Category: Uncategorized

Snowed-In

December was a grueling month.  Six-day weeks and long hours at the bookstore – ringing at the cash register, looking for obscure or in-demand titles. Mark Twain was this year’s sleeper success and difficult to get hold of, Cleopatra and Keith Richards were more predictably popular and easy to find. (Imagining the three of them – together for a fascinating and funny chat, delighted me.) Customers sure the book they absolutely must have because it is the perfect gift, follow me about the store, desperately. Cynically, I can already see this same book, sometimes with wrapping paper still attached, coming back to us. ‘Reason for return: Unwanted’, the cash register will ring again and again through the next few weeks.

But the holidays are almost done (only New Years – less an event for books) and today, I do not have to do anything. There is a daunting pile of laundry and in the refrigerator, only enough left-overs for another day or so – but no presents to buy, no major meals to prepare for. I feel free! After writing this, I may even get back under the flannel sheets to read or sleep some more. Oh, joy!  This feeling began yesterday afternoon as soon as I returned home from work (the dread day of returns) and pulled into the slippery driveway. I drove home so slowly through the treacherous, slushy streets, cheering on my little Subaru each time we made it up or down another hill without spinning out. Settling into the couch in front of the fireplace as Rob vigilantly stoked the flames all evening, I read three days worth of newspapers and a bit of my book between dozing and listening to the howling winds, grateful for our good walls and Rob’s amazing winterizing techniques.

Today, I get to stay home. As if to underline the point, the snow is still swirling, the roads from my window look totally white: I am snowed-in.  Oh, bliss! Not even the dog is asking for a walk yet.

Winter Solstice and Lunar Eclipse

At 2:00 am, I woke to my alarm, pulled myself to my elbows and peered out the window to look at the eclipse edging over the smudgy looking moon in the hazy sky. The earth’s shadow slowly crept across the silver glow and here on earth, a fierce wind howled. Branches of the maple tree swayed and bent back-and-forth – an ecstatic wave of fractals. Glad to be between the warmth of my blankets, I burrowed deeper, forcing myself to lift my head off the pillow a few more times to check on the dramatic welcome to winter before succumbing to sleep and dreaming of a lunar eclipse. This morning, I cannot distinguish dream from memory.

Dark Days of December

In my neighborhood, Christmas lights and decorations appear within days of Thanksgiving. Next door, the light-bulb deer remain lit on the lawn all day. The house on the corner of our street looks like a Hallmark advertisement, wrapped in ribbon, evergreen swag and wreaths on every lit window. Next door to that house is my other favorite: the little red cape with the 1960s vintage decor – huge colored balls. The rest of us hang glittering lights purchased off the drugstore shelves – different garish rainbows of blinking colors. These flashes of brightness help to get us through the peak of winter solstice – the darkest days of December, refusing to succumb to the dark. I think we should leave them up through February.

While I always dread snow (the clean up and difficult driving) as I write there is a magical dusting going on – a meditative dance performance of flakes.  Earlier, walking Tetley in the dark morning, the flakes seemed illuminated – nature’s beacons of light. Perhaps I can learn to embrace this aspect of winter – to twist a little yoga saying – and honor the light of winter.

A National Day for Thanking

How strange and wonderful to have a national day that is just about giving thanks.  Of course, the history is much more complex and suspect than that, but except for grade school classrooms where the shortened story of pilgrims and Indians is still told, we only focus on the thankful part. Or at least, that’s what I do and therefore, really like this holiday. It’s a predictable pause (always on a Thursday) in regular life that precedes the frenetic month of December.  At least for today, there are no presents required – just a time to gather with loved ones to eat and be grateful, to nourish body and spirit.

In recovery programs, gratitude is a key step. Focus on the good in your life, appreciate it, savor it – hang onto it for dear life!  There is an exercise I learned about from time ‘in the rooms’ for when you can’t get to sleep: make your way through the alphabet thinking of something or someone you are grateful for, that begins with each letter.  This may sound juvenile to anyone who has never suffered the insanity of addiction, but it is can be profound and soothing, and anyway – beats counting sheep.

Today, while cooking the orange and green vegetables assigned to me by the dear friends hosting us for today’s feast, I will go through my alphabet of gratitude. Most letters will be people’s names — (A is so easy, Anne) the family of friends, near and far, it is always this bounty of love I am most grateful for.

Veteran’s Day

It should be no secret that soldiers are as vulnerable to mental damage as they are physical. This is obvious from the mental illness and drug addiction so rife in returning soldiers. My late-husband was a veteran.  Always a voluble guy, he told compelling tales of his past, of growing up in England, his travels, the movie and music business of which he was also a veteran, yet he rarely spoke about his time as a 17-20 year old British soldier in the 70s.  Like most over the past decades, the battles his government sent him into were dubious ones – even secret – and he lived with the resulting nightmares of terrible violence and shame with uncharacteristic silence.  And ultimately, he paid the price as we, his family did.

