Alone at the Last

1. 
   
   

   IT was many years ago, when we left as a family.  An entire unit of five taking our earthly goods and leaving one side of the continent for the other.  Behind us would be the grandparents, those in Jersey, and my mother alone in Pennsylvania.  It escaped me, her reaction, as we drove out of the narrow lane that leads from her house that my dad built a half century ago.  ...Until Bill said, "I have never thought your mother could cry."  

   
   

   My head must have swung to his face in astonished shock.  My mother had never cried other than that period of 2 weeks in my senior year of high school.   She had been sitting at a table, her face in her hands looking out the back window into that open weedy field beyond the yard.  I had no idea why she was crying.  I never asked.  It bothered me in the strangest way, assuming it was my fault, the cause of her pain...I felt angry rather than empathic.  She never explained, the crying, it was never disclosed.

   
   

   And now, my husband tells me she is crying again.  This time I know.  It is my fault.  But she will be fine.  She will get past this, it's no big deal.  After all, we are only moving away.  It isn't like we died or something.  There will be visits, there always were.  Even when I was in college, I came home a couple times a year, usually to stay way longer than break, going back after yet another suspended era, only to reregister again and again.  That could only have been an annoyance having me come and stay off and on...why is this time any different?

   
   

   The years went by so quickly.  We did return, some of us.  One of us.  The rest of the unit was scattered.  

   
   

   Again the condition, the state of mind, of my Mother had to be pointed out to me, described, applied to my awareness.  The old woman had never been old before to me.  She had been the strong one.  The cook, the seamstress, someone who always was safe in her own world, her seemingly shallow existence.  Her ability to have hidden her own world was that bulwark that separated me and protected me from what would one day "be" me.  She was a bastion all of my life against all adversarial contrivances which one might meet.  Mom was never even sick.  She had headaches for a time, but that time was  passed.

   
   

   And now as with her, I have no headaches.  Age has moved me beyond that, beyond hormonal driven consequences.  I have entered that life that was a dark area around the eyes, that dark area that has moved behind the eyelids and situated uncomfortably but permanently in the conscience.  

   
   

   Some of her mystery now is unravelled.  The sadness at our departure, now I know, I feel.  She lived alone, as I do now.  The weekends come and go, and we go nowhere.  We look at the grease that coats a wall in the kitchen and we hate being alone with that grease.  Short attempts to erase it are met with stabbing alerts to our futile goal, the meaningless acts of ordinary daily musters needed for no one, since we are alone.

   
   

   And at last I feel guilty again for having not shared her grief for merely being alive still, and alone.  Another holiday comes and goes, as we stay inside the old house alone.  Living out her pain like a surrogate, I become the real thing.  She lived too long a life, and I wonder if I must trudge a long time as well.  

   
   

   
   

Love - a Mood, a State, a Voyage

On occasion i must admit that I fall in love, simply fall amazingly in love, with a thing, an idea, an eon, a person...but definitely totally obsessively in love.  It is perhaps one of the most amazing feelings that one can put their shorts on.  Or not.....When things are not going 'my way' and my mind races toward a precipice forward to that brink of another fall into an abyss the depth of which can be numbing after my entire reduction to that abominable critter willing to die for the love of whatever.  At least I know that I feel and feel deeply.  

The subject of my tragidrama could be the loss of a parent, although mine have been long passed for several years, one an entire life length....or it could be the status of my face.  I am not lacking for shallowness, a quality I love to attribute to women, as a result of our subjugation.  Or should i speak of the shallowness of men??  The result of their ability to subjugate women...and dogs, pigs, lemons, bread loaves and any item - the likes of which can be somehow ultimately used for their simple satisfaction of simple sexual transport.  (I forgot to mention the guinea pigs, sorry...).  

But getting back to my abysmal ability to Fall deeply and longingly in love: where was I? Oh, yes, half way through a box of cheap wine...and in the middle of the couch.  How long does this condition have to last?  Only as long as it takes for me to reflect, in fact, reflect on my reflection.  And so it goes, that I have strategically placed mirrors all the way from each room to the patio just in case my ego gets me to believing that the last formidable enthusiastic admirer had a brain cell.  

I have at least foregone the expense of vain attempts to accomplish the impossible, that of sustaining youth, or manipulating the image of the same on my exterior image.  Haircuts, tanning salons, manicures, blah blah blah....such dwaddle in the trivial blasphoma of cultural disease, that of the deterioration of our self respect.

