Les cheveux de ma fille ce matin quand elle se réveille sur le sofa : blond cendré, épais, ébouriffés, touffus. Bien plus clairs que les miens, et bien plus épais. Et cette façon bien à elle de s’imposer, d’imposer dans l’espace la force de sa personnalité.

Elle s’est endormie sur le canapé hier soir, et bien plus tôt que d’habitude. Normalement, elle repousse les limites, se brosse les dents au dernier moment, s’assure que j’ai bien remarqué qu’elle a passé l’heure assignée par moi. Mais cette fois-là elle dormait et je me suis même un peu inquiétée. Je m’inquiète trop à son propos.

Elle a dormi enroulée dans la couverture grise avec une barre rouge que m’a offerte Allan à Noël. Cette couverture ressemble à une couverture de camping, rêche et épaisse mais elle l’a adoptée.

Ses premiers mots ce matins : «Romeo n’est pas venu me voir une seule fois.»
Elle a l’air étonnée et réprobatrice.
Elle appelle « Cat ! » avec un petit rire, parce que c’est moi qui l’appelle comme ça. Le chat est venu, mais quand je l’ai appelé, moi. C’est juste que les chats sont capricieux.

Elle est dans une phase hippie depuis deux jours, depuis qu’elle a trouvé une robe longue dans l’armoire de sa chambre. Ca fait deux jours qu’elle la met. Elle a dormi dedans.

Depuis deux jours elle joue des extraits du concert de Woodstock. Hier soir pendant que je préparais le diner elle m’a montré des photos d’une colonie hippie sur son IPod, des photos noir et blancs d’hommes barbus et de femmes à moitié habillés et l’air assez sale. « That’s where you should go ! » je lui ai dit. Elle opinait d’un air ravi. J’ai pensé à mon enfance dans les écoles catholiques bourgeoises françaises et au fait qu’elle est issue de là aussi, à moitié, mais je n’ai rien dit.

Dimanche après-midi, elle a invité un garçon à faire des devoirs avec elle. Elle a joué la playlist de Woodstock pendant deux heures. J’imagine que comme le garçon était chez elle, elle pensait pouvoir imposer ses goûts à elle. Lui m’a assuré qu’il aimait l’Opéra. Elle faisait tomber sa mèche blonde sur son menton par-dessous le cordon de daim et faisait semblant de se mettre à ses maths. Elle connaissait toutes les chansons. Quand le père du garçon est venu le chercher il y avait toujours Jimmy Hendrix sur les ondes et j’ai voulu m’excuser : « Elle est dans sa phase hippie en ce moment. »
Elle m’a contredit: « Pourquoi tu dis que c’est une phase. Ce n’est pas une phase. Dans une vie antérieure, j’étais flower girl à Woodstock. »

J’essaie de l’imaginer mais je ne la vois pas du tout dans ce film. Je vois son visage en forme de cœur, son corps compact de pré-adolescente. Je me demande vraiment où elle est allée chercher ça.

“I’m going for clean streamlined hippie today” elle m’a dit, au moment de partir ce matin. Elle portait un jean avec un pull gris un peu long avec son lien de daim tressé autour de la tête, ses cheveux blonds ondulés lui couvrant les oreilles et l’œil droit, des grosses sandales Birkenstock et des chaussettes grises.

Hier, il faisait près de trente degrés Farenheit et elle a voulu mettre sa robe longue pour aller à l’école, avec un pull par-dessus, son bandeau et ses sandales. Il y avait une couche épaisse de neige fondue sur les trottoirs et elle devait rentrer à pied. « You can wear boots ! » je lui ai dit.
« No ! »
Quand je suis rentrée le soir elle avait dû changer de chaussettes, juste pour me prouver que j’avais tort.

 

 

At five, I jumped down from short stone walls because my father forced me until I cried. I also had to learn to pee in the grass during week-end outings although it was a traumatic experience at first.

*

At six, in Paris, I had to take the public bus from my home to school and back. I forgot my bus stop once and rode alone as the only passenger when the driver saw me and tried to take me safely to school.

