A MUG'S GAME

In the past two years  I have tried to pursue with more urgency my  desire to write poetry.  It is a strange  vocation and one I have  feelt was central to my identity  since my childhood---but  never trusted that I could  make a living  with poetry.  Poetry is my private and secret  pleasure.  It feels like an indulgence.  Even though when I read poems as a child from teh age of 4 to the presnt day  I was  moved and consoled to think that other  people had felt   so badly anad made a poem for  me and others to find and comfort ourselves with .
The  phrase that   labelled  poetry  "a mug's game" is from the poet TS Eliot. What do you think?. 


"[Poetry] may make us from time to time a little more aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being, to which we rarely penetrate; for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves." "Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality." "As things are, and as fundamentally they must always be, poetry is not a career, but a mug's game. No honest poet can ever feel quite sure of the permanent value of what he has written: He may have wasted his time and messed up his life for nothing. "

Two Early Loves

I guess that I have always had a romantic cast of mind. Sometimes it seems to me that longing is my heart's default position.. By the time I was four I was being read to by my mother and I had two favorite poems which I asked her to read over and over to me. One was THE HIGHWAYMAN by Alfred Noyes and the other was Lochinvar by Sir Walter Scott. Here is the text of LOCHINVAR: Lochinvar BY SIR WALTER SCOTT O young Lochinvar is come out of the west, Through all the wide Border his steed was the best; And save his good broadsword he weapons had none, He rode all unarm’d, and he rode all alone. So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war, There never was knight like the young Lochinvar. He staid not for brake, and he stopp’d not for stone, He swam the Eske river where ford there was none; But ere he alighted at Netherby gate, The bride had consented, the gallant came late: For a laggard in love, and a dastard in war, Was to wed the fair Ellen of brave Lochinvar. So boldly he enter’d the Netherby Hall, Among bride’s-men, and kinsmen, and brothers and all: Then spoke the bride’s father, his hand on his sword, (For the poor craven bridegroom said never a word,) “O come ye in peace here, or come ye in war, Or to dance at our bridal, young Lord Lochinvar?” “I long woo’d your daughter, my suit you denied;— Love swells like the Solway, but ebbs like its tide— And now I am come, with this lost love of mine, To lead but one measure, drink one cup of wine. There are maidens in Scotland more lovely by far, That would gladly be bride to the young Lochinvar.” The bride kiss’d the goblet: the knight took it up, He quaff’d off the wine, and he threw down the cup. She look’d down to blush, and she look’d up to sigh, With a smile on her lips and a tear in her eye. He took her soft hand, ere her mother could bar,— “Now tread we a measure!” said young Lochinvar. So stately his form, and so lovely her face, That never a hall such a galliard did grace; While her mother did fret, and her father did fume, And the bridegroom stood dangling his bonnet and plume; And the bride-maidens whisper’d, “’twere better by far To have match’d our fair cousin with young Lochinvar.” One touch to her hand, and one word in her ear, When they reach’d the hall-door, and the charger stood near; So light to the croupe the fair lady he swung, So light to the saddle before her he sprung! “She is won! we are gone, over bank, bush, and scaur; They’ll have fleet steeds that follow,” quoth young Lochinvar. There was mounting ’mong Graemes of the Netherby clan; Forsters, Fenwicks, and Musgraves, they rode and they ran: There was racing and chasing on Cannobie Lee, But the lost bride of Netherby ne’er did they see. So daring in love, and so dauntless in war, Have ye e’er heard of gallant like young Lochinvar? Source: The Longman Anthology of Poetry (Pearson, 2

A Strange Wish

Reading a poem by George Herbert who has become my new favorite poet, I come upon these lines that startle me so much I make one of those involuntary sounds Is it a chortle or a snort or a little stifled shout? The poem is titled AFFLICTION I--and here are the lines that shook me:

Now I am here, what thou wilt do with me

None of my books will show

I read. and sigh, and wish I were a tree;

For sure I then should grow

To fruit or shade: at least some bird would trust

Her household to me; and I should be just.

