You unexpectedly run your fingers gently along the side of my face and, knowing me well, before I can think to question you about it, you place your lips upon mine and we kiss.
Gently.
Passionately.
Tenderly.
Hungrily.
When we slowly pull away we are breathless and I open my eyes to the dark emptiness of my room.
And realize it was only a dream.
Now, I lay awake undecided.
Am I more afraid that I won’t have that dream again…
…Or that I will.
There is (or was depending on when you read this) a Facebook meme asking users to list 10 books that have stayed with them in some way. The books did not have to mean anything to anyone but the user.
Here is my list in the order of which they popped into my head:
1. The Kushiel Legacy (Series) – Jacqueline Carey
2. Harry Potter (Series) – J.K. Rowling
3. Spenser (Series) – Robert B. Parker
4. X-Men (The Phoenix Saga) – Chris Claremont
5. The Divine Comedy (The Inferno, The Purgatorio, and The Paradiso) – Dante Alighieri
6. Othello / Romeo & Juliet / Macbeth / Hamlet – William Shakespeare
7. Teacup Full of Roses – Sharon Bell Mathis
8. If Beale Street Could Talk / The Fire Next Time / Go Tell It On The Mountain – James Baldwin
9. Incarnations of Immortality (Series) – Piers Anthony
10. Holy Bible (King James Version)
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#1 (The Kushiel Legacy (Series) – Jacqueline Carey) and #9 (Incarnations of Immortality (Series) – Piers Anthony) on this list I have written about in an earlier blog post and you can read why I love them here. Below I give little summaries not of the books themselves (I trust that you know how to Google or Wiki it if interested 😉 ), but why they remain with me.
Harry Potter (Series) – J.K. Rowling
As a reader of the books and watcher of the movies I adore this in its entirety. Not having children of the target age initially designed for I didn’t come into the Potter world until I saw the first movie “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone”. As a sucker for things magic, warlock, wizard, witches et cetera, I had to read the book that created such a delightful movie. Only then did I learn a) it was a children’s book and b) it was series. Still, by the time I finished reading the books published to that point Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, I was hooked. Author J. K. Rowlings has invented such an amazing in-depth world that is and yet is not part of our own, while never forgetting that at its core it is still a young adult book. In most children/young adult literature series the characters stay relatively the same age for years. J. K. Rowling penned theses character in as true sense of a bildungsroman possible given the fantasy. Reading/watching the characters develop over the years, I really did have a sense of watching the characters grow and come into their own. The entire series was phenomenal storytelling that captivated me and opened up a genre of books (young adult) I never would have considered reading otherwise.
The following quote has been attributed to actor Alan Rickman who portrayed the Severus Snape character in the film version of the books:
When I’m 80 years old and sitting in my rocking chair, I’ll be reading Harry Potter. And my family will say to me, “After all this time?” And I will say, “Always”
That sums up my love for the books and their movies in its entirety.
Spenser (Series) – Robert B. Parker
I admit it, were it not for television, I likely still would have never heard of Robert B. Parker. Luckily for me, the television series “Spenser for Hire” happened. I fell in love with the characters; none of whom were perfect (though the leads were perfectly cast in the show). I found out in the third (and final) season that they were based on books and after reading “Ceremony” it was a done deal. Robert B. Parker’s writing is witty, intense, mellow and detailed with nuance as he slides you into his Boston. Both the requisite tough and tender, Spenser (with an “S” like the poet), a former boxer, former Boston cop, now private investigator is a well-read, often quoting classic poetry, yet one smartass S.O.B. and an excellent cook. He has his own very strong sense of morals and what happens when doing what’s right clashes with doing what’s right– as it often happened. It is both the strength and the albatross of what makes his friendships and relationships work.
