Night Swimming and Happy Birthdays

Jack and Max, by Cara McDougal

A lot on my mind and a lot on my plate these past few weeks. Not the least of which has been suffocating feel of time progression that seems to get faster and faster with each passing day. My blog entries become less and less even though I still have so much to say. I have got my head in the game, the eye on the prize, and yet time seems to saunter mockingly all the while running at an electric pace. Time, oh no, you have not been a friend as of late.

• • •

The other morning as I was tired from a long night of work, fumbling for my keys, and working hard to get into my car. I overheard someone getting into the car next to me say “We are young” as in the context of “Why not, we are young. Let’s just do it.” For all I know they could have been discussing the possibility of switching from diet to regular soda, or excited over staying up past 10:30 p.m. on a school night (which is usually my version of a leap into adventure). We Are Young. The words hovered in the air for a second. For reasons I did not yet acknowledge in that particular moment, I was left sideswiped and so awestruck by the power of those three little words that I opened my car door and fumbled for something to write on in my overly cluttered glove box. I sat down in the driver’s seat and wrote those words down in big bold letters on the back of a scrap piece of paper (which may or may not have been the back of my registration card.) WE ARE YOUNG…

• • •

My little boy turns seven today. This birthday is the first one where both my husband and I have admitted to feeling the real impact of the weight of his age. A friend of mine encapsulated the reasons for this perfectly. Seven means our little ones are really in the full throes of being a kid. All signs of being a toddler are way in our rearview mirrors. The slow and steady pace of the endurance test that is adolescence to the wretched middle school years and beyond has begun.

 • • •

The photo at the top of this blog was taken last summer by a good friend of mine. Jack is the one on the left. This image took my breathe away when I first saw it. To me, it is youth personified. It is exactly how I see Jack. It is exactly how he feels to me, to us. She managed to capture it perfectly. I had thought of including many pictorial representations of Jack for this particular blog entry, but in the end this photo became the only one because I felt no other image could illustrate Jack more faithfully and beautifully than this image could.

• • •

After scrawling down the words WE ARE YOUNG and tracing over the letters a few times, I turned the key in the ignition. That ear worm of a song “We are Young” came on. I laughed at the timing and the coincidence and knew it had less to do with some magical, cosmic connection with the universe and more because you simply can not turn on the radio right now without hearing it or a station fading into it within moments. I knew everything about this moment was cliché as I was living it, but age and mommihood entitles you some cliché. Not to mention on this particular morning I had completely forgotten to pack Jack’s lunch and had raced over to the school unshowered and unkempt hoping to get his food to him before his foodless panic set in. My penchant for caring about how I looked or what was playing on the radio had pretty much flown out the window in that moment. So I sat back and listened to the poppy tune. Ah youth… that song’s intent was to manipulate the listener into an anthem of experiences of his or her own youth and declarations of living life to the fullest while things are still brand new, or at the very least a vehicle for which us older folks can reflect upon. But I didn’t reflect upon my own misspent or misguided and sometimes intoxicating youth. For the first time I really thought about his.

I mean I really thought about it. He is in IT. WOW. I always knew that this was his time, but I had to remember that it is actually HIS time. He is experiencing his youth right now; not this abstract or voyeuristic perspective I have of his growing up. These are his memories and they are all coming fast and furious while I am sipping my coffee and making my phone calls. His firsts, the life of his own, as a friend of mine put so eloquently in her blog post: I am beginning to watch him run toward something else, and away from me. The stuff I now reflect upon about myself as I get older. It is his slow motion montage that will be played through filtered glasses and “edited for television” at a later date. His journey to be whatever he wants it to be as he gets older, all slowed down and subtle, with all the feelings that those moments emote. The stuff that dreams are made of and car commercials run on.

My nostalgia level is probably waxing more lately not only because of Jack’s birthday, but because I had been working on my son’s elementary school yearbook. I had been logging in quotes and memories of the past school years from the staff and students, and had been pouring over current classroom photos that will eventually meld into “what were they thinking” hairstyles and faded memories. I was seeing and reading all the talk of the “possible” and knowing they don’t yet understand the gravity and weight of their choices, their voices, and their ideas at this stage of their game.

 • • •

The Youth song faded into a muffled and incoherent wall of sound. I left the radio scan for a bit as I journeyed home. “Nightswimming” was half over but I stopped the scan there anyways. My youth began to fade into my mind. I never night swam until I was an adult but the recollections of moments came into play. The simplistic beauty of that song took me back to every first everything, to the point that this whole morning car reflection experience felt corny and overly earnest but not necessarily in a Lifetime movie way. I guess more in the movie montage way or another contrived way that sometimes actually happens in real life when you sit in the parking lot of your son’s school in ripped sweatpants and tousled hairs on a random Tuesday.

• • •

I keep finding more and more reasons to want to be. I am still on the edge of exploring this newfound lust for life that has reared its adventurous head to a woman whose realistic, responsible self usually beats the idealistic one into submission. New people to love and appreciate, kisses to give as the credits roll, hugs to random strangers. I am waiting to go night swimming again and skinny dip off the highest cliff with the ones I love. Right now I am standing on the edge, naked, ready to dive in. I am getting ready to jump.

• • •

Happy birthday my dearest, Pumpkin King. You have made me want to believe that all is possible.

Summer Skies in Winter

My Reflection in the Dirty Window on the 6th Floor

I spent most of the past year and a half looking up.

