Yesterday was a shockingly debilitating day; I woke at 7 with an attack of sadness, and I call it that because although most days I wake up with nostalgia and sadness, it is not as intense. Yesterday it was sharp and acute, I had a stomach ache and could not eat, could not go back to sleep, wanted only to cry, could not cry. We went to the post office to mail the newsletters and meant to go to Office Depot to return a printer but I had left the receipt at home, and when I came back I felt that I literally could not go on... I told Jim I would go take a nap, but when I lay down I started to weep... gut-wrenching sobbing that took everything I had. I thought it would be better to die than to feel such intense pain. At some point Jim came in and asked how I was, and I told him I missed my daughter. And he was kind and loving, he said she surely loved me, but the part of me that takes over at those moments was sure this was not true; I felt totally hopeless. He spoke as a true Marxist of the hope in the current terrible doings throughout our planet. The rational part of me agrees, but there was nothing rational about yesterday's Silvia. At some point he said I could just call her and tell her that I missed her and I love her. And although I nodded my head no, I began to think this was something I could do.
Eventually I stopped sobbing enough to make the call... I reached her answering machine and quite simply said, I miss you and I love you. Then I thought of calling Ivan. We had a wonderful conversation about a week ago, almost two hours, and we have not always gotten along as well. He was pleasantly surprised when I just said, I just called to say that I miss you and I love you. I said that I had just called to say that, but he and I talked for close to an hour, and it was a very good call. Not one of the 'plastic' (my daughter's word) or Mickey-Mouse relationship moments that I hate so much.
One of the topics of conversation was whether or not Cati's partner 'likes' or respects me, and of course we differ there, because once again there have been two incidents that were uncalled for cruelty and almost despotic disrespect. The first one came when I was visiting during the pregnancy and she fainted and hit her head on the wall, and I wanted to ride with them to the hospital, and he was vociferous in saying that he loved my daughter very much and he was taking her. I had not suggested anything different, but I was there, she is my daughter, I was terrified. I was left out of it all.
I can't, not today when I am more 'sane' or yesterday or when it happened, put a good spin on his reaction. I understand that he was himself worried about her and about their baby, but the over-reaction is not good, and the intent to leave me out is quite clear. He does care about family, but I am not a part of 'his' family, and apparently I am not to be a part of hers anymore either.
Last night after we went and came back from getting the printer installed in the computer (at some point I was sitting outside on the sidewalk/berm and I called the house and Joan said her father had gone to the Palestine vigil and I felt suddenly bereft and overwhelmed, and I thought quickly of how to get under some car and end it all, the same reaction I had at 17 when my mother told me she would not be coming to my graduation because she was going to Europe, and I was crossing that very busy four-lane highway in Puerto Rico and I thought, I can rush into this thoroughfare and it will be all over, I will put an end to all the pain, but just then Jim drove up and that was so amazing...
One of the things I said to Ivan was that if I ever did something because the pain was too great I wanted him to know it was not because of anything he had ever done, but because the pain was unbearable, and I talked about Bardem's performance in El Mar Adentro, but he said sorry, but he would not give me a pass on that one, and said, which was quite funny, what kind of a thing would it be on Jim, who would not have gotten even his warranty period...
Jim says he does not want to trade me in or make a warranty claim (smile).
In the evening in our room we watched Spellbound, a wonderful documentary about the National Spelling Bee, and I all of a sudden remembered that I was a spelling bee winner about six or so months after I had first come to the US; I was able to spell the big words, including decapitated and bouillabaisse, but could not spell rye; I had no clue what rye was, had never seen or eaten any rye products... And my mother never came to the school or the regional competition with me, not then or the following year at the Miami Herald; I won a pen and she made a snide remark about the lowness of the price, she was happier when I won a similar contest in Cuba in second grade and the first prize was a year's free tuition at Academia Baldor. And then there was the year (fourth grade?) when I won 'best overall student' and I got to bring home the gold medal, but it was to be brought back at the end of a specified period; there were remarks made about that and I got, as I always did, a can of peach halves, and was allowed to take the first two peaches, but then the rest were to be shared with everyone else, 'because it is so important not to be selfish, Silvia, no ser egoísta."
Watching all the work by the parents, or when they could not help the contestants, their presence at the various contests brought back so much pain and dejection that I thought I had to write this down, so it could be a part of my grieving process...
I am better today. I slept well, I am loved and I love myself. I will survive.
Friday, August 12, 2011
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Loss
Every day I mourn the loss of my children; some days the loss is sharp as the pain of a burn or a new cut; I want to scream, sob, hide away, tear my clothing, die. I think about the offer of pills to ease the pain, but I cannot do this; somehow I feel that it is my pain to bear, to live with, and it will become easier, I pray in time it will not hurt so much.
Somewhere in between the lullabies and the home-made baby food, the nursing and the play and the kisses, I did or didn't do, something so that all of my babies have grown up with pain. I thought if I went to therapy, took them to therapy, was willing to withstand any amount of pain or abuse for them, they would be healed of the pain I grew up with, the gratuitous and casual cruelty in the house of my mother, and they would literally inherit the earth. But somehow, and yes of course I am being codependent and blaming myself, there is no one else here this morning in this room except the well-known pain which announced itself as soon as I came back from the bathroom, my love was not enough.
It is easy to blame the system which Jim always does, and surely some of this is aided by this cruel system that enshrines greed... but the sick part of me at heart says "You were not loveable. Your mother did not love you and most of your children have barely tolerated you."
When I get out of this mode, and I will, later today when I put on the activist robes, sometimes the pain is replaced by rage, but that is the sickest part of it. Anger helps me cope, it does the quid pro quo that is always thrown in my face, but right now, it very simply hurts. I have been wanting to sob, have been sobbing inside for the past hour.
With the children go the grandchildren; the pain is mine to bear, but I will not willingly put myself at the mercy of anyone again. The casual cruelty is true enough; the casual indifference is quite real, and possibly my needs and hopes are unreasonable, but they are what I have left... to be loved as I am for who I am, without needing to do anything else for anyone or bring anything to the table. But I will neither submit to emotional blackmail nor, goddess help me, perpetrate it on anyone else. This is what I have elected, and I stand by that.
Somewhere in between the lullabies and the home-made baby food, the nursing and the play and the kisses, I did or didn't do, something so that all of my babies have grown up with pain. I thought if I went to therapy, took them to therapy, was willing to withstand any amount of pain or abuse for them, they would be healed of the pain I grew up with, the gratuitous and casual cruelty in the house of my mother, and they would literally inherit the earth. But somehow, and yes of course I am being codependent and blaming myself, there is no one else here this morning in this room except the well-known pain which announced itself as soon as I came back from the bathroom, my love was not enough.
It is easy to blame the system which Jim always does, and surely some of this is aided by this cruel system that enshrines greed... but the sick part of me at heart says "You were not loveable. Your mother did not love you and most of your children have barely tolerated you."
When I get out of this mode, and I will, later today when I put on the activist robes, sometimes the pain is replaced by rage, but that is the sickest part of it. Anger helps me cope, it does the quid pro quo that is always thrown in my face, but right now, it very simply hurts. I have been wanting to sob, have been sobbing inside for the past hour.
With the children go the grandchildren; the pain is mine to bear, but I will not willingly put myself at the mercy of anyone again. The casual cruelty is true enough; the casual indifference is quite real, and possibly my needs and hopes are unreasonable, but they are what I have left... to be loved as I am for who I am, without needing to do anything else for anyone or bring anything to the table. But I will neither submit to emotional blackmail nor, goddess help me, perpetrate it on anyone else. This is what I have elected, and I stand by that.
Sunday, August 7, 2011
Back in rage/Hiroshima-Nagasaki
Pretend love, pretend words, the things I fell for in the years when I wanted to be loved despite it all. Not feeling worthy or lovable, I had to push the envelope always... And gifts were essential, because no gifts meant no love, as had so often been the case in the house of the accountant and his wife, my mother.
I am pulled in ways that are impossible to bear; I am thanked endlessly, lest I figure out that these thanks are wrung out of despair... Behind it all is the resentment that things are not as they always were, without order or boundary, without the ability to do anything or do nothing in a world that consists only of yourself. Funny that once again I am in a situation where a narcissist attempts to rule everything. But this time I am here to say no more, I am here to set and protect my boundaries. No more guilt, no more laying down on the floor and saying, please step on me (unless in a nice massage...)
