Facebook

 I got nothing.

No status update today.

Not even another selfie;

I’m tapped out.

I’ve been talking to you

Like you’re out there.

But you’re the 21^st century

Mirror, mirror, on the wall

You’re the post post-modern

Religion; a prayer posting

Prison.

     ~K.Thompson

This poem was entered in the Writer's Digest Poem-A-Day Challenge in April, 2014 and was selected as a Top Ten Finalist. 

Lead Us Not Into Temptation

     I was born in the fifties.  It was such a confusing world, even then.  By the time I was six, it was the sixties.  Being raised in a religious cult-like sect made it even more confusing.  When I was nine we moved to the suburbs, a big deal.  There were about three models of brick homes, or homes that looked brick, anyway.  Ours was the plain vanilla box version but we were very proud of it.  We had a lot on the corner of  Linda Sue and Leonard Lane.  Since my father’s name was Leonard and my oldest sister’s name was Linda it was meant to be.  

     We had a fenced yard and an incinerator where we burned our trash once a week.  There was a clothesline where our mother hung clothes to dry and we kids made tents, flinging blankets over the line, shining flash lights in each other’s eyes after dark, telling scary stories. 

     Being a religious kid, I gawked at the sophisticated ways of neighbors, my mouth hanging open, greedily drinking in a world I couldn’t imagine, but secretly longed for.  We dressed like the Lord’s people, so I felt dowdy, plain, and even naked, next to Binky and Pat, the neighborhood party couple.  Binky was a pro baseball player and he and Pat had a sleek convertible parked in their driveway.  Pat wore silky scarves and dark sunglasses before Jacqueline Kennedy, looking glamorous with her nude lipstick and matching nails.  Binky and Pat threw wild parties with another couple, Lou and Betty, from the neighborhood.  Once, in the early morning hours, I saw Binky, clearly intoxicated, wandering down the street with Pat on his shoulders, whooping and hollering.  Betty and Lou stood on their concrete porch laughing and waving cocktail glasses as the rising sun cast a pink glow all around.

      I doubt my parents were invited and even if they had been, they would never have attended such a “worldly” event.  We were the chosen people, the implication of which made us better than others, people like the Binky and Pats of the world.  As far as I could understand, we were better in a sad sort of way, because we had to sacrifice a lot to be God’s people.  Instead of having fun, we had to be examples. 

    But at the swimming pool, I stole quarters from beneath other people’s towels.  I shoplifted candy from Duckworth’s, slipping it beneath the bathing cap I twisted nonchalantly on my fist. 

     I was that kid. 

     We didn’t own a television set, so I had to see the local kids’ shows in Denver like Fred and Fay, and others like The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Leave It To Beaver, and Superman, at my friends' houses.  Once the magic box was on, light and shadows flickering across the forbidden screen, I was mesmerized.  My friends, accustomed to its spells, often had to physically pull me away and out of the instant trance I would fall into as soon as a favorite show came on. 

     “C’mon!” they might yell.  “Yoo-hoo!”

     They waved their hands in front of my face and laughed at my inability to see or hear anything but the sights and sounds emanating from the screen. Reluctantly, with much yelling, shaking and pulling, I would drag my attention away from the magic.

    “Huh?” I might mutter, eyelids blinking in confusion.  Sometimes they had to just go stand in front of the set or turn it off to release me from its spell.  I felt guilty then, as though I had just secretly masturbated or something worse.  As far as my parents knew, I was outside playing.

     We lived in a magic time.  We kids ran up and down the streets of the suburbs hooting and hollering, wearing towels like Superman capes, playing hide and seek, Red Rover, Mother May I, even as the street lights blinked on, dark fell, and one by one, we headed off to our respective homes and bedtime.  Every Halloween we went trick or treating. It’s all mixed up together, how the times were changing then. 

     President Kennedy was shot.  I was in fourth grade and we all laid our heads on our desk in a moment of silence.  I was too young to understand anything but the dead silence underneath the quiet sobbing of my older sisters as it echoed through the rest of the day, the weeks, and months, even years that followed.  It was like a warning, that silence, full of dread, covered over by the hysteria to come:  the manic flood of young people, the blasting beat of rock and roll accompanied by the drifting sweet smell of patchouli oil and marijuana, into the streets.  

