#sitdownandwrite #noediting Can You Overdose on Prose?

If you've read my previous post, I'm reading Acid for the Children by Michael  Peter Balzary a/k/a Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers.  There is so much about that book that I really love. It's an unconventional autobiography, often flying back and forth in time with asides written in italics. The principle theme thus far at page... is his unwavering belief that he had a light to shine and that love saves the day. It is a great message, solidified by an inherent love for music and books and art. I've written down so many titles and albums (did you know Flea was a trumpet player?) Anyway, poured through this tale is prolific drug use. I mean Prolific with a capital P. I don't know if there was any drug untried in that boy's life and by boy's life I mean it starting at such a young age, 13.  Having moved to L.A. in the early 70s, the city is unrecognizable to those who life there now, the Hollywood and Downtown scene changed by an influx of money and malls and luxury apartments, not to mention housing that is unaffordable. 

At first, he writes about his parents, including his step father, Walter, but as that gives way to middle and high school years, they cease to be part of the narrative  There doesn't seem to be much parental supervision, given the antics he and his pals were up to, roaming the streets, sneaking into clubs, riding buses late at night. And with these adventures, almost every page details smoking, shooting, snorting, copping. Between using, Flea writes about music,  trumpet playing in the school orchestras, listening to albums, seeing concerts, various jobs like working at animal hospitals, and about his unwavering belief that all of these sordid and exciting adventures have led him on this path he is supposed to be on. I agree. We are the sum of our parts.  

I had to google "Is Flea Sober?" because I discovered that I was clenching my jaw,  worrying what the next pages would bring, which surely I thought would end in disaster. The daily highs and lows that this teenager experienced was overwhelming, and, for me, the drugs overtook the story. I woke up this morning, my jaw hurt and clicked as I tried to pry my mouth open. My dreams were littered with trash strewn Hollywood streets, run down apartments and shrinking away from the crazy characters who I vaguely recognized. The story is a good one. I've learned A LOT about music through Flea's influences. I love how he embraced music and knew in his soul that he had to find his own beat, that the music he would come to create with Anthony Kiedis need to connect with their audience.  I also really needed to read about being in the light, raising our vibration and how being in nature can center you and the importance of music education. At one point, in a truly magical way, Flea is in New York at a Knicks game and discovers that he's sitting next to the the head of the music department for the school he used to attend. Asked to speak to the kids about a career in music, he is devastated that the musical instruments that filled the band room are gone, the music teacher only part time. Because of the passage of Proposition 13, school budgets were axed, and art programs were unceremoniously axed. He starts a non-profit called the Silverlake Music Conservatory which opened in my old 'hood in 2001 and thrives to this day.

So much good, so much energy whirling and twirling and buzzing... but I had to stop after 75% in because reading about a kid doing so many drugs, losing three of his friends to drugs was too disturbing. And it should be.

What You Don't Know You Probably Do #sitdownandwriteaftercoffee #noediting

"Racism is better in the open, preferable to hiding poison in the sugar" so was told Flea by his Funkadelic friend Michael CLIP Payne. I'm reading Flea's wild autobiography. There is so much to say about that, but I'll save that for my Goodreads review. I read this passage, and then re-read it. I was reminded of my mother's feminist book club, and our neighbor Trudy Taylor, (as a 10 year old, I always thought I'd marry David Taylor - he was one of my best childhood friends). They were the only black family on the block, and one of less than a handful living in Sudbury circa 1975. I remember standing in our kitchen, asking her how anyone could be racist. I was brought in a household with an open-to-all policy. Many kinds of people came through those doors, sang to the record player, yelled at the football game, made chili in the kitchen, smoked and drank Schlitz or Miller High Life beer. Trudy looked at me, and said, "I'd rather see it, that the person reveal it to me than try to hide it behind politeness."  In answer to my quizzical expression, she said, "You want to see what's coming for you." About four years ago, I had a friend and her daughter visit me on the Cape. After I picked them up at the ferry in Provincetown, we stopped at grocery to pick up some groceries. The P-Town Stop & Shop has a number of our Jamaican population working there. As we checked out, she and the clerk talked about double twists that she had done to her daughter's hair. Later in the car, she touched my arm and said "Thank you for showing me where the black people are." Again, that quizzical expression from me prompted her to explain, "We need to know where to go if the shit hits the fan". These words, from Trudy, and my friend, seared into my brain because I haven't experienced that ever, that I may need to flee for my life.

I'm deleting pictures of Eric off my phone, off my computer. What surprised me was how violent it was. He didn't use any of the words associated with racism, it was his brutal attitude, his shouting and refusal to stop once I began bawling and screaming for him to SHUT UP!  In fact, my response seemed to fuel the fire. I'd been involved with a latent racist for the past year. Maybe that was the reason I was hesitant to introduce him to anyone or even talk about him or even write this entry. I didn't know what awfulness was buried inside him, but if I'm honest, I was suspicious, even confronting him before we started dating in earnest after he questioned my comments on the history and treatment of America's first nations people. "How do you know that?" How do you know?  Were you there?" I thought, he's pretty sheltered. I can help with that.