Somewhere in my enigmatic strive for perfection, the goal of which is neither realistic nor useful, the bite of reality hurts my very buttocks.  Yes, it takes a chunk out of my ass.  Age grabs us all.  Lucky for me, I might look older than you, but my organs remain unblemished in comparison.  Your midlife crisis looks like a sneeze captured in a kleenix....like a bag of chips left open from last night's ball game and drunk party....like underwear that should  have hit the laundry two days ago.  

But still I fly in the efervescence of that high, that place where fools fear to tread, whatever in the world that means...and enjoy what seems to be sparkling crests of waves, ethereal sounds of the most formidable artists, whispers of clouds and the secrets of the Gods and Goddesses.  It won't last.  It never does.  But for a time, my hands are captured entwined with Bacchus and Queen Boudicca and the party is about to start every time I breathe.

And I wish I could take you with me on this marvelous spontaneous spark of flaring flame, not ever a halcyon calm.

XAVIER & Me

Xavier was so extremely handsome, funny and generously simple.  He gave of anything he might have, be it money, advice, time and good intentions.  He was always a welcome presence.  Xavier had a sense of fairness and truth which he demanded we acknowledge...and there is where it began.  That is how the story started.  

His friend, co worker and reputed 'boss' was Dave, another inhabitant of the peninsula motor home court at Newport Beach, Lido Peninsula.  Dave - a mere ordinary occupant like most of us - pretended to be a partner/owner of a business where he worked with Xavier.  Little did I care, nor did I know, that he was not an owner, merely another serf.  But it became an aim, a goal for Xavier to prove Dave's unworthiness to us all.  and the game was on!

Dave was in pursuit mode, the animal on the hunt, Woden of the Anglo-Saxons - thus his mask was at the ready.  Dave was now sole owner and captain of his mighty sail boat, a nice classic wood boat, and he was a business man....fake fake fake fake.  Not that I cared...and not that I knew.

And so it was that we became a small crew involved in one of those great boat races down the Pacific from our bay area to some place much farther south.  You see, I never cared about the destination or the plan...(we have a plan?) as it was always the voyage that mattered to me.   This voyage started well prepared with liquids, foods, instructions and proper dress code....(all hands below decks, remove dress...).  Somehow during the first 8 hours of light we took fast to the waves and rapidly cruised southward like a bunch of true but drunken sailors, and somewhere in the darkness someone forgot to come back up from below decks and check auto pilot.

Dave having proven himself not the most capable captain, and about a hundred miles off course, shrugged and partied us off in the direction of Catalina Island, nothing lost - simply altered.  By the time we arrived, Xavier was clearly showing some wear from the captain, not from our travels...and his plan got underway....his plan to reveal Dave for the fake that he was.

First it would be a wise idea to ply Captain Dave with enough Captain Morgan to convince him that he was having the best of times...and tomorrow he would never know for sure.  It worked.  Captain Dave assumed we had in fact become bosom buddies when in fact, Xavier and I had remained well watered and watched the sinking of Captain Bly.  and soon we would gracefully pull into our slip anchorage at the end of the hot salt water trail and watch the rest of Xavier's plan surface like glass.

I showed up at 'Dave's Business' unannounced on Monday and carrying Xavier's business card.  What a nice surprise to find Xavier at the helm, and Dave more or less shining the boss's boots....   A celebration to follow was in order at the Sheraton in Newport Beach, somewhere on the 3rd or 4th floor, a band, dancing, champagne and "Caviar with Xavier" as it would now be known.  

I remember the two of us like a photo:  My hair was long curly and auburn, under a wide brim black woven straw hat with a large burgundy rose.  The dress was one of those simple black Audrey Hepburn things, above the knee, and high heels like Carole Lombard out of a 1930s film.   But Xavier, the emboldened Brazilian with the boyish naivete juxtaposed counterpoint to his suave Clark Gable confidence brought a spark to the spot light we made that night, with his tight white dress shirt, under a black fitted vest, the fitted black slacks, the Argentine leather shoes, a show of beard returning from the last shave ...    

 We were simply innocent friends, culprits joined like siblings, looking great and constantly creating havoc and chaos just for the moment.     Xavier's laughter always caught us both and wrapped us in the joy of winning.  The winning not of a race, but of life.  One day and one jubilant night after night after night for as long as we pulled pranks back in the days of wine and roses.

THE YOUNGER YEARS - Winter's Morning

These were the formations of life long sinus infections....these young years practicing with cold - a constant companion and environmental benefactress.   ...Waking up in the morning under light quilts made of thin cotton flour sacks all cut into patches and formed into strange patterns, sewn against a light muslin and something questionable and thin set between the two surfaces as a supposedly warming filler.  It was winter, so there were thin lindsey-woolsey 'homespun' sheets under the useless quilt as well.  They were mere prayers for warmth.  Prayers indeed spun by grandparents long gone.