     When relatives from small towns out of state came to visit, my parents took them for a drive down Colfax so they could see the long haired hippies.  They’d come home shaking their heads, muttering disgust.  I watched their consternation from the corners of my pre-pubescence, my stomach twisting with the clashing mores.  My head ached with wanting. 

     My friend’s brother was sent to Vietnam. She had scant information, garnered from conversations by adults not meant for her ears.  My sister skipped school and, in a family scandal of huge proportions, was featured on the front page of the Rocky Mountain News wearing a mini skirt and picketing to change the school dress code.  She had become sick of kneeling down before the school authorities to have the distance between the hem of her skirt and the top of her knee measured.  My friend and I had no words for the fear we felt for our siblings, unnamed worries circled our heads like vultures.

     One sister got married and moved away.  The other sister joined the hippies on Colfax.  I worried about the neighbors, who were going to hell, because they didn’t know the Truth, weren’t God’s people. 

     It didn’t seem fair.  Plus I was struggling, just like David facing Goliath in the Bible story. 

     When I went to Carol and Cheryl’s house to play, we got into their big sister’s make-up kit and I brushed mascara on my eyelashes, smeared lipstick on my lips. Their parents both worked so we had the house to ourselves. Carol and Cheryl put on records by Bobby Darin, again raided from their big sister’s stash, and we danced so hard to “Dream Lover,” replaying it over and over, that we fell, exhausted onto the floor, breathless with giggles.  Then I tried to scrub all the makeup off before I went home where my parents would see it. 

     I loved dancing to Bobby Darin, Chubby Checker, and James Brown at Carol and Cheryl’s house.  They taught me (or tried to teach me) how to do the Twist, the Mashed Potato, and the Frug, among other dances. Their parents weren’t religious and their older sister was an endless source of inspiration. I liked mascara and lipstick; I who had been forbade even clear nail polish.  Carol enticed me into playing girlfriend and boyfriend.  We placed our hands in front of our lips and fervently kissed. 

     Like I said, it was all very confusing.  Dancing and makeup were considered worldly in the Truth. My public face was kept scrubbed, clean of adornment.  Scissors, true to biblical instruction, had never touched my waist length hair. My dresses, hand sewn by my mother, reached the middle of my knees.  Man would soon land on the moon.

     Age thirteen, I huddled in my bedroom, listening to the Monkees, “The Last Train to Clarksville.”  At fourteen, babysitting, I discovered the Beatles and “Hey Jude.”  NaNa Na Na Na.  Hey – ay-ay-ay Jude, I sang. 

     I thought I might die, the way my heart pounded against my ribs day after day. 

    

  
     Everything, it seemed, was denied me. 

    

 This essay was first published October 1, 2014 at:  http://essay-a-day.blogspot.com/2014/10/lead-us-not-into-temptation.html

Seven Poems

 

 

                            for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life

                                                                    ~Rainer Maria Rilke

 

 
     Oh craziness become me.  I feel like an abstract painting, perhaps a Picasso, struggling to pull my displaced parts together.  My writing is not going well but my writing is going well. 
     Something has stopped me in the writing of the book.  In the meantime, it's National Poetry Month and I've written seven poems, one for each day of the month thus far.  I've tweeted stanzas daily.  Like this (from a poem entitled "Selfie"):



I would cut one of those apples, slice it

Wide open before carving my ear

Off completely, just to tell you

I am here.

 

     Writing is my dream life.  And because it is the heart of me, my deepest desire manifest, it is making me crazy.  Following my passion, my bliss, my heart of hearts, has brought my deepest fears, inadequacies, and insecurities out of the closet. 

     I wake up from a dream, to a volcano within, find myself sobbing.

     "I am a failure.  I have always been a failure.  And now I will fail at writing," I say when my husband asks why am I crying? 

     Woah!  Where did THAT come from? I am grateful that Wayne is my best friend, that I can show myself so starkly and raw, that he can just sit there and hold me.

     Wherever it came from was dark and deep, at the very core of me and felt true, seemed so real.  It is not a belief I can brush aside, not my usual delusion. 

     For days, I puzzle over it, the dark ring of truth.  "I am a failure."

     I have failed at many things.  And, dear reader, I know, you have too.

