Breadcrumbs

"Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real."
-Cormac McCarthy
ALL THE PRETTY HORSES

A linear life is something that feels mythic to me, an existence in which the trajectory is true as a compass without switchbacks, doglegs, detours, alluring byways or sinkholes. The liver of such a life has a plan. Their focus is not diverted by the giant tinfoil ball which, the billboards assure, will astound all who see it. Their canteens and gas tanks are full, nobody in the car has a sudden need for a restroom. They have a destination and estimated arrival time and, by God, nothing pulls them off course. They meet all goals and deadlines, each step builds upon the one before and, without doubt, their hair always turns out in the back. No badly-tossed Frisbee or untied shoelace has ever caused them to stumble; they've never accidentally wandered off course due to some amnesiac condition, fallen asleep with something in the oven or been inclined to take up with someone who, as was said in my family, was no better than they ought to be.

The absence of that linear inclination (or is it DNA?) has for years led to endlessly unproductive comparisons and an abundance of mental scolding. For the record: there is perhaps nothing that I find less agreeable than a scold; a tuna-and-turpentine sandwich sounds a whole lot tastier than anyone's voice (why do we do this to ourselves?) pointing out bad calls like a panel of sportscasters dissecting the Lakers game I just watched. At a certain age, I had to own that, like Jack, I would be likely to trade whatever animal I was leading for the magic beans, not because I'm a fool but because I believe that sure things are an illusion and Divine opportunity finds the least predictable ways of drawing us in. Added to these less-than-top drawer inclinations is a lifetime of depression, never adequately identified or treated until middle age. Here is a piece of advice: if you have the feeling that something is wrong, even if you think what's wrong is you, pay attention. Sooner or later you will find that it isn't you in the sense of your core being, your soul, but rather your chemistry and, maybe, your scars.

In elementary school we learned to square dance. There was the hand-over-hand promenade around the circle, some steps that took us backward, the changing of partners, a substantial number of fifth-grade boys who would stare at your eighth-grade chest and one guy who must have prayed to be delivered by that nuclear flash we were always preparing for rather than have to extend his moist and waxy hands to girls who would - how could we help it? - talk about him later. But it had a free-wheeling cheeriness and no sense that the world would actually end - no flash involved - if we made a mistake. In seventh grade I learned ballroom dancing (called with droll amplification, Cotillion) and clearly saw the difference between the ordered disarray of the hoedown and the, at least as we practiced it, stilted and land mine-strewn world of boy-girl dancing. The rules were much clearer, the chances of getting it wrong much greater.

If we have been, for the most part, reasonably sober, reasonably present and not serially stupid by intention, yet still found ourselves in lives that seemed to fold back on themselves like mixing cake batter AND have glanced around and seen that People Who Looked Like They Were Doing It Right didn't have their hems held up with safety pins or seem conflicted about what they might be when they grew up, self-criticism is tough to dodge without other models or new definitions of success. Our past is real, as is our present. The scars deserve examination for they may be the breadcrumbs that help us toward home.

To be continued...

Words on a less-than-perfect day

This may be a day of straight talk, borrowed from the pages of EVERYTHING REVERBERATES: THOUGHTS ON DESIGN from Chronicle Books.

My day has been spent waiting to hear legal advice on a medical question and at the moment, as well as most of yesterday, it has that life-and-death, feel your pulse in your throat, I-could-be-wrong-but-the-system-sucks aftertaste. Before I fall asleep I wanted to read what smart people had to say about other things. So as an antidote to the day, here are a few quotes:



Discomfort is almost a prerequisite for a great idea.
- Craig Frazier



Most people
ignorantly suppose that artists
are the decorators of our human existence,
the esthetes
to whom the cultivated may turn
when the real
business of the day is done....
Far from being merely decorative,
the artist's
awareness
is one of the few guardians
of the inherent sanity and equilibrium
of the human spirit
that we see.
-Robert Motherwell

Sometimes
there is simply no need
to be either
clever or original.
-Ivan Chermayeff

(and, finally, from one of my icons)

I do think there is something to
be said for art which is just sort of
lukewarm...the kinds of things
that I'm attracted to are nonchalant.
-Edward Gorey

From me: we are not always going to get it right, either in the doing or the responding or the interpreting. The most we can hope for is that to any moment we bring our best, suspend criticism and comparison, and remember that civilized behavior is contagious.