I have often had the exact thought and could never share it. I wanted to be a tree so that I would not be free to choose, I would just be what I was supposed to be. If I were an acorn I would be an oak-- not change to a cherry or long to be a maple. My freedom messes me up-- it makes me anxious. What if I make the wrong choice? What if I miss the point and choose the wrong job or the wrong husband? Then I saw that God requires freedom. That is what makes us great and worthy--that we choose to love God and to follow Him--we could and do choose otherwise. Divinity has no interest in coerced love. We must invite him into our lives. He will knock and knock but he will not enter unless he is invited. There is something magical and miraculous about that fact of freedom. He gave freedom to the angels and they revolted. He gave freedom to Adam and Eve and they ate of the forbidden fruit. But not the horses or elephants or the lions or cows--they simply follow their natures and instincts and cannot be faulted.

Words, Words, Words

WORDS, Words Words I am beginning this narrative as my personal counterpoint to the narrative that a good friend of mine that I knew in Cincinnati has created about her life. I will attempt to tackle in my way the questions that she raises about meaning and life myths especially as they seem to be more urgent questions as we get older. Certainly I have been a person who has thought and explored questions of meaning. My push in my own reading and writing has been spurred by my desire to know and my delight in all the books that are in the world and the wonders that they contain.I would say that for me books have been the tools of my search into self knowing. Books have been a central focus of my life and love since I was young. my mother says that my first word was "book." That was the word she used for the magazines that I loved to sit with and turn the pages and look at the pictures from the time that I was 6 months old. Always I have loved the world of words and story. I found refuge there. That is what I have discovered that since my mother was an avid reader herself, she understood and praised my reading. She never yelled at me for reading—in fact if any one said I read too much, she would answer—let her read more and learn more because education and learning can never be taken from you. Early on in life I understood also that my middle birth position between two sisters with Down Syndrome meant that I was to be their protector and defender. My mother did not encourage violence or fights but where my sisters were concerned—if they were under attack from teasing or taunting children, I was expected to take action and to fight back. So there were two basic rules-- 1.Reading was never wrong 2.Defending my sisters was always right These were the often announced absolutes of my young life. The household that I lived in was intrinsically matriarchal—my mother, her younger sister, my two sisters and me. My father lived with us until I was nine years old. He was genial, joking man who often countered my mother's cautions and warnings. He was a compulsive gambler and had all of the suppressed energy and excitement of gamblers who are themselves daily running towards the big win that they know will be theirs tomorrow. My mother loved my father and enjoyed his jokes and easy going charm but she had discovered that she could not depend on him and that betting on a horse would always trump buying groceries. I saw my mother begin and complete difficult tasks on a daily basis. She was energetic and cheerful. She taught herself to paper and paint and would transform our tenement with her bright color combinations and creative use of wallpaper. She constantly improved our environment. So I saw that women could and often must take on big jobs. I did not yet feel any limitations in being a girl.

Something I just made

IN the spirit of this blog and my new determination to stop waiting to get better and to do something that I can do now. That is the only way to make it better--I post the FIRST DRAFT of a poem I wrote for a Workshop I have enrolled in online SOUND THE TRUMPETS--- here goes First draft of SOUND poem

INDIAN SUMMER on the Banks of the TEN MILE RIVER

I park the car so we can see the falls

shimmering like shook silk

water so still above the low dam

beaten to froth below like beer foaming in a glass

I lower the windows, warmth enters

bringing with it murmurs like slurring drunks

of waters never silent shush

sliding slowly over the upper pond, swans

glide in the reflecting brown water

their wake churns seed pods and leaves

below shallow water gurgles between suds and tree snags

Three geese fly low under the stone bridge

squawking loudly as they land ungainly

flapping, skimming, breaking the calm

like children let out at recess

or a late inning runner sliding into third.

Waiting to get better

This has emerged as my problem--I wait to get better and promise myself that when I am better I will do the things I want to do. This seems to me to be a dangerous continuation of a self-undermining habit I have had all my life. I have often been waiting for more time or a better time to pay attention to my own work. I have not allowed myself to devote myself to creative work. MY job, my teaching, my research, my editing, my scholarly writing all took priority. I think they did because they were not as scary--I knew that I could do them and not risk rejection. I felt that teaching was my vocation since childhood, and I loved the time in the classroom. I also separated my intellectual life from my creative life--or I should say that I made my intellect primary and I allowed my creative life to augment and enhance my scholarly writing and presenting. I never put my writing of poetry and plays in first place--or not for very long. Now I feel the pressure of time and the fact of disease and aging processes. These scare me and make me understand that in the immortal words of Elvis--IT'S NOW OR NEVER

Getting Real?