     Synchronicity. A link to an Ann Pachett essay from her book "This Is The Story Of A Happy Marriage" appears on my news feed.  I read:

 "I believe, more than anything, that this grief of constantly having to face down our own inadequacies is what keeps people from being writers.  Forgiveness, therefore, is key.  I can't write the book I want to write, but I can and will write the book I am capable of writing.  Again and again throughout the course of my life I will forgive myself." 

     Thank you, Ann. 

     I may fail. No.  I will fail.  However, life has taught me that it is not the failure that matters.  What matters, is that I do it.  I show up.  I keep writing. 

     I keep writing. 

     I write.  I write against time.  I write against hope.  I can do this.

    

  

Just Between Us

 

   Wayne says that he’s the one who took care of Clyde.  He does not want to take care of another dog.  

 

    But Clyde and I know differently.  Clyde and I had an agreement.  Wayne needed someone to take care of and Clyde and I agreed he would be the one.  This was our secret. 

 

     That was partly why I loved Clyde so much, because he and I agreed that he would take care of Wayne by making Wayne take him for daily walks, and give him treats, even bake him special liver treats handmade by Wayne, and feed and water him, and teach him how to behave.  I’m the one who really taught Clyde how to behave, but that was our secret as well.  Wayne did not know any of this and he will not believe it now.  It was just between Clyde and I. 

     Right when we very first got him, I taught Clyde to stay off of the Persian rugs in the house.  I did this by using a spray bottle filled with water and squirting him whenever he went onto the rug.  Clyde thought this was a dirty trick and looked at me askance, sort of with a sideways glance, to tell me that not only was it a dirty trick, but that he knew it was a dirty trick.  He agreed to stay off the Persian rugs and the Himalayan rug too, but from then on he always put one paw on the edge of the rug just to let me know, just to remind me that the spray bottle was not nice; it was a dirty trick but he still forgave me.

     Clyde was a big dog but he did not feel like that should count against him.  He thought that even if he was a big dog, he should get to jump on people like any happy ass dog would so I had to teach him a special command, “Off!”  The way I taught Clyde that was I would turn my body away whenever he jumped on me and ignore him.  Clyde hated that.  Wayne would probably say he’s the one who taught Clyde this, but Clyde and I know it was me, even if Clyde is no longer here to verify it. 

    We had to teach Clyde that because, even at nine months old, when we first got him, he was huge and beautiful.  He had a shiny coat of black fur and a long red tongue that fell out of one side of his mouth because he lost a tooth when either a moose or a horse kicked him - back when he was an orphan before his original owners, whoever they were, abandoned him and left him to die by the side of the road.  Or maybe it was a ranch.  The story varied every time Clyde told it.

          But Clyde never forgot to remind me how we fell in love at first sight, he and I, when he almost knocked me over with that long happy tongue and his big happy grin just like I never forgot to remind him that I hated dog licks until I met him and it wasn’t the crazy wet tongue on my face, it was the quivering ecstatic shaking of joy filling his big 60 pound puppy body that got me, that made me feel it too, that joy deep in my cells, a joy Clyde brought with him, his purpose in life, to remind me.  Life, his joy said.  Live!

         Clyde knew, as I knew, that he had been a wild mustang in his previous life and that I had been a wild girl, a barefoot girl, who once rode him bareback through meadows where high golden grass grew tall and waved in the breeze like Clyde’s mustang mane did that lifetime, like his proud tail shaped in an S flew proudly behind him.  Clyde and I both knew this, though we spoke of it rarely, and in hushed tones.  We knew we were not supposed to remember such things in this lifetime, but sometimes we couldn’t resist and then we would just run and run down on the beach on Kachemak Bay behind the house in Alaska Wayne built us.