*

Still at six, I travelled to Spain alone, sent away by my parents in a Colonie de Vacance (summer camp). I did not receive parental mail and my wire mesh mattress was broken. I learned I had to watch for myself. We did mile-long hikes in the sun with sombreros on our heads.

*

I realize I am starting to sound like Henry le Chat Noir, and his existential drones. But bear with me.

*

At school, I rode a carriage drawn by a white horse with a rose on his head with my boy-friend Bruno. That was an imaginary carriage at recess but I never forgot it, or Bruno. He was well-versed in operetta and sang to me La belle de Cadix.

*

On summer vacation at my grandparents’ village in Brittany I dared to say no to the boys who played “kili-kili maillot” (a version of doctor, in a group) in a dark cabin.

*

In an attempt to build a cabin in the woods with my brother I wounded myself on a rusty nail, which resulted in an impressive life-long scar on the left side of my torso.

*

I fed rabbits and chickens and was shocked by my grandmother’s cruelty as she killed them. My favorite dish was my mother’s Civet de lapin, i.e. rabbit stew.

*

At six and a half, I was the only kid who could spell Ecureuil in the new school I attended when my parents left me and my brother in the care of our grandparents while my baby brother was born.

*

At seven, my brother and I wandered in the wasteland across our street in the suburb of Nantes, searching the ruins of the house that had burnt down in the middle of it. We brought home at least one lousy chair that we used for years.

*

At 16 I took a train to Germany to meet a pen-pal. There I drank Apfelsaft and I shoplifted a David Bowie cassette in a department store.

*

At 17 I spent a summer in an English family. There, I bought a millinery hat with the money that was supposed to pay for my stay with my host family, but that they insisted on leaving on the kitchen counter. Another day I waved to Lady Diana as she made an appearance in a parade during my stay in Lincoln. During that stay I served as a model in an art class in the high-school. I had my clothes on.

*

At 18, I set out to swim across an inlet that had a far stronger current than I thought, and I found mid-way that I had overestimated my capabilities. I thought I was going to die, but somehow in a superhuman effort mastered my panic attack, gathered my strength and made it to the other side, and then back.

*

The following summer I left for Manchester as an au-pair for an Iranian woman whose husband had died. She was 23. The babysitting experience was excruciating (severe case of the terrible twos) but I learned to cook Basmati rice.

*

I had my first kiss in a car in the parking lot of her apartment.

*

My hostess had an Iraqi friend who was impressed by my literary aptitudes: I was reading A Man for all Season of my own volition, to prepare for the upcoming academic year. He took me to visit the Brontë sister’s museum in hope of seducing me later. He told me that all the restaurants were closed and that he had to cook spaghetti for me. He did cook a good spaghetti sauce with meat from a bag he pulled out of the freezer. He had a heated pad on his mattress and turned the heat very high. I wouldn’t lose my virginity to him.

*

My hostess taught me to smoke cigarettes and to drink wine.

*

My second year of college in Angers, I rented a rat-infested apartment without heat but with a large key. I didn’t stay very long but learned about real estate.

*

There was no boy in my class and I spent a lot of time wondering when and how I would lose my virginity.

*

At 21 I lost my virginity to a student of Greek nationality who was studying French via the language program in his school in England. He used the word “socialize” and taught me about AIDS.
The morning after (he left very early) what I thought was normal bleeding turned into an hemorrhage. I took myself to the nearest hospital where a doctor and his medical students set out to sew my vagina back with sharp needles.

*

After 22 years of Catholic school upbringing I had serious philosophical and spiritual questions. The answers came in the form of a professor who introduced me to spirituality.

*

For a master’s thesis subject, I chose Henry Miller over Virginia Woolf, another interest, because she was sad and committed suicide, whereas he was “always merry and bright,” which was more the direction I wanted to follow.

*

I sought out that professor in Paris to ask him to become my thesis director. I was wearing a woolen dress and granny underwear because it was cold and on my way to England for an internship in a steel factory.
He gave me his early poetry books, which I read in the overnight bus to England that was reeking of marijuana smoke.
A few weeks later we met again in London, but he wouldn’t sleep with me because he had a cold, or he chickened out, or both. I was deeply disappointed. (He was not my professor anymore but had left to be the editor of a spirituality collection.) We went to visit Keat’s museum.