A mutant destiny

A week ago I began a post to mark the 40 years since Al-Anon saved my life. I wrote about the friend who finally got me to the first meeting and how she, her name was Jean Patterson and she has been gone for most of those 40 years and anonimity would not be an issue, convinced me to leave a poisonous marriage by simply getting in the car and driving away. I deleted the essay, it was just too real.

By beginning that story, I managed to call up all the feelings that nearly defeated me so many years ago; one of the ways my body had been shrieking at me then, which I misunderstood, as did the family doctor who should have known better, was with a chronic and disabling intestinal ailment, now I believe it is called IBS and I have been free of it for almost four decades. As I wrote and relived the details of my escape, my stomach began to hurt and, for a brief time, all the symptoms were back, as though they had never left. Let's call that revelation unnerving. And the lesson I took from it was this: we never know what alien vestige is still feeding off some part of our soul until we drag it all out into the light. While exerting what I believe was its final, punishing attempt, it was forced to let go. In its aftermath, I have felt tired yet peaceful and very much surprised at the ability of our life experiences to retain a great power, for good or ill, regardless of how long and deeply we've worked to exorcise them. We are the amalgam of all our moments.

Which makes me wonder if the most potent (again whether seemingly beneficial or harmful) of these events, when borne over a long period of time, transforms us on a cellular level; I believe so. In a way, we are mutants, life forms which differ from our original states. That in turn makes me consider that mutant is simply one of the names for our individual evolution. Is there, for each of us, a specific destiny, one which can only be reached through what I could call trial by ordeal, the bearing and surviving of the various dark nights that mark human existence? I think that is somewhere close to the truth, or at least what feels like truth to me.

Perhaps my gratitude is owed not only to those who led me away from peril but to the fact that my life has not been, shall we say, smooth and consistently lovely. My mother used to speak of trying times building character and I'd ask myself, under my breath, just how much character could one person need. For today I can accept the blessing of illumination, continue to find willingness to acknowledge that life is just life, be truly relieved for situations in which I no longer have to live and ask for the courage to keep looking back, to be sure no one was left behind.

ASTRAL WEEKS

From other postings, you may have seen that songs - mostly from other times - thread their way through my life and mind. I suspect they take me places I would not have found without their help. Consider this another in a succession of non-linear stories.

A phrase can be enough to dislodge a memory or coax an idea to draw breath. It has been said that singer/songwriter John Prine began his classic "Sam Stone" with two words: broken radio, as in, "...sweet songs never last too long on broken radios." Last Sunday I saw a listing by Ann Powers in the Los Angeles Times entertainment guide. It read, in part, "Martha Wainwright with 'I Know You're Married But I've Got Feelings Too'...made a gorgeous, hungry, sad, sweet album that anyone who's ever been recklessly in love should hear."

Recklessly in love. Oh no.

This morning on NPR's Weekend Edition there was a discussion about Van Morrison's 1968 album ASTRAL WEEKS which he performed live and in its entirity not long ago. Another such performance is scheduled. There was talk of it being considered one of the great, all-time albums by ROLLING STONE; a teacher at a New York university found that of 16 students in his class, 4 called it their favorite album; all 4 had been born long after its release.

Morrison was interviewed about its meaning, the personal experiences it illuminated. His response was that it was fiction, bits and pieces he'd collected from everywhere, "These are short stories in musical form." Others interviewed on the program said of ASTRAL WEEKS, "...so much of what makes music great is courage." (We are shown by the music that) "...life can be lived more deeply." I found my way to the album in 1970 and from the first listening, it was like sliding into a pool, sinking to the bottom, yet still being able to breathe. It made sense to me, I was unaware that it didn't match other music of that time and I found in it images that illustrated the inexpressable state of being, as I then was, recklessly in love.

