Hold me. That's the one plea I might still make—the plea I know will go unanswered. So I watch a play or read a book. I fantasize. I hold myself and repeat the mantra that has sustained me for the last seven years: "You can do this. There's nothing to be afraid of. There's nothing you need that you can't get for yourself." I hold to the words like a life preserver because they are. They keep me sane.
My mother calls because she is alone in her house. That hasn't happened often since she met Bud two years ago. Dad died, and three years later she was in love and married and immersed in a life completely different from anything she lived in all the years I have known her.
I am happy for her, glad she does not have to be alone. I joke about how quickly she found a partner, how long I have been alone. But on some level this is my choice. This is my truth. I hold myself separate. I contain my needs. I hold my stories, doling them out carefully, cautious with the words that might expose me.
I hold Jones when he leaps at my legs and am comforted by the pleasure he takes in my warmth and my affection. I hold each student in my heart at some point each day, reminding myself that they are children, but seeing how close adulthood is for them and how rapidly and eagerly they race toward that unknown terrain. I hold them dear, believing that each moment of their childhood is precious, wishing that my parents had held me closer, kept me safer, protected me from the predator who robbed me of my childhood.
I read a practice from Pema Chodron's teachings each morning and work to hold myself in the moment, to stay with the fear, trusting that I will become more tender and more courageous, hoping that I will learn to be completely open, my arms flung wide to welcome the world, not wrapped tightly across my chest, holding myself together.
Barbara Spicer is a teacher and writer living in Petaluma, CA.
SMELL OF RUBBER by Tony Johnson
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I am sitting here quite pleased with myself because my hands smell like rubber. You see, we have this metal cart we use to haul our yard waste to the trash can. It has had flat tires for about a year now. I thought about fixing them frequently, but my laziness is a stubborn old coot and every time I moved toward the cart, he knocked me on my keester. Today, on the way over to stare at the cart one more time, I saw my laziness keel over. I am not sure if he is drunk again or just dead. In any case, I assessed the job and drove to the local bike shop where I bought a tire pump, much fancier than the one I owned as a kid. I also bought a tube to replace one that could not be revived. My hands remember how to use the screwdrivers to remove the edge of the tire from the wheel and pull out the old tube and stick in the new one. Then I pump up both tires. I feel that old excitement from fifty odd years ago, knowing I am mobile again. I may look ridiculous sitting in a metal cart that is not made to carry a person, but it doesn't matter. I am racing down the street, the wind is blowing my hair and for a little while I have a tireless body and I have no fear.
Tony Johnson is changing perspective along with his tires in Petaluma, CA.
THE SINS OF THE FATHER by Glenn McCrea
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I step out of the car and into my childhood. I haven't been back here since I was, what—10, 11? As I walk down Main Street, it's like watching a movie I've seen in the distant past; the plot and scenes seem familiar only as they unfold on the screen before me.
There's the library, where what's-her-name read us the riot act whenever a book was overdue. And the Longhorn Superette, where I once filched 17 packs of Dentyne gum on a dare. My stomach knots when I see the courthouse, and one glance at the police station leaves my mouth cotton dry. Why did I come back here?
Long ago I disowned Tahoka, swearing I would never again tread this soil which nourished my miserable roots. But almost 40 years have now passed, and when my agent booked an appearance for me in Lubbock, less than 30 miles away, I felt my resolve crumble.
Memories of our hurried departure from this place so long ago come welling up—the sudden shame, the ensuing secrecy. Overnight our Father-Knows-Best world was turned upside down, and overnight I had to let go of my life, my friends—my name, for God's sake!—and start over again halfway across the country with Mom and Becca. My hatred for Dad and what he did to our family has only recently started to abate and metamorphose into something else—pity perhaps? No, I no longer hate that sad, secretive man. Love's quest can lead down some twisted pathways, I now know.
I enter McCoy's Five & Dime, and at the sound of the doorbell a sweet-looking woman with bluish hair glances up from the cash register. Her face flashes puzzlement, registers recognition, and finally settles on an uncomely marriage of astonishment and outrage as she blurts, “Oh, My God!”
My mind reels. I whirl and stiff-arm the door. Of course! What an idiot! I'm about the same age my father was when his hidden life was exposed for the nation to feast upon—when our little town and its oldfangled motto (“Tahoka, Texas...Where Family Values & Community Spirit Reside”) became infamous.
Running around the corner into Alscott's Office Building, I find the men's room and ponder my reflection in the mirror. I hadn't made the connection before, but now there's no doubt: This is the face that stared out from the newspapers, the face that so humiliated this community.
Before leaving Alscott's, I peer out the front door and look up and down the street. Hiking my jacket over my head, I sprint for the car.
Glenn McCrea is a masseur and photographer (www.dewdropworld.com) from Santa Rosa, California. Guy Biederman, through his Lowfat Fiction classes in Sebastopol, helped inspire Glenn to do something more than think about writing.
PUNCTUATION by Kate Willens
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My son whistles when what goes on inside him moves faster than what happens outside and so the body throws out exclamations of frustration designed as flutey tones. Tones the world is full of. For all silence is marked and broken by human exclamation. Marks to say “happy,” “bold,” “now,” “go,” “I've done it!” But to say the opposite— to plume the interior is there a sign? And so he throws out one: “Hurry, world! I invite you in! Dust me off! Mind me now!” or “If I am not fast enough to meet what is coming from the outside, I throw a rhythmic pattern of sounds as if to say, ‘I know I lag behind, but I'm coming.'” Perhaps each star is a punctuation marking the empty void. Darts flung to decorate the night, and the whistling my son does is the same. Only in this world we can't move fast enough to see the sounds we make.
Kate Willens, Sebastopol, California
DRAWN TO THE LIGHT by Suzanne R. Thurman
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Our son, Charlie, is 10 months old. Like most babies, he is fascinated by light. He is entranced by the candles the acolytes carry as they process down the aisle on Sundays and intrigued by the overhead light in the car. He stares at the chandelier over our dining room table while he eats, and once he even pointed to it and said light or something close to it. He loves light, radiant and luminous, drawn to it, I suppose, by its ethereal quality.
Now that the Christmas season is here, his first one, he is surrounded by even more light than usual—tree lights, shiny ornaments, and of course, toys. Some of our friends gave him an early present, a Graco "Entertainer," which is a wonderful contraption with a swivel seat and a plastic tray full of toys attached to a saucer-shaped base. We found it sitting on our back doorstep one afternoon when we came home from the grocery.
As soon as we lowered Charlie into the seat, we realized that the toy lived up to its name. Our son went wild. He couldn't decide what to play with first, the pillowy star on a squiggly green stick, the orange fish with a tail that crackled, the baby-sized mirror, or the star that blinked and played an electric version of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" each time someone pushed it. He seemed to gravitate toward the star and discovered its secret by accident while flailing his arms in excitement. Soon, he knew how to make music. Over and over he whacked the star, and over and over its tinny melody filled the air.
It was an annoying sound to our adult ears, but we put up with it for Charlie's sake, and eventually he tired of the noise. At one point, after he had launched yet another verse, we looked at him between bites of our dinner and found him sitting quite still, a look of distress on his face, hands over his ears. He knew how to start the music, but he didn't know how to make it stop. Because you can't stop it. Once the song starts, it has to play through to the end. The only way to stop the music is to stop hitting the star. But our son can't do that, can't restrain his hand from reaching for the mystery that lies just beyond his fingertips. The glittery nebula is too inviting, and he is too young to understand that desire cannot always be satisfied.
Suzanne R. Thurman wrote this piece about her first son, who is now 2. In between diaper changes and chasing her very active children, she is working on an essay about her second son, who just turned 1. Her work has appeared in many magazines, most recently Poem, Aries, and The Square Table. She lives in Florence, Alabama.
LE PILIER (The Pier) by Julian Lindemuth
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It's not like I want to be there—I have to be there—I need to be there. I quietly slide the door into its place and make my way down the terracotta stairway. The moon shines over the rooftops of the endless barren French street, beckoning to me as it hangs like a leaf's dew droplet clinging with vigor until it splashes onto the soil beneath. Yet this moon does not fall. It guides me though the endless maze of roads and alleyways and cars and people and commotion. Silence overpowers me. Simplicity dominates my soul. Beauty delicately kisses my cheek.
My body is pulled down by the force of the nautical sounds which flow from the ocean below, and I sit on the edge of the withered cracked cement pier. The sun sinks slowly, accentuating every ripple and wave the water withholds with a shimmering shade of fiery vermilion red. Beneath my feet and between every fold and flash of vivacious water, an endless mess of thousands of minuscule, banal fish, which, in distinct and spontaneous gyrations, swim as one and create a tremendous path of brilliance. This path leads out of the quiet bay and into the endless ocean, which fades away with the sun as the moon pervades through the evening sky.
Oh, the sky! How this endless space of graceful birds and colorful arrangements takes hold! There is no other option but to stare and wonder. To my right, an endless mass of dark fishing poles juts out from the pier's edge and creates a silhouette against this wondrous sky. These poles are, of course, held by only the most worthy of French fisherman. To my left, an endless stream of readied sailboats bob and sway, prepared for the coming day.
As the sun makes its final descent into the ocean's bottom, the fish settle, the birds disappear, and the day sleeps. My silence is broken by two burly, greasy and sweaty fishermen behind me who speak beautifully and elegantly within a backdrop of swirling water as they glide by. I ease my head in the direction from which I came and force myself off of nature's magical vista.
I begin to make my way into the endless, crowded, thunderous mob of humans. With the moon, like always, as my guide, I take these steps, and look back at my scene. I knew it well, but not like the others. Now it is gone. The night has taken over. Maybe nobody knows about those majestic fish, that pearly moon, that brilliant sun, and that endless sky. They look at it, but they do not see it. They listen to it, but they do not hear it. They are in it, but they do not feel it. They rush violently, they worry incessantly, and they speak roughly. They will not remember it.
But I will. And I will forever.
Julian Lindemuth attends Petaluma High School in Petaluma, California.
Beautiful piece of wild river—my third summer here—I love it! Storms in the mountains translate into unseasonable coolness, changeable skies and rain through the night, though there was a short opening for a brilliant star feast before we nested in the tents for a deep sleep. On my rock this morning, journal and pen in hand, the run of the river before me and a still green pool to my side, I watch clouds and mist drifting through the canyon, sunrise light illuminating high peaks, and a group of merganser ducks serenely floating upstream over rippled currents heading seaward. As I relax, wait, look, and listen, a sense of engagement settles in, a satisfaction with simply being here, and I no longer need to do something productive, or even to think thoughts that are meaningful and might lead to inspired guidelines.
Yet even in this surrendered state, insights drift through the river of my mind like these frothy patches floating by the rock. If I try to grab and contain them, they disappear. What am I trying to construct by holding on to them? What is this momentum in me to build an edifice of understanding wherein all questions can be resolved? Is my psyche pulled with a natural force to know and understand the source as surely as this moving water is pulled by gravity to the ocean?
And, then, what is true knowing—is it the questions, the deep examinations, the “ah haas”—or is it a release from the straight lines of thought into simple awareness and being? More than likely, I reflect, as my gaze falls on the large jade stone in the shape of India which I balanced on a boulder near our campsite, it would be some mysterious balance of both.
For observe, I have written of this experience and given it form. Language is a channel for my being to flow through as it responds to that pull towards knowing. Sometimes, like this morning, the flow of being diverts into a quiet pool and recognizes its nature in stillness, opening to a wider range of consciousness than mental structures can keep, informing the language and the knowing in ways which can't be spoken.
Other laws draw me back to motion. I rise and stretch my arms to the brightening mountain tops, ready to fill my stomach, get warmer clothing and respond to my human companions. The merganser ducks are swimming back to the green pool and I count them to make sure they are all together. Turning to leap across a little side eddy which separates my rock from the shore, my foot catches in a crevice and I stumble to my knees, journal flying out of my hands and splashing into the current. My first instinct to jump to the rescue of my precious words is short lived. That water is very cold. I look at my little red book as it bobs on the ripples and moves rapidly downstream. How perfect for it to be in the river's flow, I muse, running free and heading towards the source.
Leslie Curchack, Petaluma, CA. This entry is a piece of reconstructed journal writing.
PARTY TIME by Viola Hargadine
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“It's Edith's Tupperware Party!” the invitation said. “Friday, Oct. 13, 7:30 p.m. The house with lights in the tree. Bring a friend.”
I had attended one previous Tupperware Party at Edith's small 1920s cottage. Edith stalled in the 1970s, so her earth-toned home was awash in avocado, chocolate and turquoise, with a harvest gold shag carpet (you remember, the kind with iron filings embedded in it) and many, many touches of orange. Edith was permanently influenced by a personal colorist and only wears harvest tones. Orange is “her” color.
That first party had featured mood lighting so dark you couldn't fill out the order blank and a centerpiece of Edith's sewing machine, which filled most of the room. I was dubious. But our Tupperware column was heavily in the red. Leftovers were residing uneasily in plastic bags and eating applesauce from a Baggie is precarious at best.
Previous parties had been attended more and more sparsely by co-workers and Edith was now issuing invitations to unsuspecting new victims from her crafts class.
“I just couldn't bear to go again,” confided Lucy, her assistant of 17 years. “I had more fun feeding my cat. It's the same thing year after year. They say the same things each time and it's been—how many years now? I'm sure they said.”
Indeed, they had. Edith and Melinda, the Tupperware lady, have been friends 28 years. (“Let's see, I was pregnant with Ronnie and he's 27 now.”)
Each year, on the second Friday in October, Edith holds her annual Tupperware, featuring Melinda (although her Tupperware district is 40 miles away). Each year Edith and Melinda tell the same stories about how they met, how long they have been doing this, and give each other gifts. Melinda gives Edith orange Tupperware, although Edith already has so much Tupperware, most of it, by her own admission, unused, that she could start her own service. Edith gives Melinda giraffes. Melinda likes giraffes.
After the party, Edith's husband, Bart, serves transparent slices of his apple crisp and one cup of plain tea per guest. No sugar, milk, cream or lemon are offered—“We don't use anything in our tea,” Edith snapped, when I asked.
The décor had improved slightly. The sewing machine leaned against a wall and there was a hanging lamp. The gold shag had been replaced by beige un-shag.
Arlene, on my right, confided, “I haven't been to a Tupperware party in so long, I've forgotten how to behave.” Then, as Edith's cats scampered out of the bedroom, she squealed and pulled back her mule-shod feet. “Your cats don't eat people's toes, do they?”
The party got off on the left foot as Melinda told us she was lucky to be there: she had had a heart attack last November 17. Although we did not know it at the time, this was to be the theme of the evening.
Next Melinda distributed presents. “I save my good presents for Mitzi's parties.”
“Mitzi?” said Edith.
“I'm so sorry. I don't know why I call you Mitzi.”
First, because it was Tupperware Pasta Month, we got boxes of macaroni (“I can't eat it because of my November 17 heart attack.”) Then came pillbox key chains (“These come in so handy because of all the pills I have to take because of my November 17 heart attack.”) Next were mysterious gadgets. I got what appeared to be a crochet hook. But no! “It's an orange peeler. Oranges are one of the few things I can still eat after my November 17 heart attack.”
