How You Know You're Old

Boston was so full of Marathon fans they spilled over like popcorn all over the metro area. And after whining here yesterday I felt so good I said the Hell with work and headed over to one of these burgs where birds atop statues sang their city tunes and every passing fist held a latte. I was standing in front of a park wondering how that street musician could manage to sound like two voices at once when this beefy guy beside me started hollering into his cell phone.“Yeah and I’m in this place I don’t know where and this dude is singin’ John Denver tunes and everything is  mellow – yeah.”“Simon and Garfunkel” I muttered. “He’s singing Simon and Garfunkel”.“Yeah some John Denver tune, I don’t know which.”“Sounds of Silence,” I said.“Yeah and the Marathon was  gooooood and you know very chiiillll and now there’s this  John Denver tuuuune....”“Simon and Garfunkel!  He’s singing Simon and Garfunkel!”He stopped talking and looked at me then and for just a second I thought I was going to get punched right in the face in my speedy little sneakers and hooded sweatshirt but no. His shoulders relaxed and he turned back to his phone.. “Yeah so this woman here says  Simon and Garfunkel.”  “Whatever,” he said.  “Yeah,” he said.  “Later,” he said. And he hung up and I got out of there fast.Maybe he’d gotten a closer look and caught my real demographic. Anyway I’m glad I said my piece. All my life I was shy on the inside however brave I tried to be on the outside. All I can say today is what a relief to have that gone (along with all those awful tampons!)

Monday Monday Can't Trust That Day

Mondays bring out the crazy in me. "A new week! Why not learn a new language?" I’ll say to myself (and don’t think for a second I’m NOT driving around with an untouched case of Spanish Behind the Wheel CDs.)  I have thoughts like this every Monday, never mind that it’s the day I have to meet my main deadline and catch up with all my writer correspondence.Last week I had to have something weird done to one eyelid so I canceled all my appointments and thought “Just rest, T" – but I had to practically lash myself to the stove not to think up all new jobs for myself. “Look at this nice new morning!” I said on my very first day post-op. “Why don’t I drive 60 miles to the memorial service of the sibling of that friend I haven’t seen in 50 years?” (I seriously almost did this.)  Or, on realizing the next day was the 98^th anniversary of Titanic’s loss, “Why don’t I go to Foxwoods and look at their Titanic exhibit?  Just drive two hours to see some glass bottles and some misshapen pieces of hull!”Am I completely abnormal? By most people’s standards sure, but evidently not by mine.Last year my primary care doc tried to tell me I was depressed and why didn’t I write and then pitch to ‘legitimate’ publishers that book I always said I’d wanted to write. I was ready to squeeze every other thing in my life to the side and do just that, only because she said to and never mind that I’ve already written four books AND marketed AND sold them all myself and it nearly killed me do you hear, it nearly killed me. A good friend saw where I posted about this remark and called me right up. “I guess I have to write that book now,” I mewed to her. “Oh screw that," she said. “I’d go on the anti-depressants before I took that advice!”I don’t know, I don't know. If there’s something wrong with me it’s been wrong all my life. Maybe right now I just need to finish the column, write the dozen letters, EAT something for God's sake and hang on for Tuesday.

Rare as Turtle Fangs

The great Wallace Tripp says illustrators are just word people who to happen to also draw:  “We work with one foot in a book, the other stuck in a paint pot; our shoes are a disgrace." I think of him here on National Columnists Day, so chosen because April 18th, 1945  was when legendary war correspondent Ernie Pyle was caught in some crossfire on an island off  Okinawa. He was a word person if ever the was one, his dispatches going out to over 300 newspapers on the home front. They buried him in his helmet.Tripp also says "genius is as rare as turtle fangs, but talent is common enough" and I get that completely. For sure I’m no genius and even if I have talent it’s no more than the kind all humans have,  born story-tellers that we are - though I will say my pals on the board of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists are the wittiest people I know. I keep wanting to stop and copy down all the funny things that come across my screen during our online board meetings. I’ve been doing a weekly column for 30 years and sometimes boast about how I’ve never missed a deadline. The real pros though? They write three or four or five times a week. Like San Francisco’s Herb Caen did,  or Chicago’s Mike Royko. Did Molly Ivins write that often? Even if she wrote only  once a week you were glad you were there to see what she said: “The first rule of holes: when you're in one, stop digging" is one of hers. Also, “As they say around the Texas Legislature, if you can't drink their whiskey, screw their women, take their money, and vote against  'em anyway, you don't belong in office.”All I ever did was stay the same person I was at age two when I set out alone in the big city to find my sister at kindergarten. I still go out each day wide-eyed, eager to see whatever I can see so I can come back and tell you all about it. This blog I’ll keep up for as long as I can but the column I will never stop writing so bury me in my helmet too and say I died in the line of duty.