My obsession with “up” was born out of another obsession (borderline paranoid neurosis) that was born out of purchasing a home. I am an excessive roof/gutter checker, i.e. I am terrified that I will awake one day to a huge hole in my box gutter, or an even bigger one in my roof. This daily practice has caused me to look more upwards more often than most people should. This habit has gradually morphed into my neck craning skyward whenever I venture outdoors. First it was to check out everyone else’s roofs and gutters and compare their maintenance/deterioration to mine. But all this measured structural analysis led my eye drift skyward on more days. I guess I didn’t realize until quite recently how striking Pennsylvania skies can be; or maybe I just don’t remember them ever being quite as dynamic as they were this year; or perhaps there was just more pollution creating more cloud covers and wacky weather patterns; or maybe I was just paying closer attention than ever before; or maybe I just chose to look up more often.

Clouds Over my House.

Looking up into the sky reminds me of my summers working as a sweeperette at Kennywood Park. Back in those days, I loved having the 4 p.m. shift. The late start to the work day helped me to avoid walking around the park in the wretched noon day sun. And as an added bonus, if the weather was pleasant, it gave me a chance to head to the local water park with a few of my friends who also had my same schedule. We would always dash straight towards the “Lazy River.” We spent the day talking and not talking while floating um, lazily, in oversized inner tubes on this man-made “river.” We held onto the handles of each other’s tubes in order to stay together amongst the long line of tubers. Usually we ended the day happy, sleepy, and near sun poisoned. The following hours would entail sweeping up the remnants of leftover amusement park fun while nursing our pinkish skin with aloe vera, praying for the cotton of our polo shirts to stop scratching at our blisters. Ah, the bliss of young summers.

Parking Lot Sunset.

The memory of one of those “water park days” came to mind the other night. I remembered sitting on the foot of my friend’s bed laughing, joking, and listening to music before getting ready to head out. The Bodyguard soundtrack was playing in the background. As the next track began to play, my friend stopped talking, sat down on the bed, and leaned back on her elbows. She tilted her head back, inhaled and then exhaled and said, almost in the register of a shout, “I love this song.” She belted out that tune like it was written for her. She was looking up when she first belted out her tune, and then she turned her head looked directly at me and began to sing in that jokey way only close girlfriends can. I followed suit. I remember the look on her face and sound of her voice as if it were yesterday.

That was the summer before “devastatingly” serious relationships started to rear their lovely, angst filled heads; the summer before my mother died; the time when college was just beginning, before  momentum of growing up took hold. I loved the innocence of those Kennywood summers, the simplicity of lying on a bed and singing out loud with a close friend. When living in those moments were all you were required to do. I spent most of those summers looking at the ground, sweeping. I barely opened my eyes on the “Lazy River” because the sun was usually quite bright, even on the most overcast of days. I looked for the moments I could peek through and let the sunlight in, but I was often left seeing the imprints the clouds left behind when I was forced to close my eyes again.

Driving back from the water park, the car was usually quiet and listless. Sometimes I would plop myself down in the seat and rest my head on the passenger side window. I was finally able to look up and out into the summer sky without sunny obstructions and daydream into the cloud patterns. Certain clouds would catch my eye and I would stare at them the entire drive, wondering if they would be able to hang on to our speedometer long enough and make it all the way to our destination. The screech of brake dust when we arrived in the parking lot woke me from my fixation. “Sigh. Eight more hours of work.” Summer was calling…

• • •

Excerpts from “looking up”. A few unposted skies from this past year.

Cloud that Followed Me After the Storm.

Cloud that Waited for Me After the Graduation Party.

Winter Storm 1

Winter Storm 2

Winter Storm 3

Tightrope to the Clouds.

Waiting for Batman 1.

Waiting for Batman 2.

Jack's Cloud City (reminds us of The Empire Strikes Back).

Staring into Snow Globes Makes Me Feel Like a Little Kid

The Ladies Who Lunch.

December 23rd is my favorite day of year.

In fact, the time spanning from December 20th through December 23rd are simply the most… “something…” days of the year. There is an unprecedented “something” in the air that simply can not be described. Everyone is excited. Every moment is cliché. Every emotion is extreme. Everyone is coming up romance, or regret, or worry, or melancholy. Everyone is pushing to get final projects done, or slacking from their work, or daydreaming their December away. Everyone is either making merry or bah humbugging the merry makers. And everyone outside of your immediate family is trying to get one last chance to see you before Christmas eve. Everyone is feeling “something.” And it seems as if everyone’s holiday treat has been laced with ecstasy.

I never really liked Christmas Day. It always felt like a big let down. The commercially fabricated Christmas specials, the emotionally induced high of gift giving and receiving, the spirituality, the evening parties, and all the rest of the “stuff” that was the previous month ends on that day, most likely by 10 am. In the past, I usually spent the rest of the day trying to find a way to recapture the magic 23rd.

Over the last two years, I have been gradually trying to alter my holiday perceptions. I always dreamt of hot cocoa, a holiday medley around the fire, and Vermont style inns. What I usually received was a nice holiday that never quite lived up to my unattainable Bing Crosby/Danny Kaye expectations. (My expectations often lead to excessively elaborate production numbers often involving a piano.)

This year, I have decided to try to make the best of everything that happens or does not happen. I have decided to make my holiday week a week worth remembering. I decided to fill it with fun and little expectation, and I decided to at least try to attend every extended invitation. I decided to make time for moments instead of succumbing to the pressure of the big picture.

View from the Parking Lot.

I headed to the Strip District on Tuesday to meet Sarah Wojdylak and Lisa Toboz on their lunch break. I was struck by the fact I had not really hung out in the Strip since working there many years ago. The smells, sights and sounds of that place both transports me to and makes me long for New York City. I had spent many a day eating crab cakes at Roland’s, fresh fish from Wholey’s, or devouring meatball subs while sitting on the roof of our office building watching the cars drive across the 16th street bridge. Gosh, I love the Strip.

Waiting at Sunseri's.