Even after nearly 40 years, I understand, though I have learned to let go of such expectation, the madwoman wish to dip in bronze, to preserve, such rare merging of the human and the unquantifiable. At the time I didn't even have words for it, I just knew that I wanted to hold onto it in a way that was, at best, unwise and, at worst, extremely unwell, awarenesses that came to me much later. In THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE, the thought, let alone the fact, of the gold is the source of insanity. I admit that some of us bring more than a little bit of crazy with us and under such conditions can reach states where instincts for self-preservation evaporate. And if those instincts were not too fully developed before recklessness took over, well, one might as well sit on the railroad tracks and stare at the sun.

I've not yet heard Martha Wainwright's album. I don't know if I expect to find consolation there or the uncomfortable reminder of what it feels like to be entirely in your body, yet out of your mind. I think of it as an obsessive state in which we imagine finding our way into a space of absolute knowing, a place from which we, or so we believe, cannot not be dislodged from our object, where there is, we hope, something substantial enough to grasp and trust, a place where we would be allowed to exchange reckless for real.

Surviving being recklessly in love elicits an ambiguous response in me; yes, I was there and managed to find my way back, but, like the last of our astronauts to leave the moon, will there forever be that longing for one final, impossible flight?

Dreams, again? and good news

First, a question. It may just be curiosity or it may be a wish to confirm that something is afoot in the universe. Has anyone else been having intricate, vivid dreams that seem to go on and on; something out-of-the-ordinary, especially something that address a significant issue in an illuminating way? Just wondering.

Next, it has been a time when reports of good news are coming to me from disparate correspondents, each of them loved dearly, each on a distinct and separate path. In no particular order, I celebrate the finding of a job, in a city and economy where that is beyond challenging, and it is a job that fits the intention and qualification of the applicant. Good news, big good news. To learn that a play, grown and polished over labor-filled time, has moved further along the judging process in a prestigious competition brings appreciation, still with my wish for even greater acknowledgement. An artist whose energies, despite health-borne roadblocks, make many of us look like Han Solo frozen in the carbon block, prepares to open her Etsy shop and take her work global. A perilously delayed diagnosis of pneumonia now has a treatment that seems to be bringing it under control. A promotion and raise, unexpected, came to help heal nearly unbearable grief following a mother's death. Robins and roses are evident in a garden to which it seemed spring might never come; even if winter decides to hang around a bit longer, the promise has been made. Each day holds blessings, especially if we expand our definition and find that the box holds one last cookie, unbroken, with lots of chips, and here we thought they were all gone.

Alternate lives

Cafe Hafa, Tangier.

When AOL stopped auto-deleting all the new mail, or mail kept as new, that had been hanging around for 30 days or so, it lured a shadowy part of my nature into a state of hoarding correspondence. The fact that there was no well-functioning printer at the time needs to bear some of the blame, but that weak and procrastinating part simply let things pile up. No need to mention just how many things but as the computer began to slow down and give me the electronic equivalent of the stink eye, I started sorting - printing, saving in files, deleting or releasing.

There was gold there, as I expected; there were also serendipitous mailings, one of which connects to something I've been thinking about for a few days. It was a call, forwarded by a writer friend, for "innovative film writing," which was described, in part, as "...attempt to implant your cinematic experience in others." Dangerous doors to open for one who can take (as may be witnessed in previous postings) a phrase or interpretation from any book, song, movie or word-centered presentation and go riding off like Jeremiah Johnson, alone in the high country, to track whatever realization has left its prints in the snow.

After several evenings of watching for a second time the Jason Bourne trilogy, what stayed in my mind was the name of a city, a Bob Dylan song and the fact that I am actually 64 years old, though my mind works like hell to sidestep that reality. "If you see her, say hello. She might be in Tangier," never has been and now, likely, never will be about me. The location filming in the Bourne movies, seen closer and on a larger tv screen this time around, was something of a wonder. It was not Toronto or Prague posing as Moscow; it was Moscow. But much as the visuals - and the plentiful chases, studies in deep black ops endurance - helped me escape along with Jason, it was just the simple mention that he had traveled (from India, we knew) through Tangier, before the third picture took us there, that had me twirling through my past.