Tonight I'll lift a glass to fellow Smithie Molly, gone from us too soon

Female Viagra

I just heard the delicately worded news  that the world will soon see a new drug to stimulate arousal in women, a female Viagra so called. Now I remember clearly reading the press about the Blue Bomb when it first came out and my understanding is it only keeps a guy in a state of arousal by sort of shutting the tiny trap doors preventing the blood from flowing back out of where it needs to be; it doesn’t get the blood there in the first place. The guy is on his own for that, the articles said but lucky for the species, getting to where he’s thinking about sex is not generally a problem for its males.The key piece of wisdom served up by those who study such things is this: men are aroused by visual cues, or information that comes in through the eyes. Like… Victoria’s Secret catalogs shall we say. With women though it’s a whole other thing and here’s the skinny on that: Women are aroused by verbal signals, that is by what you say to them. In other words dust off the sweet talk guys and if she wants you to sit in adjoining bathtubs sharing your feelings do it and the rest will follow. And, inside tip, never underestimate the number of points you get for pitching in with the housework!

Not REALLY for Children

Had the grandbabies over last night and so dragged out the old children’s books – including a collection of nursery rhymes compiled and illustrated by Wallace Tripp back in ‘76. Looks like Wallace was riding the Jim Henson wave  maybe, trying to produce something  grownups would like too.I know I found this book absolutely delightful back when my babies were small but come to think of it I was still walking around in green nail polish and platform shoes back then. Thing is, it left the grandbabies cold. Tripp doesn’t seem to be mocking childhood as the sainted Mr. Rogers accused sly Paul Rubens of doing with his Pee Wee Herman character but he's not exactly talking to them either. Check it out. Funny, sort of, but…. Well, what do you think?

Bras Bras Bras

Bra-makers love me. I get all their ads.Today I got an email featuring the Va Bien Ultra-Lift Strapless Bra which my high school French says  either means Have a nice day or Go fuck yourself I’m not sure which. It has 'Ultra-lift cups featuring Three Magic Fingers molded between the layers of foam, a back reinforced by inner layers of strong powernet to support and keep the bra in place with top and bottom elastic that is treated with silicone and adds a gripping effect to make the bra extra secure.’Do you know what the Bra-llelujah is? Because I can tell you! Instead of just squeezing you around your ribcage and sternum it will squeeze you from the top of your underpants clear up to your armpits!I started at 12 with training bras which are little more than two little spans of jersey held together by straps. Then it was on to the Cross Your Heart bra (in the days when fashion said that breasts should look as pointy as nuclear warheads), the no-bra bra, the halter top bra, the bra that runs a few straps around your waist so that your whole back can be bare. You wouldn’t believe how many kinds of bras there are out there.Bras are serious business and women spend real money on them.  Last year I came across a lingerie store  so expensive it didn’t have a single bra for less than $125 – and for some reason they also sold sex toys right on the front counter. You can look here for a rundown of that visit. In the meantime …onward and upward!

Yes I Said Yes I Said Yes

A Day in the Life: Meet deadline for column. Three hours later see it popping up in papers all over, done for the week wo-hoo! Change sheets on bed, pop in Netflix DVD I don’t remember ordering. 30 minutes later still sitting on edge of bed, stunned into a state of pathos over tale of Michael Caine warehoused in home for old folks with death-obsessed child.Wash the blanket specially bought for this endless winter. Goes into washing machine so big it barely fits. Comes out like a Shrinky-Dink, like one of those loopy potholders kids used to make at summer camp. Pray for  miracle in drier but when I pull it from there out comes a wildly swirling cloud of fluff: what used to be the rest of the blanket. Find label and read “Dry Cleaning Recommended.” Oops.Pitch a story idea called "Just Say Yes" to a magazine, smiling at thought of Nancy Reagan in final chapter of Ulysses.Answer 40 emails. Experience head pain. Also neck pain, lower back pain, hip pain. “No spine ONLY buckles; it buckles and twists!" said my chiropractor gaily the other day so where's my witches hat, I’m melting….To cheer up read catalog from Purveyor of Tiny Bikinis, a few of which I bought the summer I weighed 120. Only thing in whole catalog without a plunging neckline is babydoll-type dress to wear OVER Tiny Bikini. “Cute!” I think. Put it in online shopping cart and who cares if it’s no more suitable for me than it would be for an 8-year-old boy? At least no plunging neckline.  How could I have guessed in my younger days that what would most embarrass me looking back would be what a pathetic self-displaying show-off I was? But what're ya gonna do as Tony Soprano used or say. Live and learn. Smile again at frilly frock. Press “Submit order” and go back to the goddam emails.