I saw Lisa’s plastic umbrella emerge through the crowds of holiday shoppers even before I saw the two of them walk towards me. The shape of her umbrella took me back to being a kid in the late 70s and early 80s. It’s one of those umbrellas that takes over the entire upper half of your body when you were a kid. It was always warm inside and your voice sounded modulated from the way it bounced off the clear thick walls. I imagined it as a giant snow globe and I immediately wanted to capture it “on film.” Prior to our meeting, we had briefly discussed trying to find a weird holiday display on this lunch break (maybe even dolling ourselves up in tinsel) and photographing ourselves in front of it; like some sort of weird Christmas card homage. But there were no real cheeky, technicolor-like displays in the Strip. Lisa mentioned an out-of-the-way church courtyard that may have “something” to it so we followed. I was fixated on the umbrella/snow globe. When we arrived we knew right away that we had found something wonderful. We excitedly passed around my shabby Nikon Coolpix point and shoot camera that has truly seen better days but still take great images. Our time was restricted due to their lunch schedules. I could have shot for another hour. I am grateful for these little impromptu sessions. They always reenergize me. I felt like a little kid posing and watching them inside our makeshift snow globe. It gave me that intangible, magical feeling you only get around the holidays.

Lisa's Plastic Fantastic Umbrella.

A friend of mine once described a difficult event in his life as someone “shaking up his snow globe.” This year, mine has been rattled to the point that I am still waiting for the snow to settle to reveal the fabrication inside. I am weirdly humbled and mostly thankful for all that has happened these past 12 months because it has led me to some joy filled moments happening right now, like this one: these snow globes of abstract something. I don’t know what the rest of this week will bring, but for now I leave you with this most recent set of makeshift snow globe moments (below) and I wish you all the merriest of holidays. (Photos by me, Sarah Wo and Lisa T. Thanks for the inspiration, ladies.)

SNOW GLOBES

ICONS

LEAVING

Spinning Spirals at the Passing Planes: Tension and Release

The end of fall

I realize haven’t written an entry this blog in a very long time. No excuses, just life and the participation in an extremely long two months, filled with too many distractions/projects/illness. Time and a reoccurring flu became the very personification of an enemy. But even when the clock and toxic phlegm keeps a person from their written thoughts, those thoughts still manage to emerge, just in a less linear, more imperfect fashion. Over these past few months, my brain did a lot of scattered thinking and I experienced a few random moments that seemed much more linear at the time.

• • •

View from the Mausoleum

I watched them lower the coffin into its casing before lowering it into the sealed structure into the ground for all eternity. Another funeral. My seventh for the year. I am running out of black clothing. (That is something that this normally dark attired person never thought would transpire.)

I marveled at my shoes in the reflection of the hearse’s hub caps, as I pondered whether or not to take its picture. I didn’t…

I guess this seemed an appropriate ending to this year. It began with a death in the second month and ended with another death in the second to the last month. Little did I know there would be yet another death only a few weeks after this one.

Roadside Flower

I watched my husband and his brother witness the sealing of the coffin into a larger cement box. The process reminded me of Russian stacking dolls. The deceased’s name was etched on the top of the outer box. I didn’t photograph that either… My not photographing these moments is something I regretted at the time but I now realize they weren’t the moments I was meant to/needed to capture. The air was thick with enough final goodbyes and tension. Theses “photo moments” were merely insignificant interruptions no one should dwell on. Someone whispered over my shoulder about the sadness of “said and done” and “being left with nothing but a casket.”

The “box” was transported by a small crane driven by one of the grave diggers, lifted far too high and descended far too quickly into it’s final resting place. I had never seen anything like this set up and delivery. The cement encasing was carried along by nothing but two ropes looped around the left and right sides of the lid. The ropes were taught but could be removed easily. I asked my husband how on earth did he think that casket was being suspended without a hook, wire, or other apparatus securely affixed to it.

What’s holding it up?

“Tension.”

I exhaled as he walked over to someone. That word hung there. There couldn’t have been more perfect utterance of syllables in that moment though neither one of us realized it’s significance but later discussed on the car ride home.

Picking a direction

…I lost track of time and got bogged down in the process. In my quest for simplicity, the simple became complex… Missed opportunities. Missed moments…

After eight funerals and eight funeral home visits and eight reflections and eight observances, I realized the words that were being uttered there were the same words I was uttering to myself.

If we’re lucky, we choose to build our lives on ourselves first, and then on something or someone substantial. Relationships are led by our choices and finding joy within the company you keep. But sometimes we thrive on tensions, and those tensions are the only thing holding our everything together. We can not remove the tension without removing the supportive ropes. And the ropes are our only connective tissue. Observing things now, I have seen tension in place of too much for far too long for far too many, all bubbling underneath the surface.

• • •

Passenger planes outside my window

I watched the planes take off at the tiny restaurant beside the tiny airport. We dined in the Frank Sinatra room. There were pictures of Ol’ Blue Eyes everywhere. I couldn’t imagine Sinatra hanging out in Latrobe. But there he was, looking right at me in glossy black and white. We were the only ones dining that afternoon. The sky was beautiful. I was moving from window to window trying to see as much as I could. I had arrived at a restless sense of peace for a moment for the first time in a long year.

I watched my niece make faces in the kitschy wall-sized mirrors. I knew this transition year was coming to a close, and the Pandora’s box of revelations that have simultaneously surprised, and empowered, and exhausted me on an almost daily basis were temporarily at bay. The recognition of those I love and those who love me were coming into focus.

The food was delicious and the company calming. We drove home full and ready to nap.

Frank Sinatra Room

There are so many other thoughts to have, but they all seem distant and stale. So for now, I leave behind some imagery relating to this entry as well as a few random moments of “somethings” from the last two months. Hopefully I am leaving death behind and coming into newfound words and images in the weeks to come.