This excerpt is from the memoir I am working on:

I used to wonder why veterans are reticent to talk about their war experience. They flinch at the thoughtless question, “Did you ever kill anyone?” yet put them in a room with other soldiers, even former enemies, and in hushed tones their stories flow. Soldiers believe their experiences are too terrible to repeat to civilians. Ian did.

Can anyone who inflicted and suffered terrible violence ever really experience peace again? Maybe only those who see at least a glimmer of possibility through the demons of their past, manage to survive.  Perhaps the veterans of war keep their terrible memories locked away in the hope they will eventually disappear. And maybe I need to tell mine so they won’t.

This nod of a named-day or a float in a parade, a bumper sticker — none of these are enough. Soldiers, are claimed as points of righteous patriotism and used as political batting rams.  They return home from ostensibly protecting their country, their people — and are left with little support of the kind that can make a difference. Instead, after being feted with parties or a parade, they are expected to return to their roles of parents, children, brother, sister and friend. To carry on. Instead, an increasing number are so damaged and without support, they kill themselves and sometimes, awfully, their own families.  Something is wrong.  Silence is a killer and must be broken to save these lives tasked by governments with the notion of protecting ours.

In-between

Waking on weekend mornings when I don’t have to go to the bookstore, it takes a few minutes for me to realize that the day is mine. I must veer my thoughts away from work-life: the calls I didn’t make, the tasks still waiting on my cluttered desk. Where I write from is so far away from that world and weekdays, while I try and rise early enough to have time to write, to exist in that internal place, there is never enough time. I need to be in almost a reverie when I work – best right out of sleep – my subconscious still primed from a night of dreams.  On work and school days, I have the finely tuned but harried, going-to-school and work rituals of making sandwiches, calling M to wake up, (again and again) before we bustle out of the door and roll into the dark morning towards our day-lives. But Saturdays and Sundays (two days in a row!) are precious – time to really look at things – within and without.

The dog still requires I venture outside and if I heed him early enough, the moon’s glow is still brighter than the sun’s. I revel in the magic between night and day, sleep and waking and these days, between the seasons. Over this past month, it is has gone from twilight to dark when I answer Tetley’s call for a quick morning walk down the street. This week, there were days when the weather was crazy-warm and as I made my way past the hedges, I heard the murmur of a summer insect, delightful and comforting.  An extension of the spirit of summer along with the weather.

There is a fleeting quality to these days. Autumn and spring pass quickly – the sweetness and drama between heat and cold and the melancholy of the brevity of this beauty is potent. So I pull myself out of the warmth of my bed, and for the time I have here in the now-cool mornings (we are reluctant to turn on the heat – as if waiting will keep the cold at bay) I do my best to pay attention.

Wake-Up

In the sleep stolen between the sound of my alarm and Tetley’s barking, I dreamt I was traveling somewhere in Europe.  The place is less important than the feeling conjured by the dream.

The weather was cool. I was moving on from a little pensione where I knew no-one, to another place and had little heart for it. What I wanted was to be home, to actually have such a place. Living without schedule or purpose beyond being somewhere and then only to go to yet another place – only an observer of other people’s lives – in both my dream and memory, I recall how exhausting and lonely this exercise often was.

On the road, it was home I longed for – a home I did not have.  Instead, I kept moving on, traveling to another exotic place hoping to find my place. That somewhere, I would discover a reason to stay.

From the recesses of my unconscious, I am reminded of these times and thus, to savor my present. These days are so busy with external demands,  I long for unscheduled, contemplative hours until the dream reminds me that what I desired so many years and miles ago is here: I am home.

October

Gusting winds whipped through the garden, with the same rhythmic power of the sea. Leaves swept inside-out and then back again, still clinging to branches, the violence of the movement sounding like waves crashing onto shore.  Laying still in the dark of early morning, I am reluctant to move, wishing I could remain in retreat and follow the wild-weather from the comfort of my bed. But up I get to join the fray.

The wind brought the rain — falling in lashing grey sheets throughout the day. Rivers of water filled the roads and traversing even the shortest distance from car-to-building was enough to get drenched. Still, it felt tropical – more summer than autumn. But that was yesterday. This morning, my street is filled with storm-flotsam: twigs, leaves, branches pooled by flood waters into a topographical map over the cracked tarmac.  The sky is vivid blue and the leaves seem to have changed into their autumn colors overnight.  A flock of birds settle noisily into the trees. I cannot make them out between the foliage, nor do I recognize their song – more like chatter – as if they are discussing what route to take. They are on their way somewhere – at least 30 of them. It feels cold and pulling my jacket close, I yawn and my breath forms a cloud.