Yesterday at the gates of the Livermore Conversion Project we heard a Japanese survivor who was 16 at the time of the bombing of Hiroshima. He told of being in school and seeing a bright blast, and then being blinded by sound and noise. But then "it was deathly quiet and pitch dark." Only later would he realize that the roof of the school had fallen on their heads. He talked about seeing people whose eyeballs had popped out of their sockets, and others seeing confused people trying to put their intestines back into their bodies. He watched people all day and all night, as he walked home, holding out their arms in pain... He is one of the Hibakusha, and we had a computer linkup so that they in Japan could see our candles in front of the gates of one of the two places in the US that manufactures every bomb we make against the people of the world.
How many of our children even think about the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, when we unleashed an inhuman bomb that killed a quarter of a million people and laid waste to two cities, to mothers and their infants, elderly men and women, vegetation, hospitals, indiscriminate destruction.
And when we talk about Japanese imperialism, the truth is that the U.S. wanted to get into the war in Europe but public opinion was strongly against it, so the U.S. manipulated Japan into attacking us so they would have public support to enter the war. We froze Japanese assets and blocked trade. We never cared about British, French or Dutch imperialism in the Pacific, only Japanese. True, Japan had a treaty with Italy and Germany, but the Japanese had made diplomatic concessions to avoid war. We stalled, and as soon as the bomb was made, we flattened two cities and a whole country. It was unnecessary, it was brutal, it was inhumane. Empire always is.
I am pulled in ways that are impossible to bear; I am thanked endlessly, lest I figure out that these thanks are wrung out of despair... Behind it all is the resentment that things are not as they always were, without order or boundary, without the ability to do anything or do nothing in a world that consists only of yourself. Funny that once again I am in a situation where a narcissist attempts to rule everything. But this time I am here to say no more, I am here to set and protect my boundaries. No more guilt, no more laying down on the floor and saying, please step on me (unless in a nice massage...)
Yesterday at the gates of the Livermore Conversion Project we heard a Japanese survivor who was 16 at the time of the bombing of Hiroshima. He told of being in school and seeing a bright blast, and then being blinded by sound and noise. But then "it was deathly quiet and pitch dark." Only later would he realize that the roof of the school had fallen on their heads. He talked about seeing people whose eyeballs had popped out of their sockets, and others seeing confused people trying to put their intestines back into their bodies. He watched people all day and all night, as he walked home, holding out their arms in pain... He is one of the Hibakusha, and we had a computer linkup so that they in Japan could see our candles in front of the gates of one of the two places in the US that manufactures every bomb we make against the people of the world.
How many of our children even think about the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, when we unleashed an inhuman bomb that killed a quarter of a million people and laid waste to two cities, to mothers and their infants, elderly men and women, vegetation, hospitals, indiscriminate destruction.
And when we talk about Japanese imperialism, the truth is that the U.S. wanted to get into the war in Europe but public opinion was strongly against it, so the U.S. manipulated Japan into attacking us so they would have public support to enter the war. We froze Japanese assets and blocked trade. We never cared about British, French or Dutch imperialism in the Pacific, only Japanese. True, Japan had a treaty with Italy and Germany, but the Japanese had made diplomatic concessions to avoid war. We stalled, and as soon as the bomb was made, we flattened two cities and a whole country. It was unnecessary, it was brutal, it was inhumane. Empire always is.
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
The love of the dramatic...
Yes, it is in my genes, but I wonder if the excess anger, which is also a part of my children's lives, is also in the genes or is a part of some chain of past life rage that we carry around, and never shed. I have decided to shed it. As happened when I went back to therapy to control my anger, not to get rid of it because as I told Dr. Trook, it has saved my life on more than one occasion, I want to have the ability to become angry and to let that anger fuel my actions to change the things that make me angry, read here injustice and war and man's inhumanity to man, but not to let it rule my life. The love of drama is a bit harder to give up, but I would rather have interesting but not necessarily crisis mode, which has been my favorite mode these past few years, decades, life? So, yes, I want the ability to fight back efficiently and successfully, without drama.
sometimes
"Beware of feeling yourself unfairly treated."
The Course in Miracles
sometimes
despite the best made plans
life throws you lemons
a spanner in the works
and when you've prayed,
thought, meditated
sat silently before a teacher
humbled yourself before your god
it hurts to find yourself so human
so prone to hurt and disappointment
to bitter rage, a pacifist converted
to a raging killer, sometimes
the years drop far away
and you behave in adolescent
ways you had forgotten;
you scream obscenities
at life, the way things are,
the rain on a June Saturday,
the pissing of the cat
on your wool jacket, sometimes
the best that one can hope for
is a quiet recollection as the storm
is beating on the roof, a moment
of sincere apology for rants, sometimes
in letting go of rage,
a smile wells up within
the confines of the belly
and grows and grows and grows.
sometimes
"Beware of feeling yourself unfairly treated."
The Course in Miracles
sometimes
despite the best made plans
life throws you lemons
a spanner in the works
and when you've prayed,
thought, meditated
sat silently before a teacher
humbled yourself before your god
it hurts to find yourself so human
so prone to hurt and disappointment
to bitter rage, a pacifist converted
to a raging killer, sometimes
the years drop far away
and you behave in adolescent
ways you had forgotten;
you scream obscenities
at life, the way things are,
the rain on a June Saturday,
the pissing of the cat
on your wool jacket, sometimes
the best that one can hope for
is a quiet recollection as the storm
is beating on the roof, a moment
of sincere apology for rants, sometimes
in letting go of rage,
a smile wells up within
the confines of the belly
and grows and grows and grows.
It is working, slowly but surely
The awareness that I need not give it all up, give in, although I can still surrender if I wish to do so, but in the way that one surrenders to an experience, to love, to the smell and being of a flower, not because of guilt. I did not go to yet another faraway meeting just to hold a friend's hand when actually she was being introduced to a professional. I did not at first understand that I needed to let her walk on her own and not be her muleta, but the fact is that when I decided, I am not going, and sent the email saying, I am available here, I can answer questions from here, it felt wonderful! I felt as though I needed to say, good job, and I kissed my own arm... this was sort of funny, but you would have had to have been there...
The same thing with the fact that the level of anger at my snapping back at my own true loves is out of sight, but this is one of the things that happens as one heals and becomes less ready to take abuse... I feel really really good.
I just printed out a schedule of meetings for Al-Anon and ACOA, and we are going this week to a first meeting. Recovery, here I come!
The same thing with the fact that the level of anger at my snapping back at my own true loves is out of sight, but this is one of the things that happens as one heals and becomes less ready to take abuse... I feel really really good.
I just printed out a schedule of meetings for Al-Anon and ACOA, and we are going this week to a first meeting. Recovery, here I come!
Sunday, July 24, 2011
No more guilt
The guilt is real; I should have divorced earlier, should have spared the children the years of deterioration. When one is in a dysfunctional relationship and family, particularly having grown up in a very dysfunctional relationship and family, it is impossible to know what is best. I spent years and countless amounts of money trying to 'fix' the relationship. I knew I could not do it by myself. I hoped it would be possible to find whatever was broken, to mend it, repair it. I can understand in my sane mind that I was attracted to someone unwilling to commit because of my early family background, but I wonder if at a younger age when the hormones are raging it is not harder to see that, especially when, as a full-blown codependent individual, one is always looking for a cause to fight, a crisis to fix, a world to save... The things I have understood through years of therapy, workshops, spiritual 'interventions' are not easier to put into practice because they are understood...
But if I am to proceed, I am setting guilt aside. I am explaining from now on not for anyone else but just so that I can understand the process and work, one second at a time, to ensure it is not repeated. I know from work with people in recovery that it is easier said than done. I can only repeat to myself what I said years ago, when I realized, as a wounded adolescent, that someone had to put an end and a stop to the sadness in my family, all the extended families, brought apart by resentments and hatreds and money. Yes, money, in all of them, has been a big part of the problem. In my own family, in the families of my children, all of these things perdure and persist. I wonder if the next thing to do is to take an ax to the dirty 'dishes' in this family and all the 'dirty secrets, resentments and hatreds." I have always been willing, at least as far as I was concerned, to be challenged, hopefully in a space made safe by love. I did this in family therapy, therapy and workshops with my oldest and youngest sons, group and individual therapy with all the children. I have always been willing to lay out my heart, my feelings, my needs, for the common good. Are any of them ready? Do they understand that if they do not do the work now, it will plague their children and their grandchildren? So, for a bit of dark humor, this is something that really happened, several years ago, in the Poconos:
Perduring amid axes and dirty dishes
Yesterday I took an ax
to my dirty dishes. I was in bed
and my daughter and her fifty-seven flavors
of adolescent renegades
had taken my car out for breakfast.
Night before two kids had shown up
at the front door near eleven, car stuck
in the snow, and they had slept somewhere
on sleeping bags or floor or blankets.
The sink was full again.
The toilet in the bathroom that we never use
was clogged again.