• • •

OTHER MOMENTS TOO “SOMETHING”  TO DEFINE:

All I Ever Needed to Know I Learned from Jim Henson… and a few others…

My Path, South Park

Emptiness and rebirth. There is a lot of empty and rebirth going around… (My husband will actually be writing about something similar in his blog this week, as well… funny how great minds think alike.) A few weeks ago, I decided to sit down with my family and watch the original Muppet Movie. There was no particular reason behind this other than that it was my birthday weekend and I wanted to share a memory of something I loved with my husband and son. I hadn’t watched this film in about 15 years, so I was curious if my memories of the greatness of this film truly held up.

This movie marked the first time I fell in love, although (at the time) I did not know I was falling in love. I fell in love with an idea much bigger than myself. My young brain was too immature to process that idea, so I simply collected Kermits and various other Muppet memorabilia throughout my childhood as a make shift shrine to this thing I admired yet didn’t understand. In fact, I still have my commemorative Muppet Movie glasses that McDonald’s handed out in the 1970s when the movie first came out.

To my delight, the perfection of this film from my memories remained in tact. The one liners, the subtlety, the heart, it was still there. Steve Martin in Lederhosen was there. Crazy German Mel Brooks was there. My family listened to my deep-seated Muppet geek references and my general gushing. We all had a great time watching, laughing and analyzing the sheer brilliance of the film.

But I was struck by something I had forgotten. I always, always, always cringed at the film’s ending. If you have not seen it before, here it is:

 

This ending nearly sent my optimistic childhood brain into shock.

How the hell could they end it like this!? All that work. All that struggle. All that, all that to make their dreams come true: the bad guys, the kidnapping, the Instagrow™ pills, the frog legs, etc. After all that, they finally get to Hollywood to make their dream a reality and whoosh, the studio gets destroyed by carelessness and freak accidents. I was devastated. Even the rainbow at the end seemed senseless. It was a true moment among many truths in that movie. A level of unfairness my adolescence had not (as of yet) encountered.

I have spent this past year focusing on my limitations and trying to better the person I am. When I began this journey, I felt I had a limited knowledge of who I really am and what made me tick. I took the dangerous approach of self exploration without a net, or at least without a licensed psychologist.

I suppose I should have made a list of what I considered limitations within, but instead I began to explore my roots, my genetics and how all of that comes into play with shaping who a person is, but more importantly, discovering what happiness IS when you really want it.

After a year of analyzing, kneading, and expelling, I realized something rather horrifying. I have spent my whole lifetime over analyzing my limitations. I have been so busy getting to the heart of my flaws, that I had forgotten how to nurture the seeds that had been planted by my family, my teachers, my friends, my experiences and myself from so long ago until this very moment. And worse, I lacked the foresight then, as I do now on how make them blossom.

Henson was always my teacher. And like the best teachers, I had no idea I was being taught. I was just organically (and sometimes inorganically) learning. He became a father figure to me when I needed some emotional guidance. He taught me straight forward humor and the ability to laugh at myself. He taught me the beauty of imperfection. He taught me to follow my dreams with what is (in my opinion) the single greatest buddy film ever created using these few simple words:

 

They believed in the dream…

Lately I feel as if I have let down my surrogate father of my possible and impossible dreams by traipsing through regret and not bounding gleefully towards the future as much as I really should.

I have been reflecting on these thoughts for some time now, and then Steve Jobs’ passed. And something happened…

Something was set in motion. I was left empty and I did not expect it, but there it was, drifting into my life like a message in a bottle.

Another teacher forging his own path. Another risk taker showing me how following your bliss is the only thing that makes sense in this life. Risk takers have this foresight or at least are able to weigh the risks enough to know what is a “win”. That is a skill set of intuition I am so envious of.

I have a confession. I have squandered bliss from time to time for the sake of responsibility. Don’t get me wrong, I have tried to live the life I was meant to live, but compromise for the greater good sometimes took precedence over happiness. I think that happens when your parents leave you young, you either become super reckless or super responsible. I chose the latter.

Upon hearing the news of Jobs’ death, these thoughts came rushing through my brain, both fast and furious:

I need pushed. I need my dreams to not be in vain. My plea is desperate and my soul craves something. 

The restless has been stirring for a long time. I have been stuck in these waters for too long.

I love my family and my art, but I have been treating my life as temporary, as some sort of transitional period for far too long. What I need to do is transition them (and myself) into the “next”.

There are so many quotables from my heroes, but how can you translate that rhetoric into solid life experience and success?

I have been under a false notion, listening to the dissenters for far too long, saying your too old for this, too late for that…

All this clarity happened so abruptly to the point where I can barely type these words out. When I heard the news of Jobs’ death, I wanted to change everything. I wanted to grab the scissors and cut my hair, cash in and/or sell everything and fly off to Berlin, do something, anything. Light a fire and begin living.

So how do you change the world? I guess the better question for me is, how do I change myself and leave the world different? I guess I need to start by changing the way I perceive myself. I need the change the way I perceive my limitations. All my heroes believed they could leave the world a little bit better than the way they found it. They found ways to enhance our way of communicating with each other. One on an emotional level and the other on a technological level.

My first computer was an Apple. I bought it (used) at a time when everyone was buying PC’s. That simple purchase changed everything for me. I began drawing with the Mac Paint program and doing simply desktop publishing very early on. I was curious about layout and design all the while trudging through my journalism degree. I saw fonts and illustrations differently and began nurturing possibilities. I began taking classes in the early Photoshop programs; I began taking desktop publishing courses; I began shaping the person I was searching to become.

