Summer 1962, at the music theater in Nyack, I shared a six-bedroom house with many other theater employees. One of them was George Finkel, the cello professor at Bennington College. One Wednesday night the household decided to go across the river into New York City for a night of drinking. I was not invited because I was deemed to be too young for this event. George had to stay home also because his wife said he had already had too much to drink.
After the revelers left George went upstairs. I turned off the lights and sat in a corner of the livingroom, staring out an open window at the full moon and smelling the scent of honeysuckles. Then I heard George coming down the stairs. He was carrying his cello and a glass of whiskey. He didn't see me. He sat down in a straight backed chair in front of the fire place, set the glass down on the floor and positioned his cello.
There, in the darkness and the moonlight, he sat and played by heart all the Bach cello concertos - with such feeling and such virtuosity - I left time and was in Eternity. I can still be there.
-THE END-
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
2.
A few years later I was sharing an apartment with a tiny blonde student named Charlene. She grew up in a town with a name like 'Fred, Oklahoma,' where her father was the pastor of an extreme right fundamentalist church. She spent her childhood dressed like a character from "Little House on the Prairie," living in a house that had no radio, no television and no secular literature. The main form of recreation was nightly prayers and Bible study. Charlene celebrated her liberation from this environment by entering a passionate love affair with a 6' 2" graduate student from Ethiopia.
One day Charlene was off with her lover and I was home recovering from a bout of the flu. I was wearing an old flannel nightgown with orange juice dribbles down the front and a long tear under one sleeve. There was a knock on the door. I walked out of my room and discovered that my dog Moses had gotten into the trash, carried it into the living room and sorted it at his leisure, doing such a thorough job that the entire living floor was covered with an even layer of eggshells, coffee grounds, banana peels, unmentionable items recovered from a wastebasket in the bathroom....
I still answered the door, assuming it was just one of the other
student degenerates who lived down the hall. I opened the door and there stood Charlene's parents. Something clicked inside my head and I passed into a whole new, expanded state of consciousness. I became the Zen Observer standing on the bridge watching the scene unfold.
"Come in," I said. "Charlene isn't here but you are welcome to wait for her. Would you like a cup of coffee?" I spoke while leading them across the carpet of garbage, to the couch, as grandly as Queen Victoria leading guests into her private sitting room at Buckingham Palace. They collapsed onto the sofa, their eyeballs fixed at the ceiling. Sweat was breaking out on her father's forehead and her mother was breathing in little asthmatic puffs. After about two minutes they jumped up babbling about remembering another place they had to be - out of town - far out of town - and scrambled for the door, with me waving graciously and saying, "Charlene will be so sorry she missed you. Have a good trip!"
-THE END-
A few years later I was sharing an apartment with a tiny blonde student named Charlene. She grew up in a town with a name like 'Fred, Oklahoma,' where her father was the pastor of an extreme right fundamentalist church. She spent her childhood dressed like a character from "Little House on the Prairie," living in a house that had no radio, no television and no secular literature. The main form of recreation was nightly prayers and Bible study. Charlene celebrated her liberation from this environment by entering a passionate love affair with a 6' 2" graduate student from Ethiopia.
One day Charlene was off with her lover and I was home recovering from a bout of the flu. I was wearing an old flannel nightgown with orange juice dribbles down the front and a long tear under one sleeve. There was a knock on the door. I walked out of my room and discovered that my dog Moses had gotten into the trash, carried it into the living room and sorted it at his leisure, doing such a thorough job that the entire living floor was covered with an even layer of eggshells, coffee grounds, banana peels, unmentionable items recovered from a wastebasket in the bathroom....
I still answered the door, assuming it was just one of the other
student degenerates who lived down the hall. I opened the door and there stood Charlene's parents. Something clicked inside my head and I passed into a whole new, expanded state of consciousness. I became the Zen Observer standing on the bridge watching the scene unfold.