TAKING THE TITLE OF THIS BLOG IN EARNEST I AM EXPERIMENTING WITH MY TRAVEL WRITING--> In the past week I have started some writing projects that involve me with other people. This represents an attempt to break out of my isolation and to connect with other people who are also interested in writing and improving their writing. Two of the projects are informal and are in the opening stages The first project is with my niece Nimmie. In 2004 she went to India for a long visit and to acquaint herself with her father's family and his culture and the places that were part of his life as a boy and young man in India. Nimmie was born and raised in Canada, and like many Canadian children of immigrants she speaks English and also French but no Indian language. She developed a habit while travelling of writing about her adventures in a diary that she shared with friends and family. I had read and admired earlier journals she posted online of journeys to Cuba and Guatemala. Now she has a 90 page manuscript detailing her time in India, and she would like to raise it to a publishable level. Nimmie is a talented writer and has a funny and engaging persona as a traveler. I would like to help her improve her book for publication and also to use the opportunity to concentrate on one of my own travel writings and see what I can make of it now. In my past travels I spent a year in India, many summers in Ireland and a year in Romania. I only fitfully and very unevenly tried to write about those times. Helping Nimmie and taking my own advice, I might be able to make something I could publish about my locales. Or I might find a way of expressing that time in poetry or drama. I am embarking on these new writing initiatives on line in the spirit of the conclusion that I came to after many sessions with my therapist---DO WHAT I CAN DO NOW. DON"T WAIT TO BE ALL BETTER TO DO IDEAL AND MORE AMBITIOUS PROJECTS>

What is lost in translation

My husband turned 80 years old a few days ago. I have told him that we will celebrate this big birthday for the entire month of October. October is a special month--there is a change in the light : the air seems molten gold that floods the world with some hidden meaning. I got him two CDs of the ghazals of Ghalib set to music. He likes to listen to them and sometimes he translates the Urdu phrases as they are sung and repeated. One he noticed today "One desire can eat up an entire life; desires come by the thousands/I 've received what I asked for many times; but it was not enough." I once would have thought that this insatiability is one of the proofs of human failure, now I see it more as a sign that yearning is our default position--our glory. There is something that we want that cannot be satisfied by mortal things. Shakespeare has one of his characters say "I have immortal longings." Augustine said that our souls are made for God and we will be "restless until we rest in Thee." Shelly, another poet, wrote about "the desire of the moth for the star, the day for the morrow" Is this restlessness the best thing about us--that we know that we were meant for something more than this mortal coil--that we are hungry to be reunited with the spirit that made us. Writing about the endless, hopeful human activity when there is no cause to hope, Ghalib writes "The efforts I make in my life resemble a bird in a cage/ Who can't stop gathering straws for her nest." One funny line from Ghalib " God sent an angel to drive Adam from Eden, we've all heard that story,/But when you threw me out I felt something much worse had happened.

Hopkins' Hymn to Diversity

               PIED BEAUTY

Glory be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: Praise Him

This is one of my favorite poems because it celebrates the unmatchable abundance of Creation.  Often I have been struck by the sheer excessiveness of the world's beauty --it seems almost gratuitous. This poem tackles that fact  head on.  What it seems to do  for me is to clear the way for each and everyone of us  to be loved in the eyes of God.  God made so much  difference in the world--each snowflake, each blade of grass, each DNA,--he made all that difference because he likes difference. HE  is all one and that means that he contains  multitudes. He contains all the possibilities, and he wants to see each and every one of them flourish. HE does not play favorites He created everything and  He pronounced everything that HE  made as GOOD.
I am watching  Pope Francis slowly ride through a crowd  of people many of them special needs children at the Madison Square Garden.  How great  god is to have sent a leader that  shows such receptivity  and inclusiveness to all that  humanity.  It is overwhelming and so obviously right once   we see it.  Why is it so rare?  How can we bring that love and acceptance into our daily lives?