Let me go back. We met while my mother was in hospice. He builds telescopes, an electrical engineer genius. Quirky, a Trekkie, wild laugh and game for adventure. Our meeting is a great story. He liked me. He flew out to see me several times and was loving, kind and generous. He would often send incredibly beautiful samples of his astro-photography. We fell into love and started a long distance relationship. We wanted to be together. I thought about that conversation and realized that old thing we tell ourselves "everything happens for a reason."  I was in a relationship with someone who really wanted to be with me. Wasn't doing the pull you close push you away thing that I had experienced most of my life. As we grew to know each other and spend more time together, there were cracks that erupted into arguments, ranging from gun control to immigration. Hot topics you might say.  These were followed by intense conversations where common ground and understanding was found. There were many things we agreed on, once we got past the inane statements, spoken without thinking. 

Do you just dismiss a person that you care about or do you try to show them a different way of thinking, about cultures and ideas? I committed to this route because I believed that I could be the example. I thought when two people love each other, you decide to grow together. What I was dealing with, however, was a person who had limited awareness because of his traumatic childhood, his major lapses in education and lack of exposure to art and history and literature. There are many good things about him. I just didn't believe half of the shit that came out of his mouth as something he actually believed, that was in his heart, but a way to avoid the conversation, to steer it back to something he was comfortable with. He often agreed with that reasoning.  We're trained as teachers to teach empathy and that also means to embody that principle as well. After these long, exhausting conversations, I would think, "Ok, we're getting somewhere".

In May, after the protests had started, that all exploded in a truly horrible conversation during which we were planning a summer trip. In hindsight, I realized that I had been diminishing my true self, avoiding the egg shells so that these conversations wouldn't start because they took so much out of me. I often felt that while we made two steps forward, nothing was moving forward in a meaningful way. By "anything" I am not referring to a relationship, I'm talking about the questions I started having about this person and why I was spending so much of my mental energy and light life force willing him to be better.  His is a sad tragic story, how someone becomes a shallow thinking willfully ignorant person,  but that dark energy that revealed itself left a traumatic imprint on me. 

It's not only the revelation of his opinions, but the emotionally violent way they spewed out. It's the first time I told a lover to **$*#&$(@!!!  and hung up the phone. He texted me "If you don't want my opinion, don't ask for it".  I wanted to write "I didn't ask for your opinion you fuck ass." But I didn't want to text fight. I didn't want anything to do with him. Blocked and erased immediately. Listen, I'm not questioning why I let this person into my life. He was in my life and there were some good times. I'm not responsible for him, but I can't help being scarred by that final conversation. That ultimate reveal of the true nature of a person who you've cared for and no longer can tolerate in your sphere. I'm not upset that Eric is no longer in my life.  In fact, I'm relieved. What I'm truly hurt by is that someone would sacrifice love to embrace a morally warped and willfully ignorant ideology, and speak with such violent energy. That he is so closed off from humanity and therefore, closed off from true emotion. Yes, yes, I know that the human condition has both a dark side and the light side, I get that.  Can you really influence anybody once the environment imprint has been cemented?  I don't know. Flea writes "The racist talk bummed me out and I couldn't pretend it was okay. It's so hard when you know someone is sweet and beautiful inside, but they can't outrun the demons and ignorance of their upbringing." 

Delete 

delete 

delete

#sitdownandwrite #noediting BE THE LIGHT

 I'm envisioning a golden orb of light. I'm following Davidji's guided instructions, having poured myself a cup of coffee, sat down on my carpet and selected the SoundCloud app with the right meditation. I'm picturing the golden globe of light traveling up and down my spine as a breath and out. What I'm honestly thinking at that moment was christ - is this evolution of the mind or is this a time sucker, something to fill in the blanks? 