My mother bought me that computer. She shaped so much for me in our short time together. We both thought about driving to NYC to attend Jim Henson’s funeral. We never did go for one reason or another, but she understood why I so desperately wanted to attend. My brother and I sang this song at her funeral:

 

___

My solidification of unabashed change came today when I heard of the passing of someone who I attended college with. I did not know him well, but the whole college community knew of him. He was one of those folks you would call a life force. He was musical, both in vocational choice and in the fact he was constantly singing, his voice burst through the halls of our dormitory in a joyous noise. He sounded like Stevie Wonder and wore rollers in his hair. He took in all the “misfits” and made them feel like family. They called him “Mama.” In his short time on earth, he touched so many. I have not seen him in 20 years. I admired him from afar while standing next to him when he serenaded the masses in our tiny ramshackle dormitory elevators:

Monte Smock: Amazing Grace (video courtesy of Gretchen Schock)

Life should not end at 39.

I walked into Starbucks (as I normally do most days). I was thinking about all my friends who were grieving over Monte. The school hallways constantly echoed with his singing; he was always singing. Lost in my thoughts of his voice and my friends’ sadness, the Starbucks workers spontaneously burst into song, the same song, laughing, giggling, having a good time. Everyone in the coffee shop began to smile. I am there everyday (literally) and I have never seen any one of them do that. Normally it is pretty silent and stoic. I was moved to tears. I told them that their impromptu concert made my day and urged them to keep on singing. Monte was special and he served his purpose on this earth. Again, even for me, someone who only got to observe his loveliness from the rafters… or within earshot.

Teachers really do “show up” when you least expect it.

To that end, I have spent the whole day reading the FB memories of someone I wish I would have gotten to know better in life. The lessons I have learned this week are more than I can bear.

My hope still is to leave the world a bit better than when I got here. — Jim Henson

Upon this last viewing of the Muppet Movie, I began to understand the film’s ending on a much deeper level. I did not cringe this time. I watched with the knowledge only age and maturity could provide. I realize that your dreams can come true but sometimes they can still be taken away. That your dream doesn’t always turn out the way you had hoped it would, but if you do it right, if you believe in something, if you are truly yourself, that you will be surrounded by folks who stand up for your dream. Jim Henson was a great teacher and he was smart not to candy coat life, even if it was only a movie.

I think we all go through life wanting to be remembered, wanting to leave an impact. It takes hard work, perseverance, etc. But the dirty little secret to success is not just success itself but combining that success with a life well lived.

Life is not for the faint of heart. It is work to find out who you are. I am envious of those who have killer instincts and trust in themselves implicitly. The rhetoric means nothing without a change in perspective. I am still crawling through my path of self discovery. But I think I may be cashing a few things in and starting a new adventure. I owe it to my surrogates, my art, my loyal and gracious family. I owe it to myself.

Rearview

Exploring Berlin, Waiting for Others (reminder)

Compartmentalizing

***

Exploring my own “Berlin”. Wish you were here. Will call when I return.

Please Leave a Message…

***

CALL FOR ARTISTS >> OCTOBER 9, 2011

Hope to see you soon.

***

Message

Terminal

Conflict

Nightmare

Waiting

Nothing Gold Can Stay Clever

My Grandmother (left) and Aunt Rose (right) as teenagers.

What happens when you spend every waking moment waiting for the moment when your life is about to change? That was the random thought that awoke me from my sleep this morning. These are just the types of ridiculously clever words that usually creep into a person subconscious only after spending a lifetime watching and absorbing the language of too many “hipster” indie flicks. The ones that explain a lifetime of circumstance in 20 words or less.

I went to bed watching Me and You and Everyone We Know. Almost every word in that film oozes clever.

Clever words…

This past year, among other things, I have been searching for clever: clever words and clever images; clever words and clever subtext; clever words and clever meaning; Clever words in order to figure myself out, and more immediately, cleverness in order to write this blog. Things, events and moments keep coming full circle, however fast and furious. My indie upbringing has left me with clever and for me, clever equals clarity.

——————————

A few weeks ago, I attended on of my favorite Aunt’s funeral. She was just shy of 101 years old when she passed. When I think of my Aunt Rose, the first thing that always comes to my mind is her voice. It was a very unique in tone and sound, almost too difficult to describe. I always thought it sounded like what an aged elf might sound like but not annoying in that helium, Wizard of Oz munchkin type way; more like a soft toned, closed throat sound, as if her vocal chords were struggling to get all the air it expelled. It had resonance but was still slightly muffled. Her laugh was similar. Both gave me comfort and made me smile. I was told that she was the only adult, other than my mother, who had the ability to quell me in her arms. I cried for almost everyone else. I suppose her amazing voice had something to do with it. I was deemed as somewhat of  a “cold” baby because of my lack of calmness and inner peace.

I was compelled to write a few words in Rose’s honor due in part to this early bond. I wrote few random thoughts on some vacant scraps of paper. The pages were filled with scribbles, scratched out words and prose that, due to my penmanship, was quite indecipherable to most everyone else but me. After about 20 minutes, I was able to make my thoughts cohesive enough to complete my passage, so I folded the dog-eared, messy memoriam and placed them in my purse. The next day I walked into the viewing, said my hellos, gave my hugs, and handed the folded text to Rose’s daughter, Judy. My intention was have my words placed in the casket as a kind of silent remembrance.

“You should read these at the repass.”

——————————

Public speaking is quite daunting for me. I have done it on many occasions, but it is unnerving to say the least. I spent the whole next day thinking: people call me the Kim Reaper™, I am REALLY associated with death so I should REALLY feel more comfortable in this whole dearly departed/remembrance realm.