Pope Francis Speaks of aging

One of the surprising and touching aspects of the Pope's remarks to  the American  public has been  his emphasis on the  process of aging.  He mentioned the loneliness of the aged and also to day to Congress he reminds us of the wisdom of the aged.  One of the  most poignant  insights is his  stressing of the  mixed nature of all things and of all of us. This thread of the  ways we should examine polarity and refuse to see everything  as either black or white.  He directly  points to the inadequacy of seeing reality always as  a duality. In  calling for a  universal global ending  of the death penalty, he  focuses on the fact of its  finality--that it erases  the chance of change and  rehabilitation.  I believe that applies to the  experience of aging and dying--as long as  we are breathing we have  within us the potential to change, to repent, to seek forgiveness and like the Prodigal Son to  turn back  to the loving arms of our FATHER who is always watching for us  on the road with arms ready to embrace us.
There is a golden thread that weaves  through every remark of the Pope-- to be at the service of dialogue and peace.  We must not write anyone off, must not declare anyone  as finished or hopeless. Especially we must not numb our hearts to the tender  mercies that flow constantly from God to each and every one of us on this planet. Each of us so different in our  circumstances and our DNA but each of us united by our  human dignity and our participation in the divinity that we each carry in our immortal soul.

Making new neural pathways--DAY ONE

Just read  that it takes 45 days of daily activity to create a new neural pathway in our  brains.  Another good reason not to  stay in a negative  space with negative  thinking for too long lest it become habitual. I  know that this blog has not been habitual  for me.  I  feel as if the  content is not as focused and sometimes I am not  sure if there is any  interest  or coherence in  what I  am writing.
My other  Blog "BACK IN THE BUCKET" contains  thoughts, memories and experiences  connected with my life in Pawtucket--where I was born and lived  until I went to  graduate school in 1966.  In 2009 when  I returned to Pawtucket  to  care for my aunt  who lived there,  I  retired prematurely --or maybe just in the nick of time--from  my  professorship at the University of Cincinnati.  I found so much the same in Pawtucket and so  much  that had changed. And I wanted to  react to it all.

This  Blog "MAKE SOMETHING OF IT' comes from a different inspiration.  I  was suddenly  plunged into the world of retirement, care giving and decreased mobility.  I also  was facing  and seeing for the first time the limits of my own  energy and  possibilities.

I wanted to explore the experience of aging and to see  what the tasks were that occupy  me now and how they are shaping my identity. In other words I wondered what to make of this sudden emptying out of  all or most of the activities that had filled my  life before. Also I wanted to  discover what I could make of this new experience.  I want  to make something of it--but gradually I  have come to see that the experiences were making something of me.  I was changing and I was not in charge of the changes.  Then I began to understand that change is the nature of living and that  I have never been in charge of the changes.  But I had an illusion that I was in charge.  I have lost much of that illusion now.  I want to make sense of what is left and what  use  God and  society can  make of me and the millions like me--people who are now over 70 years old and  feeling their energy and certainties diminishing and their questions  expanding.
So for the next 45 day--starting  with this entry I will  explore the experience and the  reality of racing towards eternity.

Rememebering my last visit to my Uncle Irving

"If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness." Paul II Corinthians

Today thinking of the Mowry family reunion that I attended  two weeks ago, I suddenly  began recalling the last days of  one son of Ida Mowry Jenckes, my Uncle Irving Jenckes  Dying of cancer, he was being cared for at home and I went to visit him.  When he learned that I was downstairs waiting to see him, he asked that I be brought upstairs to his bedside.  When I saw him, he was sitting reading his Bible which he did daily.  He asked my Aunt Winnie, his wife, to leave us alone and  then he began reading aloud to me from St Paul's  Letter to the Corinthians--the great  teaching about love:
"If I should speak with the tongue of  man and angels but have not  love, I am as  tinkling brass or clanging cymbals."  He would pause and ask me what each line meant.  He was very intense and his gaze searched my face fiercely. When  he got to the lines that begin--"When I was a child"  and conclude "Now that I am a man I put away childish things."He came to a full stop.
"Explain this to me," he demanded. He asked, " what are the childish things?"
I remember that I thought--why he reads this Bible every day, he is a  staunch Baptist--he must know the answers.
Then I thought again --maybe he is aware that now  I have a PhD.  and  he is asking me as a scholar to  interpret the lines. Such a self-flattering thought to calm my nerves--so I took up the old, worn Bible and read the passage aloud several times.  Then I treated it as if it were a problem  of literary criticism--some crux in  a sonnet by Shakespeare or a dense passage from Eliot's The Wasteland. I explained to Irving that the childish things could be the toys, the tantrums, the willful disobedience and defiance of youth.
I'll never forget how he looked at me and said simply,"No, try again." after I tried and he  repeated that direction three times, I put the Bible down and said "OK I give up." And he asked me directly  what childish things I had given up, discarded--and in the throes of my  prideful agnosticism I thought and I wanted to blurt out--
my rosaries, my scapulars, my novenas, my childish Faith--
I said nothing, just picked up the leather bound volume and resumed  reading. When I reached the  point about "seeing through a glass darkly",he stopped me again--"what is that glass and why darkly?"

Then I had another not so brilliant thought--oh, he is dying and he  is reading Corinthians for solace--. So I mustered up my Platonism and told him that the  fact that we have bodies and eyes of flesh permits us to see only material, earthly things but when we die and our spirits are free of the constraints of the  physical  then we will know the  spiritual truth of everything.
Well--he said wearily--that's a start..  He dropped his head back on the pillow and closed those eyes. Almost on cue my Aunt Winnie came into the room to say that I should go down for tea with my cousins, Mary, Grace and Roberta. And I must admit I was glad to leave that room.

It has taken me many years to see that interview less darkly and to understand that  Irving was not asking me  questions for his sake, he was doing it for my sake. He was bearing witness, using his scarce energy to  raise  questions in my mind about  FAITH, HOPE and LOVE.
He was  acting like that  notorious HOUND OF HEAVEN,  acting on behalf of that GOOD SHEPHERD,  seeking that lost  sheep that was his niece and turning me towards eternity.

"Whoever brought me here will have to take me home,"  Rumi

Does my Road to Damascus Runs Through Pawtucket??

For the past  couple of years I have been struggling with two seeming contradictory situations: 
1. I have been beset with health and physical mobility problems that made  me able to do less and  less
2.I have become convinced that the  most necessary task of the  rest of my  life is to discover how I  can best respond to God's love and how I can   show forth  my own increasing awareness of the divinity that is with in me and every human being. 
So that with diminished  physical powers  I am   trying to find a way to explore and  expand my  God-given spiritual powers. This paradox is a hard one to explain and also  seems to me to demand some kind of  dedication and devotion. I am  especially moved by how many times Jesus gives his newly chosen apostles just one simple direction :FOLLOW ME.  I don't see what the path of my following would  be. I do see clearly that for  Jesus it was a path that lead him to Golgotha and I have seen the increase of my own suffering but it  is not comparable to that of the Savior.
I am uneasy even expressing these ideas.  When I feel a little better I start imagining myself undertaking and completing some pilgrimage or taking up some form of active  work of mercy--visiting the imprisoned,  helping the homeless. But I am unable to do much  except send  limited charitable  donations to  support the good works of others.
So what can I do? What is  the path that I am to seek out and follow when I can barely walk at  all?  I am reminded of Milton's pignant question in the sonnet on his  blindness 
"Does  God exact day-labor light denied?"
Here is the entire sonnet:

When I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodg'd with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide,
"Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?"
I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies: "God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts: who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed
And post o'er land and ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait." 

John Milton

The poet  finds an answer to his question and expresses it in the final six lines:

 "God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts: who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed
And post o'er land and ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait." 

What are the implications of  that answer that Patience gives in the poem for my  life and my limits? So God  does not need me to do anything?  I need to adjust my attitude  to bear  my mild  yoke.  That is literally the rub for me.

That means that what is right before me--the daily  inconvenient, pain ridden, boring  routine of rising and  trying to maintain this household that consists of a  person-me- who can do very little, and a person --my husband-- with dementia and memory loss who can do many things but no longer knows how.  That is the meal the Lord has set before me  and that the poet George Herbert tells us is a LOVE FEAST?

286. Love

LOVE bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning	5
If I lack'd anything.
'A guest,' I answer'd, 'worthy to be here:'
Love said, 'You shall be he.'
'I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear,
I cannot look on Thee.'	10
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
'Who made the eyes but I?'
'Truth, Lord; but I have marr'd them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.'
'And know you not,' says Love, 'Who bore the blame?'	15
'My dear, then I will serve.'
'You must sit down,' says Love, 'and taste my meat.'
So I did sit and eat.  I CANNOT LOOK ON THEE Where do I go from here?