"Come in," I said. "Charlene isn't here but you are welcome to wait for her. Would you like a cup of coffee?" I spoke while leading them across the carpet of garbage, to the couch, as grandly as Queen Victoria leading guests into her private sitting room at Buckingham Palace. They collapsed onto the sofa, their eyeballs fixed at the ceiling. Sweat was breaking out on her father's forehead and her mother was breathing in little asthmatic puffs. After about two minutes they jumped up babbling about remembering another place they had to be - out of town - far out of town - and scrambled for the door, with me waving graciously and saying, "Charlene will be so sorry she missed you. Have a good trip!"
-THE END-
KODAK MEMORIES
1.
Summer 1962 I got a job playing my viola in the pit of a summer stock theater in Nyack, New York. I wasn't much of a musician, but violists were hard to come by, and I also agreed to babysit for the directors 4 kids every other weekend. On the last day of the theater season I woke up with bronchial pneumonia - lungs rattling, 104 degree temperature - the full drama. I ended up in an oxygen tank in a Catholic hospital in Suffern, New York. After a few hasty visits from other theater employees, exspressing their extreme grief at leaving me in this unfortunate situation, I was alone. No books, no cards, no visitors.
At one point a priest walked into the room and stared down at me. I couldn't talk but my mind began babbling: "Father, I am heartily sorry for I have sinned. I have taken the name of the Lord in vain on several occasions, I lied to get served alcohol at a bar, and then I let Fred Lindsey feel my..." Oh, he's leaving. I'm not dying! Yahoo!
After I got out of the oxygen tank, I noticed an old cleaning woman who came in my room every day, pushed the broom around, emptied the wastebaskets, made a few passes with a dustcloth and left. She was a classic - fat with wisps of gray hair pinned into a bun at the nape of her neck, wearing a shapeless cotton housedress that was permanently hiked up just a little in the back, to accommodate her world-class caboose, ankle socks and old tennis shoes cut open at the sides to accommodate bunions. Of course I, age 17, saw her as a visitor from another planet.
I still couldn't talk above a whisper, but my eyes followed her around the room. She came over to my bed, stared down at me, and started talking. "You're young. There's still hope for you. Spend your life being alive. Most people spend their whole lives eating, drinking, sleeping, going to work, and watching TV. If you have a chance to go on an adventure - go! To hell with the consequences. I'm just an old fat woman but last year I visited my cousin in Florida and rode a surf board. the year before I jumped out of an airplane with a parachute. Be alive!"
Sometimes angels come in the form of old fat ladies with bad feet. She changed my life forever.
-THE END-
Summer 1962 I got a job playing my viola in the pit of a summer stock theater in Nyack, New York. I wasn't much of a musician, but violists were hard to come by, and I also agreed to babysit for the directors 4 kids every other weekend. On the last day of the theater season I woke up with bronchial pneumonia - lungs rattling, 104 degree temperature - the full drama. I ended up in an oxygen tank in a Catholic hospital in Suffern, New York. After a few hasty visits from other theater employees, exspressing their extreme grief at leaving me in this unfortunate situation, I was alone. No books, no cards, no visitors.
At one point a priest walked into the room and stared down at me. I couldn't talk but my mind began babbling: "Father, I am heartily sorry for I have sinned. I have taken the name of the Lord in vain on several occasions, I lied to get served alcohol at a bar, and then I let Fred Lindsey feel my..." Oh, he's leaving. I'm not dying! Yahoo!
After I got out of the oxygen tank, I noticed an old cleaning woman who came in my room every day, pushed the broom around, emptied the wastebaskets, made a few passes with a dustcloth and left. She was a classic - fat with wisps of gray hair pinned into a bun at the nape of her neck, wearing a shapeless cotton housedress that was permanently hiked up just a little in the back, to accommodate her world-class caboose, ankle socks and old tennis shoes cut open at the sides to accommodate bunions. Of course I, age 17, saw her as a visitor from another planet.
I still couldn't talk above a whisper, but my eyes followed her around the room. She came over to my bed, stared down at me, and started talking. "You're young. There's still hope for you. Spend your life being alive. Most people spend their whole lives eating, drinking, sleeping, going to work, and watching TV. If you have a chance to go on an adventure - go! To hell with the consequences. I'm just an old fat woman but last year I visited my cousin in Florida and rode a surf board. the year before I jumped out of an airplane with a parachute. Be alive!"
Sometimes angels come in the form of old fat ladies with bad feet. She changed my life forever.
-THE END-
Saturday, December 25, 2010
THE FAMILY CHRISTMAS LETTER
Back in the sixties I worked on a hometown print shop that handled everything from Chamber of Commerce brochures to Bar Mitzvah invitations. Every December family Christmas letters - complete with Mom, Dad, Dick, Jane, Puff and Spot sitting under the tree - was a large part of our business. The proletariot, such as myself, who worked in the typesetting/proofreading department loved to read these missives outloud, giggling uncontrollably:
"It has been another Merry Madcap Year at the Hollister Homestead. Fenwick was elected to the City Council in March. In June we smiled bravely as we waved off our beloved daughter Honoria who is leaving us for her fellowship at Oxford. Bon Voyage! She has had a good year there, focusing on linguistics during the Pre-Cambrian era. Gabriel made the water polo team at Groton.
If you think Mildred is sitting home with Empty Nest Syndrome - I should be so lucky!.....(I will mercifully spare you the details of Mildred's wonderful year)."
Years later I would occasionally send out a family Christmas letter of my own, to a very select group of recipients:
"We managed to keep the kids off drugs for another year, we think. Freeman's exwife and her boyfriend lived on our screened-in porch for the month of April. We're not sure why, except they seem to be between assignments. etc, etc."
Real memories for real Christmas letters - might be across time and space, a lacy, silvered tapestry of moments floating like an unmoored Constellation through Infinity. (Think I could win the Bullwar Lytton Award for that sentence?)
I remember walking through the Vermont woods with my grandmother. I think it was in March. I was four years old. She took me to the base of a large tree and began diggging the snow. There, maybe four to six inches down, she uncovered the furled leaves and buds of next year's wildflowers. I especially remember the violets - so intensely green and purple against the mulch and soft Spring snow. Then she carefully buried them again.
In retrospect I think this wonderful/terrible Vermont grandmother may have had bipolar disorder. There was also the time she threw the Christmas tree out the front door of our house on Christmas morning. In a town of 1500 people this was Front Page News.
I remember searching through the snow, to find ornaments, and finding an antique, spun-glass, handpainted apricot that had been in our family for more than a hundred years. Miraculously, this enormously fragile ornament was unbroken. I hope that this apricot still decorates a Christmas tree in one of my cousin's living rooms.
TO BE CONTINUED....
"It has been another Merry Madcap Year at the Hollister Homestead. Fenwick was elected to the City Council in March. In June we smiled bravely as we waved off our beloved daughter Honoria who is leaving us for her fellowship at Oxford. Bon Voyage! She has had a good year there, focusing on linguistics during the Pre-Cambrian era. Gabriel made the water polo team at Groton.
If you think Mildred is sitting home with Empty Nest Syndrome - I should be so lucky!.....(I will mercifully spare you the details of Mildred's wonderful year)."
Years later I would occasionally send out a family Christmas letter of my own, to a very select group of recipients:
"We managed to keep the kids off drugs for another year, we think. Freeman's exwife and her boyfriend lived on our screened-in porch for the month of April. We're not sure why, except they seem to be between assignments. etc, etc."
Real memories for real Christmas letters - might be across time and space, a lacy, silvered tapestry of moments floating like an unmoored Constellation through Infinity. (Think I could win the Bullwar Lytton Award for that sentence?)
I remember walking through the Vermont woods with my grandmother. I think it was in March. I was four years old. She took me to the base of a large tree and began diggging the snow. There, maybe four to six inches down, she uncovered the furled leaves and buds of next year's wildflowers. I especially remember the violets - so intensely green and purple against the mulch and soft Spring snow. Then she carefully buried them again.
In retrospect I think this wonderful/terrible Vermont grandmother may have had bipolar disorder. There was also the time she threw the Christmas tree out the front door of our house on Christmas morning. In a town of 1500 people this was Front Page News.
I remember searching through the snow, to find ornaments, and finding an antique, spun-glass, handpainted apricot that had been in our family for more than a hundred years. Miraculously, this enormously fragile ornament was unbroken. I hope that this apricot still decorates a Christmas tree in one of my cousin's living rooms.
TO BE CONTINUED....
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Food Pantry Thanksgiving Blues
Come be lost with me.
I have a number ten can of beef ravioli,
a case of Vienna sausages,
forty-four jars of peanut butter,
apples and oranges.
I want that paper mache turkey that
travels from set to set on a
TV soap opera show -
first out at Tent City,
then to St. Augustines Student Center,
then to me -
so fine.
I want my grandmother and my Uncle Seth,
transformed by the company of angels,
to come back from the next world,
carrying side dishes of
cranberries, walnuts and greens.
I want my old cat to come home.
I'm thankful for toilets,
running water,
a bed.
I have a number ten can of beef ravioli,
a case of Vienna sausages,
forty-four jars of peanut butter,
apples and oranges.
I want that paper mache turkey that
travels from set to set on a
TV soap opera show -
first out at Tent City,
then to St. Augustines Student Center,
then to me -
so fine.
I want my grandmother and my Uncle Seth,
transformed by the company of angels,
to come back from the next world,
carrying side dishes of
cranberries, walnuts and greens.
I want my old cat to come home.
I'm thankful for toilets,
running water,
a bed.
Friday, November 19, 2010
The Only Way Out
the leap into Nothingness
for only there
do blueberry frigates drift
through oats and milk
a blue square from a pack of rolling papers
Blue
Square
source of all Art that
ever was or ever will be.
Outside the world of
the electrified frog lying on a slab
in high school biology
(back when apple blossom clouds
drifted through the air)
the legs jump
although it's dead!
Just like me
except Now
for only there
do blueberry frigates drift
through oats and milk
a blue square from a pack of rolling papers
Blue
Square
source of all Art that
ever was or ever will be.
Outside the world of
the electrified frog lying on a slab
in high school biology
(back when apple blossom clouds
drifted through the air)
the legs jump
although it's dead!
Just like me
except Now
Sunday, April 25, 2010
1950s Women
In Prunewhip, Vermont in the fifties, children ran in packs, in and out of each other’s houses. One scene I witnessed almost every day, at least once, ran something like this: The father of the family heads out saying, “I’m going to the hardware store.” The mother immediately scoops up the nearest three-year-old and holds her out saying, “Take Baby Snooks with you.”
He’s trapped, since Baby Snooks is clapping her hands in joy. It was decades later when I realized that this was a control mechanism. Baby Snooks was her insurance policy that he would not follow the trip to the hardware store with four hours at a bar watching sports on the little black and white TV that sat on the shelf over every bar in town. Even though he didn’t help with housework or cooking, he was someone else for the kids to interact with while she went about her endless rounds of work. He wouldn’t come home drunk after spending a pile of money. Everywhere you went in Prunewhip, you’d see middle-aged men and three-year-olds traveling together..
Most husbands in the 1950s had total control of household funds. Women were given an allowance, out of which they were expected to buy groceries, clothing and school supplies for the children, and cleaning products. Anything left over they could - whoopee! - spend on themselves. Men often had expensive hobbies involving ham radio equipment, woodworking shops, power boats, fishing rods, guns. They went on weekend hunting and fishing expeditions with their friends.
Women, of course, wanted money. Most women had some kind of home business where they made what was commonly referred to as ‘pin money.” Women sold Tupperware and Avon. Some of them ran chickens in their backyards and sold the eggs. Others gave hair cuts and perms in a one-dryer hair parlor set up in a corner of their kitchens. They also saved Raleigh cigarette coupons and green stamps. They did a lot of dreaming - pouring over the catalog of items one could get for only three thousand cigarette coupons or five books of green stamps. They dreamed of new sewing machines and vacuum cleaners. A vacuum cleaner meant you didn’t have to roll rugs, take them out to the clothesline, and beat on them. Steam irons - that meant you didn’t have to roll and sprinkle the ironing anymore. Money meant you could buy a brand new prom dress for your 16-year-old daughter. She wouldn’t have to go to the prom in her cousin’s hand-me-down orange spaghetti-strap chiffon formal, which would have to be taken in and lengthened and would still be plug ugly.
If these women sound like a bunch of self-sacrifing ‘patient Griselda’s', think again. They were keenly aware of the inequities of their situation, and many of them had enormous contempt for men. I know this because my friend Joanne’s mother had a beauty parlor. We sat in a corner for hours on end listening to the women condemn men and laugh at them. Men were lazy, stupid and mean. Horror stories were met with gasps and lowered voices - we strained to hear, “You mean her arm is in a cast??” Tales of male buffoonery were told out loud, with lots of laughter. As the women warmed to their topics they would forget Joanne and I were there, and share strategies for avoiding sex with men, particularly when they were drunk. I lived in a household that had no men, and counted myself lucky in that regard. As a prepubescent female, I wondered why women ever got involved with these creatures in the first place. I considered the possibility of becoming a nun - it would be three hots and a cot, with no stigma of being an old maid. Furthermore, it would be a ticket to Heaven, and show all those morons in the sixth grade what a special and sanctified person I actually was. Win - win - win! At night I knelt by my bed and told God I was waiting for the call.
This is obviously not a fair and balanced account of gender roles in the fifites. In part, though, this was how it was. Although women have not achieved complete equity with men, we really have come a long way.
He’s trapped, since Baby Snooks is clapping her hands in joy. It was decades later when I realized that this was a control mechanism. Baby Snooks was her insurance policy that he would not follow the trip to the hardware store with four hours at a bar watching sports on the little black and white TV that sat on the shelf over every bar in town. Even though he didn’t help with housework or cooking, he was someone else for the kids to interact with while she went about her endless rounds of work. He wouldn’t come home drunk after spending a pile of money. Everywhere you went in Prunewhip, you’d see middle-aged men and three-year-olds traveling together..
Most husbands in the 1950s had total control of household funds. Women were given an allowance, out of which they were expected to buy groceries, clothing and school supplies for the children, and cleaning products. Anything left over they could - whoopee! - spend on themselves. Men often had expensive hobbies involving ham radio equipment, woodworking shops, power boats, fishing rods, guns. They went on weekend hunting and fishing expeditions with their friends.
Women, of course, wanted money. Most women had some kind of home business where they made what was commonly referred to as ‘pin money.” Women sold Tupperware and Avon. Some of them ran chickens in their backyards and sold the eggs. Others gave hair cuts and perms in a one-dryer hair parlor set up in a corner of their kitchens. They also saved Raleigh cigarette coupons and green stamps. They did a lot of dreaming - pouring over the catalog of items one could get for only three thousand cigarette coupons or five books of green stamps. They dreamed of new sewing machines and vacuum cleaners. A vacuum cleaner meant you didn’t have to roll rugs, take them out to the clothesline, and beat on them. Steam irons - that meant you didn’t have to roll and sprinkle the ironing anymore. Money meant you could buy a brand new prom dress for your 16-year-old daughter. She wouldn’t have to go to the prom in her cousin’s hand-me-down orange spaghetti-strap chiffon formal, which would have to be taken in and lengthened and would still be plug ugly.
If these women sound like a bunch of self-sacrifing ‘patient Griselda’s', think again. They were keenly aware of the inequities of their situation, and many of them had enormous contempt for men. I know this because my friend Joanne’s mother had a beauty parlor. We sat in a corner for hours on end listening to the women condemn men and laugh at them. Men were lazy, stupid and mean. Horror stories were met with gasps and lowered voices - we strained to hear, “You mean her arm is in a cast??” Tales of male buffoonery were told out loud, with lots of laughter. As the women warmed to their topics they would forget Joanne and I were there, and share strategies for avoiding sex with men, particularly when they were drunk. I lived in a household that had no men, and counted myself lucky in that regard. As a prepubescent female, I wondered why women ever got involved with these creatures in the first place. I considered the possibility of becoming a nun - it would be three hots and a cot, with no stigma of being an old maid. Furthermore, it would be a ticket to Heaven, and show all those morons in the sixth grade what a special and sanctified person I actually was. Win - win - win! At night I knelt by my bed and told God I was waiting for the call.
This is obviously not a fair and balanced account of gender roles in the fifites. In part, though, this was how it was. Although women have not achieved complete equity with men, we really have come a long way.
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