The Funeral Procession

Storm Approaching

I am fascinated with eulogies. I am also a huge fan of pop culture. For a period of time in my youth, our household was subscribed to People magazine. I always jumped to the celebrity death/obit/remembrance section first. My two hobbies in one fell swoop. WOO HOO! It was always fascinating (and a little heartbreaking) to me how a writer, who probably did not even know the deceased, could sum up a whole lifetime of achievements in a few small paragraphs. That a lifetime of work filled with blood, sweat and tears could be condensed into a few hundred characters, in a column format right next to an ad for baby formula or shoes. It almost felt like a Greek tragedy to me. I would read and reread each death notice trying to memorize who they were and reflect on impact they left behind. I would ask my mother detailed questions about select dearly departed if it was an actor/artist from before my time or whose work I was unfamiliar with. For a time, I would even cut the notices out and save them in a folder. I don’t know why I felt so obligated, I just felt sad that after these words were printed, the forgetting would begin. I knew it wasn’t the celebrity thing that left the impact, it was the horror of forgetting or being forgotten.

These days, I no longer clip and snip obits manually, instead I inform the masses through my Facebook page, posting the death notices as I find them. I have a reputation as the “you heard it here first” merchant of death. I have been dubbed the Kim Reaper™ because of these posts. In fact, I have hopes that my “reapering” will be mention in my eulogy at least listed as one of my occupations in my obituary. How poetic?

Crooked Jesus

Exiting the cemetery

Words… Remembering

I spent the whole night before the funeral reworking and agonizing over the honest words I had written in private for my Aunt. I was almost bastardizing the spirit in which they were written due to my insecurity over their weight. I felt that they somehow HAD to be changed, they had to be better, they had to have bells and whistles, they had to have more of an impact. I wanted people to remember. I wanted my words to almost rematerialize this person in front of the familial onlookers.

In the end, I found there were no better words than the ones I wrote for my Aunt the night before. The simplicity of them made sense. Relationships should be simple, honest, quiet and meaningful. The bells and whistles usually lack substance.

I read my words as my voice crackled and stammered and stumbled. My throat tightened as the prose spilled out. I spoke of endurance and perseverance. I spoke of family devotion and togetherness. I thought of how she called me “my Kimmy” every time she hugged me. Were these the right words? They lacked chutzpah, they lacked the cleverness-clarity. My aunt and I had not seen much of each other over the last few years. I said to my sister that something to the effect of, “there are so many more people here today WAY more qualified to honor her.”

The room was silent when I exited the stage. As I made it back to my seat, my sister hugged me with tears in her eyes. They meant something to her.

Despite the tears, I still debated in my mind whether my words were an adequate enough memoriam or even if I had the right to be on that stage at all. We began to say our goodbyes. The last hug I gave that day was to a woman, a distant cousin, someone who I had not seen in years. She grabbed my hands and uttered the phrase, “How beautiful.” I smiled. I think her words were one final gesture of love from my dear Aunt, spoken through my cousin.

Aunt Judy and Uncle Bob dancing with me (at my wedding) for our version of a father daughter dance to the song Rainbow Connection.

I spent the rest of the day remembering. Scattered, lovely, sad, happy thoughts swirled around as I drove home:

We had to be in bed by 8 or so my mother and Judy could enjoy their nightly telephone ritual… Rose was widowed so early in life… There were no pensions in those days… She cleaned the neighborhood church to make ends meet because that is “just what you did”…  The doctors feared Judy and Bob’s daughter’s leukemia may have been a result of the Agent Orange used in Vietnam… What would it be like to be drafted… Duquesne Rummy nights in our house were legendary… They always smiled. I knew all their laughs very well… I need to listen to the Rainbow Connection again… My niece called Rose her Uncle Rose. “If that’s what she wants to call me then I am ok with that”… They watched a lot of M*A*S*H … Bob, Judy and Rose lived in that tiny house in Duquesne  for as long as I can remember. It smelled like cookies and a department store. That smell always reminds me of family. 

Aunt Rose on her 100th

I ended my remembrance with two statements I felt appropriate. This was the first:

At the end of Rose’s life, when she could no longer get around, my Uncle Bob had to carry her from room to room. Aunt Judy was worried that Rose was far too heavy for him to carry. To this Uncle Bob replied, “I will let you know when it’s too heavy.” I thought to myself, “How beautiful.” That phrase sums up everything you ever needed to know about Rose, Judy and Bob.

I realized on that car ride home that is was not important whether my words were significant or not. The significance lies in a life well lived. And my words, however unpoetical or unclever, couldn’t give or take away from any of the italics.

The second statement was this: I could not get the words of Robert Frost out of my head throughout most of the funeral service, so I decided to end my eulogy the same way I am ending this blog. These perfect, simple words that seemed to make all the sense in the world. The universe had been giving me cues all day, so I figured it was best for me to oblige.

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down today.
Nothing gold can stay.

FAMILY PHOTOS, Courtesy of my cousin, Donna

Aunt Rose (right) and relatives from New Jersey

Aunt Rose and Judy

Aunt Rose

My mother (left), Judy (right)

Front Row: Judy and my mother, Back Row: My mother's brother, sister and cousin.

Birthday Art, part 2

I woke up with the words of a poem in my head.

It was spoken to me in my dreams by a silhouetted traveler adorning a fedora and trench coat. His outline looked like the love child of William Burroughs and Leonard Cohen. He smelled of lucky strikes. They weren’t my words (although my brain dreamt them up). I will share the poem in its entirety next time, but here is the ending:

are we always all born restless?
or is it only me…

i spent 10,000 days alone
spend 10 years getting famous
10 years getting rich
then 10 years getting forgotten (by the time i’m 66)
will i get what i need by the time i’m 66?

_____________

The words made me think. They made me make promises to myself:

• I was going to enjoy this birthday. I was going to recognize through my lens the little moments.

• I was going to wear a dress everydayof this birthday weekend. I was going to accept that side of my femininity that isn’t related to motherhood, combine it with my other selves and make it more apparent.