Creativity as universal human trait

I have never agreed with people who say that we cannot learn or teach the creative arts.  since I believe that creativity is  part of every human experience, I cannot  support the idea that there are only a few creative  souls. We all have  the creative spark--the fact is that  our society does much to dampen our creative enthusiasm .  Sometimes teachers are guilty of  discouraging  students by telling them that they have no talents. To borrow a phrase  that Pope Francis has used in another context--WHO AM I TO JUDGE.
We all have talents --the job of teachers is to help  those who  are in their  classes to discover their  talents and nurture them.  Self-expression is not meant only for the best--it is  for everyone.  Remember in the New Testament  the story of the talents--Jesus speaks most against the  person who buries his talent in a field--That is the  only wrong thing to do with talent--to bury it and not use what you have been given.  by God or by Nature or just your unique DNA expressing itself.  You pick your belief --but it all adds up to the fact that you are the keeper of your talents.  USE THEM UP..

SMUDGED

It seems I am  often  starting this blog over. Like me it is flailing trying to figure out what  I should or can be in a  circumstance where my choices are coming up against my physical limitations.
I just re-read Tennyson's poem abour  Odysseus  setting out again in old age I will post a portion it here:

Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
’Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. 

He says that though much is taken much abides.  This emphasis on  what we have left in life is important to me.  It is the attitude I am trying to take to  consider  again the great value of my husband who has dementia.  Much has been taken from him,  but there is still something wonderful left and that seems to be the core of his goodness and simplicity and  fidelity.

That does not mean that I am  not still  annoyed with his repetitive questions and  lack of memory, but I  stop myself and  admire the ways he still trys to contribute. He is always trying to make things better. This trait has been in the forefront for 44 years of marriage.  When I focus on all that we still ahve, I feel a steadying  hand in mine and  a deep sense that all will be well.

This Ash Wednesday I recall  the meaning of that dark smudge  on the foreheads --it is the mark of our mortality--the source of all our anxiety.  But also it is a reminder that we believe in One who took on human  form and endured the most extreme aspects of human pain  to show us that  Death  cannot extinguish the soul. Death shall have no Dominion.

ACT OLD LATER

When ever I look up and see it dangling on the wall, I laugh.  When my grand daughter visited  with her mother, my wonderful daughter-in-law Charlotte, we went to a few galleries and little gift shops in Charlestown.  I saw the sign--act old later-- and picked it up for a while, and then she surprised me by buying it for me.  It is good advice.  I can' t always  follow it because I am  feeling so  stiff and sore with my  herniated discs and my  inability to walk  pain free.

I want to do more than I can do. RE-READ that --it is madness-- that is a path to frustration and finally despair.
But now I ask myself another question.  Am I doing all that I can do?   I have decided to concentrate on what I can do--which is reading and writing.  I am doing both more systematically and more on a daily basis.
I finally  put a collection of poems together for  a volume called DEMENTIA:THIS UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY.  I  expect that it will be in print soon.  I decided to be real about my resources and to  finally do what I can do  and keep pushing on that frontier.  
I can write and publish.
What about in the physical realm--I can swim--let's try it every day.  It is my one pain free  movement--let's take it to the limit--one more time.

Making a Garden

Making a garden when you cannot dig a hole is  a difficult feat.

Last weekend I got inspired by the Tax holiday and decided to buy some plant material  from garden outlets in nearby Massachusetts.
I drove over to the Home Depot with my neighbor--who also cannot dig much.  And we scouted the  garden shop.  My conclusion was that there were not enough trees and the prices were still too high.  Then I was inspired to cruise over to the garden  area of the nearby KMART,  and I could see that they were offering some real bargains.  So when it began to pour down rain,we headed home and resolved to return the next day.

And we did--I bought 10 plants--mostly trees and some shrubs.  My neighbor also  bought a few items.  We jammed them into the trunk of my old Volvo--it has a kind of hidden capacity to carry  large items --when I   push down the back seats and extend the trunk space to include the rear passenger seat.  So all the trees   were crowded into the trunk, and we were able to close the  trunk and carry our prizes safely home.