I took the plunger and shit flowed.
I coughed, vomited, remembered
the ax.
I have ALWAYS wanted to take an ax
to dirty dishes.
I left messages taped to my locked door,
took the ax to the kitchen sink,
demolished plates, bowls, glasses, mugs.
It was oddly satisfying.
One of the notes on the door said
I had taken care of the dirty dish problem
permanently. I had.
Axes are satisfactory permanences.
They perdure
as I perdure.
Returning home, my son and his Taiwanese friend
and my foster exchange child from Bretagne
were washing dishes... The ax had been hidden.
The house sparkled. I had been gone six hours
and planned never to return (I tend
to overdramatize, it's a genetic flaw).
Small flan or custard dishes had been placed
on a wicker table by the couch, with round
blue candles, a Delft vase with dying roses,
two wooden cats.
I perdure.
The roses aren't doing so well.
But if I am to proceed, I am setting guilt aside. I am explaining from now on not for anyone else but just so that I can understand the process and work, one second at a time, to ensure it is not repeated. I know from work with people in recovery that it is easier said than done. I can only repeat to myself what I said years ago, when I realized, as a wounded adolescent, that someone had to put an end and a stop to the sadness in my family, all the extended families, brought apart by resentments and hatreds and money. Yes, money, in all of them, has been a big part of the problem. In my own family, in the families of my children, all of these things perdure and persist. I wonder if the next thing to do is to take an ax to the dirty 'dishes' in this family and all the 'dirty secrets, resentments and hatreds." I have always been willing, at least as far as I was concerned, to be challenged, hopefully in a space made safe by love. I did this in family therapy, therapy and workshops with my oldest and youngest sons, group and individual therapy with all the children. I have always been willing to lay out my heart, my feelings, my needs, for the common good. Are any of them ready? Do they understand that if they do not do the work now, it will plague their children and their grandchildren? So, for a bit of dark humor, this is something that really happened, several years ago, in the Poconos:
Perduring amid axes and dirty dishes
Yesterday I took an ax
to my dirty dishes. I was in bed
and my daughter and her fifty-seven flavors
of adolescent renegades
had taken my car out for breakfast.
Night before two kids had shown up
at the front door near eleven, car stuck
in the snow, and they had slept somewhere
on sleeping bags or floor or blankets.
The sink was full again.
The toilet in the bathroom that we never use
was clogged again.
I took the plunger and shit flowed.
I coughed, vomited, remembered
the ax.
I have ALWAYS wanted to take an ax
to dirty dishes.
I left messages taped to my locked door,
took the ax to the kitchen sink,
demolished plates, bowls, glasses, mugs.
It was oddly satisfying.
One of the notes on the door said
I had taken care of the dirty dish problem
permanently. I had.
Axes are satisfactory permanences.
They perdure
as I perdure.
Returning home, my son and his Taiwanese friend
and my foster exchange child from Bretagne
were washing dishes... The ax had been hidden.
The house sparkled. I had been gone six hours
and planned never to return (I tend
to overdramatize, it's a genetic flaw).
Small flan or custard dishes had been placed
on a wicker table by the couch, with round
blue candles, a Delft vase with dying roses,
two wooden cats.
I perdure.
The roses aren't doing so well.
Saturday, July 23, 2011
How to decipher lies
Years ago I dated a man, an inappropriate man, one of the many charmers I related to and slept with and might have almost married, had I not discovered among other things that he believed sex for pay was a 'sport' and had no problem with the hiring of 'ladies of the night' to entertain his business friends. He did teach me one very important lesson. He was studying or had studied psychology, and he said I paid too much attention to what people said rather than what they did, and quoted that saying "Amores son obras, que no buenas razones." To illustrate the point he took off his shoe, an expensive moccasin, and started telling me how much he loved me, and everytime he said "Pero yo te quiero mucho" he would hit me on the head with the shoe... I got it the second time around (smile)...
But I have come a ways from that early girl, I talk about the past and write about it because silence perpetuates a sick society of secrets and deception; writing, talking, telling, sharing, promotes healing and is empowering. Had I been able to talk about what was going on in the accountant's house and obtain some help and not felt so much a shit I would have been much better... because somehow, even the priest agreed, it was my fault, I was one of the shitty people in the world, and somehow again, everything that happened was my fault. When we invaded Panama, one of my neighbors came looking for me to ask me why I had one it... and when I didn't get it, he said, oh, I am sure somehow it is your fault, your husband always says everything is... because I married, of course, the man who pointed out it was my fault, and have permitted all and sundry, in particular sundry, to perpetuate that myth... As a child I was la inventora de la sopa de ajo, and later on I became la madre de los tomates, and so, again, I might as well have become the alcoholic whore (with apologies to all alcoholics, whores, and other admixtures of the same...)
Qui tacet consentit, and I am not sorry and I will not be silent.
Perhaps I have underneath it all been controlling; I told my husband he would have to sign an affidavit saying he was marrying a bossy bitchy broad, but I have also practiced self-awareness for many years now. I know one of the reasons I never drank or took drugs other than the occasional wine glass or the tasting of marihuana is that I am terrified of losing control. In the occupied territories that I lived in as a child, constant vigilance and awareness were required to survive.
Finally, whether there are reasons why my own children have felt I meddled (I did laundry when it was not mine to do, cooked food when it had not been asked of me), the punishment feels harsher than warranted... there goes the criminal lawyer speaking again. I have retired, but she has not (little smile)
From another time, years ago in Pennsylvania:
and once again, whatever
everyone is writing moths spidersilk
the writing of poets from faraway
and long ago and the real ones
didn't know anymore than you
that any of it was worthwhile
they couldn't stop
words on paper papyrus the stone
of the cave was breath
...................
......
-
x
i am here on a cold two degree night
waiting for potatoes to boil, soften,
become mush, in my room with two layers
of clothing and wanting somehow
coat hat gloves inside the house
with lousy windows sliding door
icicles hanging from the corners
reading lines words the exhalations
from North Carolina or Miami, Canada
or Calcutta, my blood breath neurons linked
one giant tracery of poesy to the blood breath
neurons of one Jack or Djuana or a Kelly
or Lynette, or Ankush in his room with dog
and brother, or any of my sisterbrothers
in this dream we share, or nightmare
on some days, a common yearning
for a spray of beauty, silvery dusk,
lunar bayings of the wolf within us all
^^
^^
?
the ibuprofen i was taking
can cause hives or facial swelling, asthma, shock
i couldn't breathe at kitchen sink
one neverending wheeze-
a poem incomplete
a filament of death beside the small
delicate crocus, purple petals
bright against the icy window,
knocked head against the sink, the walls,
breath wouldn't come
thus sometimes with a poem
which is hanging in coocoon
and will not budge, my life did not
flash as they will tell you, i concentrated
on the breath that wouldn't
not with a bang a whimper but a wheeze
???????&
i played the piano in a former life
malefemale i don't know
when i forget that i am i
and sit at keyboard i can play
as if my hands were those of someone
else and when i read another's lines
until my sight blurs and the breath
from other shores is mine and i am
them li po and jack and federico
ankush and neruda tara and nicolas
guillén, i tango with djuana's
compositions, watch birds with lynzie,
grieve in laurel's oldest shoe-
it's almost finished
the ache for conversation vibrates
in the piles of slush in front of my garage
some days i question every breath
each drop of menstrual blood
each poem line or child or word
some days i am content with breath
i have no muse, not anymore,
he quit and left for warmer parts
no longer do i wake with things i need
to write or songs for my guitar
it's done
--------------------------------------------------
PROMISE FOR THE DAY: I will play at least one song on my guitar EVERY day.
But I have come a ways from that early girl, I talk about the past and write about it because silence perpetuates a sick society of secrets and deception; writing, talking, telling, sharing, promotes healing and is empowering. Had I been able to talk about what was going on in the accountant's house and obtain some help and not felt so much a shit I would have been much better... because somehow, even the priest agreed, it was my fault, I was one of the shitty people in the world, and somehow again, everything that happened was my fault. When we invaded Panama, one of my neighbors came looking for me to ask me why I had one it... and when I didn't get it, he said, oh, I am sure somehow it is your fault, your husband always says everything is... because I married, of course, the man who pointed out it was my fault, and have permitted all and sundry, in particular sundry, to perpetuate that myth... As a child I was la inventora de la sopa de ajo, and later on I became la madre de los tomates, and so, again, I might as well have become the alcoholic whore (with apologies to all alcoholics, whores, and other admixtures of the same...)
Qui tacet consentit, and I am not sorry and I will not be silent.