In the spirit of the Birthday Art Project, and as a present to myself, I was going to attempt to make some sort of statement about who I am. (However narcissistic that may or may not seem). So within the tiny quiet moments of my solace and reflection, and within my (sometimes) loud, boisterous, self-imposed attention grabbing, antics, I let myself experience moments this year, moments through myself and through others. I captured them. I documented them. Each photo took a nanosecond to take, but it painted the story I wanted to tell. This weekend was my art. It was the first birthday over I decade where I took time and experienced the moments. So here is my birthday, my weekend, my moments, my art, my dresses, party feet, other people’s feet, my feet and my birthday dancing, my laughter, my images without words.

_______

EXCERPTS: MY FRIDAY

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EXCERPTS: MY SATURDAY

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 EXCERPTS: MY SUNDAY BIRTHDAY

Chaos Theory, Part 1: The Entropy of Black & Blue (Dishes)

Energy of the universe is constant. Entropy of the universe tends to a maximum. —Rudolf Clausius, German physicist, mathematician and one of the central founders of the science of thermodynamics

photo by Kim Rullo

ENTROPY: a measure of disorder in the universe or of the availability of the energy in a system to do work. The tendency for all matter and energy in the universe to evolve toward a state of inert uniformity.

_________

I broke a dish…Well, actually, I didn’t… Really, I just opened the cupboard and the dishes came pouring out.

A loud cacophony of crashes ensued. Angrily, I looked downward and screamed inarticulately at the floor. Another direct result of my poor household organizational skills and my often disheveled nature, I thought. In that moment, I had no idea why this freak event brought me to that depressive, narcissistic anti-me sentiment, but there it was, unexpected and disruptive, like the mess laid out before me. A feeling of my mother washed over me as I stared at the broken ceramic shards. She was organized. I am not. She was neat. I am not.

As unkempt as some aspects of my mother’s life had been, everything on the surface always had its place.“What the hell?!” were all the words my thoughts could muster. Whomever said motherhood and domestication was a natural, genetically inherited trait was seriously misinformed. Fort maker — yes! Lightsaber battler — bring it on! Dish stacker — thumbs down.

My thoughts drifted to a friend whose mother had just died. We had spoke of our weird shared experiences that weren’t really shared but weren’t mutually exclusive either. Our different mothers wading in this underlying current of “mutual-ness”: mutual sentiment; mutual sadness; mutual self discovery; mutual regret. Regret is such a terrible thing.

photo by Kim Rullo

Crack! I stepped on one of the shards. My misstep didn’t really hurt, it just brought me back to the floor. It reminded me of the mess that was still there. Kneeling to the ground, I haphazardly started to pick up the taunting ceramic remains.

I got down low, laying my body close to the broken pieces.

I chuckled to myself and began to think, Isn’t this all so very cliché? So cute? So apropos?  The words “a beautiful lie” came to mind. I wasn’t sure what the lie was: my perceptions of my mother or my perceptions of myself. Even the random patterns on the floor were deceiving me in their own way. Strong and thick, yet jagged and broken. A few large segments with miniscule bits behind them, surrounding them. Food particles from last night’s dinner added to the debris that was adorning my less than pristine kitchen floor. They looked like mother, or at least mothers as I intimately knew them. I captured it with my camera. After half my life without her, it was what was left. Not really sad, just different, distant, objectified. Her’s and mine.

Debris and strength.

I began focusing on chaos. I began to miss her.

photo by Kim Rullo

continued next week: Chaos Theory, Part 2: Fumbling Towards Extropy

_________

THE ORIGINS OF MOTHER BLUE:

This post was written this past winter shortly after I heard news of the death of a friend’s mother. My crashing dishes and our multiple conversations inspired this true event and in turn this event prompted me to begin writing this blog. It is the beginnings of my entropy and my journey towards extropy.

The photos in this series are called “Black & Blue Mothers (Dishes).”

Lost and Found, Part 2: Belonging

My purse is filled with funeral cards.

My purse is filled with funeral cards. It seems as if I had been averaging a funeral home visit twice a month for the last six months. I guess that is the trappings of aging with an aged family.

I headed out the next day, triple checking the viewing schedule on all my smart phones and electronic devices. With my constant travel partner in tow, we set off on an encore performance of the previous day’s plans. I debated on wearing the same dress from the day before, but after revealing myself at Burgerfest I thought better of it. Me arriving in town in similar fashion and appearance from the day before came across to me as too deja vu, too trapped in limbo. It was like adding another ghost to this ghost town.

It was strange venturing out to the same location. The day before, I felt this weird sense of loss and reflection and today everything felt a little forced. I think I may have been exhausted from yesterday’s circumstance. As I drove, my mind drifted back and forth to past and present and the limitations of yesterday.

I arrived at my cousin’s funeral, just as I did every other funeral this past year, not knowing what to expect. I was the outsider and I knew it. I almost felt I did not have a right to be there, like a ghost or relic from the past. I was interrupting the grieving of family who spent the last 17 years together, celebrating birthdays, backyard BBQs, life, death and day-to-day struggles together. Maybe I should have adorned yesterday’s clothing.

Wow, we have not seen you in ages… I am such and such’s daughter…

Entering the room, I saw familiar faces that had aged slightly since I last laid eyes on them. I walked in and was recognized by a few, to other’s I explained my lineage. I offered my condolences. We began chatting about our shared histories.

August 1964. Aunt Lilly, top row, 4th person. I think Linda is next to her. My Grandma, second row, last person. Photo courtesy of my cousin, Donna.

I remember my cousin being one of the kindest women I had ever known. She had always seemed to make family appearances and miscellaneous functions with my other, equally kind aunt. Aunt Linda and Aunt Lilly, they always seemed so inseparable, like soulmates. In fact their names merged into one entity when referred to by the family. AuntLindaandAuntLilly. It seems so sad to me now that death separates them.