*

At 22 an assistantship in an American liberal arts college landed in my lap. There I found students who played guitar, played hippie, played Frisbee and cooked hamburgers on a spectacular campus on top of a hill. Orange juice glasses were four times the size of glasses in France. I never heard words such as professional outlets or unemployment which had permeated my childhood.

*

At Kenyon College I took one French lit class and studied A Rebours by Huysmans. I never forgot the tortoise painted gold and encrusted with gems who died from the weight of that decadence. I also took Swimming 101 and became so sick I broke two ribs coughing and had to stay in bed for several weeks.

*

With material I had gathered at U Mass Amherst, Columbus, Ohio; and Paris libraries I finished writing my Masters thesis entitled Henry Miller and the Transcendental Spirit in the summer of 1989 on a rinky-dink Apple computer that showed green letters on a black screen.

*

In 1990 I got a job at Procter & Gamble France as a secretary, moved to Paris, tracked down my French ex-professor and rented a studio in the same arrondissement.

*

At night, I blissfully typed his novel on his own new Apple word processor. The novel was never published.

*

While I lived in Paris I was mostly interested in visiting the American bookstore Brentano’s on Avenue de l’Opéra. I bought Couples by Updike, which I read on my bed in my lonely studio longing to return to New England where I had left my heart.

*

In exchange for my typing services, the author introduced me to People in his circle, including Alejandro Jodorowsky. I was invited to join an intimate dinner in a restaurant following one of his tarot readings. I wished I had something interesting to say, a joke, a brilliant conversation. But alas. I recall this vividly, and the fact that Jodorowsky ordered osso-bucco.

*

That busy year, I left my lonely studio and moved in with three young Irish people who were teaching English in Paris. I had met Jane at work where she was also a secretary. Later that year, Jane tried to rescue a fellow expat from New Zealand from a heroin addiction. In our apartment. She gave her the bedroom she normally occupied with her boyfriend and left a bottle of Thorazine on the shelf outside the door. She warned us it could become violent in there.

*

At 24 my boyfriend and I got married: we bummed a ride from a German tourist we befriended the previous afternoon in front of the John Harvard statue, among the squirrels in Harvard Square, and brought a marriage license to the town hall in Gloucester, Massachusetts. After the ceremony, or lack thereof, the wedding party of five had lunch in a fried fish restaurant and went to the beach. We stayed married for twenty-two years.

*

While waiting for a green card, I advertised myself as a French tutor to pay rent and buy a coat and clothing suitable for winter in New England. I taught a Harvard student from Hong-Kong who invited me to empty classrooms for the lessons. He was trying to choose between Math and Piano as a life path. French wasn’t one of them.

*

Another student was a tall blond MIT PhD student in math who was reading Anna Karenine in French and could not eat his Pain au chocolat from Au Bon Pain without dusting his lips or nose with powdered sugar, which puzzled me – I couldn’t reconcile this clumsiness with the fact that he was extremely attractive physically and intellectually. He invited me to his student lodging once on the pretext of showing be a book, but I just glimpsed into his room. I was freshly married and conscience stopped me there. I could only fantasize and act out with my own husband.

*

I took a job as a waitress at the Greenhouse coffee-shop as soon as I received my green card. We served breakfast and one morning, a prostitute (I am convinced she was prostitute although I will never know for sure) left me a $5 tip, which was way too much for just a coffee. I thought she might have been confused or tired although it could very well have been altruism. I did need the money and I will forever be grateful.

*

In 1991 I started working at the Medieval Academy of America as the Editorial Assistant. Down the street, panhandlers were selling their own mag, and a street musician relentlessly repeated Bruce Cockburn’s song Lord of the Starfields.

*

The Cambridge Center for Adult Education put out catalogs which I studied from cover to cover. I learned all the Creative Writing classes descriptions by heart. I followed the advice, bought Writing Down the Bone by Natalie Goldberg and Ira Progoff’s Intensive Journal, and used them to the core, writing on my bed while my husband was still at work. Then I made dinner for the two of us.

*

One day at 26 I was reading Anais Nin’s diaries on the train from Boston to Manchester-by-the-Sea on the way to the beach, and told myself I was getting old and I should start living now, or else!

*

I made an apple pie from The Joy of Cooking. Then I tried the lemon pie. Theses made me feel very American and very domestic. At some point I made one pie every week. That was too much.

*

One day I bent down to kiss my husband who was sitting on the porch at breakfast time. One of my hoop earrings got stuck in his nose. It hurt him. Somehow, I got it out.

*

At 28 I was temping in Paris while the economy was at its worst. I recall an interview where the employer showed me his fax machine spewing one resume after another which piled up on the floor. I interviewed for BMG records but didn’t get the job. I was in demand for being bilingual but didn’t get any job.
Radio hits at the time were Everybody Hurts (REM), Runaway Trains never coming back (Soul Asylum), and What’s Up, hey, hey hey, what’s going on (4 Non Blondes) wailing in my head when I wandered in the metro from interview to interview.
That was about the last year I really looked at my horoscope. I realized that it made me feel even more trapped and depressed.

*

In 1995 I was back in Boston, temping. I wore “career suits” I bought at Filene’s Basement, nylons as required by companies’ dress-code, and big white sneakers like all American women to walk faster in the street. We changed shoes at the office.

*

At 29 I took aerobics lessons and developed a crush on the instructor, a beautiful androgynous blonde with short hair and golden skin. One day she changed in the same locker room and I got a glimpse of her breasts. I realized I didn’t know what lesbians do or feel. I thought about approaching her with a fake interview so that I would learn more about her, on a deeper level. I didn’t do this however and became pregnant instead.

*

At 30 I knew I would not be a writer, and I didn’t have a career either. I hated the idea of moving out of the city, which my husband wanted. I couldn’t go back to France either as I was dependent on him. All I could do was shut up and care for my baby. Which I did.

*

At 37, I was a French teacher in the public schools. I hoped it would be a good way to develop my writing skills, what with all the school vacations. Like most people, I had not realized how much hard work and how all-consuming teaching is.

*

At 39 I was a French instructor in college.

*

You might notice that I am loosing steam in the end. Why do life events in youth seem decisive, vivid, colorful, and the same or similar incidents more beige at mid-life. Who can say if my life is not even more adventurous now?

*

At 40 I started meditating and simultaneously started a writing group in the basement of the local Unitarian Universalist church. That was the most fun and laughter I ever had.

*

At 45 I asked for a divorce, which became official the following year. The day of the court meeting, a truck crashed into an electric pole, shutting down the electricity for the whole road, including the manufacturing facility where I worked, and thus giving me the afternoon off as a present.

*

At 50, this is the beginning of the rest of my life which is, well, in the process of being written. I changed the batteries in the carbon-monoxide detector on the ceiling of my apartment at 7:00 am a couple days ago which I thought was pretty adventurous.

* * *

Here is my answer to the question you were all asking yourselves!

Please note that this brief and focused autobiography was inspired by Wayne Koestenbaum’s piece “My 80s.” I’ll be happy to answer any questions  you have about the cryptic illustrations.

This morning, a poem entitled “[the old soiled carpet of the wish to be Anais]” landed in my mailbox. I was curious about the author and found that it is a man named Wayne Koestenbaum, that he is homosexual, as he worded it himself, and that he is not a self-published self-proclaimed mediocre poet as I had first thought (I didn’t like the poem at all, I just was curious about someone who had the interesting thought of wanting to be Anais Nin) but someone on the cusp of being a “public intellectual.” I went to Amazon, where I took a look at My 1980s and other essays, which I found very interesting, although I don’t think they are essays. This led me to a website, Poet Selfies, where I saw that he (Wayne Koestenbaum)  looks a lot like Joshua, a person I briefly dated a couple years ago.