Perhaps I have underneath it all been controlling; I told my husband he would have to sign an affidavit saying he was marrying a bossy bitchy broad, but I have also practiced self-awareness for many years now. I know one of the reasons I never drank or took drugs other than the occasional wine glass or the tasting of marihuana is that I am terrified of losing control. In the occupied territories that I lived in as a child, constant vigilance and awareness were required to survive.
Finally, whether there are reasons why my own children have felt I meddled (I did laundry when it was not mine to do, cooked food when it had not been asked of me), the punishment feels harsher than warranted... there goes the criminal lawyer speaking again. I have retired, but she has not (little smile)
From another time, years ago in Pennsylvania:
and once again, whatever
everyone is writing moths spidersilk
the writing of poets from faraway
and long ago and the real ones
didn't know anymore than you
that any of it was worthwhile
they couldn't stop
words on paper papyrus the stone
of the cave was breath
...................
......
-
x
i am here on a cold two degree night
waiting for potatoes to boil, soften,
become mush, in my room with two layers
of clothing and wanting somehow
coat hat gloves inside the house
with lousy windows sliding door
icicles hanging from the corners
reading lines words the exhalations
from North Carolina or Miami, Canada
or Calcutta, my blood breath neurons linked
one giant tracery of poesy to the blood breath
neurons of one Jack or Djuana or a Kelly
or Lynette, or Ankush in his room with dog
and brother, or any of my sisterbrothers
in this dream we share, or nightmare
on some days, a common yearning
for a spray of beauty, silvery dusk,
lunar bayings of the wolf within us all
^^
^^
?
the ibuprofen i was taking
can cause hives or facial swelling, asthma, shock
i couldn't breathe at kitchen sink
one neverending wheeze-
a poem incomplete
a filament of death beside the small
delicate crocus, purple petals
bright against the icy window,
knocked head against the sink, the walls,
breath wouldn't come
thus sometimes with a poem
which is hanging in coocoon
and will not budge, my life did not
flash as they will tell you, i concentrated
on the breath that wouldn't
not with a bang a whimper but a wheeze
???????&
i played the piano in a former life
malefemale i don't know
when i forget that i am i
and sit at keyboard i can play
as if my hands were those of someone
else and when i read another's lines
until my sight blurs and the breath
from other shores is mine and i am
them li po and jack and federico
ankush and neruda tara and nicolas
guillén, i tango with djuana's
compositions, watch birds with lynzie,
grieve in laurel's oldest shoe-
it's almost finished
the ache for conversation vibrates
in the piles of slush in front of my garage
some days i question every breath
each drop of menstrual blood
each poem line or child or word
some days i am content with breath
i have no muse, not anymore,
he quit and left for warmer parts
no longer do i wake with things i need
to write or songs for my guitar
it's done
--------------------------------------------------
PROMISE FOR THE DAY: I will play at least one song on my guitar EVERY day.
Friday, July 22, 2011
walking along the marina
I had a moment of lucid understanding;
saw clearly my Iago, my well-beloved Cassius,
plotting away, ready to pull the switch
as soon as anything
part of the healing then, perhaps,
involves no more recrimination of the self...
the water lapped against the shore,
the distant coastal mountains winked
and hey the wind
sang but a broken lullaby...
saw clearly my Iago, my well-beloved Cassius,
plotting away, ready to pull the switch
as soon as anything
part of the healing then, perhaps,
involves no more recrimination of the self...
the water lapped against the shore,
the distant coastal mountains winked
and hey the wind
sang but a broken lullaby...
No tit for tat
asked my daughter, as I dutifully
(and codependently oh yes)
thought I have always given tit
without the tat, but always wanted it,
expected it, believed it was my due...
alas, how to come out from hell
unto the light of day...
(and codependently oh yes)
thought I have always given tit
without the tat, but always wanted it,
expected it, believed it was my due...
alas, how to come out from hell
unto the light of day...
A FEW CHARACTERISTICS OF CODEPENDENTS:
Wow...
- Feel most comfortable when they are giving
- Find needy people to take care of
- Try to please others instead of themselves
- Have an overdeveloped sense of responsibility
- Feel anxiety, pity, and guilt when other people have a problem
- Wonder why people don't do for them
- Feel victimized by the "selfishness" of others
- Try to be all things to all people all the time
- Have difficulty saying "no" and/or setting boundaries
- Feel empty and bored when they are not involved in a crisis
- Seek out chaos and then complain about it
- Get angry when somebody refuses their help or doesn't take their advice
- Tend of have a self-esteem that is connected to "doing"
- Try to prove that they are good enough to be loved
- Are afraid of making mistakes
- Are easily offended by other's "rudeness" or "insincerity" or "uncaring attitude"
- Can become self-righteous with phrases like "I would NEVER do that...."
- Try to be perfect, and expect others to be perfect
- Have self-blame and put themselves down
- Must be in control at all times
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From Robert Burney's Co-Dependence, the Dance of Wounded Souls
As children we were taught to determine our worth in comparison with others. If we were smarter than, prettier than, better grades than, faster than, etc. - then we were validated and got the message that we had worth.
In a codependent society everyone has to have someone to look down on in order to feel good about themselves. And, conversely, there is always someone we can compare ourselves to that can cause us to not feel good enough.
Codependency could:
More accurately be called outer or external dependence. The condition of codependence is about giving power over our self esteem to outside sources/agencies or external manifestations. We were taught to look outside of our selves to people, places, and things - to money, property and prestige, to determine if we have worth. That causes us to put false gods before us. We make money or achievement or popularity or material possessions or the "right" marriage the Higher Power that determines if we have worth.
Codependency is:
A particularly vicious form of delayed stress syndrome. Instead of being traumatized in a foreign country against an identified enemy during a war, as soldiers who have delayed stress are - we were traumatized in our sanctuaries by the people we loved the most. Instead of having experienced that trauma for a year or two as a soldier might - we experienced it on a daily basis for 16 or 17 or 18 years. A soldier has to shut down emotionally in order to survive in a war zone. We had to shut down emotionally because we were surrounded by adults who were emotional cripples of one sort or another.
Codependency is:
A dysfunctional emotional and behavioral defense system. When a society is emotionally dishonest, the people of that society are set up to be emotionally dysfunctional. In this society being emotional is described as falling apart, losing it, going to pieces, coming unglued, etc. (Other cultures give more permission to be emotional but then the emotions are usually expressed in ways that are out of balance to the extreme of letting the emotions control. The goal is balance between emotional and mental - between the intuitive and the rational.)
Traditionally in this society men have been taught that anger is the only acceptable emotion for a man to express, while women are taught that it is not acceptable for them to be angry. If it is not ok to own all of our emotions then we can not know who we are as emotional beings. [Also traditionally, women are taught to be codependent - take their self-definition (including their names) and self-worth - from their relationships with men, while men are taught to be codependent on their work/career/ability to produce, and from their presumed superiority to women.]
Codependency is:
A disease of lost self. If we are not validated and affirmed for who we are in childhood then we don't believe we are worthy or lovable. Often we got validated and affirmed by one parent and put down by the other. When the parent who is "loving" does not protect us - or themselves - from the parent that is abusive, it is a betrayal that sets us up to have low self esteem because the affirmation we received was invalidated right in our own homes.
And being affirmed for being who we are is very different than being affirmed for who our parents wanted us to be - if they could not see themselves clearly then they sure could not see us clearly. In order to survive, children adapt whatever behavior will work best in helping them get their survival needs met. We then grow up to be adults who don't know our self and keep dancing the dance we learned as children.
- Feel most comfortable when they are giving
- Find needy people to take care of
- Try to please others instead of themselves
- Have an overdeveloped sense of responsibility
- Feel anxiety, pity, and guilt when other people have a problem
- Wonder why people don't do for them
- Feel victimized by the "selfishness" of others
- Try to be all things to all people all the time
- Have difficulty saying "no" and/or setting boundaries
- Feel empty and bored when they are not involved in a crisis
- Seek out chaos and then complain about it
- Get angry when somebody refuses their help or doesn't take their advice
- Tend of have a self-esteem that is connected to "doing"
- Try to prove that they are good enough to be loved
- Are afraid of making mistakes
- Are easily offended by other's "rudeness" or "insincerity" or "uncaring attitude"
- Can become self-righteous with phrases like "I would NEVER do that...."
- Try to be perfect, and expect others to be perfect
- Have self-blame and put themselves down
- Must be in control at all times
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From Robert Burney's Co-Dependence, the Dance of Wounded Souls
As children we were taught to determine our worth in comparison with others. If we were smarter than, prettier than, better grades than, faster than, etc. - then we were validated and got the message that we had worth.
In a codependent society everyone has to have someone to look down on in order to feel good about themselves. And, conversely, there is always someone we can compare ourselves to that can cause us to not feel good enough.
Codependency could:
More accurately be called outer or external dependence. The condition of codependence is about giving power over our self esteem to outside sources/agencies or external manifestations. We were taught to look outside of our selves to people, places, and things - to money, property and prestige, to determine if we have worth. That causes us to put false gods before us. We make money or achievement or popularity or material possessions or the "right" marriage the Higher Power that determines if we have worth.
Codependency is:
A particularly vicious form of delayed stress syndrome. Instead of being traumatized in a foreign country against an identified enemy during a war, as soldiers who have delayed stress are - we were traumatized in our sanctuaries by the people we loved the most. Instead of having experienced that trauma for a year or two as a soldier might - we experienced it on a daily basis for 16 or 17 or 18 years. A soldier has to shut down emotionally in order to survive in a war zone. We had to shut down emotionally because we were surrounded by adults who were emotional cripples of one sort or another.
Codependency is:
A dysfunctional emotional and behavioral defense system. When a society is emotionally dishonest, the people of that society are set up to be emotionally dysfunctional. In this society being emotional is described as falling apart, losing it, going to pieces, coming unglued, etc. (Other cultures give more permission to be emotional but then the emotions are usually expressed in ways that are out of balance to the extreme of letting the emotions control. The goal is balance between emotional and mental - between the intuitive and the rational.)
Traditionally in this society men have been taught that anger is the only acceptable emotion for a man to express, while women are taught that it is not acceptable for them to be angry. If it is not ok to own all of our emotions then we can not know who we are as emotional beings. [Also traditionally, women are taught to be codependent - take their self-definition (including their names) and self-worth - from their relationships with men, while men are taught to be codependent on their work/career/ability to produce, and from their presumed superiority to women.]
Codependency is:
A disease of lost self. If we are not validated and affirmed for who we are in childhood then we don't believe we are worthy or lovable. Often we got validated and affirmed by one parent and put down by the other. When the parent who is "loving" does not protect us - or themselves - from the parent that is abusive, it is a betrayal that sets us up to have low self esteem because the affirmation we received was invalidated right in our own homes.
And being affirmed for being who we are is very different than being affirmed for who our parents wanted us to be - if they could not see themselves clearly then they sure could not see us clearly. In order to survive, children adapt whatever behavior will work best in helping them get their survival needs met. We then grow up to be adults who don't know our self and keep dancing the dance we learned as children.
Victims of torture (love heals!)
Yesterday at the vigil/rally for Palestine, one of our wedding guests and dear friends said that the love Jim and I have for each other, the love he has for me and I have for him, expands and touches and heals all of them, everyone around us... and I am/we are so lucky, so...
After a grueling exercise in wrenching sobbing pain
I realize that Marx was right
it is the property within our midst
that poisons all; my oldest son stopped walking
after the birth of his first brother.
He never learned to share, he had to be the sole
inheritor and son. My heart has room
for sons and daughters of the body and the soul,
and there are larger problems we must learn
to bear. I am myself a torture victim,
but most of all I am a warrior, ready to battle
but most ready to be love, to heal and to forgive.
I started this long story many lives ago,
and it is time to put the weapons down
and turn the swords to ploughshares.
We must imagine such a planet as the one I dream of;
one with no labels, no requirements, no ready-made
classifications that will make you fit
for this or that. I will survive to sing
another day, to love, to show that love
no quarrel shows.
After a grueling exercise in wrenching sobbing pain
I realize that Marx was right
it is the property within our midst
that poisons all; my oldest son stopped walking
after the birth of his first brother.
He never learned to share, he had to be the sole
inheritor and son. My heart has room
for sons and daughters of the body and the soul,
and there are larger problems we must learn
to bear. I am myself a torture victim,
but most of all I am a warrior, ready to battle
but most ready to be love, to heal and to forgive.
I started this long story many lives ago,
and it is time to put the weapons down
and turn the swords to ploughshares.
We must imagine such a planet as the one I dream of;
one with no labels, no requirements, no ready-made
classifications that will make you fit
for this or that. I will survive to sing
another day, to love, to show that love
no quarrel shows.
tears yet again
the tears are here again
I am awash
in seas of tears
but though they wrench my body
stress the very ends
of my existence I am grateful
they are here
the tears will heal
all wounds
they always do
I am awash
in seas of tears
but though they wrench my body
stress the very ends
of my existence I am grateful
they are here
the tears will heal
all wounds
they always do
4-point crucifixion
I am no stranger to pain, said she
when the first wound was made, a sharp
incision to the gut, there where it hurts,
followed by a booted kick, a one-two
to the upper ribs, here’s where the telling
gets much harder, the breath fails you,
you remember
every diaper, rash, baby gurgle, toothless smile,
the sweet and sour breast-milk runny shit
on your best Salvation-army-special blouse,
the year you went to three rehearsals, one dress,
and four performances, the teachers at the school
who raved about the promise and despaired
about the steadfast failure to perform
and all the times of no responses to the letters,
phone calls, emails, gifts and birthdays,
and other days forgotten but not lost,
there is a crazy person somewhere deep inside
who’s yearning to be free
who says, it’s what you did, or what
you didn't do, whatever, too much love
or too much what they call it now, the co-dependence
of the wounded in remission or recovery…
the second one came first in time of day;
the one I never pleased, was never young or beautiful
or rich enough for, I haven’t ever figured what the lack
or failure was, but everyone had better mothers,
better friends, no matter what the issue was,
sometimes you have to tell yourself the fight is over
at the start; I never learned to do that, kept fighting on
to bitter end; this one will have the hardest time
when time comes to an end because at heart he always yearned
for what I did not have, or what he thought I should have had,
and coming back from his occasion one year later
having heard him tell the new adopted mother
how much he owes and telling mine, the one who never
ever came to graduations, stopped abuse when it was real
and dark and painful or made the pain stop once,
the one I wrote to for his sake, because she hurt him
and I could not bear to see him hurt, she also
has he thanked that time and told her oh how much
it was that she had done, that she had meant,
while I sat somewhere on a frozen seat aware
of how much I had not ... could not... would not...
so no, it was not a surprise that money was an object
when he was so near, I traveled far on more than one
occasion, bestowed what I could ill afford but no,
it was not a surprise…
the third one’s been a time in coming, the stabs
have been more frequent in the year gone past,
when closer as to miles, I have been shed as she
who got to talk and hear the hopes and prayers,
ongoing attempts to heal a mind and heart
ravaged by pain, by dread disease, by harsh
addiction, willing or not; I say again, though
painful yet, it was not unexpected but I did not buck
the feint; that seems to be what one will do
when brought together by blood, as blood will do,
one stands and takes it, grins and bears it,
and all the sad clichés of love and pain
and life and death
the fourth one I suspected for a while;
we drove just before Christmas in the middle
of a storm and I had a full-blown panic fit,
I yelled and screamed and sobbed and hit
my fists against the steering wheel,
the post-traumatic stress, a well-known friend
from childhood, exile, life, abuse, an accident
or two, full blown, it is not lost, oh no,
it’s never lost; now that I do the work
of hearing and interpreting for victims
of abuse and torture it's clear that pain
lives on despite the best-made promises
to forget; and so on to the birthday
when we drove all day to be there at the birth
of a new life; we stayed in a hotel,
ate from a blender fruit and prayed, at least
I prayed for safe delivery, for an ease
of pain, we were the first to see the babe’s
new frowns, to hear his cries, but I should not
have been amazed, there has despite the years
of driving through the rain and snow been
an estrangement, so when the partner opened
the freezer compartment and screamed that I was not
to cook again, the food all packed in the containers
which she had not thrown away, but kept,
a mute but saddest testimony to an ill-spent love
that is not what is sought or wanted,
why is it I have never understood the lesson
to be learned, whatever it was…
I offered money, an airplane ticket, all I wanted
was to share my special day and I suspected
when my emails went unanswered, and the calls
I made to both the lines that this one would be hardest yet…
it is because as women we both know the pain of birth,
the wonder of the warmth of baby’s breath upon the breast,
the marvel of a love so strong it feels as though your heart
will burst and that is what the last stab wound, most painful
to a weakened heart, felt; sharp as the sharpest knife
turning upon the wound, already opened; I sobbed
and later on I screamed, forswore my best allegiances
and swore to mourn them as the women and the men
who’ve seen their dearest ones put down by evil or by time
or fate or illness or decree; perhaps it is as my new love
asserts; our system, so corrupt, corrupts all love,
smashes the hearts of all who live, it's easy to believe
it's these our times, I wonder wonder wonder if the answer
is that simple, the later plays of Shakespeare show the way
that love can fester in the heart, Regan and Goneril,
the others written and performed, I am here to tell you
that the pain is most exquisite, I will survive
these wounds and let them not be fatal; more grist
for mills that work all day; I do not know quite what will help;
the newest meditation or the longest psychotherapy.
I will survive, will sing again, will write
of orchids and their blooms, will hold others’ grandchildren
and perhaps will find redemption in the end.
when the first wound was made, a sharp
incision to the gut, there where it hurts,
followed by a booted kick, a one-two
to the upper ribs, here’s where the telling
gets much harder, the breath fails you,
you remember
every diaper, rash, baby gurgle, toothless smile,
the sweet and sour breast-milk runny shit
on your best Salvation-army-special blouse,
the year you went to three rehearsals, one dress,
and four performances, the teachers at the school
who raved about the promise and despaired
about the steadfast failure to perform
and all the times of no responses to the letters,
phone calls, emails, gifts and birthdays,
and other days forgotten but not lost,
there is a crazy person somewhere deep inside
who’s yearning to be free
who says, it’s what you did, or what
you didn't do, whatever, too much love
or too much what they call it now, the co-dependence
of the wounded in remission or recovery…
the second one came first in time of day;
the one I never pleased, was never young or beautiful
or rich enough for, I haven’t ever figured what the lack
or failure was, but everyone had better mothers,
better friends, no matter what the issue was,
sometimes you have to tell yourself the fight is over
at the start; I never learned to do that, kept fighting on
to bitter end; this one will have the hardest time
when time comes to an end because at heart he always yearned
for what I did not have, or what he thought I should have had,
and coming back from his occasion one year later
having heard him tell the new adopted mother
how much he owes and telling mine, the one who never
ever came to graduations, stopped abuse when it was real
and dark and painful or made the pain stop once,
the one I wrote to for his sake, because she hurt him
and I could not bear to see him hurt, she also
has he thanked that time and told her oh how much
it was that she had done, that she had meant,
while I sat somewhere on a frozen seat aware
of how much I had not ... could not... would not...
so no, it was not a surprise that money was an object
when he was so near, I traveled far on more than one
occasion, bestowed what I could ill afford but no,
it was not a surprise…
the third one’s been a time in coming, the stabs
have been more frequent in the year gone past,
when closer as to miles, I have been shed as she
who got to talk and hear the hopes and prayers,
ongoing attempts to heal a mind and heart
ravaged by pain, by dread disease, by harsh
addiction, willing or not; I say again, though
painful yet, it was not unexpected but I did not buck
the feint; that seems to be what one will do
when brought together by blood, as blood will do,
one stands and takes it, grins and bears it,
and all the sad clichés of love and pain
and life and death
the fourth one I suspected for a while;
we drove just before Christmas in the middle
of a storm and I had a full-blown panic fit,
I yelled and screamed and sobbed and hit
my fists against the steering wheel,
the post-traumatic stress, a well-known friend
from childhood, exile, life, abuse, an accident
or two, full blown, it is not lost, oh no,
it’s never lost; now that I do the work
of hearing and interpreting for victims
of abuse and torture it's clear that pain
lives on despite the best-made promises
to forget; and so on to the birthday
when we drove all day to be there at the birth
of a new life; we stayed in a hotel,
ate from a blender fruit and prayed, at least
I prayed for safe delivery, for an ease
of pain, we were the first to see the babe’s
new frowns, to hear his cries, but I should not
have been amazed, there has despite the years
of driving through the rain and snow been
an estrangement, so when the partner opened
the freezer compartment and screamed that I was not
to cook again, the food all packed in the containers
which she had not thrown away, but kept,
a mute but saddest testimony to an ill-spent love
that is not what is sought or wanted,
why is it I have never understood the lesson
to be learned, whatever it was…
I offered money, an airplane ticket, all I wanted
was to share my special day and I suspected
when my emails went unanswered, and the calls
I made to both the lines that this one would be hardest yet…
it is because as women we both know the pain of birth,
the wonder of the warmth of baby’s breath upon the breast,
the marvel of a love so strong it feels as though your heart
will burst and that is what the last stab wound, most painful
to a weakened heart, felt; sharp as the sharpest knife
turning upon the wound, already opened; I sobbed
and later on I screamed, forswore my best allegiances
and swore to mourn them as the women and the men
who’ve seen their dearest ones put down by evil or by time
or fate or illness or decree; perhaps it is as my new love
asserts; our system, so corrupt, corrupts all love,
smashes the hearts of all who live, it's easy to believe
it's these our times, I wonder wonder wonder if the answer
is that simple, the later plays of Shakespeare show the way
that love can fester in the heart, Regan and Goneril,
the others written and performed, I am here to tell you
that the pain is most exquisite, I will survive
these wounds and let them not be fatal; more grist
for mills that work all day; I do not know quite what will help;
the newest meditation or the longest psychotherapy.
I will survive, will sing again, will write
of orchids and their blooms, will hold others’ grandchildren
and perhaps will find redemption in the end.
the alcoholic whore bit
I could have been an alcoholic or a drug addict... I could have taken up sex for hire... I am sort of entitled, I figure, but instead I had children, many of them, and I loved them too well, by which I mean I loved them co-dependently, whatever that means, I will find out what that means and why I can feel so much resentment and yes, even hatred and 'desprecio,' why most things I try to do are rejected; why they never came to hear me play (with the exception of two of them, but that was to specific shows rather than to my regular gigs). I know for a fact that I overdid, that I tried too hard, as a child, to be the best, hoping for some acceptance, nice words, a bit of applause from my mother and the accountant. High school: magna cum laude. My mother went on vacation to Europe and did not come. College: magna cum laude; I don't know the reason she did not come to that. Law school: too far away? I don't know.
Would it have been more acceptable to have been an alcoholic whore? Would they have come, applauded, laughed, cut me a break? Maybe the shadow knows...
Ah...
i am in constant mourning for everyone
the fridge hums a dirge all day
the photos of the deceased
stare from the page hopelessly
Natvarili
Is it the passing of the years?
The newest wrinkle on my neck?
Is it the first gray strand
in my son's hair?
Most days I am content
with line and yeasty bread,
with tree and snowy fields
and honey in my chamomile.
But then there are these moments
when the black hole that is life,
(or is it death?) yawns hugely,
clacks yellowed teeth, whistles
a syncopated requiem; I always mean
to write out in those moments how
my farewells are to be said; the music
(Ella Fitzgerald, Satchmo, Benny Moré)
for the dancing at the head of the cortge,
the later slower strains (Concerto for Mandolin,
Vivaldi, and some of Enya, or dark strains
of Piazzolla) for meditation on the taste
of life and death; I always get distracted,
will probably miss my funeral, pyre
will burn without me, my children having paid
for funeral meats, champagne and cha-cha-chá
will wonder how it is again that I am late...
and yet I mourn the touch of Larry's hand
upon my cheek and his caressing voice
(I'd call his office just to listen to the message
on his voicemail), I mourn the lack of seas
that I may never see again, my tropical
bluegreen with white spun sugar sand,
I mourn now dead illusions,
misconceptions, the restaurants
that failed, the men I loved whose names
escape me, the feel of baby bottoms
after diapers had been changed...
At sixteen I wore melancholy on my face;
at fifty-four remember sixteen's eyes
and think how much time wasted...
Time out for chamomile and honey,
for fresh-baked bread with butter,
for old Neruda lines and taste of kisses
in this melancholy brain, and pleasant dreams
and planetary turnings for the day
may bring rejoicings or calamities,
with hey ho, wind and rain.
POST SCRIPT: which means, not necessarily an afterthought, but something after it was all written. On the last visit, after I drove all day on my birthday to be there for the birth of the baby, I came to visit just before leaving, I offered to make soup and the partner yelled and opened the door to the freezer to show me how much of the food I had made while she was pregnant was still there, frozen away, uneaten. This followed my oldest's email request that I NOT cook anything if I visited... This is called co-dependent cooking. I will cook no more, hopefully, there, although I made paella for my wedding, and everyone ate it and had second and third helpings.
Would it have been more acceptable to have been an alcoholic whore? Would they have come, applauded, laughed, cut me a break? Maybe the shadow knows...
Ah...
i am in constant mourning for everyone
the fridge hums a dirge all day
the photos of the deceased
stare from the page hopelessly
Natvarili
Is it the passing of the years?
The newest wrinkle on my neck?
Is it the first gray strand
in my son's hair?
Most days I am content
with line and yeasty bread,
with tree and snowy fields
and honey in my chamomile.