I've done this meditation before, and it has helped me to focus and keep the thoughts bright. But this morning I'm thinking, people who do this, like me and maybe thousands of others, are doing this because we don't have to carry water. We don't have to keep a fire lit or even think about how to get fuel for that fire. We're not buying bits of coal, illegally harvested from ancient trees that are the cause of erosion and poor soil conditions where deforesting has given way for the coal industry. I imagine farmers also don't have time for this sitting and conjuring up golden lights. There is too much at stake, when your life depends on it.  In the former group, I'm thinking about the women I've worked along side during my Habitat and Fuller builds trips in Mozambique, Malawi, parts of India.  In American standards, I don't have much. I'm in a small house, driving a 14 year old Honda with 238,000 miles on it. I don't need to wear super trendy stylish clothes and heels and purses and accoutrements anymore. I've given away or sold most of those items in the past few years. The truth is, I have too much. Even looking around my small space, the kitchen, dining room and living room opening up via an overlarge 1970s slider to my front deck. Pretty small, and yet, do I really need all of these pots and pans? Vases? Wooden spoons? It feels like a lot to think about, the state of the world being brought full focus while I'm sitting attempting to calm the mind, be the light. I'm grateful I can turn on my faucet and water comes out. Hell, hot water comes out. I appreciate you hot water! I've never been without a refrigerator. Cool enough for my filtered water, my cheese, my half and half and my ice cream. Thank you refrigerator! I have shade trees that I'm trying to trim and cultivate so that they branch out evenly. I have a picture window that I bought at the ReStore through which I watch bees (not so many this year) monarchs (few) and hummingbirds (many!) suck the nectar. I love you wildlife! I'm feeling grateful, but also meaningless because people need water. They need shade. They need soil that they can grow things on. Will their circumstances end? I know the responses to this. Do what you can there. Be grateful for what you have. What I know for sure, something I do not question, is our connectivity. So what I am doing here does it really affect what's happening there? I am struggling, like many people. I still have too much. And obviously too much time on my hands...

I Love You #noediting #justpostit

Those of us who aren't mothers, and no longer have mothers on this earth, can forget that there is a day designated to moms. It's not that I've forgotten my mother, quite the opposite, but Mother's Day, in my shelter in place situation, the cards and bouquets advertised for such an occasion have slipped by without my notice. When I received an email from The Mosquito Story Slam, our Outer Cape version of live storytelling, inviting participants to join in a live zoom with the prompt, "What Would Mother Say?" in celebration of this day, I thought of the answer my mother would always give when we'd ask her what she wanted for Mother's Day, "A bath". 

I'm not a participant in the Mosquito, but I have worked at several of them, and I enjoy listening immensely, always promising Vanessa, the host, that I will "the next time". Alas, I had a BlueJeans conflict, and perhaps that led me to my keyboard to sit down and remember and try to put something together, if only just for me.

So here goes... Things Mother Would Say

If I was upset or maybe throwing a tantrum or who knows - it's hard to see the reflection of your child self - but I can certainly see Mom, hands jauntily on hips with a slight smile sing-songing "Sarah Bernhardt Sarah Bernhardt" At 5, 6, 7 and 8, I didn't know who she was referring to, but upon learning she had once been a famous actress, I'd gleam with what I thought was a compliment. When I was older, she tell me to "Go outside and emote, yell as long and loud as you want. I don't care what the neighbors think. Go EMOTE".  If we didn't know the meaning of a word, you were sent to the large dictionary in the dining room to "look it up".

We had to be in our bedrooms by 8 or 9 pm with lights out an hour later. She would stand at the bottom of the stairs and say "Don't make me come up there with the wooden spoon!" My sister was the only one who didn't have a wooden spoon broken across her bottom. She would tell us that she and her siblings got the hairbrush "bristles down" as if pacify us. Later, when we were adults, there were moments that she'd stop whatever she was doing, and exclaim with tears in her eyes, "I beat you!" and we'd laugh at her because most of the time, we deserved it. 

If something was misplaced, she'd say "I can't have anything nice with you kids around!" When the missing item was discovered somewhere, she wouldn't apologize, she'd just act as if it had never been missing.

Upon leaving the house for a field trip, or birthday party or any social event, "Don't forget when you leave this house, you're representing the Williams family!"

My mother wasn't one for boundaries, not the burst in your room way, although we were not allowed to lock our doors, but in the conversational way.  Sometimes, she'd listen to her Roger Williams album and look wistfully out the kitchen window and say "Guillermo" which was not my father's name.

When we would complain about our Saturday chores, "What do you think we had kids for?" If we asked for something, clothes, toys, whatever, she'd say "You've got more (insert object here) than Spaldings got balls".

And later when I got older and we'd have a long chats on the phone, "I never really wanted to have kids" and "I didn't really like being married." I remember that conversation because I told her she had to get some friends her own age. I just learned what boundaries meant! She would always tell me that I had a revisionist version of my childhood. We joked that we should write a book called "I Don't Remember it That Way". 

Upon my first unbearable heartbreak, I called her for emotional support telling her I couldn't get out of bed. Her advice, "Pretend it didn't happen". She told us that she and her siblings were not allowed to cry in the house she grew up in Fort Dodge Iowa. We were not allowed to call her Mommy, but neither we were encouraged to call her "Mother" as she called hers. "I'm Mom" but to our friends, she was "Sally". My aunt later told me that in that house, my grandparents never told their kids that they were loved, and they weren't hugged. The same in my father's household in Framingham, MA. She'd told me "The way your parents raised you is the polar opposite of how we were."