Where this is leading is a poem I wrote at the painful time of breakup with Joshua, although there wasn’t even a relationship to begin with.
I think I am posting this because I just finished reading Anais Nin’s biography by Deirdre Bair (who really didn’t like her at all.) Anais died, I finished the book two nights ago and am still grieving. But she didn’t really die, only on a certain plane, and is still very present in my life and the life of others.
I often wished to be Anais, and I now have the sudden wish to write like Wayne Koestenbaum.

IPSWICH SANS UPDIKE
I saw Updike’s portrait at the library
Updike is much more visible than Joshua in Ipswich
Although Joshua is alive
Or at least he was

I saw Updike’s house
I saw Joshua’s house
And Joshua’s house was much more alive
Was much more alove
To me for a while
Not anymore
I am done writing about Joshua
Updike is just done writing.

Halloween. The wind is blowing
Chrysanthemums on the doorsteps.
Your ghost joined Updike’s in Ipswich
blowing around in the streets
With dead leaves and flower pots.

Even on Facebook you disappeared
Last time I checked you were gone
I saw your kids, who look like you

You had told me you grew up with Updike and his kids
Now I see the whole tribe of ghosts
twirling along in the wind with the leaves

I wanted to see your slight silhouette
Your blue eyes and dainty profile
The kids’ laughter is what I get

And I don’t think of you that often
I just like the title: Ipswich Sans Updike
You are more alive on my bookshelf
A nice memory
With Updike’s biography.

 

 

Walking down Amesbury
Touching a paperback in my pocket
Like a talisman.
I’ll open it sitting on a bench in Amesbury Town
Colette my long-time friend, my sister, my double
And we will watch the cars turn around the roundabout

When she comes with me she always tells me
About the cats in her kitchen
The flowers that bloomed in her garden these days
And then I feel so protected
In my self-inflicted exile
From the sharp corners of my world
With its ice picks and its ice packs
The American stridency of CVS merchandizing
And the general asperities of life unfolding.

From the cocoon of what’s in-between covers
From her forever encapsulated garden
Populated with cat shadows
And figures stirring hot cocoa at the stove
She shows me to seek the flowers and give them a name.

---

This is about Colette, one of my favorite writers; about diving into books as an escape from reality, about the idea that life unfinished is unnerving and requires constant soothing (at least for a HSP like me), and about being an expatriate and the pain of it.

I have my ways to get back to my native France, my inner France, when I am homesick. It happens to me once in a while and Colette is one of the best comfort blankets that way.

The quote is from the poet Mona Van Duyn, and the picture is by Gustav Von Arbin, both clipped in a magazine a few years ago.

I receive in my email box the Poem of the Day from two organizations. That makes two poems a day. I don’t always read them, but the title My Father’s Tie Rack caught my attention. There is something about domestic themes, poems of the details of daily life that appeal to me. So today I will share my own creation from a few months ago, followed by My Father’s Tie Rack, by Joan Larkin, which is delightful, and a lot better than mine, although we are not here to make comparisons. You will see the common theme:

IN MY CLOSET

I opened my closet door this morning
And found your two shirts hanging there

Tightly pressed against the right wall
Slumped together on the hanger
Collars drooping and buttons down
Almost hiding, unassuming
Trying to take so little place.

One was brown and reminded me
Subtly of past woes of matrimony
It called back domesticity’s fears
Of laundry, boredom, treachery
A few furrowed brows down its sleeves.

The other was the blue of summer memories,
I brushed off sunlight dust from it
A couple of mosquito bites
Handfuls of smitten smiles in its seams
And piano notes lost in creases.

Together they were joining forces
To mark the new territory
Among the tremendous collection
Of my dresses and pants and skirts
Marking past, present, and future.

And my heart skipped a beat
In spite of all my experience
At this new love in the closet
At this new joy on a hanger.

 

and now by Joan Larkin:

MY FATHER’S TIE RACK

Back of the door to his dark closet,
eye height, with clever steel
pegs I could flip both ways.
A row of pendulums. Of tongues.
Words, wordless. Witnesses
waiting to be sworn. The town secret.
A silk body, a man’s plenty.
A wild ache, a knot. One painted
with gold mums, one with blood
leaves on mud. Vishnu’s skin, twenty
shades of sky. White flag iris.
Slick sheen of a greenblack snake.
Which one went with him into the hole?
Somewhere else: his belts.