My next test was to determine how I would get the plants into the ground. My husband is older than I am and has no affinity for gardening.  But I  broke the job down into three events, and said surely we could dig  3 or  4  holes each day and get the  plants into the ground.
I cannot tell you what a battle raged and how often I  had to  implore him to try to make the hole just a little bigger.
Now they are all in their new spots.  It  looks like a garden from hell because they sit in the  midst of weeds and long grass.
My next move will be to buy many  bags of mulch and compost to encourage  growth and  protect them from the  changes of the winter season.
I wonder how many of these  cut-rate trees and shrubs will take  hold and thrive,  and how many will perish. But then again--I ask that question of just about everything these days.  It has all become so precarious and uncertain--and I know that we are  all perishing. But before we go, let's do what we can do.

I used to think that I could control and make things happen--now I see that was an illusion too,

Making those skeletons dance--Anna's Way

WHAT ANNA TAUGHT ME

Because my mother, Anna's older sister, Margaret was the constant reader, writer and thinker in our family I thought that she was my most active life teacher. After all in constant consultation with her brother Joe who was a Christian Brother and taught school all his life, she was always reading to me and taking me to libraries and encouraging me to prize my mind as she prized hers—they cannot take your education away, she often told me. My mother sort of knew that "they" would try to take anything else one had. gathered on life's precarious journey.

Anna, on the other hand, only read the newspaper and style and fashion magazines. Her favorite activities were Shopping, Bingo. Gambling and experimenting with make up and ironing new clothes. She was vain and gossipy and mocking and very funny. What did she have to teach me?

It turns out that she taught very valuable lessons in three areas—loyalty, vanity, and show business.

Let's face the music and dance.--That was her unspoken but constantly enacted performance.

Anna taught me the value of putting on a show. She taught me the heroism of cheerful, uncomplaining show boating.

Many days it would get very difficult to amuse my two sisters who had Down syndrome and were extremely active and restless. When my mother had exhausted all of her and my resources—play store with them, Norma, play hide and go seek. Read to them. She would pull out the last and unfailing stop--

Time to put on a show.

And depending on the time of year and what holiday season we were near we would begin practicing the Carols, or the love songs or the patriotic airs or Irish favorites. Then Margaret would take up her top hat and cane and I would act as Master of Ceremonies.

We would wait until Anna came home from her day job at the Corning Glass Works. And when she came through the door on the second floor on Englewood Avenue—she would see the costumes and the drum, and after a day inspecting glass from a hot furnace, she wold take her turn and do her set pieces—a sailor's hornpipe and a kind of modified can can. We would all join in the uproar and applause and bows--we had made it through another day.
 Years later when my mentor quoted Bernard Shaw's remark--”We all have skeletons in our closet, the trick is to make them dance,” I got it instantly-- wept and laughed copiously—that advice went straight to my heart—with Anna we certainly had made them dance.

Yes, Anna taught me the value of putting on a show. the heroism of cheerful, uncomplaining show boating.

Burnout and Care giving

Talk to me abut care giving and I will tell you that it eats you up from the inside out. Relentless, it never ends and it never lets you forget it. Like a kind of negative being in love—thinking about the person you are taking care of is the default position for your soul. You know how when the electricity goes off all the clocks go to 12 o’clock. Well all the clocks of me now reset at Anna and Yash. I wake up in the morning and I listen for them in the house. Then I go and check on them it’s 5am so I try to go back to bed. But I can’t sleep because I am running the things to do for each, doctor appointment, new prescription to drop off and later pick up.

How about talking to me about love

Cause I don‘t know how to talk about it anymore. This is where love has brought me, but I am not  feeling it as love. It doesn’t sound like love and it does not act like love,  it is indifferent and oblivious, and takes it all for granted.

Don’t talk to me about love because I know now where that leads. It feels like a way of getting to use people and say this is what you should do if you really love me. Take care of me from dawn to dawn and then get up and do it again.

Talk to me about burn out because I fear that is where I am going with this. Finally one tires of talking and  I just want to sleep and see what dreams produce or what comforts can be extracted from oblivion.

Better Late Than Never?

This blog has  languished for a long time. I am not sure  how to be honest  in a blog about creativity and aging --so many changes have  taken place in the past  two years.  I was aware that I was approaching a transition. I was expecting to retire from a position that I had held for 26 years.  But I had no sense  of how events would  unfold in the next few months and how those events would outstrip all of my expectations.

I wanted to make something of it. The idea behind that title is one of creativity.  I felt that I needed to see that I had in my life and experience all the material that I needed to write stories, poems, memoirs whatever.

But instead of writing, I got caught up in the vortex  of care giving, moving, and aging in a way that was never easy or predictable..