There were variations on the theme: Melinda went to Europe after surviving her blind date with death. While there she bought knives because, at $36 per, they were much cheaper than back home and, after all, she had realized after her November 17 heart attack during which the doctor had told her she should have died, that you can't take it with you.
“Isn't that right, Mitzi?”
Melinda had brought a whole tableful of new Tupperware, none of which looked remotely like the items I needed to replace. Any hope of getting out early evaporated when I heard Melinda pitch her first item. She demonstrated each slowly, methodically. Each had a different, special use, related, quelle surprise, to her heart attack.
“Now this cookie container—except I can't eat cookies any more since my November 17 heart attack—can also be used as a booster seat for my granddaughter. Phone books slip, but not Tupperware.”
A sandwich container went with Melinda, “to all those luncheons. Of course, I can't eat the food, and it's all very expensive, but I can't eat it since my November 17 heart attack, and since it's so expensive, I just take my container along and put my luncheon it in and bring it home to my husband.”
At Variation No. 15, a diversion was created when the Baker twins, Merry and Terry, arrived. Perfectly matched refugees from the ‘60s, their bottle-black hair was ratted into identical Aqua-Netted helmets. They were wearing outfits from crafts class: Chinese red pedal pushers and loose tops, patterned in metallic squares. Over the pajama tops were black quilted jackets appliquéd in green and pink chintz. On their feet were sling-back sandals.
“The only person,” Lucy told me later, “who talks more than they do is their mother.”
After an hour, Melinda ran out of items. I thumbed carefully through the catalogue several times. None of the items I needed were there.
Melinda told me those items had been retired, “long before my heart attack.” I found something I liked in non-Edith tones of pink, lavender and teal, although they were not what I needed, and cost so much I could only afford two.
The following day, I went to Wal-Mart and bought replacements.
“You know,” said the clerk as I checked out. “These little single-serving sizes are great. I've had to be much more careful about what I eat since I had a heart attack.”
Viola Hargadine observes party life in Mankato, Minnesota.
Recently, my consuegros, or daughter's parents-in-law (is there an English word for that?), came over from Britain to visit her and their son and their and my grandchildren, aged four and six, who live on the east coast. I arrived from the west.
In the course of conversation, the elder Brits asked about me—both had attended our wedding 46 years ago. Over dinner, the father-in-law asked my daughter why I was living alone, as if it were my daughter's choice and fault.
"There's no one being responsible for your mother!" he accused.
Up piped my six-year-old granddaughter. "Oh yes there is!" she said.
"Who?" asked the gathered rest.
"Herself!" replied my heroine.
[She was right. I've ruled only me, depended on heroines and heroes. After 71 years' abstention from power, if I ruled anyone else it'd go to my head, and I fear I'd rule rather more shakily than those now responsible for our country.
That's not to say I won't abet, strew fliers for a Presidential (in upper case) candidate. But I leave dethroning to the ballot system. God bless every chad.
Terry Law lives in Bodega Bay, CA. Her email: klaw@neteze.com
NEW MOON by Diane LaRae Bodach
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You stopped by to bring ice, stayed for steamed veggies
with melted cheese. You helped move the tent. We laughed
as you lifted the tarp and the fearsome animals
which had kept me awake and finally paralyzed
by fear much of the previous night (I'd gone through
my mental list 20 times or more. Rats? Raccoons?
Coyotes? Snakes? Wild pigs? Mountain lion?!!—you'd seen one
in the abandoned orchard below the house!) until I finally
discovered by morning it must be something living
under the tent—
turned out to be three tiny
field mice. (I made you promise not to tell.)
Stunned by the sudden brightness and exposure, they sat
for a full minute among the sifted forest debris, their little
noses raised, sniffing the air, before they scampered off—two into
the woods, one behind the camp cabinet. After supper
you put two mats in the meadow and we lay together
watching the new moon brighten and then sink slowly
behind the great fir trees that line the meadow, (like a giant
with a lantern, you said) as the stars defined themselves
gradually against the darkening sky. In this way
we continue, not knowing what we are: chums, lovers,
fellow rebels—squirreling away
the days together as these small graces bless us.