But then there are these moments
when the black hole that is life,
(or is it death?) yawns hugely,
clacks yellowed teeth, whistles
a syncopated requiem; I always mean
to write out in those moments how
my farewells are to be said; the music
(Ella Fitzgerald, Satchmo, Benny Moré)
for the dancing at the head of the cortge,
the later slower strains (Concerto for Mandolin,
Vivaldi, and some of Enya, or dark strains
of Piazzolla) for meditation on the taste
of life and death; I always get distracted,
will probably miss my funeral, pyre
will burn without me, my children having paid
for funeral meats, champagne and cha-cha-chá
will wonder how it is again that I am late...
and yet I mourn the touch of Larry's hand
upon my cheek and his caressing voice
(I'd call his office just to listen to the message
on his voicemail), I mourn the lack of seas
that I may never see again, my tropical
bluegreen with white spun sugar sand,
I mourn now dead illusions,
misconceptions, the restaurants
that failed, the men I loved whose names
escape me, the feel of baby bottoms
after diapers had been changed...
At sixteen I wore melancholy on my face;
at fifty-four remember sixteen's eyes
and think how much time wasted...
Time out for chamomile and honey,
for fresh-baked bread with butter,
for old Neruda lines and taste of kisses
in this melancholy brain, and pleasant dreams
and planetary turnings for the day
may bring rejoicings or calamities,
with hey ho, wind and rain.
POST SCRIPT: which means, not necessarily an afterthought, but something after it was all written. On the last visit, after I drove all day on my birthday to be there for the birth of the baby, I came to visit just before leaving, I offered to make soup and the partner yelled and opened the door to the freezer to show me how much of the food I had made while she was pregnant was still there, frozen away, uneaten. This followed my oldest's email request that I NOT cook anything if I visited... This is called co-dependent cooking. I will cook no more, hopefully, there, although I made paella for my wedding, and everyone ate it and had second and third helpings.
Recovery
So I am back again doing work, work that it seems I have been doing all my life. I went to my first shrink at 18, when nightmares made it difficult for me to sleep or to live or to enjoy life with my first husband. I have done psychological work, spiritual work, all the myriad things, rebirthing, meditation... I suffer from post-traumatic stress, some of it from early childhood, exile, abuse, and later discrimination while in a foreign country. I had an accident several years ago that left me mentally unable to drive, and this is coming back. In December when I went to visit my daughter I had terrible attacks of terror; there was a storm, and I kept screaming and crying and wanting to have the car stop... I would have never gotten there had it not been for my love...
But I, as a wounded being who revisits these things, am co-dependent, and probably that is not an easy thing for children and other strangers to put up with. Recently, I was summarily dismissed, given up. I was a stranger, and the pain and the anger, because oh there is a tremendous amount of anger, is making it difficult for me to go on. I have trouble sleeping. I want to shout, yet again, THIS IS NOT FAIR, so instead, I have gone back into therapy, and she has suggested group recovery, such as ACOA or AL-ANON, or even CODA. I will get to stand up and say, I am a co-dependent. It turns out so many of us who are activists are equally wounded, and the most interesting thing is the guilt from being white, which my partner experiences, which makes us work that much harder. I know how much privilege there was in my life, despite all the abuse, because there was access to education and culture, and because, after all, I am white, even if in this new land I am a person of color (which I treasure). My sister, also a victim, is helped by medication; I can't seem to do that. May she thrive, and heal, and find love and peace.
Sisters
We talked
through deepening gloom and chill
of children, wounds, organic freerange
chickens, the reparation
of abuse, and whether evil
ever has a mother's face
and winter rooms with socks and layered
clothing to avoid
electric dollars flying out of windows,
and squeezing contributions
from ex-husbands for the fruits
of former love, their lives not ones
of desperation but of newfound
wealth, and frequent trips
to disneylands and cruises
with the current wife or mistress,
but on through midnight, one and two
o'clock, through change to daylight
savings we held inner hands,
asked why, laughed, ate
that evening's apple pancake
and buttered pumpernickel bread,
and paraphrased that old saw that revenge
is best served cold, and rearranged
the early and the later griefs
of motherjealousy and hatred
and asked why, and had no answers
and asked why, and wondered how to keep
depression far and leashed, asked why
and all the pseudo philosophical
and new age metaphysical and all the theories
of FreudJungMaltz and People of the Lie
left questions in their wake, there is a fact
that we are sisters orphaned by a mother's
hatred or indifference, that love and sometimes
jealousy bind us like old Mandarin feet,
and that despite the bickering and the halting
progress of our ordinary goodness we must
persist.
But I, as a wounded being who revisits these things, am co-dependent, and probably that is not an easy thing for children and other strangers to put up with. Recently, I was summarily dismissed, given up. I was a stranger, and the pain and the anger, because oh there is a tremendous amount of anger, is making it difficult for me to go on. I have trouble sleeping. I want to shout, yet again, THIS IS NOT FAIR, so instead, I have gone back into therapy, and she has suggested group recovery, such as ACOA or AL-ANON, or even CODA. I will get to stand up and say, I am a co-dependent. It turns out so many of us who are activists are equally wounded, and the most interesting thing is the guilt from being white, which my partner experiences, which makes us work that much harder. I know how much privilege there was in my life, despite all the abuse, because there was access to education and culture, and because, after all, I am white, even if in this new land I am a person of color (which I treasure). My sister, also a victim, is helped by medication; I can't seem to do that. May she thrive, and heal, and find love and peace.
Sisters
We talked
through deepening gloom and chill
of children, wounds, organic freerange
chickens, the reparation
of abuse, and whether evil
ever has a mother's face
and winter rooms with socks and layered
clothing to avoid
electric dollars flying out of windows,
and squeezing contributions
from ex-husbands for the fruits
of former love, their lives not ones
of desperation but of newfound
wealth, and frequent trips
to disneylands and cruises
with the current wife or mistress,
but on through midnight, one and two
o'clock, through change to daylight
savings we held inner hands,
asked why, laughed, ate
that evening's apple pancake
and buttered pumpernickel bread,
and paraphrased that old saw that revenge
is best served cold, and rearranged
the early and the later griefs
of motherjealousy and hatred
and asked why, and had no answers
and asked why, and wondered how to keep
depression far and leashed, asked why
and all the pseudo philosophical
and new age metaphysical and all the theories
of FreudJungMaltz and People of the Lie
left questions in their wake, there is a fact
that we are sisters orphaned by a mother's
hatred or indifference, that love and sometimes
jealousy bind us like old Mandarin feet,
and that despite the bickering and the halting
progress of our ordinary goodness we must
persist.
The underdog
I was the child underdog in the accountant's house. My mother was busy being the accountant's young wife, and he had money, and she had been a child of the depression. So his sisters and his mother made comments about my family, my looks, and the undesirability of my genes. Of course, the accountant brother still tried to put his hand in my twelve-year-old panties, still pinched my budding nipples if I happened to be home alone and doing dishes. One day he pressed me against the kitchen sink and I could feel his erection, although of course at the time I did not know what that was, this was before sex education. I knew the nipple and the bulge could not presage anything good so I tried to get away, while he tried to put his tongue in my mouth. Years later, when I had buried all that had happened, and it took stress and tears and therapy to dig it up, I was newly married to my first husband, waiting for the movie to end and the new show to begin, and he pressed his body against mine; we were 18 and in love... and I became hysterical and started screaming and sobbing so that he had to carry me out. That is when he first found out... and when I began to relive the nightmares.
As a twelve-year-old there was very little I could do... he was the master of the household, my mother would hear nothing against him, and so early on I began defending those who 'have no voice.' The abuse was not only sexual, but implied a feeling of total impotence, because I could do nothing. I tend now to defy authority, I love to 'disobey,' especially when it involves the rich, the bean counters, the defilers.
coming home
we are a messed up set
our wings in slings where traffic
was too rough for flying
the scars hurt most on fridays
unhappy fridays when all the doing
of the regular week is quieter
and laundry, beer or sex
rear their solitary heads
promise a respite from the pain
of daily breath, we look at bitten
nails and stretchmarks on our bellies
and sympathetic grief marks
outside ventricles
where that old heart had stretched
for such a love as Abelard and Heloise
before castration and reality
came to visit, dressed in satin
sweats, we hold each others'
hands and dreams, breathe
in and out each moment of the day,
a poets' coven, hearth, a place
for love and all the satisfaction
of the smallest moment in the yard
listening to the cricket’s song
As a twelve-year-old there was very little I could do... he was the master of the household, my mother would hear nothing against him, and so early on I began defending those who 'have no voice.' The abuse was not only sexual, but implied a feeling of total impotence, because I could do nothing. I tend now to defy authority, I love to 'disobey,' especially when it involves the rich, the bean counters, the defilers.