The picture above has nothing to do with either of the poems. I saw it yesterday and it spoke to me as a poem in image. So beautiful, succinct and meaningful at the same time. I tracked the credits to the following site: http://misterblick.free.fr/

 

CONTRE NATURE OR &%#$$#@@#!!!

I do not use nearly enough fucking swear words
I don’t even know many
I am too fucking polite!
Because I was raised to be meek
Afraid of retaliation

 

So does that mean
I will never write hard-hitting,
Powerful writing?

Shit!

What if I tried to insert some of that freaking shit
in my poems?
If I started to use “shitass” and “bitch”
Would it sound spicy and exciting?
Eyebrow-raising and delighting?
Or would I sound hilarious
Instead of passionate and crazy

I have to admit it feels good
to give the finger, in general, to no-one in particular
it makes my inner school-girl giggle
and wiggle her toes
inside her goody-two shoes.

I’d need to try and go further
Stretch my limits
Try to find someone to hate
Or to be afraid of, and call it Asshole!
Cock-sucker, Motherfucker!
I’d need to start seeing men and women in a different light
Maybe start bitching about those bitches myself.

Why do I think I’d look smarter, more powerful?
It takes a lot of hate
To call someone Motherfucker
Testosterone

And it seems to me grossly deprived
Of emotional intelligence.

And I like to write about beautiful things!

*

Dear reader, I have been writing this week. Yes I have. But some of my creations I am not ready to publish. Some things have to stay private. Yes, I am cultivating a secret garden as well. So because I keep my promises, here is a poem which is not entirely new.  It dates from the time I was trying to set up this blog. And maybe cursing helped since you are reading it in these pages.

ODE à MARZUYAND

Oh Marzuyand, toi sans qui
Le visage de Lochrist ne serait pas ce qu’il est
Je ne sais plus si je t’ai jamais vue de face
Petite silhouette sombre
Rabougrie sous la bruine bretonne
Un petit nœud de cheveux jaunes noués
Sous une petite coiffe défraichie

Tu sortais de ta maison
Au bout du petit village fermé
Drapée de l’ombre de ses habitants
Ses mesquineries, ses petitesses
Et toutes ses sombres névroses
Dans le châle sur tes épaules

Marzuyand sans enfants ni famille
Personnage de nos contes de fées
Petite vieille silencieuse
Magnifique Sorcière maléfique
Victime de tous les complots enfantins
Tu avançais dans le brouillard,
Sur la route vers le village
Même pas bretonne de Gauguin.

Je voudrais ici te rendre la vie
Te rendre ce qu’on t’avait enlevé
La dignité
Restaurer dans ma mémoire
Ton visage complet
Rien que pour faire la paix
Pour te demander pardon
Il serait temps
Peut-être parce que j’ai un peu peur
A l’heure de mes cinquante ans
De te ressembler un jour
Et que des gamins méchants
Viennent lancer des pétards
Devant ma porte pour s’enfuir en riant.

No-one in my family knows where the name of Marzuyand comes from or what it means, but it was how we called the woman who lived two houses down from my grandmother’s house.

---

ODE TO TITI

My apologies to you Titi,
As to all I have not loved well.

No dog was ever given
A more ridiculous name to start with
Or a twitchier little self
I remember your stingy tail
Your common white and black thin coat
Or was it brown?

Poor sorry excuse for a dog
Runt of the mutt-iest of litters
Who came from I don’t know where
I wish I could say I cared for a dog
In my reasonably happy childhood
But that was not close to the truth
Titi!

Almost hampering our lives
Rather than adding to them,
With your unending erratic high-pitched barks
Aggressive gnawing of our shoes
Frightening passers-by at the gate
With your crazy teeth-baring and growls

It’s not that we were cruel
Or animal haters
We wanted to love you
But did you have to eat your own poop?

Where did you go when you left our house
When you ran away of your own volition?
Did you escape to the wasteland across the street?
Did you find a better place?
(As in here, on earth?)

I don’t want to wish you ill
The laurel tree that you watered
Missed you for a long time.