     Clyde and I shared secrets we never had to put a single word to, like the one about taking care of Wayne.  The day Clyde chose to leave; he was sick with a rare blood cancer that came suddenly and out of nowhere, at least for me, (Wayne had known, Clyde told me in our secret code, even though I hadn’t, that he was that sick, not just sick like in getting better sick like I thought) so it was terrible for me to suddenly have to face losing him in one day and he knew that but he knew too, and told me clearly and in strong language, how it had to be for Wayne – that he couldn’t linger, that he would if it was just me, because he loved me, but he reminded me of our deal about him taking care of Wayne, and, of course, how we both knew Wayne couldn’t handle that, Clyde lingering, Clyde suffering.  Clyde could, if I needed him to, he said, just to hang out together a little bit longer, but is that what we wanted to put Wayne through, he asked me?  No, he said so clearly.  I’m doing my job here, he said.  I know, I said back.  I know you are, Clyde and I love you for it and we both love Wayne, don’t we?  Yes, Clyde said.  We do. 

     And so, just between us, we said goodbye and part of our goodbye was thanking each other.  We thanked each other for loving each other, but mostly, we were just both so grateful to each other for how much we each loved Wayne – that we were a team – and how we shared that.

     Now I keep thinking maybe if we had another dog, I wouldn’t miss Clyde so much even though I know that I will always miss him that much.  But Clyde is still with me and he says be patient; he says that I am not just missing him, but I am missing how we shared our love for Wayne.  Clyde says we may or may not have another dog someday.  He says remember our pact that he will take care of Wayne?  Yes I say.  Well, Clyde says, I've never stopped.  Besides, you never know when a great spirit may enter your lives again.  It could happen.

     Clyde shows me this picture then (because Clyde mostly thinks in pictures) of him climbing into the truck with us the day we brought him home, how happy he was to find us, how perfectly we fit. 

     When and if another great spirit comes, Wayne will know, Clyde says.  Just like he did when you found me.  Remember?  Yes, I nod.

       I came as a dog this time, Clyde reminds me.  In another life, I was a mustang.  Who knows in what form we’ll meet again?

     I swear I can feel that big lug of a puppy lick my face again. 

     Keep an eye out, Clyde tells me. 

     I promise.

     He sends me another word picture.  He is headed down toward the beach, right at the beginning of Jeremy’s trail.  He pauses a second, looking back.  Our eyes meet, and then he disappears into the brush, leaving the fireweed and the devil’s club behind.  I get a last glimpse of his tail, shaped like an S, then he’s gone, headed, I know, straight for the water he loved, the ocean he once swam in, chasing some imaginary ball out on the horizon.

     Any minute, I know, he’ll come trotting back with it.  I just need to keep an eye out.

    

     

    

From This Broken Hill

     
     If It Be Thy Will by Leonard Cohen has been speaking to me lately and I recommend listening to the song (posted below.)

     I am writing memoir and Cohen's song pretty much describes my writing process.  A memoir involves taking the stuff of one's life, as though clay, and creating a third thing with it, hopefully art.  It involves telling the truth, a loaded subject in the world of publishing over the past decade (another blog post altogether.)  
 
    I agree with those who say truth is critical in memoir. However, it is emotional honesty I am striving for; no, not striving, rather, it is being demanded. It is not facts I am concerned with or some chronological rendering of the events of my life, it is some deeper truth.

      I now understand what writers over the ages have referred to as the muse.  My muse requires from me not only honesty, but a true voice, although I am writing from a broken hill, as Cohen sings.  I am writing to end the night...to let the rivers fill.  I am not in charge.  The muse is and for that, I am grateful.

     Each day, before writing, I light a candle.  I play this song.  I ask that mercy spill onto the page, that my burning heart be made well. I ask that the tattered rags of memory be clothed in light.  I ask to be let to sing.

     If it be Thy will.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNfNdflTs5E&feature=player_embedded

To the Lighthouse

     You can see that I haven't blogged since September 2010. I won't try to cover that lost ground, just start where I am. I committed to an innovative writing project aka The Book Project at The Lighthouse https://lighthousewriters.org/ located in Denver, Colorado. We relocated here from Alaska in late August 2010.

      Let me clarify what I committed to:

      I committed to myself and my lifelong passion for writing and reading.

      I committed to a daily writing practice. I committed to emerging myself in a writing environment, one where I am in daily contact with other writers and readers.

      I committed to writing a book even if I don't know how, even if I don't know what, even if, in the end, the book I'm writing turns into something else or equals three different pieces of four different books, or one short story, or two essays or maybe a poem.

      I committed to listening to and following my Intuition; because She has taught me the hard way that all the other voices are liars.