The Loaded Goat

Watchin’ New England Cable News  this morning and the greatest thing happened: they ran a whole ad in which a woman in voice-over goes nattering on about her expanding waistline while the  images show a Toyota  dealership and all these zippy testosterone-fueled cars dashing along the road like so many sperm in search of  the egg party.It reminded me of my favorite TV experience when the viewing guide started reporting from the Planet Strange-O).  At 8pm for example the Guide said I could look forward both to a show called N-n-n-never (and d-d-don’t ask again!)  one called HopeSic (like homesick?) and a third called Moips Corner: Suicidal Women (Hide the razor blades! Little House it isn’t!)Also, many of the shows had thcuss-word symbols in their titles. There was one called Wiiiiiiiist%±*! (like an arrow flying?), one called Aaiiiiiiiii@#! (like an arrow landing?) and one called Timon and Pumbaaaaaa!!!! (in which Pumba falls from a cliff?)Then, when I tuned INTO these shows, exactly none of them matched their descriptions. A football game was labeled Tun Tun Tun,  The Daily Gicky Show had some guy de-veining shrimp, and an infomercial on curing excess gassiness was called Larry Kiaaawiiii*!@!, (Kiaaawiiii!*!@! being what? the sounds poor Larry makes in his distress? The protests of those seated next to him? ) It went on:A program called Fanatic turned out to be the local news and Newhart was an international soccer game. The Loaded Goat had a pleasant middle-aged lady displaying dangly ear rings, and Intimate Fantasies featured a little four-year-old playing with a bride doll.It was entertainment so rich I’d have been willing to pay for it - if I wasn’t already paying for it. I was almost disappointed when I tuned in the next day to see the shows all properly labeled. Still, I shan’t soon forget my two favorites:  (1) The famous news anchor gravely mooing on about the Crisis in Washington while its explanatory text read: “Telly Monster Fears That Big Bird Will Sit on Him;”  and (2) a program showing three mud-covered men using crowbars to pull down a ceiling. Mrs. Slocum Mrs. Slocum Mrs. Slocum, the Guide said this one was called. (When will you learn, Mrs. Slocum? You know we always find your husbands’ bodies!)

One Good Death

My mom died on December 20th. It was a Sunday like this and snowy like today.  She died at her own birthday party in my living room.It was a long time ago I guess. in 1987  I was a baby practically, a mere 38 with my dark-haired husband and our babies sleeping sweetly in their beds. I was still letting her do all the worrying a mile away in her little room at The Mt  Vernon House where she radicalized all the old ladies with talk about how they should have been given SOCIAL SECURITY for the years of homemaking!  (I loved how she could be really steamed up about something,  yet funny about it at the same time; mad and yet comical.)She died wearing a bright-blue top I had bought for her for the big occasion. The EMT’s ripped it open to get at her heart and the nurses in the ER cut her bra right in two. It did no good of course. I'm pretty sure she  was dead  before my cousin and my sister-in-law even got her onto the floor for the CPR.This at the top is how she looked at age 39, newly married and six months pregnant with the baby she thought she'd never have. This picture down below I took when she was in her casket and that baby - my big sister Nan -  was praying beside her.Every year on December 2o^th I wear the bright-blue top with its three new buttons over the heart. I’m wearing it now and thinking  Mom, oh Mom, oh mother of ours, that was one good death.

What's That Coming?

Boo! Ha ha, WATCH OUT!  What was THAT?Dark things on the prowl tonight! Prey or be preyed on!

Plus.... Here comes the WIND! The whole thing puts me in mind of that other Robert Frost poem. Here it is:

"Once by the Pacific" (but you guys on the Atlantic aren't safe either!)

(scary underlinings mine)

The shattered water made a misty din.Great waves looked over others coming in,And thought of doing something to the shoreThat water never did to land before.

The clouds were low and hairy in the skies,Like locks blown forward in the gleam of eyes.You could not tell, and yet it looked as ifThe shore was lucky in being backed by cliff,The cliff in being backed by continent;

It looked as if a night of dark intentWas coming, and not only a night, an age.Someone had better be prepared for rage.

There would be more than ocean-water brokenBefore God's last Put out the Light was spoken.

The I'm OK You're Crazy Plan

"Dying is easy; comedy is hard,” an old vaudevillian once said but not to me it isn’t.  I’ve been making people laugh since I was four years old and first began doing my imitation of the old faster-than-a-speeding-bullet Superman prologue, which I’d rattle off in tights and bunchy underpants, a dishtowel around my neck for a cape.No, to my mind, it’s not hard to make people laugh, provided you don’t mind sacrificing your dignity. If you ask ME for an epigram depicting one true thing, I’d say this: “Comedy is easy. Therapy is hard” and I found out just how hard when I enrolled in counseling under the “I’m OK, You’re Crazy” plan, maybe you’re familiar with it?Doing therapy under the “I’m OK, You’re Crazy” plan occurs when someone you live with suggests you get counseling, although he personally wouldn’t open up in a therapist’s office if you dragged him there in chains and threatened to pull out all his nose hairs.To be plain, my husband, whose nose-hairs I have occasionally eyed, said he thought I should seek treatment. Because I seemed sad, he said.“Hey, all humorists are sad down deep,” I retorted, though I knew he was right; I was sad. Not long before, my mom had died, and I guess I felt too young to face life without her. Plus, she didn’t just die. She died in my living room. During her own birthday party. Within 20 minutes of when I offered the toast by reading a letter which her dad had written her when she was off in college, her own mom newly dead, and she homesick, grief-struck, eating too much chocolate and failing History. My reading it aloud these 60 years later made my steely mom cry, who never, ever, cried - something which I then somehow concluded brought on her death.So, yes I was sad, if not plumb crazy. And I began seeing this counselor to try feeling better.Every week I drove to her office, all unwilling. Every week she asked me how I was. I could only tell her how everyone else was. I told her a million stories, most of them funn. I entertained the daylights out of us both, but I wasn’t getting at the problem, and I think we both knew that, and so, after 18 months, I quit.And 12 years passed, and I was funnier than ever, still in full flight from every kind of sadness that had ever come my way. Then, one day, my oldest friend called to say she was doing counseling -  over the phone of all things - with a gifted therapist in Colorado, who was at first reluctant to work with someone in such an unorthodox manner.“But it’s helping!” my friend said, and one day added, “and you know you should do it too.”And so? And so I am doing it, though God knows it isn’t easy. I can’t seem to sit still as I talk to this faraway therapist. But because we’re on the phone, she doesn’t know this. Sometimes I scrub toilets while we talk. Sometimes I strip small pieces of furniture. nOnce though, she got wise to me. “Are you DRIVING?!” she said. I was driving all right.But I am doing it, as I wish my mom could have done it, to ease her own aching heart.I’ll say it again and you can take it from this old vaudevillian: Comedy really is easy by comparison; and therapy is very, very hard.

Touring Greece, or, Dept. of Whoopsixonassis

My mom had an old flame who, on meeting her 40 years later, told her she looked like Greek ruins in the moonlight. Finally, I’m getting what he meant.I’m IN ruins and this IS Greece and that old moon’s been shining so much I think it’s on the payroll of the Bureau of Tourism -  the Bureau of Whoopsixxonassis, to say it in Greek or some approximation of that. (I'm not doing too well with my street-Greek. I tried to order  fresh-squeezed orange juice and the kid behind the counter thought I wanted to buy the whole machine. “Ah too many moneys!” he sang joyfully. “Four, five hunderd Euros!”)I say I’m in ruins but really I’m just vacationing. At first I thought I’d keep mum about my travel plans because what if news of my absence fell into the wrong hands allowing thieves to break into my house and steal the Queen size, Suntan, Sheer-from Tummy-to-Toe pantyhose that all the cool gals in my demographic favor? But then handy family members offered to move in so I can be honest:  together with Old Dave and a couple we’ve been vacationing with since the days  we thought nothing of packing whole duffel bags filled with crib bumpers and  potty chairs.I’ve been in Athens since Monday morning in other words and now I’m bobbing like a happy cork just off the coast of Mykonos.Speaking of real Greek ruins in the moonlight we could see the Acropolis from our rented treetop apartment from which by night it looked rosy and romantic. But hiking up there and seeing all those tumbled Tootsie Roll parts and those friezes in the museum full of lions with Halloween-style creepy-teeth taking bites out of these poor guy’s backs just made me sad. All that beauty and might crumbled to dust in spite of the fact that here were the only people God ever made who look good in pleats! It broke my heart.To comfort myself that night I ironed everything in my suitcase and, as a kindness to our future shipmates, washed a few things using our little rental unit’s designated appliances. The only problem: the drier didn’t quite do the job even after 120 minutes in. Well a girl’s gossamer panties dry in the blink of an eye but poor Dave: off we went to the ship with four suitcases two carry-ons and one plastic bag filled with ten sodden pounds of extra-large Ts, tube socks and tightie-whities. As the Classical folks would say, Excelsior!  Onward and Upward!

This Just In: Brute Force Ultimately Ineffective

Where Western Civilization Went Wrong Part One. This from a guidebook on Ancient Greece:"Rising to prominence around 700 BC, Sparta became one of the most powerful city states in Ancient Greece where the male citizens lived communally in constant readiness for war. Warriors were selected at the age of seven and subjected to rigorous training: whipping contests with young boys as the victims. Sparta was able to support its citizens as professional soldiers because it had conquered neighboring Messenia, and its enslaved population provided all the food required. "Ah and it could have worked so beautifully! All that cheap slave labor! All the fun of warping tender young natures!  Alas"Its power was based on rigid social and military discipline as well as hatred of foreigners which eventually led to its downfall since it had no allies."Translation One: Everybody hated them. Everybody always hates bullies and wounders of children, however much they also fear them.Translation Two: Our man from Nazareth said it: Live by the sword, die by the sword.Translation Three: If  we women could have run things from the get-go we’d all be a lot better off even now. :-)

Gates Unbarred

Remember that scene at the end of Pretty Woman when the Richard Gere character climbs the fire escape to the call-girl Julia Roberts character and asks her “What happens after the handsome prince rescues the princess?”“She rescues him write back!” says our Julia and the audience totally gets that because of course her smooth and deceitful Prince has been pretty lost himself.Listen to this:When I first met my friend  Bryan he was a chubby-cheeked member of the Advanced Placement English class I taught in my years at Somerville High School. Well a lot has happened in Bryan’s life since those schoolboy days: He went from Boston to Florida by way of California as the saying goes, meaning he made mistakes that even led to his being incarcerated, all because of addiction that proved as hard to cut through as the super-tough ligaments that tie the arm to the torso.Lucky for us both the 12 Steps came along. One day well into his journey toward recovery he and I did a prison ministry show called Gates Unbarred together and as I was taking him back to the Pre-Release, he told me I should go to meetings myself. He said this because he saw in me what I never saw in myself: that as a result of alcoholism in my family of origin I had terrible boundaries and exhibited the kind of ‘rescuing’ behavior that almost never helps anybody and dearly costs not only the person practicing it but those with the closet claims on that person.Today Bryan owns his own very successful business, goes to the VA a couple of times a month to talk with the guys there who are 'in program' and flat-out loves singer-songwriter Lori McKenna,  one of whose tunes caused him to have to pull over the first time he heard it on his car radio and weep tears for pain so old he did not until then know its name.Without saying more let me show you the letter he wrote me ten days ago which I have excerpted as this week’s column and which he says he is happy to have me copy here in unedited form. I titled the column “What Recovery Looks Like” but privately I think of it as “Bryan: May He Speak at My Funeral”:

Dear Terry: So how was your long weekend? Were you up north? I went to Maine on the bike all by myself to visit my Aunt Polly,  my father's sister. Stopped in York Beach to see the twins do you remember them? It was me, Ricky & Robby. Joe, Peter and Yuri all through junior high and high school. Their family has a house in York Maine and we all spent summers up there.Here's a story: In 1984 when I first started going to meetings, my first sponsor was a guy Paul. This was before I even started going to AA. We were going to Cocaine Anonymous back then. I only stayed sober a year and half that first time. Me and Paul stayed friends though. He was a good guy, a contractor, and he always helped me out.In 1988 I was really declining and I needed a car. I had totaled mine. I conned Paul into buying me a car. He bought me a brand new 1988 Ford Escort, he registered it and insured it and I was supposed to give him the payments. Since I was using at the time, I was always a month behind paying him. His car was the car I did those armed robberies in and since the car was registered to him, the police initially went to his house with guns out in front of his kids, the whole nine yards. He told them I had the car and that's when they came and got me.He took the car back, I went to jail and never saw or heard from him again.He's been on my amends list for a long time. I heard 10 yrs ago, he had moved to North Carolina.Fast forward to Saturday. I'm leaving my Aunt's house in Biddeford and I stop for gas with the bike. This couple also on a bike at the next gas pump start talking to me, asking where I'm from, was I enjoying the riding? they asked me if I'd been to this biker bar/restaurant down the road called Bentley's. I told them I hadn't. They were like “Oh, you have to go. It's wild, all the biker's go there, the food is good. Then this other guy at the next pump in a car starts telling me “Ya, you have to go there” Blah, blah, blah, blah.Now I feel like I’m in a Twilight Zone episode where I've gotten off the main road and everyone is a little "too" friendly.The other couple finally talked me into going and following them there. We pull in, I'm completely overwhelmed. There must have been 300 bikes there. Bikers, biker chicks, regular people everywhere. It's a huge place with like 4 bars. They had a mechanical bull, a big bar-b-q pit. Hundreds of people all over the place. I'm all alone, overwhelmed, in a place I had no intention of going to, brought here by two strangers I didn't know.I go get some food and I'm walking around with my plate, just taking it all in. I get in line at one of the four bars to get a coke. I'm standing in line waiting and there’s this guy in front of me with his back to me. He calls over to the bartender and I recognized his voice instantly.It was Paul. My first impulse was to walk away, but I knew I had been led to this very spot for a reason. I tapped him on the shoulder and he turned around.I said 'Hi Paul.'He's looking at me not remembering me and he says 'Do I know you Friend?'I said 'Ya, you do Paul, it's Bryan.'He looked at me for a few seconds then he remembered me. He goes 'Bryan! Is that you? how are you. What happened to you? How ARE you?' I was expecting 'You piece of shit, you fucked me over and you owe me for that car.'I caught him up on my life. He caught me up on his. I noticed he was kind of buzzed and he was drinking. I got his number and told him I needed to call him when he wasn't drinking and make amends to him, including financial amends for the car.Before we parted, I told him 'Paul, you were a good guy and I took advantage of that. I just want you to know you were a good guy to me.'In the midst of all these bikers and all that was going on around us, I saw his face just crack and he started to cry. I don't think anyone had told him he was a good guy in a while. I knew exactly how that felt and how he felt.There were three gas stations at that intersection. Why did I choose that one? Why did I talk to those strangers? I never do that. Why did they talk to me, plus the guy in the car. No one ever just talks to me. I wasn't going to follow them, but I looked over and they were waiting for me.I could have just drove off. There were four bars at this place, why did I end up at that bar in that line, behind that guy?Today I drove back up to York in my car and sat down with Ricky (Robby had to leave) and I made amends to him too for not having been a better friend, for leaving the group and blaming them all these years like they had abandoned me. In reality, I abandoned them for drugs, my crazy lifestyle and being a criminal going to jail. Out of that whole crew, I'm the only one not still in the loop.My whole adult life I've felt the loss of those guys. They knew me, they really knew me. In a way that no one, since, has ever known me. Until I became someone they didn't know anymore.I blamed them for not caring enough to save me. But, how can anyone save you from yourself?I was looking at this Labor Day weekend as a sad end to a summer alone. I guess God didn't have self pity in the game plan for this weekend.  But, I started finding myself again after a very long time.There's a line in the first Lori McKenna song I ever heard called "Boston By Friday:  'I lost a lover, but found my best friend.' I've always known that the  best friend that was being referred to in that song was  me-myself.Love, Bryan

Bryan in 1984

The Sound of Their Falling

On September 11th of last year I posted a piece based on the image of people jumping from another tall building. I wrote it in 2002 with the memory fresh in my mind of that footage  by those French brothers who were hoping to make a documentary about the firehouse right there in Lower Manhattan. Of course they too ended up racing to Ground Zero and the images they captured show how dazed and helpless the firefighters look as they stand in the lobby of Tower One trying to assess the situation. Then the bodies start dropping and the elderly chaplain begins looking disoriented as well as dazed and the next thing you know he’s being carried out, dead of heart failure. I found a little of this footage on YouTube and I’ll post it below.

It was the sound of their falling that I couldn't forget - until I read that Robert Pinsky poem about the people almost a hundred years ago who also jumped to avoid the flames. That was the Triangle Shirt Factory Fire of 1911 and the dead, young women mostly, had been locked in at their machines, company policy.

Strangely enough, it comforts you to read the poem. I keep my piece about it at the top of my home page here. It used to be what I thought of whenever I thought of this awful day. Now I also think of the two people David and I knew who died there and how almost a full year later they found a credit card belonging to one and a little finger belonging to another. And I also think for all we might do wrong here in America, what other country would spend more than a year moving 16 acres of ash and rubble, then sifting, sifting, sifting and doing the careful DNA work too, all so that the families of the victims  might someday have some peace?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pg8FQiJ-Rcw&feature=related]

Losing - Gaining? - My Religion

On nights like this last one when I’m lying in bed like a steamed clam unable to sleep, I take a hot bath which sounds crazy I know but it really does push the old ‘reset’ button. After about 20 minutes my muscles all relax and when I get out,I barely dry off.  Then I  wrap a towel around myself and just sit there reading old Newsweeks while my body cools and  sometimes, sometimes with this thermal hot-and-cold combo, I enter an altered state of consciousness  which is a good thing right, like that fine day comin’ when people can have all the medical marijuana they need.In this altered state I see things as I lie there, turning myself into Terry Fricassee. The bathroom tiles, for example, start to look like as Sesame Street Segment featuring the letter ‘S’, and last night... Well last night the folds of my cast-off camisole there on the bathmat began looking like an orangutan face. A lot like an orangutan face. So very much like an orangutan face that I went downstairs and got my camera.Of course it was 3am by this time and I was so sleepy and dopey I stupidly kicked the garment when I came back in the room and spoiled the effect-Which is a shame. because it really did look like an ape face. Or the face of somebody anyway. And mighty l-o-o-o-o-o-ng  lines of miracle-seekers get started over less. You put a sleepless guy out on a barren cliff in the desert and next thing you know, boom! A new religion.So what do you see here, hmmm? (Dr. Rorschach called! He says Careful what you answer :-)

How to Feel Like a Dork

One good way to feel like a dork is to model for Sky Mall Magazine, that glossy publication found aboard all airplanes these days, each issue sporting on its cover the I Dare-You words “Take It! We'll Replace It!” I take it every time a) because who has to hear THAT twice and also because it often  comes with a cover photo you just can’t forget.Take this image here of the not-entirely-normal foursome relaxing in the Ahh-Qua Bar®, a kind of large inflatable tub decal from the Sock-it-to-Me era only with the nice hammock-y seats built in and the centrally placed ‘ice bucket’ for your off-brand beverages. Mr. Muscles is  OK except he can’t seem to look joyful for one single second more, and really there’s nothing TOO wrong with Chipmunk Cheeks beside him. And the Lady In Red with the slight squint would be fine if she weren’t wearing her bra in the pool, but will you look at the kid beside her?! When they said 'Smile Big!' he DID it by golly and widened his eyes too so you can really see the manic gleam in them!I’ve had this issue of Sky Mall for over a month and I still can’t throw it out I think because of the lesson that it offers: if ever you  get the chance to do any low-budget modeling you should run as fast as you  can in the other direction or this could be you!