---

EXITING THE AIRPORT

One always gets lost in airport parking lots
In Paris, Boston, Seattle
Guided by odd combinations
Of numbers and letters on signs
With erratic arrows indicating motion
Frantic with emotion and haste
Under the neon lights of
Level P1, P2, P3, P4
Carry-ons in tow
Fingering ticket in pocket
Through industrial-size rooms and covered passages
Elevators, hallways, corridors

Blabbering incoherent tidbits
And intently listening to the same
The way crazed moths get dizzy
Seeking the way out
Looking for the light out of the tunnel.

CYMBALS crash a few wavelengths away
Principally into your ears
And you pray that it will be enough
To keep you awake
For a few minutes
Before the soothing bassoon…
And the violins buzzing swarm…
Your eyes slowly close,
Cradled and rocked by a smooth cello sound

Your body bends slightly forward
While you dream of a flat EKG
Or a flat EEG
Anything flat that would let you
Shut off your eyes, and the system.
Come on!
Your cells cry for renewal
Stop the insult!
Or else! ?
You could grow 100 years old
In a few minutes, erase your total hard-drive
Creating utter chaos.

You could lie down on the dark floor
Right now
Nobody would see you
No-one would care
So says the id

But that would be so rude
The super-ego revolts.

The Ego just waves around
Undulating on the chair
Crossing legs, right on top
For one second,
Other leg up,
Doing its own St. Vitus dance
Echoing the one on-stage

You dream of the trip to the airport
You hang on to that thought,
Only a few more minutes, forty minutes
Are nothing, piece of cake
Maybe you’ll be able to sleep in the car
Close your eyes and let go
Let go…
Let go…
CYMBALS CRASHING AGAIN
Help, help me!
You hang on to the flash of an arm, a leg
Appearing in your vision field
How can they be so alive on stage?
How can they not feel like you
The whole world nodding off
Shutting down – how is that possible?
Not to feel it?

Turn to the monitor screen on your left
Hoping that the neck movement
Will hold you up, awake
A tenth of a second
Before your whole being relaxes again
Into deeeeeeep sleeeeeep….

Castanets, lovely castanets
Memory from childhood
Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?
Some kind of art aficionado you are!
Guilt guilt – be damned!!

Clap clap, curtain down. You fly.
Somehow you’ll remember this performance for ever
Every precious second of it marked in your memory.

***

I had the privilege, not long ago, to attend the dress rehearsal and the Premiere of the Nutcracker ballet at the PNB in Seattle. I was also offered the unique experience of seeing and hearing it all from the orchestra pit. However, the second night, not due to lack of interest, which is unbounded, but to the time difference (past my bedtime) and too much fun within a short weekend, this is what happened.

I made a discovery recently that I added to my Journal section. See you there.

Rummaging through my wallet
While waiting for our meals to arrive
I fished out three IDs
On forgotten official documents.

Without having dropped Acid,
I saw, like Richard Alpert did
Some of my past Identities
Float in front of my bemused eyes
One by one.

Hi, dewy-skin doe-eyed kid with the caterpillar eyebrows!
I remember the morning in Montpellier, France when
You pedaled down in the heat to the mall
And incidentally how lightning reflected on the ocean out there
Some nights turned the world white like a cosmic flash.

Hello young woman with the little pinched smile,
I remember well the day you tried on
That business suit, near Gare Saint Lazare
Where you found the Photomaton that so skillfully captured
The sheepish look.

And there you are again – looks like you mean business
At the campus Police station for this memorable mugshot
The day students were moving in
At the college where you taught French.

I hope you all enjoyed your youth and the journey so far

And how beautiful to know that
The “I” who played those lovely roles
Tragedy, comedy, happy endings and all
May still have many more in store
New sets, co-stars and stories

Now in the next snapshots of this life
Among other things (such as love and laughter)
“I” plan to conjure up matching eyebrows
And to do something with the hair.

* * *

I subscribe to the idea that “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” (This quote has been disputably attributed to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin). Also this was before the selfie era, which did so much for the self-esteem of our daughters’ generation.