I can't say that I really, actively chose the path my life took; it was more like an unmarked car which pulled up to the curb and I got in. There were never moments in which I thought, "Instead of sitting at this typewriter, I could be renting motor scooters on Corfu," or any Mediterranean coastal island or town. Life was just life, with goals and dreams that didn't involve world travel. I never saw myself, and don't imagine anyone else did, as exotic, adventurous, daring, mysterious or likely to be found in Tangier, but I suppose the possibility existed, for I didn't actually admit until a few days ago that my evolution into such a creature was unlikely to happen.

Nearly 30 years ago I worked with a woman, who might have been found anywhere. She and Bob Dylan were friends - he dedicated a song to her at a local concert. She could walk a tightrope and didn't believe in car insurance and in looking at the two of us through the same lens, I felt pretty much like someone who would be instantly recognized as some version of regular, while she would be compared to the fragrant smoke from a joss stick...sandalwood, patchouli or something unidentifiable, something other.

Allowing myself to accept the fact that her sort of otherness had ceased to be an option was not painful so much as surprising. I don't expect that at this point I will learn to water ski either. Perhaps it is just my mind that processess the passing of time in increments that have pretty much nothing to do with how rapidly the years go by. Tangier or Corfu or faraway places in general are not likely spots for women of a certain age to have new beginnings. But grabbing hold of other words, a Marianne Fathful song called "The Ballad of Lucy Jordan," in which she sings, "At the age of thirty-seven she realized she'd never ride through Paris in a sport car with the warm wind in her hair," it is clear that there are some alternate lives which I choose to hold onto a bit longer.

Mystery

All my life I’ve read mysteries. My mother read mysteries - she also read westerns and stories about the cavalry and the Battle at Little Big Horn. It was the mystery gene that was transmitted.

Beginning with Nancy Drew in the third grade, I spent decades reading my way through series by writers British, Australian, Swedish, Japanese, American and I can’t recall how many others. Nancy Drew is tied to very specific memories, such as my Aunt Dot walking up the driveway on my birthday with a gift stack, each present wrapped separately in an identifiable shape that could only be one thing. The public library, across the street from my elementary school, did not carry Nancy Drew, nor the Hardy Boys, the Dana Girls or any of the other somewhat pulpy favorites as they were deemed to lack literary merit. It seemed to me then and now to be a version of de facto censorship. Someone had read something - maybe that Nancy had a boyfriend! - they didn’t like and all the works in the genre were considered trashy, unworthy of shelf space at the Santa Catalina or any other branch. So one had to purchase the books, trade with friends or receive them as gifts in order to read them. And even though there wasn’t, at least in the N.D. books, a thread that spun out from one book to the next, it seemed essential to read them in order. No need for a paragraph before the opening page which said, “Previously in Nancy Drew...”

Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett were early grown-up mysteries, along with Cornell Woolrich and James M. Cain. Reading, particularly of mysteries, sustained me through uneven times; during a early and trauma-ridden first marriage, I easily consumed nearly a book a day. But I was not, am not, a mystery fan who likes to solve the puzzle. If I can figure out who-did-what, I think the writer hasn’t done his or her job. Of course there are the stories where the villain is known early on, but that’s not the same thing. One day it occurred to me to wonder just what was it that drew me to mysteries, not quite to the exclusion of other fiction.

There is the puzzle aspect, but since I don’t set out to solve it, what does that mean? The closest I can come to explain this passion to myself - and I don’t believe that we are ever required to explain ourselves to ourselves or anyone else - was probably rooted in the sense I have that it is all a mystery. There was a time in my life when I visited psychics, wanting to know what was ahead; I wanted a periscope with which to peer around corners and try and learn if there was a good outcome waiting for me. And the definition of “a good outcome” was very specific, filled with expectation based on wanting and a limited, naive grasp of the way in which the Universe operates. Lengthy, bruising lessons have helped me admit that the way ahead is uncharted, unchartable, and the energy spent in trying to see in such dim light embezzles the energy we could invest in finding the joy or the peace of right now. A well-constructed mystery novel frequently gives us the answer that daily life denies us - how does it all turn out? I find something comfortable in such stories, yet I am never disappointed when the ending is ambiguous, a more familiar situation in which the mystery continues to unfold as time is allowed to reveal next page.