Before we went to bed, we sit on either side of her while she read to us from "Oscar Lobster's Fair Exchange", "The Wind in the Willows", "James and the Giant Peach." 

Upon saying goodnight, "I love you"
Ending a phone call: "I love you"
Signing off on a letter, email or postcard, "I love you, Mom".

#getupandwrite #noediting

Wednesday's child is full of woe. That is how the saying goes anyway. I didn't exactly wake up full of woe, and I admit that I am melancholy by nature. However, I've had a period of not experiencing that melancholia in the mornings, and that period has been the time I've been away from Wellfleet. I find myself thinking that  maybe it is time for me to move on, even though I've manifested some dreams here. Maybe it's August and people aren't on their best behaviors, and I returned smack dab in the middle of that. 

 I have a new neighbor in the house in front of me. Joy, God bless her, held on until 93, refusing to move from her house and passing right before the quarantine. She was a spry sprite - always calling me "Kathleen" and putting on red lipstick when I told her I'd be by to visit. The house sold quickly. There has been a spate of people wanting to leave the city and move to the quieter places that in their view, is more affordable. And maybe for them it is. But for this ranch house, "the third house built on the block" Joy once told me, a young couple from Wellfleet are the new owners. All of us surrounding them are pleased. He has an oyster claim at the end of the road and she owns a popular boutique in Eastham. I work with her mother at the elementary school. I learned all of this last Saturday afternoon when I returned to my house (yay!) and went over to introduce myself before dropping off some Trader Joe's goodies to my other neighbors next door.  He apologized for the noise. He and a few friends were putting a new floor in. Saws and pneumatic nails were buzzing and pounding. "Don't worry about it!" I said over the noise, "I have been there!". That was at 5 PM. At 10:00 P.M. I was gritting my teeth, and swallowing my tongue. I was exhausted. Didn't he remember that I had been traveling for over 8 hours? At 11, after much fretting, I mustered up the courage and walked down, and knocked on the door, which was closed. The table saw on the deck was lit up and someone was doing cuts.  "Um.. I'm sorry ("why was I apologizing?" I silently scolded myself)  I get it - I know you want to finish your project, but when do you guys think you're going to wrap it up?" He was sort of funny about it. "I'm glad to know I'm keeping up the neighborhood" he replied with a sheepish grin. And they stopped soon afternoon. So, imagine my thought process, when last night, from 6  - 11 pm the saws and hammers were going again. We have a 10 PM noise ordinance in our town. We also have this "born here" entitlement, which means if you were "born here" you get to get away with anything. The stories I've heard....

I lay in bed, wondering what I should do. I'm a good neighbor, and in fact, all of us in the surrounding houses are really good to each other. I didn't understand why this person, new to the 'hood, would think it was ok to do construction at 11 PM at night. And why I was trepidatious about confronting him a second time. I text consulted a friend, who replied "Be careful. It might not be a good idea". I got her reasoning -  there are men who begin yelling uncontrollably (no hyberbole here)  if they feel you are stepping on their toes. That has happened to me a couple of times. Once for asking a contractor to come over and put a lag bolt into the deck he was working on, the second time for asking for a bid to finish the interior painting of my house. Both of these guys were "born here". The first time, I reported Charles to community development office where I had hired him from and sent them the voice mail he had left me. The second time, the step-son of a good friend, I just waited until he was done ranting at me that my house was "a piece of shit" needed "A LOT OF WORK!" and said, Eben, I was just asking you to give me a bid so I budget the rest of the painting. Then, he  sheepishly grinned and said "ok". This kind of behavior was familiar to me because there was a time I'd be on the other end of the phone of an unreasonable publicist or director yelling obscenities at me for a clip of b-roll. Honestly.

The saws stopped right around 11 last night. I was reading, I fell asleep. I wasn't awoken by construction, but I woke up this morning a bit on the down side about it. I think I have that seed of fear that has sprouted among humankind. I don't want to lose sight of the social contract, that we look out for each other, that our community is what we need to survive. I'm in the middle of reading Harry Potter book 5 with my students for Pete's sake - it could not be more clear about division and meanness and ego and things falling apart. Dare I write that I'm shrinking back because I don't want to be yelled at by a young guy? I don't want to be slapped or shot or trolled. It's the meanness that gets me. Like that bumper sticker I've seen pasted up on the back of the Yield sign at the end of my road "Make Liberals Cry Again". It's both funny and sad. Sad for the person who posted it. As a teacher, this is exactly what we are modeling kids not to do. "Be Kind" "Kindness Matters" These are the slogans I see everywhere in schools.  I wonder what these kids, seeing adults act this way, think. Add to the irony of pasting it on the back of a "Yield" sign.