Pajamas weren't warm, back in these old days, the only thing we knew was cotton.  Maybe thin cotton flannel, a slightly softer hairier kinder-feeling excuse as a covering for night times.  Why I wasn't really aware of the temperature encasing my little body like a soft refrigerant was only due to the exhaustion from staying up so late waiting for Daddy to get home from the club.

He worked at the VFW down the street a few blocks, and I was "Daddy's Little Girl," something he sang to me often on these nights, as I - embarrassed - smiled and fell quickly to slumber.  It was a long day for Dad, I took him lunch daily and still, he wasn't home 'till close to midnight.  

Anyway, this was morning wake-up-call, through that single-pane rotted wood window, the cold winter frost on the glass sucking the heat away from my left side which was always close enough to the window to be a down-right danger.  I knelt on the sagging mattress with the view of the old gray buildings right across the street.  They seemed tall and narrow, built into the shale layered hillside of an old oil boom town.  These were erected in quick fashion and it showed.  Boxes, dark, tilty thrown right up against that crumbling hillside, mud sometimes seeping around their edges.  (The necessity of providing for newcomers in the era pre Civil War and past it.)

There were railings still, old iron railings footed in cement all the way 'round the block, where once a horse could be tied up, and a drunk could convey himself from the bar over there to the tilty house over here.   Every speck of serviceable space that could quickly be used without much excavating and the use of technical hard core equipment.....horse, buggy, oxen, wagon....this was what built this part of town.  

When the sun rose, the glaze of ice on the window in front of me melted in light patches and ran with tiny crystal patterns all over the thing.  I made pictures on the ice with my finger nails, murals of people, of family, of the folks in the other half of the house, of dogs which we would  never have since Wolfie bit me right on the face.  

The figures and the dogs and trees and cars would disappear during the day, falling in thin ice frostings like forgotten dreams.  The ice tasted kind of like coal dust.  Maybe before we got there...but not now.  We only had the little gas stove in the living room.  No heat up here, no heat under this attic space, no heat by this window with the view of old gray silent dwellings and a sun rising.  

My first taste of winter's day was a bit of my ice sculpture, and the rest of the day could only be a reward.  The space by the gas stove where I drew with crayons on the walls, warm....   All day I could draw and stay warm, and never consider what cotton tee shirts and long boy pants I wore against the chill of the floor.  Crayons melted easily, my colors were a band of murals about three feet high as a diorama record of happiness as only the poor are aware.

Bullies/Metamorphosis

This story board employs foam board on wood blocks, and tells the true story of a disadvantaged child the same age as I was at the time, and demonstrates how friendship and support can overcome the effects of bullying....friendship being the great equalizer, as you can see in the change in color, demeanor and size due to perception of the victim as well as the victimizer.…

HOMUNCULUS

The inspiration for the piece is a tiny person whom I know well.  The aged scrabble board is a wonderful background on which to extrapolate words and terms depicting the story behind the person in several ways.  (Indeed, the Homunculus intended is all about words and terms.)  The bracelet around the wrist spells "Sever" where indeed it has been!  and that could also say something of the little man behind the story.  The surface of the old board is made for the 'unsighted' with raised bumps for Braille readers.  All the items attached are antique or from the nostalgia era, some from gumball machines, Cracker Jack prizes, lamp beads.... Within the palm covered by the organza glove, is a miniature boy and his Mom, she being the 'KEY' to much of the rest of life of this Homunculus.  These were from a tin doll house I once had as a child.  The letter tiles are made from found materials to add character and a personal artistic feel.  Note the black Mammy figure which is the handle off of an old sock darner, and she is attached to a tiny chain, again symbolic of a time past, with present struggles.  Homunculus now has a new home and a new owner, Mary Morgan proprietor of the Mosaic Cafe and Art on Elm in Oil City.

Piano Key Art

The arms inside a piano are allowed to move across an antique Baroque style mirror.  The piano was built in Oil City, PA before the 20th Century, in the old neighborhood, the 3rd ward, known then as the Dirty Third.  Over the keys I have segmented a piece of music from that era titled "Pure as Snow" and from the small brass screws at the top end of each key arm, wires and guitar strings carry vintage and antique beads, cloisonne, old celluloids, for sheer merriment and beauty, continued musical amusement.  The close-up shots as you view down the page here also show the modern interloper, the hologram of my credit card.