Growing up, there were two or three houses of cousins all in a row. Our neighborhood not being the greatest and my mother’s fear of the decline that had taken over the town led us elsewhere on certain holidays. As an alternate to the traditional door to door tricks and treats, every Halloween we would get dressed up in our costumes, walk over to grandparent’s apartment to show off our costumes and get some treats. Then we would pile into our Oldsmobile and drive to the trifecta of houses my cousin’s lived in. The most glorious bags of candy would be waiting there for us. They were packed to capacity. It was more candy than you could EVER collect in one night even if you scoured five neighborhoods. At least that is what I speculated in my young mind.

I don’t remember when the Halloween adventures ended, just as I can’t pinpoint when we all eventually lost touch. My grandfather died in 1990. Four years later mother died. Then my grandmother passed away four years after that. My closest connective tissue to that part of the family had rapidly started dying off and my siblings and I were trying to navigate in our own little “brave new world” that existed without the parents and grandparents that had guided us. Time simply marched on.

My grandparents on their wedding day.

I made my way around the room as Jack made friends with another cousin. They shared some goldfish crackers and talked shop. I began reintroducing myself to everyone and repeatedly telling my Halloween story. I get nervous in crowds and tend to talk… a lot. I think I was also trying to prove to myself (and others) that I had a right to be there, even when my cousins showed no signs of thinking I was out of place. In fact it was quite the opposite.

I began talking to another cousin’s wife and started to tell the Halloween story again. For some reason, I began to reflect on my words as I talked. It became less the rehearsed speech of a nervous person and more a story and heartfelt memory. I began to tear up as I repeated the same words of that same story. I thought of how AuntLindaandAuntLilly remembered to send us birthday cards every year without fail. I remembered being baby sat by another cousin, the cherry tomatoes we used to munch on laughing and talking in my living room, TV glowing in the background. I remembered the warmth I felt every time I was around those people.

We noticed the sounds of our respective sons cavorting in the back room and chuckled. I mentioned how sad it was that we all lost touch. How sad it was that most of my immediate family had passed away and that for my siblings, baring a few exceptions, there was not much of an immediate family left. She looked at me as if she understood my longing and feeling of loss of family on so many levels. Of course that may have been my perception of the moment, but in that instant, I felt a connectivity.

Goldfish crackers with cousins.

I gave my family a few more hugs and condolences as I was getting ready to leave. We were extended an invitation to their 4th of July celebration. Unfortunately, we were not able to attend because my husband had some major dental work done and needed cared for that weekend. I was sad we could not make it, but I hope to reconnect at their Labor Day extravaganza.

We got in the car and headed for home. We made one last stop at my old place on the way out. Jack wanted to see where I grew up.

Jack hamming it up.

Serious Jack.

Took a different route home than I normally do from this area. Instead of taking the parkway, I took the back roads through West Mifflin towards Century III Mall. There was one last place I wanted to see.

I wanted to live in that house. I constantly curious about the goings on there. The brick footbridge complete with the flowing creek underneath was always so romantic to me. Especially on our nighttime drives back from the mall. I stared longingly at this place each and every time we passed it. The warm glowing orange lights the space omitted at evening time was so inviting. On one of our nighttime travels, I passionately proclaimed how much I would love to live there one day. To this my mother responded, “Yeah it is lovely, but they probably have rats (because of that creek).” My mother had this gift of being both sharply acute and unknowingly obtuse all in one sentence. I think sometimes her overinflated sense of reality and practicality prohibited her from seeing the space in the gloriousness only my 13-year-old eyes could conjure and imagine.

I was irritated that my mother was so cautious, at times. But my mother’s love, fear, and harsh realities led to some brilliant Halloweens. I never tricked or treated until my son was born, but I thank her for giving us such a beautiful memory.

My "dream" house.

The creek below.

I made one last pilgrimage to my hometown the week following my cousin’s funeral. It was for the death of my godmother’s father who also happened to be my next door neighbor. He was the first person I ever knew to have tattoos. I think he got them while he was in the war. A blunt and funny man. They had a German Shepherd named Thor. He taught everyone in the neighborhood, including my mother, how to drive. My godmother asked if he taught me as well. I told her that he tried. He took me out on the highway to teach the basic rules of the road, but I guess my skill set was sorely lacking. He clutched the passenger seat with purpose. When we arrived back in Duquesne, he asked me to pull over at the local “Moose” so he could get out and grab a drink. I patiently waited in the car. Through all his years serving our country and his stature as the neighborhood driving guru, this 16 year old girl had somehow broken him. My godmother, her brother, and a few other funeral attendees laughed heartily at my story.

My godmother holding me as my parents looked on at my baptism.

I spoke to the director of the funeral home for a few moments after that. He had buried most of my family including my mother. I always promised myself I would thank him for being so kind to us in the days after my mother’s death so I set out to do just that. He remembered me once I mentioned my last name. We talked a lot about our town’s decline and some of the residents that were no longer there. After a few moments, I shook his hand and made my way home. I recounted the past few weeks of mourning and revisiting the past. I always had a sense of not feeling like I belonged to anything on so many occasions. These few weeks of retelling bits and pieces of my childhood gave me a sense of being tied to something; of being part of a shared memory of a collected group of people; of being part of a town’s history, and the documenter of my own, still developing… something…

The funeral home waiting area that I felt compelled to photograph. It looked so different from what I remembered.

Finding the right chair.

Still searching.

Receipts and funeral cards from the past several months finally expelled from my purse.

Jack horsing around with the camera while trying to take my pic. He told me later that if he took my photo he would like to be in the pic as well. Hence his two fingers. He did not explain this before taking the photo. I was nervous that someone may exit the house and complain about us being on the property. Jack captured my face at the height of my nervousness. We laughed heartily after this photo was taken when he explained what he was doing.