      I committed to living the writing life because it is the Life to which I have always belonged even as I rejected it in favor of anything, anything, anything else.

      Last night, in workshop, I shared a selection from my memoir in progress where I describe the death of three friends by suicide related to alcoholism. This morning I get a Tweet about a piece in The Atlantic by Rob Delaney, an excerpt from his memoir ROB DELANEY: Mother. Wife. Sister. Human. Warrior. Falcon. Yardstick. Turban. Cabbage where he describes the death of three friends, essentially, by suicide.  http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/11/drugs-will-kill-your-friends/281418/

      His piece is, by far, more polished than mine but so what? I was tempted by the Liars in my head to completely dismiss my version, throw myself on the floor, and give up writing due to this discouraging coincidence, or is it synchronicity?

      But instead I decided to start blogging again here on the KellyBlog. I'm gonna keep Writing About What Matters as long as it matters to me.

Life Happens

It's funny how life blindsides us from time to time. I haven't blogged since June 2009 and so much has happened since then. My most recent post (before this one) features a poem I wrote March 26, 2009 after learning I was to be the grandmother of triplets. The same day I received the news, Redoubt, a volcano located in upper Cook Inlet, part of an area near where we live in Homer, Alaska, had just erupted with ash emission 65,000 feet above sea level. Along with writing the poem, I collected enough volcano ash from our rain gutters to fill a jam jar.
One of my daughters, Jennifer, had been undergoing a struggle with fertility issues for several years prior to a successful IVF implant that, against the odds, resulted in that good news. The sucessful implantation (after three failed attempts) was only the beginning of what became one hell of a miracle rollercoaster ride. The eruption of Redoubt paled in comparison.
In August 2009, I traveled to Brooklyn, New York, where Jen lives, to hang out with her for the remainder of her pregnancy. I had originally planned to fly to NY around mid-October, my intuitive guess for when the babies would choose to arrive. However, by August, Jen had been hospitalized twice with pre-term labor concerns. My son-in-law, Karim, was out of the country on business and it became clear: my daughter needed me and needed me yesterday.
So, the months of August, September, and October 2009 were spent in my daughter's third floor one bedroom apartment cheering her on in her heroic and determined effort to keep three babies in one place: inside her womb. She was magnificent.
As big as a house and growing bigger by the moment, she religiously drank two gallons of water (she had been told that, in most cases of pre-term labor, the expectant mothers are dehydrated), ate nutritious foods, and swallowed a handful of pre-natal vitamins daily.
The babies' optimal chances for good health and survival grew exponentially with every day they stayed in the womb up until 36 weeks. Then, the doctors informed us, should they reach that magic number inutero, they would need to come out via C-section. Eventually, the C-section was scheduled for October 19, 2010, timed at 36 weeks gestation, although we were told repeatedly that, with triplets, the chances of making it to a scheduled birth are not good.
She made it. On October 19, 2009 she gave birth to three healthy babies, two boys and a girl. Hannah (Baby B) and Rayan (Baby A) weighed 4.5 and 4.7 lbs each. Yasin (Baby C) weighed 5.2 lbs. Three days after birth the triplets and their mom came home from Columbia University Hospital to that one-bedroom, third floor Brooklyn apartment and three of everything.
Jen, Karim, myself, and my husband Wayne (who joined us a week ahead of their birth) hence took turns feeding, burping, and changing three beautiful babies in a constant rotation that was exhausting, even with four of us on duty.
Did I say exhausting? Yes. Have you ever experienced the kind of exhaustion that comes with what is, perhaps, your greatest work, your best achievement? That kind of exhausting.
Wayne and I flew home to Alaska just short of ten days after the babies' arrival. I had been in NY for almost three months and needed to go home, but saying goodby to my new grandbabies was bittersweet. I had so little time with them. Their life-affirming baby smell, the silky feel of their newborn skin, the distinct note of each of their cries, and the long, treacherous journey my daughter undertook to get them safely born had soaked into my pores and filled my senses with an uncommon, crazy love. They had safely arrived and with them, that miraculous thing we call life.
It knocked me for a loop. It's not the first time life has stopped me in my tracks. It won't be the last. So, if anyone happened to notice that I haven't blogged a word since a year ago June, just know this: Life happens. Aren't we lucky?