X-Men (The Phoenix Saga) – Chris Claremont
Yes, X-Men as in the Marvel comics and movies, The Uncanny X-Men comic books to be specific. Yes, Storm – a character who was strong, female, and stop the presses, Black – opened the door introducing me to X-Men and the Marvelverse, however, it was Chris Claremont’s writing that kept me in the building. From the Phoenix’s fiery ascension (ironically from the waters of New York City’s Jamaica Bay), to its death, The Phoenix Saga took a little over three years to tell in its entirety and I was there for every step of it. The very human dynamics of the mutant x-men working with their powers, and in the case of Phoenix powers that eventually prove to be far beyond her ability to control with dire consequences, was not something I expected in a comic. The world at large was just coming into the concept of a graphic novel, so this level of storytelling for a comic book was unheard of. Yes, they were humans with extraordinary powers, but they were human first and that is what called out to me.
The Divine Comedy (The Inferno, The Purgatorio, and The Paradiso) – Dante Alighieri
Finally reading this as an adult away from school, I needed two detailed abridged versions along with the original to fully appreciate the scope of this masterpiece. Yes, on the literal surface, The Divine Comedy portrays Dante’s adventures in his imaginative realms of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, which is intriguing enough. However, these adventures or so much more than what is on the surface. Other than the Holy Bible, it was the first book I read that dealt with the demands Christianity makes on invariably fallible human souls. Though told through the character’s view this is not just one man’s struggle, but the struggle of all who strive for morality and find unity with God as we try to travel the right road.
Othello / Romeo & Juliet / Macbeth / Hamlet – William Shakespeare
Who is better at delving into what makes man, and woman, tick and then deliver it to us in finer verbiage than Willie Shakes? No one. While his comedies show display our foibles with rapier sharp wit, it is his tragedies that really cut to the human heart of us. These four in particular being the prime examples of his craft.
Teacup Full of Roses – Sharon Bell Mathis
Though technically a young adult novel, I was ten when I read “Teacup Full of Roses” at the suggestion of my teacher. I fell in love with the book because it was the first book I read clearly where the characters were contemporary (1970s), from the city and above all the characters were Black. I could easily relate to the hopes, dreams, nightmares and failures of these people because they lived in my world. There is much conversation on how the media does not provide an accurate portrayal/accounting of people of color compared to real life, and this is at the adult level. Imagine how much more this is so at the child level. Until then the only black character I knew in books was Jim in Huckleberry Finn. Some will never understand how amazing and important this is to a child of color, but it is.
If Beale Street Could Talk / The Fire Next Time / Go Tell It On The Mountain – James Baldwin
Ah Baldwin, in turns made me yearn, made me made angry, made me resolute. Not yet fully aware of the world at large, I did not know the importance of his writing at the time. I just knew this was our lives being told true as I knew them to be. I was exposed to passion in black love, anger and Christianity in a way that was not toned down and pretty. Teacup impressed the ten-year old me, but Baldwin blew the teenaged me out of the water.
Holy Bible (King James Version)
Ah the Bible. I worried as Pharaoh refused to let the Israelites go. I understood the father’s joy when his prodigal son returned home; Abraham’s torment as he led Isaac up the mount, as he resolutely obeyed God’s word and Mary’s pain as she cried for her child on the cross. And Song of Solomon / Song of Songs – well, that’s its own love. For me The Word was never about my potential destination to heaven or hell. It never really about His word per se, the analogies/parables between man and deity took second place to the stories of the people themselves and how we relate to and with Him.
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Dissecting this list I realize the connection between all of them is that, it is always about the people in them and their stories. Whether fictional/biographical/auto-biographical – it is how the protagonists / antagonists relate to themselves, to the immediate people who are a part of their daily lives and how they relate to the world the world at large. Good or ill, it’s all about what makes them tick. And how deeply can they pull me into it their world and make feel me it in mine.
I have a Facebook friend who recently loss her husband. Like I did then, she feels all alone on her path of grieving. I wrote the below a few months after the loss of my husband. As others who walked the path before me reached out to me, I share this now so she knows she’s not alone on her path either.
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What Is Proper?
I look over these years of my life from childhood until now.
Intellectually, I know I’m just a brief dash of eternity. But in my heart, half of that “dash” was my entire life with him.
What is the proper form of grief? I’m being told how well I am doing, how strong I am. If I don’t look as though I’m going to huddle in a corner and sob my eyes out any second, is that sufficient token to gauge my passion? I sometimes feel as though, I was expected to immediately fall apart and because I have not, it’s as though all these years with him have been a farce. For every few sets of real flowers he gave me, he also gave at least one artificial one “because like me, they will still be here when everything else is gone.” But since no one is there at night when I’m falling asleep exhausted clutching those same flowers on the bed, is that form of sorrow any less worthy? So who was pulling the masquerade? Bill? I honestly thought the artificial flowers would be gone first.
What is the proper time of grief? My mother passed away years ago and I still deeply feel her loss, but there is no expectation of a potential replacement for her. I’m expected to carry on and someday find a replacement for the irreplaceable. But when is ‘someday’?
If a year from now some new form of happiness enters my life, am I in too much of a rush to dismiss what was by pursuing it? What if a year from now I find I still cannot take off my wedding ring, am I flat out holding on far too long?
Oh God, a year from now – another dash of eternity I can not comprehend when I’m trapped in pseudo time warps.
I hear a song on the radio and for a moment we’re dancing so close together. But then it’s over and I’m forced back into the reality that he’ll never dance with me again. Then I’m feeling even more the fool for once again letting myself get sucked into a happy memory when I know the end result of such reminiscence is pain. I know it won’t always be like that, but right now I feel like I am wading and wading along a shore of my own tears, trying to find an answer in the tide, but it’s on a crest just out of my reach. I’m so close, yet so far from the solace there.
“One day at a time” I’m told. Right now, I’m just trying to get through one minute at a time.
I’ll work on getting through a whole day later.
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I also offer this:
And this:
I was parsing out some advice to a friend a couple of days ago who then commented “Why do you always have just the right answer, Raivenne?”. Of course me, being me gave her a sarcastic and completely narcissistic, but humorous reply at the time, but it set me to thinking. It was not the first time I unintentionally found myself in the role of wizened advisor as of late and had a similar comment made regarding it. It made me wonder were my advisors, when I have questions?
I lost one set of grandparents before I was born. I lost the other set by my mid-twenties. I have no siblings. Other than my sons, I am estranged from everyone I am related to by blood by mutual apathy. My family is the one created from marriage and from those whose lives have intertwined with mine over the decades. Even so, my personal family is small and at this stage of my life, pretty much without elders.
Some things are irreplaceable. Recipes I never had a chance to learn, childhood pictures and family stories forever lost. Apologies that never had to chance to be given or perhaps received.
It started hitting home one day when a group of us peers were sitting around the dining room and realized we were now the ages of our parents, aunts, uncles et cetera when many of us met and become the tight-knit group we were. We are now the elders. Back then, none of us in our early thirties to early forties lives, were ready to embrace that title. Now at fifty and one of the youngest of that core group, and having already lost a few of them -including my husband- there’s no denying it.
When my husband died, the few elders I had loved, trusted, would turn to for advice were no longer among us. Luckily among my peers in real life and one or two from the Internet a wellspring of information and inspiration was found and I happily get by and for the most part thrive on it.
Mine is an interesting sort of elder-hood at this moment. I have no grandchildren, no nieces or nephews. No immediate young family to look up me with their expectant eyes while I bake pies and look oh so wise over my bi-focal glasses. My late-husband and I somehow raised two very self-contained men who at this point in their lives are even less ready to see me as crone than I am. Most of my motherly advice, worldly wisdom -such as it’s not- goes to my younger peers. The twenties and thirties among my friends who are where I once stood 20 -30 years ago. And you know what?-that works for me.
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Slice of Life – Two Writing Teachers – Write, share, give: SOLS time
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Six of one –lest we forget– and half-dozen of the other –let us remember– still totals twelve years.
Today marks the 12th anniversary of the attacks of September 11th. On that beautiful sunny day in 2001, it seemed that nothing would ever be the same again. That we would never get over it. The collected we of the stunned free world, the collective we of my heart-broken fellow Americans, but specifically the collective soul-shattering we of myself and my fellow New Yorkers, who survived through it then and live with it now.
If I could pack my things and move back home per se, perhaps I would be a little more nonchalant about it, as some are all this time later. But I am not a transplant, I have nowhere to go to and ‘get over it’ as I’ve heard/read over the past few years. New York City is my home, where I was born and raised. The Twin Towers were as much a given in my social and physical landscape as The Statue of Liberty, The Empire State Building and hell, even Madison Square Garden.
The destruction of the Twin Towers changed not just our geographical landscape of the city, but of our very psyches. What we went through as a City, as a people along with our kins-of-circumstance in Somerset County, Pennsylvania and the Pentagon in Washington, DC was something we will never forget. Or will we?
We grossly underestimate the human capacity to forget. Not the overall event itself, that simply cannot be done. Not the individual stories of horror and of hope, as those who went through them deserve to honor or dismiss such as their souls can bear. I mean the necessity to resume our daily habits, the need to return to as close to our day-to-day existence pre September 11th as possible. And other than our annual remembrance, or the accepted inconveniences now related to travel, this collective selective amnesia was actually encouraged in the first few crazy years after the attacks.
It is a cold reality, yet cruelly disconcerting fact to know that for most of us, in such a very short amount of time, the enormity that was September 11th has pretty much been reduced to conversational trivia. In the 70’s the curious question was ‘where were you when Kennedy was shot’? Now it’s ‘where were you on 9/11’? And I cannot remember the last time it was asked of me.
It has stopped being a part of the collective daily conversation, but it does crop up from time-to-time. In my case, it also does not help that my working career for the past twenty plus years have been within viewing and often walking distance of the old and the new.
I remember this rush of pride, of honor, for the nation in general, but especially for my City the day I took this picture in January of 2012:
click for full picture
When I saw it that day, I was reminded so much of the original towers, when low clouds and fog would shroud the upper levels of the buildings in this same manner. Caught in the bittersweetness of the old and the new, I had to take the picture. When I posted it to my Facebook I quoted Maya Angelou giving it the caption of “And still I rise…” Because yes, we did and still are rising as the rest of the construction that will comprise the new World Trade Center continues.
I was on a cruise on the Hudson River this summer (July 2013), and took this picture of 1 World Trade Center and the beginnings of what will be 2 World Trade Center:
click for full picture
This past May, there was a cheer that arose across the City when it was announced the final spiral of the Freedom Tower was up, officially making it 1 World Trade Center. Now all 1776 feet of remembrance, national perseverance and home town pride is up for display. To quote Donnie McClurkin, “We fall down, but we get up…” Yes, yes we do.
To those who think we’ve “milked” this long enough and prefer that we forget it – I ask you to remember Pearl Harbor and think about it. We still honor the fallen at Pearl Harbor and that was how many years ago? This is our new Pearl Harbor. The building of the World Trade Center and the National September 11 Memorial & Museum located in the footprints of the Twin Towers, is our new USS Arizona Memorial. Let those who want to forget about Tuesday, September 11, 2001, go ahead and do so.
The rest of us? We will remember.
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No I cannot forgive you yet
No I cannot forgive you yet
You leave us all in debt
I should have known…
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When the Foo Fighter’s song “I Should Have Known” came out, group lead Dave Grohl stated -and he does have a point- that anything he writes relating to loss or death, the public will generally read into it that it is in some fashion related to the suicide of his Nirvana band mate, Kurt Cobain. However, the song becomes especially more haunting and Cobain related for those of us that knew that Dave was joined by two other members of the now defunct Nirvana as guests musicians on this song. And while Grohl certainly understands why the public instantly makes the connection to Cobain here, he has stated repeatedly that yes Kurt is in there, the song was not specifically about him.
And that I can understand…
For just as much as I feel the impact of the loss Cobain in this song, as I also feel the loss of my late-husband…
I was home -thank goodness- when I first heard the song. On that very first listen, by the end of the first stanza, I remember I stopped everything I was doing at the moment, sat down and just listened to the song on repeat. “I Should Have Known” immediately reminded me of some of the stages of grieving, I went through…
The guilt: I’m still standing here, You leave my heart in debt, caught me unawares…
But especially the crescendo as Grohl refrains No I cannot forgive you yet.
It’s raw, it’s pounding, you can all but see the fury and anguish pouring out. For those of us who have walked the grieving path, especially for the loss of someone who left us unexpectedly, we know this. We know it too well.
When my husband passed away, I recall being in that anger stage for a very long time.
A. Very. Long. Time…
And this song took me right back there to that very first year of grieving. It hit me so hard, that when I was finally able to turn the song off an hour later, I was hurt and wanted to scream all over again. This song is such a brilliant mood changer for me, even now. Here I am -some seven years after my husband’s passing and two years after the song’s debut- that the moment I heard those first opening chords of the strings through my iPod, it still gave me a moment’s pause, that I stopped reading my book and just listened.
Enough of a pause that, hours later, I still had to acknowledge it and write this blog.
Everyone has a song that gives them pause… what’s yours?
It was my third week back at work after my husband’s passing. Still early in my path of grieving, the okay days were the ones spent staying one step ahead of the tears in want of falling at any given moment. The better days were the ones I got through simply by rote. This particular day was a cross between the two and only I knew why. Thus, it was something of a surprise when early in the afternoon a flower delivery guy stops at my desk. My mind was understandably elsewhere and it took a moment for it even register that the flowers were for me.
I remember being perturbed as I signed for them. I was thinking who in their right mind would send me condolence flowers, at work, a solid month after the fact. I mean what else could they be? And why today of all days? I open the box to reveal two dozen red roses in a silver vase. They were lovely and smelled heavenly. After getting fresh water and arranging them, I finally read the card that came with it.
Because you thought I never would –Posslq
I loved my husband dearly, but it was a running point of contention/running joke between us on how he was not a flowers giving kind of guy. The compromise being that I received flowers on Mother’s Day and Valentine’s Day; that was it. And that was the way it remained. Still, in our nearly twenty years together, never had he sent flowers to work for any reason, until that day.
The signature “Posslq” -pronounced “poss-el-que”- stood for People of Opposite Sex Sharing Living Quarters. It was something we got from the late Andy Rooney of “60 Minutes” fame, where in his not quite jokingly curmudgeon way stated the IRS should add POSSLQ to the Married/Single/Head of Household options on the annual tax forms, to reflect couples who live together, but are not married. We had turned it into a silly term of endearment for each other, which we had stopped using, quite correctly, once we married. It is the only reason I knew they were from him, as no one else would have known we called each other that. I then knew why they arrived on that specific day – it was our wedding anniversary.
I learned later on in the day, after a few phone calls, that he made the arrangements for the flowers the Friday before he died. The guy at the florist shop remembered him and how he was making jokes about messing with his wife (me), on a random whim. None of which was surprising at all to those who have had the pleasure/torture of knowing my late-husband. But at that moment the incredulous reality of it set in and I burst into laughter.
I had not laughed that hard, that sincerely, since before my husband passed. One of my co-workers popped his head over the low barrier of out joined cubicles. He was smiling, happy to see me laughing and wanted to know what was so funny, so I told him. “My dead husband just sent me flowers for our anniversary.” Suffice it to say, that wiped the smile from his face, which made me laugh even more. I explained it to him and then he understood. Granted it took some convincing before he would believe that I really was all right; that my laughter was not from hysteria and I was not about to lose all it in the middle of the office floor.
My husband was the reason I lost my laughter. It made perfect sense to me he was the reason I got it back. Surprisingly, and yet not, I really was okay with it. Now, seven years after his passing, there’s always a twinge of the bittersweet in my smile when I use that vase.
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Daily Post: Bittersweet Memories
And come see what else is slicing at Two Writing Teachers:
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The passionate call of the joined heart beat
Felt long past when the heart was nubile
The feeling of spring’s first blooms so sweet
The old memory that still makes me smile
It’s the urge at a concert to just weep
The comfort at night when I fall asleep
The piece that’s with me wherever I roam
In the spirit of land, of heart, of home
The knowing when it’s my time to let go
After countless days and nights on this earth
A song on the end of the world I know
That began playing since the day of my birth
As my Deity holds my life in sway
I am drenched peace, as though it’s my last day
For I know I’ve lived the best way I can
In the spirit of love to fellow man
The not so free will that brings me to here
Those voices of guidance to go or to wait
Gifts of inner light to make the dark clear
Past lessons that leads me to paths straight
The persons I feel when no one is there
When needed their presence snakes through the air
Their hands go right through me like ghosts and walls
In the spirit of the ancestral call
A coat of many colors dark and fair
Sometimes it is sparse, sometimes it flows free
Those are my scarves and my rings that I wear
The glow of words that accessorize me
The trifle of rhyme that falls just right
The feeling that haunts “post this tonight”
Paint, pencils, pens and pixels I use
In the spirit of the magic I call Muse
The delightful joy I can’t put into words
The raw anger growing above the din
The most quiet of calm I’ve ever heard
The connection of love with my close kin
The slow chill of knowing hell’s on its way
The warm glow of just being, that needs no say
And it’s to my core when I feel it
In the spirit of living in the spirit
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dVerse ~ Poets Pub | Meeting the Bar: Your Voice–Let’s Hear It!
Buzzfeed.com had an interesting post on “What Happened To Opera”. True to Buzzfeed’s style the article, while somewhat tongue-in-cheek, makes a damn good point and gets extra kudos for the Bugs Bunny reference.
While the opera productions have become bigger, grander, the singers themselves have not, at least not size wise. Here in America, as well as in other Western social minds, the fat body is considered unhealthy, abnormal, something to be ashamed of, not the socially accepted form of what is sexy.
Many opera companies, especially the smaller ones, struggle economically. And apparently think the solution is to behave like popular music labels and play up the sexuality of their leading stars. Singer Deborah Voigt, a leading dramatic soprano, was famously fired years ago for being too fat to portray a role as the stage director at that time had envisioned it. Voigt was eventually reinstated after she lost the weight through gastric band surgery. Yes, she states it was for her own health reasons, but no one can be blamed for the unspoken wink, wink, nudge, nudge that goes with it. Erstwhile mega operatic superstars such as Norman and Sills and Pavarotti would likely be hard pressed to keep their standing in this new aesthetic. This goes beyond mere fat-phobia into an analysis of appearance in music and theater that is depressing.
If the saying “It ain’t over ’till the fat lady sings” were to held to its truth, it would likely mean the death knell for opera. As with everything else there are exceptions to the rule, those whose amazing voices transcend the benchmark. Still, even those exceptions are growing smaller and smaller and not just in size.
It’s sad, but unfortunately true. Opera used to be solely about the singing. Now not only must the singers have the most amazing voices for the parts, they now must have the looks to go with them and therein lies the rub. There was ad campaign which queried “What is sexy”. And let’s face it, in this climate, the de rigueur definition of sexy = skinny.
The beloved image fat, horned-helmet Valkyrie, belting out Wagner, pretty much synonymous with opera, will eventually be as obsolete as the Beta-max. There are such amazing singers out there whose voices may never be heard because of this downsizing and we will never know our loss.
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Sun
Dappled
Shimmering
Full of promise
With daylight dawning
Tears
Are done
I know this
Down to my core
As I stretch yawning
So
I rise
Contented
Feel my soul smile
In this new morning
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Welcome to the Arun.
A nonce poem created by friend and fellow blogger, GirlGriot. An Arun is a fifteen-line poem in three sets of five lines. Each set of five lines follows the same syllable structure: starting with one syllable and increasing by one syllable with each line. 1/2/3/4/5 — 3x. There are no other rhyme or structural requirements. Though all of hers, so far, were left aligned and not rhymed, I took a little poetic license here.
Raivenne-lations 