The Wax Museum

Memories of the Wax Museum, 1984

The woman, reaching her hand to a man
whose head was bleeding, invoked the fear
which was difficult to assuage. The plank

we walked to get to the next exhibit grew
in dimension as flames encircled the faces
of young and old. It's not real, I said, as tears

welled like the coming tide. We crossed into
Varykino and the ice castle, a lovely woman
and handsome man standing inside the dome

 of entrapment, the subservience which comes
with the death of all they ever knew, a society
in shambles, Tsars displaced with a deadlier

mission gone wrong. This I could not explain
to my three year old daughter, who would, years
later, champion those without hope, wrecked lives

living in basements and penthouses, oppressed
by governments and friends and communities
which bend and are broken in the slightest

change in the wind, the most seemingly trite
utterances. The child encompassed in fear--
as she looked at the etched faces in the wax

museum many years ago--knows the mind's
persuasion to stay a victim or to overcome,
and has seen far beyond the reproductions,

has given her hand to those whose wounds
cannot be easily seen, has refused to let fear
be her dictate, who lives the questions.

Mr Ashberry, revised

Yes, Mr Ashbery, Asters Bloom One Way or the Other

However, they don't always bloom in this yard,
no matter the time I take, the perfect blend of manure
and fertilizer, the dead-heading and the watering.

Interestingly enough, they tend to do better untended.
Which amuses me somewhat but frustrates me more.
Am I not needed? Are these hands--daring to go ungloved

into the black earth, exposing themselves to shards
of old clay, brick, and glass--not enough? I am not squeamish
and don't mind touching the underbelly nor the topside

of an earthworm, but it's the forgetting them there in the hot
sun that gets to me. I--slaving for hours to perfect my aster
garden--only think of them when it's time to put the shovel

and hoe away for the day and I discover what I think is an old
rubber band there next to my beaten-up New Balance. Being
the child I still am with the need to touch things that sometimes

hurt me, I lift a shriveled body up to eye-level and think of the loss,
eyes darting back down to the cool soft ground to search for more
casualties. Mr. Ashbery, I think I just realized why the asters thrive

without worm-killer me--me who can't even let a worm go honorably
to its death. Kindness has its place and sympathy cannot always hold
its hand in understanding even as it holds the fragments of loss.

Bathed In Light (revised and needs pruning)

Bathed In Light

I clean Molly's gunky eye
out, hours now since I finished
my wrapping duties, and take a break
on the screened-in porch, moon full
above me, clear and white, and I think
about the silver dollar my great uncle
gave me the last time I saw him
at the old folks home, before he set
the room on fire, smoking his Camels,
O2 pulled off his face long enough to savor
one of his old habits, habits being these tricky
things that die hard. He was 88 when he passed,
not from lung cancer or a myocardial
infarction or even a stroke, just from the bad
luck of a stubborn pneumonia and his own
breaking heart, the love of his life gone
ten years since. My mind returns to eyes,
to this morning and the eyes looking
back at me from the mirror, looking
back at the me who keeps showing up
for the whole disaster, marveling at how
much they resemble my father's, how cloudy
and distant they present themselves at times,
how the lightning blood-streaked swollen
mess they are can also exude an Aurora Borealis
wonder, flashing their blue-green one moment,
and their tired grey the next, how extraordinary
they are, and were, even this morning, night
after night of no sleep or restless sleep at best.
But there's something this night in the fullness
and blinding white of a winter moon which arrests
my eye thoughts, brings to mind the amazement
(you see it takes little to amaze me)
of making my fingers work wonders with red
and green and ribbons and bows, that eases
the uneasiness such careful introspection elicits,
allows forgiveness and comforting enlightenment
that comes with knowing the soul-cleansing
goodness that prevails when cleaning out the eyes
of a gunky-eyed dog, the wrapping of gifts,
the anticipation of children and grandchildren
arriving in the light of a new day, the hope
that they find under the tree something more
than a gift, something that tells them Mom
knows them better than they'd ever thought.
All of this is followed by the unexpected relaxing
of the shoulders, the sense that gravity no longer
exists as my tired self rises from the porch
and glides to the bedroom, eases the body into
bed and wraps it up in the ebony and white comforter,
gives itself over to the serendipitous moment the
body responds when it knows it has done all it can.

My thanks to Nick Cave for this assessment of one of Elvis's last performances

"In the final minutes of the film, we see Elvis, on stage in Las Vegas, sing the famous so-called ‘Laughing Version’ of Are You Lonesome Tonight? The camera begins with a long shot and does a slow zoom in on Elvis’s face. Elvis is stoned and overweight and by the time he performs the disastrous central monologue, we can see the pure anguish of his performance, the drugged and mortified eyes, the terrible aloneness, the horror of the moment - his vast soul crucified on the cross of his own body as he blunders through the words. It is one of the most traumatic pieces of footage I have ever seen."

Not Nearly

I thought when I left FB I would start spending more time writing here or in my journal.

But, I have discovered it is not nearly as interesting writing about me with no audience.

That should (oh how I like to say I shun the should word but oh how well it works here this night!) tell me a little bit about myself.  That being said, I have certainly been doing a lot more--well, no, actually not--uh, hum--thinking. No more nor less than usual.

I have not gone to the gym in over a week and a half. That dream and goal busted. I have not slowed down my drinking. That dream and goal busted. I have not been eating healthier. That dream and goal busted.  But, tonight, I feel alright.  I just need to get focused.

Everything changes and nothing changes

I am still just trying to navigate the waters.  I thought things were bad/difficult/trying/troubling/confusing/exasperating/problematic/exhausting/frustrating/dissatisfying/nearly hopeless/conflicting/existentially draining/psychologically damning/metaphysically lacking/diurnally repetitive/nocturnally arresting/and overall plainly unsatisfying in terms of trying to feel I had found my place in this world when I was working.  I thought that maybe I would be able to discern what caused my existential dilemmas once I retired.  I have found out that I already knew when I was working and nothing has changed.

I want to write about this and these things, and I don't.  I am so fucking lonely.

The Immensity of Being

I am an immense woman. An obese woman. A rotund woman. Grossly overweight.

I don't know how I let myself get to this awful place, and getting out of it is proving to be next to impossible.  I can't help but think about what people say when they see me. Look at that really large woman.  She must sit around eating doughnuts and cakes and drinking cokes all day. I bet she eats 4 quarter pounders a day.

Sigh.

When, in reality, I rarely eat out, and I choose to eat lots of vegetables. But, I also choose to drink margaritas and eat lots of potato chips. I'm really bummed out again today.  Not sure if I'll walk. What good does it do?  I didn't walk yesterday.  Just couldn't muster up the enthusiasm to do it.

I'm glum, gloomy, despondent, dispirited, downhearted, morose, dismal, depressed as hell.  I wonder what I would think about and do if I were of normal weight.

Sigh.

Reading an article in Psychology Today about how fat people tend to start hating themselves.These sentences from the article are so true:

Every time you make a disparaging comment about yourself, you die a little inside. You are scarring your soul. What you are saying is ‘I am ugly and wrong.’ That is simply not true.