On My Cat’s Last Day

On the last day we spent together, my cat Charlotte was tending her bad hip, same as always. She used to like to lean it against me as I sat writing in my wide chair, the two of us flank to flank.On our last day, I had come in at dawn from the coast on the red-eye and was already working in my study at 7 a.m. when she emerged from her favorite sleeping-place under the eaves. During that four-day trip, my husband David had cared for her, setting out the individually-wrapped saucers of wet food I'd made up and keeping both the kibble and the water dish freshly filled.I think now of what an engine of nocturnal pep she was a kitten, when she would scale the tall cliff-face of our bed to administer wildly-scrabbling scalp massage to our sleeping noggins.I think of what a sedate lady she later became, in these last years especially when she spent most of her time monitoring joint pain, just like us. And yet she was content; happy to see us always; freshly delighted by every sudden pool of sunlight that opened up on the floor of whatever room she was in.With this grateful nature and David's good care it may be that she never missed me while I was gone. It may be that she took my love and care as givens, the way children do who see their parents as eternal fixtures,ever-sheltering.If she did I'm glad she did, though it never worked the other way: I never took her for granted. We humans don't, with our pets, because we see how much they love us, all undeserving. Because we know how likely it is that we must one day go on without them.At 8 a.m. on the last morning we spent together, I was seated at my laptop with Charlotte curled up against me. But the night-long flight had taken its toll on me and by 9:30 my eyes were closing as I worked.I don't know why I did what I did then, since never before in our 15 Junes together had I tried to move her just because I wanted her with me, but it's what I did that morning. I carried her into the bedroom with me, where, with the lace of the curtains billowing and the softly buzzing sounds of summer wafting up from the street below, the two of us closed our eyes and slept three hours.She died at 6 that night.Within minutes I felt her spirit vanish, which means I do not hear a phantom cry at the door and I do not feel the phantom press of her flank against mine.I do dream of her though and know well what comfort there can be in dreams: Once, about six months after my entirely healthy 80-year-old mother died all unexpected at a celebration in her honor, I dreamed the two of us were trotting down a wide staircase together. When I suddenly looked over at her and said "Mom! You're running!" she replied, "I know, isn't it great? I'm not old anymore!"Maybe it's the most we can say our dead, that age no longer touches them.Neither our much-loved pets nor our mothers who did their best for us every day; neither our once-young dads nor our fierce big sisters; neither our brave brothers nor our babies lost before their time: They get no older.Getting older is what we do. We age, and we remember, and if we’re wise we too show daily thanks for whatever pool of sunshine opens sudden around us.

Kicked 'n Kicked 'n Kicked Again

The time: 5pm at weekend’s edge. The scene: a plane so crowded people’s elbows are deep in eachother’s belly-fat. The hero: a silver-haired man attempting at the end of the long business day to finally study his Wall Street Journal.  The action commenes when the four-year-old child seated directly behind him scootches down and down in his seat til his feet reach the man’s seat back.  Then, with his mommy out cold in the seat beside him, he bends his knees and KICKS, straightens both legs and PUSHES, holds them slightly flexed  and EXECUTES A SMART LITTLE TAP-DANCE, causing the man’s body to jerk and jump and lurch with every blow. The man says nothing, either to the child, or the child’s mother or to the flight attendant. He doesn’t even cast a baleful glance at the people around him who see what is happening. Instead, for the whole of this weary day’s-end flight, just as millions of anxious investors have been doing for nearly a year now, he winces slightly with every blow, hangs on tight and goes for the ride.

Locked in a Public John

Here’s some karma for ya; just when you get through making fun of your local paper's Police Blotter you end up ON it.I’d been amusing myself with what passes for criminality here in Tinytown. (Somebody winged a cigarette butt out his car window, somebody got pinched for texting behind the wheel, somebody broke into at childcare center, played on the ride-on toys and ate all the ice cream etc.) but now I’LL be the in the paper too, shame of shames, just because I got locked in the bathroom of my favorite coffee shop.I knocked faintly on the thick steel door once I realized it really wouldn’t open.“Yo! Lady stuck in the can!” shouted the man at the table closest to the unisex bathroom.The manager arrived on the door’s opposite side. Then the police."Couldn’t we just cut through the sheet-rock?” I heard somebody say.By the time the fire trucks arrived I was super-hungry and wondering if they could maybe slide a really flat cookie or two under the big heavy door.Also, my feet hurt but the only seat was that prison-cell-style toilet.Meanwhile the consulting went on outside.“Ma’am! Are you all right ma’am?” the manager kept asking, maybe because I was preserving a dignified silence.Also because I was also busy trying to text the family member who might be likeliest to see a text.Also because I was trying to figure out if you could actually eat tampons.But after an unknown interval they finally succeeded in busting me out.“The cops wanted to shoot the lock but we wouldn’t let them!” the firefighters crowed. They were tickled  that they'd been the ones to solve the problem.The manager was tickled that they hadn’t had to introduce her walls to the Jaws of Life.But the most tickled people of all  I think were my own family members, some of whom confessed to guffawing loudly on hearing of my predicament that it caused heads to turn all over the office - and what can I say to that but GLAD TO BE SO ENTERTAINING!