The seasons were wrestling these past few days – but this morning we have a winner: autumn is here.

Living with Books

When I ride the train, the subway, walk on a beach – and see someone reading, I always want to know – what?  When people are photographed or interviewed on television in front of a bookcase, I try to make out what titles are on their shelves. Because I work in a bookstore? Maybe, but also because I am nosy – it is as if I’m sneaking a peek at who this person really is by checking out their books.

My own bookshelves are packed to capacity – including too many books I have yet to read. Will I ever? There are titles that I feel like I should read — a great example being a huge tome: Tournament of Shadows: The Great Game and the Race for Empire in Central Asia by Karl E. Meyer and Shari Blair Brysac.  Autographed by these local authors and scholars – I do want to read it for a better understanding of this volatile region we have been so mired in – and so it stays and I think: one day. The same ‘should’ keeps From Beirut to Jerusalem by Thomas Friedman on my shelf for years.  I cannot let go of these books nor my good intention to read them but other books always jump the reading queue.

Then there are the books I may want for reference – that get yanked from the shelf about once a year or so – Alternative Medicine: The Definitive Guide by Goldberg and The Art Book – a book published by Phaidon door-stop sized book I picked up once at a tag sale. It’s a fast-food kind of look at the history of art.  I have more cherished art and photography books I also found on sale and could not resist – the most recent find being Andy Goldsworthy’s Passage – this remarkable sculptor’s poetic works are created out of nature – powerful works of time and space – some of stone but many others of ice, leaves, the tides and now, only a photograph remains.  It sits on a table in my living room and I have looked at it maybe once but I am so glad it is there.

I have the powerful photography books by my friend Ron Haviv – his important documentation of wars including Blood and Honey: A Balkan War Journal – the war I knew. My Balkan titles can take up their own shelf and I have read them all, hungering to understand the madness that was my life for four years.  My collection began back in 1992 with Rebecca West’s classic Black Lamb, Grey Falcon and Misha Glenny’s The Fall of Yugoslavia. Later on, I added David Rieff’s Slaughterhouse, Peter Maass’s Love Thy Neighbor: A Story of War. And perhaps the one most poignant for me, My War Gone By, I Miss it So by Anthony Lloyd – a powerful memoir of addiction to war and to drugs.  

The addiction self-help books have mostly been purged – in the hopes that the problem is also gone out of my life, I have passed them on to others who might find them useful.  But I have kept the memoirs – Beautiful Boy by David Sheff, Mary Karr’s Lit.

Over the years I have amassed a collection of signed titles that are impossible to part with – I see them as a legacy for my daughter. J. K. Rowling – the second Harry Potter title signed at an event at the store early on in her success.  Still, it was like hosting a rock star but she was lovely, signing well over a thousand books and looking every child in the eye and sharing a chat while signing with her arm in a brace.  My inscribed copies of Angela’s Ashes and Teacher Man will always have a revered place on my shelf with warm memories of my encounters with Frank McCourt.

There are books I can and should cull: novels I have read and never will again. Outdated travel guides – to Bali, Martha’s Vineyard (I have not been since high school), the Florida Keys (I have never been) parenting guides, cookbooks I never open – but as my eye scans the dusty spines, I think of a reason why I want each one to stay – a memory, the possibility I might one day need to check on the correct Serbo-Croatian word or refer to that book The Brain. I won’t though — the internet is too easy.  At least, I will dust them.

Next Year May Be Better (The Garden)

A rare Saturday with nothing planned. Much to do, but nothing required. The ‘to-do’ is catch-up cleaning, inside and out.  The garden looks abandoned – petunias dried up in the window boxes, basil plants going to seed, morning glories strangling scraggly rose bushes and in the vegetable garden, pokeberry and crabgrass reign. A few perfect, little heirloom tomatoes are rallying on an almost-leaf-less plant, and I hurry to rescue them before the birds and squirrels attack. And jalapenos – I can’t make salsa fast enough and they wrinkle on the kitchen counter. But the garden is at the end for the year.

As the days finally cool down, I plan on how to prepare it for winter.  Rather than yank up all the crabgrass, I’ll probably cover it with newspapers, then layer leaves, compost, dirt in ‘lasagna’ garden fashion. By spring, it should be rich earth, ready for planting. Although it was a bad year, I am planning for next. An optimist – next year may be better and, in any case, I will try.

Follow

Get every new post on this blog delivered to your Inbox.

Join other followers:

%d bloggers like this: