead the listener to far away places and on fantastical meditative journeys. 

    My major had changed from Pre-Nursing to English during the year I bought the album. I started thinking of traveling to the UK and farther a field. I had two roommates, Meg a student at what was then called Portland School of Art, and Nan who was studying psychology at USM. Nan and I became chosen sisters then and remain so today. My acting teacher, Peter Frankham, would become a mentor and friend. He was starting the Maine Actor's Studio in Portland. Before that he'd founded Make a Circus in SF with Peter Coyote, among others. His family in England were "travelers." His mum and aunt were the first in their family to stop moving, to put down stakes. A year and half later, August '84, he'd be living in squat in South Kensington (I know a contradiction in terms, but it was the '80s, Thatcher's England, and many things were upside down). This time working towards collecting like-minded people to start yet another theater company. He invited me to come stay with the group (8 or so folks) and use it as a base for more travel and work. 

        When I stayed in London, Peter's roommates said, "You must stay, as the sun has been out since you arrived!" August in London can be like August in SF, to steal from Twain, "the coldest winter I've ever spent, was my summer in San Fransisco." I was happy to be the squats' sunny rabbit's foot. London. August. 1984. Large quantities of people were carrying packets or rolls of tin foil with them. Why? Heroin was easing the pain of a poor economy and social unrest. Strike after strike, year round. Cigarettes at parties were commonly laced with hashish, which meant trying not to get a contact high in cramped soirees near Hyde Park was damn near impossible. We ate out some, Indian mostly.  The music being played in these tiny shops included the tabla, swarmandel, cabasa, timbali, sitar, tambora and various stringed guitars. Monsoon would enter my brain while we were eating our curry and I realized how far I was from my typewriter on Frederick Street. 

        I did take a few day trips. A pilgrimage to Stratford-upon-Avon and Coventry. The latter to see the gigantic  Lady Godiva sculpture, not knowing that there were many such monuments of her scattered around the UK. Trains and busses carrying me through towns when poems, sonnets, plays, and entire masterpieces were created was a bit over whelming and hard to take in with my guide books, maps, notebook and traveling watercolor set for me at the age of 22. I made money at a dance studio, the Pineapple Dance Studio in Coventry Gardens in London. Not sure how I got the gig, but worked under the table. 

         Peter and I took the ferry to Paris, and we walked the streets for 24 hours, except when we fell asleep on a park bench in the Tuileries under the famous stand of manicured trees, only to be woken by some cranky Paris cops. Peter showed me "his" Paris, like everyone who has ever lived in a world class city shows your their city. Shakespeare and Company, stories of Sylvia Beach and Marcel Marceau with whom Peter had trained in his mime and Commedia Dell'arte days. We saw the business stoops being swept by their owners with twig brooms and buckets of water. We saw prostitutes meeting johns.  We ate mostly bread, cheese, chocolate and red wine (which we carried with us, ate in parks and no one cared--just like I'd do decades later on playgrounds in Amsterdam, only sans the vino). We had a long debate about whether legalized prostitution was better or worse for all involved. We finally found our way by train back to coast to catch a ferry. I'd have to check my journals, for it was either Boulogne or Dieppe, a walled seaside port either way, where we waited for the ferry. Much to our astonishment there was Roman vs Gaul competition happening in a festival that took over the old city! I felt like I'd stepped into the land of Asterix and Obelix. Yes, a magical and mystical journey,  and continued as we sipped calvados. Peter jokingly proposed to me. It was my first experience with the apple brandy, a proposal,  and my last year of drinking (I'd started a decade earlier, but that is another story). He said that if we could travel 24 hours with about as many dollars in our pockets, sleep soundly on park benches and only have one rough patch (really a thoughtful political debate), we were fated for each other. I agreed, but as same spirited friends not more than that!

{Another time: story on friend in Notting Hill and Roma Aunt and her "lodger" in Tunbridge Wells}

        My final week in London, we waited on line, twice, to get tickets to Dario Fo's one man performance of something like The History of the World or Man (?). I'm writing this all from head to keyboard, and don't want to open the rabbit hole that are my boxes of journals. Google is no help. Can't find a winning combination to find the exact name/date: Dario Fo. London. Notting Hill. 1984. One man show. Nada, zilch, goose egg.  

        The real take aways were two fold: 

            1) His one man performance of the history of us as "Beings" rivals that of Lily Tomlin (who I saw perform Search for Intelligent Life  in SF) and beyond anything Robin Williams capture on film in Being Human (and he bought boxes of books with my help from Green Apple to prepare for that role). Fo was a true silent magician. No gesture, posture, grimace or popped eye movement was wasted. The audience experienced him starting as a rock and traveling through time and space to London in '84. Every emotion was touched. Magical Mystery Tour, for sure. 

            2) The first day we were on que (British term for line) the show sold out. The next day Dario Fo again walked past the ticket line on his way into the theater. He turned around and saw that we were back, trying again to see him, (for non-theater or literary folks - he was banned in the US at the time, I was leaving soon, and he would win the Nobel Prize for Literature a decade +-later), and he stopped. 

        Dario Fo, "You two were here yesterday, did you not get in?"

        Peter, with his big Romani eyes and impish grin, "No, we didn't, so we're back!" 

        Dario Fo, "Well, today you shall!" And he brought us to the front of the line.

        The power of patience and mediation is greatly under valued in our society. That is why Buddhism, yoga, and meditative sports like kayaking, sailing, diving, snorkeling and, oh yes, the Big Kahuna, swimming are so important in my life. Running used to be. Started as a girl. But as a crone, my bones are too brittle to carry me. Perhaps I can change that with weights. 

        Finding music in the imports section of a record story on Congress Street carried me through writing and rewriting reams of papers to achieve my BA and kept me balanced. As did my runs with Nan, including the above mentioned album. Peter would find Thatcher's UK too depressed to rally support for a new Theater. He'd moved to Brooklyn to start again, he had a hard time staying in place. But he liked to build things wherever he went. When I began the  Radcliffe Publishing Course, in the summer of '87, they told the students  that there would be a job fair at the New Yorker and we'd be expected to find our own housing in NYC. Peter wrote to me saying he was moving to California and I could have his room in Brooklyn. Not quiet a squat in South Kensington, but rather a room in a Browstone in Boerum Hill with 6 others sharing the house. I took it. 

   Well, I've gone over my self-allotted writing time. Hope you enjoyed the today's jumble.

        

        

                        

* When I first heard Madonna's album, Ray of Light, I wondered if she'd found this album in record store in London ~similar sounds in many places, so a possible influence.