coming home
we are a messed up set
our wings in slings where traffic
was too rough for flying
the scars hurt most on fridays
unhappy fridays when all the doing
of the regular week is quieter
and laundry, beer or sex
rear their solitary heads
promise a respite from the pain
of daily breath, we look at bitten
nails and stretchmarks on our bellies
and sympathetic grief marks
outside ventricles
where that old heart had stretched
for such a love as Abelard and Heloise
before castration and reality
came to visit, dressed in satin
sweats, we hold each others'
hands and dreams, breathe
in and out each moment of the day,
a poets' coven, hearth, a place
for love and all the satisfaction
of the smallest moment in the yard
listening to the cricket’s song
God, et altera
At the age of 12 I began to be visited by the accountant, while I was sleeping in the room with my two sisters. I neither knew nor understood what was going on, I only knew I wanted it to stop. When I went to the priest to ask him what to do to make him stop, he said I must be doing something to bring it on. I decided this was an unfair judgment by God et altera, and decided also I wanted no part of God. Mornings were particularly difficult, because I showered in the morning and it was forbidden in the house of the accountant to lock the bathroom door, allegedly to prevent injury to the children. I got up earlier and earlier every day, at 12, to shower in peace, but the door to the bathroom would be slammed, the lock turned, and I would tremble in my twelve-year-old body, while the shower ran...
grace
Isn't it amazing when walking wounded
alienated third class...
each of us survivors of a hurt
that meant to kill and maim though scars
remain which make it hard to breathe
on humid nights or when the air
is anorexic, isn't it, I say, amazing
that we thrive, that despite moments
when the breath is stopped by inner
torrents of burnt anguish, a taste of acrid
bile, a sudden wrenching of the lower
intestine, that we can sing an aria,
laugh loudly,
love and love
and love?
It was so hard to live at twelve
immured in prejudice and fear
to shower in a house where lust
was rampant in middle-aged
step-papis, nightmares with knives
and breathless races
through dark alleys covered
in slimyleeringystepdaddylovesyou eyes,
(oh miserere nobis, dona nobis pacem)
Isn't it amazing that nightmares
may be conquered, that hatred may become
indifference, that if you live enough,
someday indifference
may become forgiveness?
I'm working on forgiveness, forgetting
nightmares, the sun outside is pouring
daffodil rays on sycamores and maples
and that so patient worm walking a crooked line
upon my rotting deck
and oh the wind is sweet
upon my back, miniature
tiger lilies have begun
to peer above the frosted earth,
isn't it, can't you see how much it is,
amazing?
grace
Isn't it amazing when walking wounded
alienated third class...
each of us survivors of a hurt
that meant to kill and maim though scars
remain which make it hard to breathe
on humid nights or when the air
is anorexic, isn't it, I say, amazing
that we thrive, that despite moments
when the breath is stopped by inner
torrents of burnt anguish, a taste of acrid
bile, a sudden wrenching of the lower
intestine, that we can sing an aria,
laugh loudly,
love and love
and love?
It was so hard to live at twelve
immured in prejudice and fear
to shower in a house where lust
was rampant in middle-aged
step-papis, nightmares with knives
and breathless races
through dark alleys covered
in slimyleeringystepdaddylovesyou eyes,
(oh miserere nobis, dona nobis pacem)
Isn't it amazing that nightmares
may be conquered, that hatred may become
indifference, that if you live enough,
someday indifference
may become forgiveness?
I'm working on forgiveness, forgetting
nightmares, the sun outside is pouring
daffodil rays on sycamores and maples
and that so patient worm walking a crooked line
upon my rotting deck
and oh the wind is sweet
upon my back, miniature
tiger lilies have begun
to peer above the frosted earth,
isn't it, can't you see how much it is,
amazing?
Thursday, July 21, 2011
We begin at the beginning
I was raised from the age of six in the house, care and 'tutela' of an accountant, a numbers cruncher, and learned early on that everything had a price and a value. Mine, in that borrowed house that belonged to the husband of my mother, was minimal. I had the wrong father, the wrong last name, the wrong everything. I was too smart and too smart-mouthed, had too many opinions, was too combative. I was also the oldest, and when the new children came, from the accountant and counter and reckoner, I was relegated to the duties of babysitter, diaper-changer, feeder. Oh but I loved those children desperately, because to me there was no half-sibling understanding. These were babies, my babies, whose cloth diapers I changed and boiled and washed, whom I burped and fed, and played games with, and loved.
With time I discovered that my duties were not held in high esteem, as I was not either. I became an avid reader, a secret reader, a reader of everything and every type of literature. My escape and my solace was with my father's father, whom I adored. He spoke languages and made mayonnaise at the table, but he did not escape unscathed. He was always found wanting, found to be less than, to be more than, to be weird, and years later, to be a jew, which my mother said was tainted, and explained why I was unsuitable.
Abuelo was a fighter, but I was told he was the family black sheep, a title I seem to have inherited and worn with some pride. In a family of very rich commercial men, he was the war correspondent, the impecunious one, the worthless one at the mercy of richer relatives. He is the one that stayed behind, though, when we left Cuba, and became the Swiss embassy translator. He taught me to play Scrabble and cheated in many languages...
Habanera
Duérmete mi niña, duérmete mi amor
the voice of abuelita Adela asking me the flavor
of my thumb at night, abuelo cheating at Scrabble
played in four languages while I learned the rudiments
of ajedrez, rooks, knights and obispos.
The house and its large gardens, a strange menagerie
of dogs and cats and once a goat, several hens for eggs,
ducks in the pond, and parrots discussing politics
and the news in raucous orange cries. My tata Eugenia
braiding my hair with pretty yellowgreen lazos,
telling me about el coco who'd kidnap any nia
foolish enough to misbehave. Abuela Inés always the perfect
beautiful seora rocking herself in her sillón as she played
old habaneras on her guitar. The world tasted
of sweet fried plaintain, arroz con leche with canela,
warm hugs and toothless smiles while I combed
abuelita's hair, a long cascade of silver.
Mother's divorce was swift and hidden, sundered my world
of chickens and abuelos, left me with shortened weekend visitation,
long enough for Sunday trips to the Larousse, el Diccionario
de la Real Academia Espaola, and ten volumes of Oxford's
for good measure. It was impossible to win at Scrabble.
Memories of my father then are dim.
He was a background picture lit
by blue linternas. It took his death
to resurrect his living.
The sounds of son and rumba are all that's left now;
memory plays her tricks with time and shadows, the players
have gone on where none can follow. They've left
their hearts and voices in an habanera, flauta, bongó,
guitarras and maracas, sway of the palm trees singing
habanera eres tú, habanera...
With time I discovered that my duties were not held in high esteem, as I was not either. I became an avid reader, a secret reader, a reader of everything and every type of literature. My escape and my solace was with my father's father, whom I adored. He spoke languages and made mayonnaise at the table, but he did not escape unscathed. He was always found wanting, found to be less than, to be more than, to be weird, and years later, to be a jew, which my mother said was tainted, and explained why I was unsuitable.
Abuelo was a fighter, but I was told he was the family black sheep, a title I seem to have inherited and worn with some pride. In a family of very rich commercial men, he was the war correspondent, the impecunious one, the worthless one at the mercy of richer relatives. He is the one that stayed behind, though, when we left Cuba, and became the Swiss embassy translator. He taught me to play Scrabble and cheated in many languages...
Habanera
Duérmete mi niña, duérmete mi amor
the voice of abuelita Adela asking me the flavor
of my thumb at night, abuelo cheating at Scrabble
played in four languages while I learned the rudiments
of ajedrez, rooks, knights and obispos.
The house and its large gardens, a strange menagerie
of dogs and cats and once a goat, several hens for eggs,
ducks in the pond, and parrots discussing politics
and the news in raucous orange cries. My tata Eugenia
braiding my hair with pretty yellowgreen lazos,
telling me about el coco who'd kidnap any nia
foolish enough to misbehave. Abuela Inés always the perfect
beautiful seora rocking herself in her sillón as she played
old habaneras on her guitar. The world tasted
of sweet fried plaintain, arroz con leche with canela,
warm hugs and toothless smiles while I combed
abuelita's hair, a long cascade of silver.
Mother's divorce was swift and hidden, sundered my world
of chickens and abuelos, left me with shortened weekend visitation,
long enough for Sunday trips to the Larousse, el Diccionario
de la Real Academia Espaola, and ten volumes of Oxford's
for good measure. It was impossible to win at Scrabble.
Memories of my father then are dim.
He was a background picture lit
by blue linternas. It took his death
to resurrect his living.
The sounds of son and rumba are all that's left now;
memory plays her tricks with time and shadows, the players
have gone on where none can follow. They've left
their hearts and voices in an habanera, flauta, bongó,
guitarras and maracas, sway of the palm trees singing
habanera eres tú, habanera...
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