After you'd gone back to the house, I lay beneath
the vast sky shifting on its axis ‘til the light circled
around again and crept gently through the trees to the east .
Diane LaRae Bodach
WE DON'T TALK ABOUT IT by Amy Zimmer
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Dedicated to the memory of Elfi Chester—Taken from a prompt poem given to grade 6
I am composure, unraveling
I wonder if I am worthy of your thoughts
or merely a lazy man's distraction.
I see you shirtless, absorbing warmth off Lizard Rock,
hands tucked behind your head, solicitous,
red staining the hollow of your neck where
my nervous hand fed you summer's first strawberry.
I want to close my eyes and conjure the sweet spice of
sunlight on your skin.
I am composure, unraveling
I pretend we trek out of the frame of our ordinary lives, unnoticed.
I feel you hard against me betraying the integrity of your Gramiccis
revealing the truth you've tried to push away.
I touch you and I alight with self and possibility.
I cry when the longing to claim you breaks loose
from the stronghold of my restraint.
I am composure, unraveling
I understand that there is more to attending to the heart
than the deafening peal of desire.
I say that I can let you go, but I am afraid I will
fade with your memory.
I dream of an us that is more than staccato conversations
and pantomimed intimacies.
I hope I can find that place you touch in me on my own.
I am composure, unraveling.
Amy Zimmer is teacher and mom, a wife and a human being, trying to put her essential self forth in Sebastopol, CA.
HEARING COLORS by Armand Gelpi
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It was a Saturday night at Davies Hall in San Francisco. And the symphonic program included a piece by the young American composer, Michael Torke. This was a nine-minute production called "Bright Blue Music". And it was built upon traditional tonality and rhythms, but could be described as buoyant and celebratory—in keeping with its title. But of more interest to me, was the fact that two earlier works by the same guy were entitled "The Yellow Pages" and "Ecstatic Orange." So what's going on here, with this colored music?
Remembering your high school physics, you might also recall that sound, light, radio waves, x-rays, and cosmic rays all have one thing in common: They are all the result of particles in motion— repetitive, and at various frequencies, and in wave form. This could be compared to the ocean's surf, a metronome, or the ripples from a stone cast into a pond. So when you hear a tone in the key of C, for example, the sound is the result of air vibrating at a specific frequency. But, you probably do not recognize that this is the key of C. On the other hand, if you see a red traffic light at the intersection, you'll probably have no trouble recognizing the color. Many colorblind people can recognize distinctive colors, but have trouble with different shades of color or color blends. In any case, most of us cannot recognize a musical note as being a C or a D. But those who do—many symphonic conductors—have absolute, or perfect pitch.
Question is: To really enjoy music does one have to have something more than a "musical ear"? Does one have to have perfect pitch? Probably not. But the gifted few may be getting some of the added extraordinary sensations one might feel when seeing an exceptional sunset, a vivid painting, or a turquoise sea. Looking in the other direction, why is one person's music another person's noise? Is this a matter of preference—some would say, taste? Are there degrees of tonal deafness—that is to say, the inability to hear colors? Finally, is music appreciation based on multiple structural elements—instrumental sound, harmony, counterpoint, rhythm—besides just tone?
Which brings us back to Mr. Torke and his colorful music. It's just possible that this composer has pondered all of these things, and discovered to his own satisfaction—and that of his audiences—that not only do tones and harmonies have chromatic qualities, but whole compositions may be thought of as colored. And now, I'm on to something: Brahms' “Requiem” sounds purple to me. The music of Delius has a pastoral quality, and seems green. And the great, brassy "Sing, Sing, Sing" popularized by swing artist, Benny Goodman and his band in the 40s, just has to be golden-orange. So I'm wondering, what did W.C. Handy have in mind when he composed the St. Louis Blues?
Excerpt from a longer, unpublished original by Armand Gelpi, Sonoma, CA.